Everyone has strong opinions, but the remarkable thing is how friendly the chat is - nobody gets mean about it. In current internet ways, this is truly remarkable. Thank you to all my readers
And now, finally, a new book:
Who is Simon Warwick? by Paricia Moyes
published 1978
My friend Jim over at the Invisible Event blog
recently did a fascinating post about clues in Golden Age mysteries – I strongly
recommend it. It includes a tour de force of showing
different ways a writer could introduce the same clue: the white scarf.
It got me thinking about clues, and I mentioned in a
comment to the post that one of the best I remembered came in a book that
wasn’t otherwise very memorable. And this is it – I took it down off the shelf
for a reread in the wake of Jim’s activity.
I have done a few Patricia Moyes books on the blog (see tag below),
and have enjoyed some of them: they usually have interesting settings, and I
can always get worked up about Henry Tibbett being very annoying and his wife
Emmy a doormat - full
discussion here, and not challenged in this book by the way.
Who is Simon Warwick? has
an excellent setup: a rich dying man – a lord and a businessman – decides to
search for his lost heir, a nephew who was orphaned and adopted, the eponymous
Simon. He wants to leave his fortune to him. The child was taken to the USA,
and his name was changed, and the lord dies before he can be found.
So now two different claimants come forward – how to decide
which is the right one? Impersonation! A great
favourite round here.
So there is some investigating into the two men, and then –
just as they are about to confront each other – one of them is murdered in a
solicitor’s office on a Saturday morning. (A weird reminder of one aspect of Michael
Gilbert’s Smallbone Deceased)
I should have enjoyed all this enormously, but my memory
was that it didn’t quite work for me, and it was the same this time. (I will
come on to the question of the Good Clue shortly.) I wasn’t invested in either
of the two claimants, and could guess some of what was going on. It all became
quite meta, regarding who might have a motive, depending on who was the real
Simon Warwick, and then a rigmarole about arrests and arrivals from the USA and
lost characters.
However: there was one aspect that I had completely
forgotten and was not expecting at all. Plainly I can’t give this away, though
with my patent #spoilernotspoiler system there are similar
plotlines in works by this
author,
& this
one
& this
one
(not necessarily the book in the linked post, and all of
them wrote shedloads of books, so you can triangulate or not as you choose)
It was a big surprise, and handled well I thought.
Now, when I started rereading, I had no real memory of
anything except double-Simons, and the clue. When the clue turned up I was very
surprised about who was involved, I would
not have remembered that at all. Because I was looking for it, the clue
jumped out at me, but I truly believe most people would not spot it.
And that’s all I can say.
So – an interesting read, with some points of interest, but
not recommending everyone rushes out to find it…
Sometimes Patricia Moyes gives good clothes, and sometimes
she doesn’t. Not this time, so I have chosen a couple of women who resembled my
idea of those in the book - particularly the respectable wives of various respectable men - from fashion magazines of the era.
What a tease you are!
ReplyDeleteI know! Feel I can't do other.... the Good Clue is rather a giveaway...
DeleteYour friend Jim’s post about white scarf clues and how to hide them, or make them obvious, is fascinating. From now on I shall read murder mysteries in an entirely different way!
DeleteI know, it's a brilliant exposition isn't it?
DeleteI read this earlier in October funnily enough, which at least means I have enough of a memory of it to remember the clue you are hinting at. I was definitely surprised by the ending, but I am not sure it is well clued enough, as the key clue is a visual one which we don't get access to until near the end. Tibbett also does some off the page recording checking which we can't interact with.
ReplyDeleteThat's a coincidence, given that her books aren't exactly top of most people's piles these days! I remember saying to you that only you and I sill read Elizabeth Ferrars, and perhaps Moyes is the same. I thought there was the Good Clue, and the rest was a bit of a mishmash, not too coherent. And the adventures at the end were a bit mad. Still, an easy read.
DeleteI've read several Moyes books (and still read Ferrars too). Funny that I didn't see Emmy as a doormat, because I'm usually
DeleteDarn Enter key, it keeps jumping under my fingers! (Marty here.) I usually notice doormat behavior, maybe I was too young when I read these books. I thought the books (and sleuths) were pleasant but a little blah.
