Why Keep the Brakes On? Let’s Misbehave!*

What do you think of when you think of the 1920’s? Do you think of ‘flappers?’ Of Babe Ruth? Prohibition?  The growth of Hollywood? It was an action-packed decade, and so many things happened at that time that it’s no wonder it’s got such an appeal. There’s a certain mystique about art-deco and 1920’s style extravagance among other things. So it’s no wonder that the 1920’s is also a big part of crime fiction.

For one thing, many people argue that the Golden Age of crime fiction began to hit its stride in the 1920’s. And I’m sure that those of you who are Golden Age fans could list a large number of authors and books from that time – many more than I could. Let me just mention a few. Dorothy Sayers’ series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey debuted in 1923 with Whose Body?, in which Wimsey investigates the murder of an unknown man whose body is found in a bathtub. This plot thread ties in with embezzlement and another man who seems to have disappeared. In this novel, we see one of the hallmarks of the 1920’s – the class differences that still remained quite strong. Wimsey and his family are wealthy and privileged. They have access to all sorts of means that ‘ordinary’ people do not. And the theme of class differences is woven into more than one of Sayers’ novels.

We also see those stark class differences in historical series. For instance, Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series features Fisher, who was born to the working class but inherited a title and fortune. So she mixes and mingles in the highest social circles. And yet, we also see that not everyone has that sort of prosperity. In Cocaine Blues for instance, Fisher gets involved in cracking an illegal (and dangerous) abortion clinic for working-class girls and young women whose families don’t have the means to make it all quietly ‘go away’ safely.

The 1920’s were also a time of great waves of immigration, and not just to the United States. Travel was becoming easier and the Great War had uprooted millions of people. The resulting diversity was one of the major social changes of the era. But that immigration also resulted in quite a lot of ethnic and racial prejudice. We see that reflected in crime fiction of the era too. In Margery Allingham’s The Crime at Black Dudley for instance, a group of friends is gathered at Black Dudley, the home of academician Wyatt Petrie. During the course of this house party, Petrie’s uncle Gordon Crombie dies, and it looks very much as though his death is suspicious. One of the guests Albert Campion takes a hand in finding out the truth about the death and about a mysterious ritual that’s supposedly associated with the family living there. In the course of the novel, there are several ‘isms’ and offensive references to members of different groups. You’ll find those in lots of other crime fiction of that decade too.

For several reasons, the roles of women changed fundamentally during the 1920’s. Just as one example, between 1920 and 1929, voting rights were extended to include women in the Czech Republic, Sweden, the U.K., the U.S. and Belgium among other countries (Australia granted federal voting rights to women in 1902, but some states granted it earlier for state elections. Canadian women had full federal voting rights in 1918. Women had had full suffrage in New Zealand since 1893).  We see the changing status of women in a lot of crime fiction from and about that era. Certainly we see it in Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series. Fisher is single and in no hurry to marry. She’s independent, liberated and although she certainly depends on her circle of friends, I’d say the word ‘demure’ hardly describes her.

We see that also in the work of Agatha Christie. Several of her female characters are independent, strong women. There’s Anne Beddingfield from The Man in the Brown Suit; there’s Katherine Grey from The Mystery of the Blue Train; and there’s ‘Cinderella’ (giving away her real name would be giving away too much of the plot) from The Murder on the Links, just to name three. All of these women think for themselves. They’re not averse to falling in love, and they’re not ‘man haters.’ But all of them reflect the reality of that time that women were coming into their own, so to speak.

A lot of people associate the 1920’s with extravagant parties and hedonism and it was certainly there. We see a hint of that in Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness (AKA Poirot Loses a Client). Hercule Poiriot and Captain Hastings investigate the death of Miss Emily Arundell, who supposedly died of liver failure, but has a group of relations desperate for her fortune. One of them is Theresa Arundell, a young ‘jet-setter’ who goes with a ‘party crowd,’ drinks heavily and so on. She’s not painted unsympathetically, but she is reckless.

