A good old fashioned murder mystery

Written well, as usual for Patricia Wentworth. She has been so underrated. A good mystery and lots of murders, with a satisfactory ending.

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Beautifully read

I love these gentle tales of murder and mayhem and the gentle, Tennyson loving Miss Silver is a delight.

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Excellent! Beautifully descriptive and read!

A brilliantly detailed and nuanced detective story and so evocative of the home front in wartime Britain. Very informative and great characters
So brilliantly read!

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Interesting period piece, but lacks pace.

The narrator is good, but the story lacks pace. The denouement takes far too long, and the stupidity of the police in refusing to accept the blindingly obvious both annoys and frustrates, rather than building up tension.

Don't even get me started on the ludicrous concept of a well-educated upper-middle class young woman working as a housemaid for people of her own class. Just nonsensical. Judy as a companion, I could have accepted, scrubbing the floors, no!

The wartime details are interesting. However, I found the smug acceptance of male misconduct - really quite shocking behaviour is dismissed with an accepting smile - grating to say the least, post #metoo. The emphasis is very firmly on 'boys will be boys' and girls, even very young girls, should know better and only have themselves to blame if they 'fall' from grace. It's never the man's fault in this world!

I guessed the villain very early on, and the motivation for multiple murders was, quite frankly, ridiculous. There was also a bizarre angle involving drugs which was introduced and then forgotten about. (There was a hint that one character was being drugged for a particular purpose, but this was forgotten about as soon as it was raised.)

I do like the fact that there is not a completely 'happy ending', as this is more 'realistic' and, as I have noted before in a previous review of Wentworth's work, she isn't afraid to depict, (albeit briefly), the darker, more violent aspects of domestic life.

If you are happy to ignore daft plots in favour of a slow-moving vintage crime caper, (with lots and lots of recapping in case you fall asleep), then this will suit. I will continue to listen to Wentworth's work when on special offer, but wouldn't spend a full credit!

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2 people found this helpful