I still don’t really know what to say about Brexit, and not being from the UK I’m not sure how qualified I am to say anything, so instead here are some random thought about the mid-century Miss Silver mystery novels by Patricia Wentworth, which I’ve been reading on Project Gutenberg.
(Some spoilers ahead)
1. I think I’m enjoying these more for the romantic subplots than the actual mysteries, which are competent but not startling. I haven’t been going in strict chronological order, but there seems to be a progression from one to two romantic pairings per book, with one of them being a young married/engaged couple who, having split up before the story begins (usually over some misunderstanding fomented by a jealous third party), get back together over the course of events. This is an improvement on the earlier device of “she keeps turning down his marriage proposals and he keeps making them until she finally says yes on the last page.”
2. The secondary couple is usually only secondary in that they become a potential pairing midway through the story. I particularly liked this in the novel I read today, The Fingerprint (1956), in which the two characters who look like obvious suspects even before any crime is committed end up together. Johnny Fabian is the penniless, roguishly charming cousin on the hunt for an heiress to marry. Mirrie Field is another cousin who popped into the picture six weeks ago and has wrapped everyone around her little finger just a little too easily. They’re not a noir pairing of grifters-in-love, though: Mirrie is no Machiavelli, nor is she completely innocent. She’s as manipulative as her loveless upbringing has made her, but no more. She’s genuinely amazed and grateful to have been taken into this wealthy family, and she’s been sucking up to everybody in terror of being sent away again, but that’s the extent of her ambition. Unfortunately she’s also got a scheming boyfriend who knows of her good fortune. Johnny, meanwhile, isn’t taken in by her for a second, but finds that a protective instinct he didn’t know he had is beginning to override his self-interest….
3. At least two novels mention an unflattering black-and-yellow striped dress which somebody receives as a hand-me-down. I’m beginning to wonder if Wentworth was subjected to such a garment in her youth.
4. Wentworth’s mysteries are extremely cozy ones, but they definitely aren’t set in a universe where the UK stayed out of WWII – rationing gets mentioned frequently, and The Key (1944) begins with the murder of an Austrian-Jewish refugee scientist who’s been working on a new explosive for the Allies.
5. There’ve been two villains by my count who were adopted as children, but I’m grateful Wentworth didn’t go the “bad seed” route, and there’s at least one good character who was also adopted. Actually there are a ton of step-relatives and people being raised by aunts or cousins. Some of this is for plot purposes, some just seems to be background detail. I suppose it does happen quite often in real life.
6. I don’t think Wentworth was deliberately hinting that Miss Silver is a lesbian, but the following exchange with Frank Abbot, one of her colleagues on the police force, reads like a fanfic prompt:
‘You know what I mean, and I’m going to tell you why. You like girls. Georgina Grey is an extremely attractive one, but it looks as if there was very little doubt that she shot her uncle.’
Mooncustafer 