And reckless is I think a good way to describe some aspects of that era. I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know for sure why the 1920’s was such a time of reckless abandon for a lot of people but here’s my guess. World War I changed everything for everyone. The real threat of mortality (especially with the influenza pandemic that followed that war) made a lot of people decide to enjoy life while they could You see that in writing from the era (e.g. F. Scott Fitzgerald) and you see that theme of deep wounds from the Great War in some terrific historical mystery series too. May I suggest Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series, ‘Charles Todd’s’ Inspector Ian Rutledge series, and Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series. You can also see it in Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In all of those novels and series, we get a sense of the privations of the war and the ‘flu pandemic. People wanted to forget it, to plunge into life and have fun while they could.

Of course there was plenty of violence during the 1920’s too. There was a lot of union unrest and the backlash from that. There was plenty of ugly, ugly racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration and political corruption and that too led to a lot of violence. And there was organized crime. There’s a trace of that rise in organized crime in Patricia Wentworth’s Grey Mask, in which Charles Moray returns to England after some time away only to find that his home has been taken over by a criminal gang and that the woman who broke his heart may be mixed up with it. And then there’s Jeffrey Stone’s Play Him Again. In that historical mystery, Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson is a ‘rum-runner’ – a smuggler of then-illegal alcohol who supplies Hollywood’s luminaries with ‘liquid fuel’ for their parties. When a friend of his is murdered, Hud goes after those responsible, including a very nasty crime gang that’s moved into the area. That novel also explores what Prohibition was like in the U.S. (and makes it clear why the law enforcing Prohibition was never going to be really successful).

I could go on and on about the 1920’s (Jazz, anyone? The Harlem Renaissance? The fashions!) Moira at Clothes in Books has done some great posts on the clothes and fashions of the era. Here’s just one example. But this one post doesn’t give me nearly enough space to talk about it all. The 1920’s was too influential a decade for that. So now it’s your turn. Does that era appeal to you? Which books and series from and about that era do you like? Help me please to fill the gaps I left.

 

ps. The pearls on the left in the top ‘photo are part of a long double strand of pearls that belonged to my grandmother. On the right is a double-strand necklace that belonged to my grandmother-in-law. Both are genuine vintage…   The other ‘photo is of the terrific Essie Davis, who portrayed Phryne Fisher in the very well-done (in my opinion, anyway) Australian series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. These episodes are adaptations of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels and if you get the chance, I can recommend them. They aren’t of course 100% true to the novels, but very nicely done I think.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Cole Porter’s Let’s Misbehave.

Oh, and She Never Gives Out and She Never Gives In*

A fascinating discussion at Mrs. Peabody Investigates (A blog you really need to follow if you’re a fan of crime fiction) has got me thinking about two trends in crime fiction. One of them (and this is what was discussed at the blog) is the increase in depictions of extreme violence against women in some crime fiction. I’ll get back to that shortly. The other trend is the increase we’ve seen in the last few decades of strong female protagonists. I’m most emphatically not saying the two trends are necessarily related. I find that duality really interesting though.

Of course, there’ve been crime novels that depict violence against women for quite some time. For instance, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, published in 1952, is the story of Central City, Texas deputy sheriff Lou Ford. Everyone thinks of Ford as a nice, competent lawman, even if he isn’t exactly an exciting person. Then a local prostitute Joyce Lakeland is brutally beaten. Then there’s a murder. As the investigation into these events goes along, it becomes increasingly clear that Ford is not the person everyone thinks he is. In fact, he’s battling with something he calls ‘the sickness.’ While this novel is not as extreme as some of today’s novels, it certainly is uncompromising.

So is Mickey Spillane’s treatment of women. In several of his Mike Hammer novels, women are the victims of all sorts of abuse. And in this ‘hardboiled’ category of noir crime fiction, that violence is not glossed over, even in Spillane’s earlier work. There are other examples too, especially among other ‘hardboiled’ novels, of plots that involve violence against women.

But what seems to be a much more common theme among today’s crime fiction novels is the deliberate targeting of female victims. I won’t – promise – list for you all of the novels in which there’s a series of brutal torture/murders of women. But if you pay attention to crime fiction, you know exactly what I mean. Those who’ve been involved in the discussion on Mrs. Peabody’s blog are right that there are many more of these kinds of plots than there used to be. And in many of those novels, the violence isn’t just extreme; it’s described in excruciating (and I mean that word) detail. I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know what the reason is that books like this sell as well as they do. But if they didn’t sell my guess is that fewer of them would be written.

What’s interesting (or maybe it’s just my opinion) is that at the same time as we have this increase in the number of books that feature extreme violence against women, we also have the development of several very strong female protagonists. Again, there’ve been strong female characters in crime fiction for a long time. Dorothy Sayers’ Harriet Vane, Patricia Wentworth’s Maude Silver, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Ngaio Marsh’s Agatha Troy are just a few examples of Golden Age female characters. And recent decades have added to that number. From Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone to Helene Tursten’s Irene Huss to Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest, we’ve seen the number of strong female characters grow rapidly. Space doesn’t permit me to mention each one of them (I know, I know, fans of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski).

And even in novels that feature male protagonists, the female characters have gotten stronger and more self-sufficient. Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti for instance is married to the very strong and independent Paola Falier. And Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller was married to the formidable Maggie ‘McFierce’ McPherson, who can most definitely hold her own as a character. There are many other examples too; I’m sure you could give me more than I could ever offer to you.

It’s not just a matter of strength of character either. More and more, female characters have positions of high authority and power, too. Again, I won’t go on and on with a list of examples. Suffice it to say that in just about any sub-genre of crime fiction, there are women who are high-ranking police officers, bank presidents, well-known attorneys and so on.

And from what I read in reviews and on blogs, readers want it that way. They want female characters, whether or not they are protagonists, to be ‘fleshed out,’ to be strong, and to be interesting as people. If you look at the sales for authors such as Leon and Connelly, you know that people buy a lot of books in which women are portrayed as strong characters. What’s more, those authors don’t write a series of books in which killers target only beautiful young women and subject them to unspeakable horrors.

So why are we seeing these two simultaneous trends? I don’t know the precise reason. And it could very well be that the two trends have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I’m going out on a proverbial limb here, not being a psychologist or other expert who’s studied the role of women. One guess might be that different sorts of people buy those two different sorts of books. I don’t have access to marketing data, but I wonder whether people who buy books that feature extreme violence against women also buy books in which they play significant roles and are in fact, strong protagonists. Another guess might be that this dual trend says something about society’s view of women. That’s a complicated issue in and of itself of course. But books usually do have something to say about the society in which the authors live.

I honestly don’t have the answer, but I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you see this same dual trend? If you do, where do you think it comes from? Where do you see it going? If you’re a writer, do you think about the roles your female characters play?  Thanks, Mrs. P, for the inspiration.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman.

I’m Not the Same As I Used to Be*

An interesting comment exchange has got me thinking about the way our reading tastes and the novels and series that appeal to us change over the years. In part of course our tastes change as we mature and develop. Our tastes also change as we read more and expose ourselves to different sub-genres and authors. Want to see how you’ve changed as a reader? Pick up a book you first read at least ten years ago. Do you still feel the same way about it? Are there any authors whose work you used to love but have now drifted away from reading? I’m not talking here about authors who’ve changed their style; we’ve all had the experience of reading a novel by an author who’s long since ceased to innovate or who’s changed her or his style. I’m really talking about an author whose work you feel differently about because you’ve changed. There may even be authors whose work you used to dislike but have come to really like.

Some people for instance started out by reading spy thrillers, and there’ve been a lot to love over the decades. For instance, Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File is the story of crime reporter Peter Miller, who happens to follow an ambulance to the scene of the death of Holocaust survivor Solomon Tauber, who’s committed suicide. Through Tauber’s diary entries and some of his own investigation Miller learns of an ultra-secret worldwide organization to re-establish the Nazis as a world power.

There’s also the work of John le Carré, like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. In that novel, jaded and wearied British spy Alec Leamas is the leader of British Intelligence in East Berlin. When several of his agents are killed on his watch, it’s obvious that Leamas isn’t doing his job very well any more. Then, his best agent Karl Riemeck is murdered. Leamas is called back to London where he’s persuaded to take on just one more assignment: the murder of Hans Dieter Mundt, who organised the killings of Leamas’ agents.

Spy thrillers like these and the work or authors such as Robert Ludlum are past-paced and “high-octane” so it’s no wonder that they’ve sparked many people’s interest in crime fiction. Were spy thrillers your first introduction to crime fiction? Do you still love them as much as you did? Did you move on to more modern thriller authors such as Daniel Silva? Do you branch out into psychological thrillers such as those by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine?

Other people (and I am one of them) started out with classic or Golden Age crime fiction. For instance, one of the first crime fiction novels I read was Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. That’s the story of the murder of a seemingly inoffensive charwoman, allegedly by her lodger James Bentley. Superintendent Spence begins to believe that perhaps Bentley isn’t guilty, and asks Hercule Poirot to investigate. Poirot travels to the village of Broadhinny to look into the matter and finds that several of the villagers are keeping secrets and that Mrs. McGinty had found out more than it was safe for her to know about one of them.

If you started out with the classics, perhaps you began with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels or stories. The Adventure of the Red-Headed League, for instance is the story of pawnbroker Jabez Wilson, who gets hired for a job that seems too good to be true: he’ll be paid to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica. When his “dream job” disappears, Wilson visits Holmes to ask his help in unravelling the mystery.

If you started with the classics or Golden Age novels, do you still love them as much as you did? Do you still read Rex Stout, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth or Ellery Queen as much as ever? Do you also read more modern authors such as Colin Dexter, Peter Lovesey or P.D. James who keep some of the classic traditions?

Lots of people began their mystery reading with books in the British or U.S. tradition, whatever the sub-genre, and have discovered translated crime fiction. For example, when Maj Sjöwall and  Per Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series was first translated in the mid-1960’s, many English-speaking crime fiction fans who’d been reading authors like Patricia Highsmith, Dick Francis or Ed McBain had a whole new series of novels to enjoy. The first in the Martin Beck series, Roseanna, is the story of the discovery of the body of an unknown woman who was murdered during a holiday cruise. She turns out to be twenty-seven-year-old Roseanna McGraw, an American who was on a tour of Sweden when she was murdered. Martin Beck and his team may not have had today’s technology, but they doggedly pursue the case and in the end, they find out who the murderer is.

There have been many other translated authors since then of course, from all over the world. Have you moved from work only in your own language to translated work? Have your feelings about “homegrown” crime fiction changed as you’ve read novels originally written in other languages?

There are also readers who began by reading cosy mysteries. If you started out with cosies, perhaps you began with LIlian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who… series featuring newspaper columnist James “Qwill” Qwilleran. Much of that series takes place in Moose County, “400 miles north of nowhere” and follows the lives of Qwill, his two seal-point Siamese cats and the various “regulars” who live in the small town of Pickax. This was a very popular and enduring series actually; it lasted from 1966 until Braun’s death in 2011 (OK, there was an 18-year break between 1968 and 1986, but still!).

If your first mystery novels were cosies you might have begun with something like Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen mysteries. Swensen is a former aspiring teacher of literature who returns to her Lake Eden, Minnesota home town after the death of her father and opens a bake shop The Cookie Jar. Fans of this series have followed the lives of Swensen, her love interests Mike and Norman, and the other residents of Lake Eden for thirteen years as I write this. These mysteries have the small-town setting, the amateur sleuth, the theme and the recipes that have become features of several cosy series over the years, so it’s easy to see why cosy fans would have started here.

If you’ve stayed with cosies, are you a fan of other cosy series such as M.C. Beaton’s Hamisch Macbeth series or Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Memphis Barbecue series? Perhaps you’ve branched out to “cosies with an edge” such as Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series. Or maybe you’ve moved on to something completely different.

Sometimes it’s really interesting to look back at the way your crime fiction tastes have changed. If you’re a writer, it’s also interesting to think about theyou’re your changing tastes in crime fiction affect your writing. So thanks, Kathy D., for the food for thought.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Elton John’s My Elusive Drug.

A Picture Postcard, a Folded Stub, a Program of the Play*

In real and fictional murders, detectives often look among the victim’s keepsakes and other possessions to get clues to the murderer. That makes sense, since keepsakes often tell a lot about a person. We don’t often think deeply about what our keepsakes say about us, but they do tell things about our personalities. The avid sport fan may have “sporty” keepsakes, while a theatre buff may have playbills, ticket stubs for a particular show and so on. Those personal little items don’t just give clues as to the victim’s personality either. Sometimes they are clues to the murderer. So detectives do pay attention to them and when they’re relevant, they use them as evidence.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Superintendent Spence asks Hercule Poirot to help solve the murder of a charwoman. All of the evidence has pointed to her unpleasant lodger James Bentley. In fact he’s been convicted of the crime and is due to be executed. But Spence, who actually collected the evidence in the case, has begun to believe that Bentley may be innocent. Poirot agrees to re-examine the case and travels to Broadhinny, where Mrs. McGinty lived and worked. In the process of his investigation, he discovers that several of the village’s residents are not sharing everything about their lives. Mrs. McGinty found out more about one of those residents than it was safe for her to know and paid for it, as the saying goes, with her life. Poirot gets several clues about the case from one particular keepsake: a photograph. What’s more, there’s a direct pointer to the killer in another keepsake (no spoilers here). It’s those little clues rather than fingerprints or bloodstains that guide Poirot in the right direction.

Sometimes those things we keep are documents or papers. I’m not talking here of wills; that’s another matter entirely. But people do keep papers that matter to them. For instance, in Patricia Wentworth’s Grey Mask, Charles Moray returns to his family home in England after a four-year absence. That’s when he discovers that a gang of criminals led by a man known only as Grey Mask has been using his home for their meetings. He discovers that they’re apparently planning to get rid of an heiress to get their hands on her fortune. What’s worse, Moray discovers that his former fiancée Margaret Langton may be mixed up with this gang. When the heiress, who turns out to be eighteen-year-old Margot Standing, leaves her home to escape an unwelcome marriage proposal, she ends up meeting Margaret Langton who takes her in. Now Moray is involved in this case on a few levels. With help from Miss Maude Silver, Moray, Langton and Moray’s friend Archie Millar find out the truth about the gang and their plot. At the heart of this case is a missing document that plays a critical role in the fortune that’s at stake.

In Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel we meet Hilary Bill-Tasman, who commissions Agatha Troy to paint his portrait during the Christmas holiday. Troy travels to the Bill-Tasman home Halbards and begins her work. Bill-Tasman’s house party also includes his uncle Fleaton “Uncle Flea” Forrester and Uncle Flea’s wife Bedelia “Aunt Bed,” as well as Uncle Flea’s longtime servant Alfred Moult. There’s also Bill-Tasman’s fiancée Cressida Tottenham. Bill-Tasman has planned a large Christmas-Eve party during which Uncle Flea will dress up as a Druid and distribute gifts to the local children. At the last minute though Uncle Flea is taken ill and can’t play the role of the Druid. So Moult takes his place. Shortly after the party Moult disappears and is later found killed. Inspector Roderick Alleyn, who’s just back from another case he’s been working, is concerned about his wife’s staying in a house where there’s a murderer. So he travels to Halbards and gets involved in the investigation. The first suspects are the members of Bill-Tasman’s staff, all of them convicted criminals (Bill-Tasman is a strong believer in rehabilitation for criminals). But Alleyn soon discovers that the house party too may have had motives for murder. This case hinges on an important document that reveals too much about the killer. When Alleyn realises who the killer likely is, he traces the murder to that document.

Peter Temple’s Bad Debts tells the story of the murder of Danny McKillop. McKillop has recently been released after serving eight years in prison for a drink driving killing of political activist Anne Jappeson. Sometime attorney Jack Irish defended McKillop but not very well, so he’s surprised when McKillop leaves him a telephone message but at first doesn’t do anything about it. McKillop wants to meet with Irish but makes it clear he can’t say why over the telephone. Irish doesn’t keep the meeting and truly regrets that decision when he finds out that McKillop has been murdered. Irish begins to ask questions about the murder and finds out that his former client may have been framed for Jeppeson’s death. Bit by bit he uncovers the truth about both deaths and in the process, he finds that one person Ronnie Bishop may have evidence in the case. When Bishop too is killed, Irish knows that whatever evidence he had must be critical. As it turns out, Bishop, a video and photography enthusiast, has left the evidence behind in the form of ‘photos that clearly connect the killer with the crimes.

One of the more unusual keepsakes in crime fiction (at least in my opinion) is in Karin Fossum’s Don’t Look Back. The body of fifteen-year-old Annie Holland is discovered by a tarn near the village of Granittveien. Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre begin their investigation with a look into Annie’s life and those of her family members, her friends and her boyfriend Halvor Muntz. At first there seems to have been no real motive for murder. Annie was well-liked and neither she nor anyone in her family had made enemies. More digging though uncovers the fact that several people in the small village are hiding things they’d rather the police not learn. One of those things is a sad event in the history of the village. Almost by accident Sejer learns of a keepsake Annie left behind that is related to that event, and that’s a large part of how he connects her murder to the right person.  In this case too, we learn about that keepsake early on in the novel, but we don’t know the real story about it until later in the story. Fossum does an effective job of planting that clue so that it doesn’t call too much attention to itself.

And then there’s Camilla Läckberg’s The Hidden Child. In that novel Fjällbacka author Erica Falck is in the process of cleaning out her mother Ely’s possessions as she comes to term with her parents’ deaths. She’s shocked to discover that among her mother’s things is a Nazi medal. Falck also finds some diaries her mother kept during her teen years and begins to read them. In them she wants to find out the reason for her mother’s neglectful treatment of both Erica and her sister Anna. Following up on the Nazi connection, Falck visits retired historian Erik Frankel to try to get some answers. But two days later he’s murdered. Then there’s another death. Now it’s clear that someone doesn’t want some of Fjällbacka’s ugly secrets to come out. Falck’s husband Patrik Hedström can’t resist getting involved in the investigations even though he’s supposed to be on paternity leave, especially since his wife’s family may be directly involved. So together Falck and Hedstrøm work, each in a different way, to find out the truth about the murders.

And that’s the power of keepsakes. They tell about who we are as people, they can give valuable clues, and they can even be behind murders. What kinds of keepsakes and remembrances do you have?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Souvenir.

In The Spotlight: Patricia Wentworth’s Grey Mask

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. When many people think of Golden Age sleuths, they think of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey or of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion. One Golden Age writer who perhaps doesn’t have the wide recognition of some of the other “Golden Age greats” is Patricia Wentworth. Her Maud Silver series lasted from 1928 to 1961 and plenty of people believe that Miss Silver is deserving of at least as much acclaim as Christie’s Miss Marple. So let’s give Miss Silver some “air time” today and turn the spotlight on her first outing Grey Mask.

Grey Mask begins with the return of Charles Moray to England after a four-year absence. He goes to his family home one night only to find to his shock that it’s being used as a meeting-place for what seems to be a criminal gang led by a man known only as Grey Mask, so-called because he always wears a mask when he’s meeting with his fellow criminals. The criminals don’t know Moray is there and he remains hidden for a short while watching and listening.  Apparently they are plotting to get rid of an heiress to get her money. Moray gets an even greater shock when he sees that one of the people who seems mixed up in this group is his former fiancée Margaret Langton, who jilted him and whose rejection is the reason he left England in the first place.

A few nights later Moray has dinner with an old friend Archie Millar, who tells him that Margaret hasn’t married anyone else. Worried that Margaret may be in trouble or worse, that she may be a willing criminal, Moray decides to do a little sleuthing. He doesn’t get very far though and is left with more questions than answers. That’s when Archie Millar recommends that Moray visit Miss Maude Silver. Moray reluctantly agrees to do so. When he does make an appointment with Miss Silver, Moray tells her what he witnessed although he doesn’t mention Margaret Langton’s involvement. Miss Silver agrees to take the case and in her own quiet way she starts investigating. As for Moray, he tracks down Margaret to the shop where she works and the two resume what turns out to be a very awkward, up-and-down relationship.

In the meantime, we get to know the ingenuous and immature Margot Standing, whose very wealthy father Edward has recently been lost at sea and who now stands to inherit a fortune. It then comes out that she may not be eligible to inherit, and her cousin Egbert is also in line for the money. The papers that would prove Edward Standing’s intent with regard to his wealth have disappeared, so both young Standings have a claim. When Egbert proposes that the two should marry, Margot refuses and leaves her home. What Margot doesn’t realise is that she is in grave danger because she is the heiress that Grey Mask and his gang have targeted. One wet night, with no-where to go and no idea how to start life on her own, she happens to be walking aimlessly when she meets Margaret Langton who takes pity on her and takes her in. When Margaret realises who her guest is, she faces a terrible dilemma. On one hand, she is mixed up with the criminal gang although not in the obvious way. On the other, she doesn’t want anything to happen to Margot Standing and she does want to resume her relationship with Charles Moray. In the end and with help from Moray, Archie Millar and of course Miss Silver, both Margaret Langton and Margot Standing find ways out of their situations and we find out who Grey Mask is and what the gang’s plot really was.

One of the elements that runs through this novel is the question of identity. We see it most clearly in the person of Grey Mask, who turns out to be one of the other characters in the novel. Identity also comes into play in the person of Margot Standing. The reader knows who she is throughout most of the novel but the other characters don’t know who she is at first. When Margot leaves her home she chooses another name so that her cousin Egbert is less likely to be able to find her. That’s the name she uses when Margaret Langton finds her. Then she chooses yet another name when it becomes clear that she is in real danger. There isn’t honestly a lot of suspense about who Margot Standing is, but it is (at least in my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do) fun to see how the other characters come to know her real identity.

Another thread running through the novel is the developing relationship between Charles Moray and Margaret Langton. Both have been hurt by their breakup, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding between them. Wentworth doesn’t minimise this either; they don’t instantly realize they still love each other and immediately reconcile. That adds some depth to their characters and some realism to the story. It’s not hard to cheer for them as they try to work things out and as they try to figure out how to help Margot Standing.

It’s also worth noting that while there is sexism in this novel in more than one place, we don’t really see the “weak and ineffectual female” in the character of Margaret Langton. She’s bright, she takes initiative and she has made a life for herself without “catching a man.” In fact, it’s Langton who finds a way to save herself and Moray when they end up trapped by Grey Mask (a bit more on that in a moment).

Dedicated Maude Silver fans will notice that Miss Silver doesn’t have as strong a presence in this novel as she does in later novels. The plot features Moray, Langton, Archie Millar and Margot Standing a lot more. So Miss Silver’s character is not as richly developed as it later becomes. Nonetheless, she too is bright, resourceful and intuitive without seeming to be possessed of some “magic power” that allows her to guess the truth about this case.

This is an old-fashioned detective novel in a lot of ways. We’ve got a young heiress, a fortune at stake, suspicious masked “bad guys” and a young couple whose relationship goes all the wrong way at times. There’s even a scene in which Langton and Moray end up trapped in a dark cellar by Grey Mask. There are other elements too that we see in other novels of this type, but mentioning them would come too close to spoiler-land.

Readers who prefer the deep characterisation, deep plots and careful gathering and following of evidence in more modern crime novels will be disappointed. That said though, Grey Mask serves as a good example of the old-style detective novel, complete with all the “trimmings.” But what’s your view? Have you read Grey Mask? If you have, what elements do you see in it?
 
 
 

Coming Up On In The Spotlight
 

Monday 2 July/Tuesday 3 July – Death on a Galician Shore – Domingo Villar

Monday 9 July/Tuesday 10 July – Body on the Stage – Bev Robitai

Monday 16 July/Tuesday 17 July – The Last Detective: Introducing Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond – Peter Lovesey