DeleteI think Moyes would say that she isn't a doormat, and that Henry and Emmy have a relationship that is equal but different (that well-known defence of apartheid). And occasionally she has good moments, or pursues her own line. But I find them very annoying. YMMV!
DeleteI quite often would have preferd if Moyes would have made Emmy either a stronger character or leave her as a supporting character (bit like Mme Maigret, an adult well-settled loving marriage, but not a sleuthing partnership)
DeleteYes, I know what you mean, she's neither one thing nor the other...
DeleteYou know, Moira, I haven't read Moyes in a while, so I'm glad of the reminder. It's interesting, isn't it, how a book can have one great element (in this case, a clue), but otherwise not be memorable. And of course, if you mention much about the clue, it spoils the story. Hmm....stories that hinge on that one clue... I'll have to think about that.
ReplyDeleteIt is a strange book, and not her best, but it did have intriguing elements.
DeleteOne clud is an interesting concept! I am remembering two different books, where someone goes back into a room/house to collect something. There is evidence that the ultimate victim is alive when they come out again, but is murdered later. When you've read as many crime books as we have, we immediately suspect that 'still-alive' evidence, and know immediately who must have done it... Obviously I'm not saying what those books are!
I couldn't resist adding just one more thing on the Emma post ...
ReplyDeleteI have no memory of ever reading anything by Patricia Moyes, which is odd, because based on her Wikipedia entry her books would have been in libraries in the 1970s and early 1980s when I was prepared to read pretty much anything. Don't think I'm going to be adding her to my list.
Thoughts about clues remind me of Sarah Caudwell's "The Siren's Sang of Murder", and Julia's indignation that the murderer is so old-fashioned as to leave a large, tangible, obvious clue (in the form of a pen with engraved initials) when modern practice requires forensic clues invisible to the naked eye.
Sovay
I love 'just one more thing' going on forever.
DeleteSirens is on my list to reread and I am looking forward to it. Adonis was always my outright favourite, but they were all good.
I can’t pick a favourite Caudwell, though the one I re-read least is the last one, “The Sibyl in her Grave” - clever and funny as the others but my overall feeling at the end is of sadness at these people unnecessarily sabotaging each others’ lives.
DeleteSovay
Incidentally my comment that I was prepared to read anything in the 70s wasn't meant as a reflection on Patricia Moyes - just that if her books had been in the libraries I frequented, I'd have read them! Catherine Aird is another writer of the same sort of period who was mysteriously absent from the libraries of my youth.
DeleteSovay
I do need to read them again. Such a joy, and so sad that she died young.
DeleteOf course I understood your point about the libraries - I was the same, and I would say both those authors were not around for me either. Strange, because most libraries certainly cater in part to a sector of readers who 'like a good crime novel' (as well as providing many other styles...). If I was keen on an author and couldn't find enough of their books, I would go and look in the large-print section (full of what might be called cosy crime), feeling slightly guilty and prepared to imply that I was borrowing it for an elderly relative...
My libraries did have Moyes and Aird, and I read a lot of their books. Often the detective fiction had helpful little symbols on the book spines which made browsing for "new authors" much easier. And I'd look in the Large Print section too!
DeleteI've read and enjoyed a few of Catherine Aird's books - perfect cosy crime. Don't think I ever thought of looking in Large Print in the 1970s but these days I have to be very alert when ordering vintage cosy crime online - the more affordable copies do tend to be Large Print and ironically that seems to put more strain on my eyesight than Normal Print.
DeleteMarty - speaking of cosy crime, I've also enjoyed the first three of Lilian Jackson Braun's "Cat Who" series that you mentioned a while back - I'm now deciding whether to press on into the UFO phase ...
Sovay
Geographical zones for crime writers in libraries perhaps!
DeleteYes I have had the experience of receiving large print without realizing I had ordered it.
Let us know how you get on with the cats...
Sovay - the rest of the Cat Who books weren't written till almost 20 years after the first three, and general opinion is that they're not of the same quality. I thought they were ok (at least till the UFO's appeared, which doesn't happen for quite a while), and they changed the setting to Moose County which I enjoyed, with all its rural eccentricities. I guess it depends on your tolerance for Qwill and all the other quirkiness, and it certainly helps if you like cats. If you still enjoy the next two books you're probably safe for the next dozen or so!
DeleteOne library I knew did have a special area for mysteries, as opposed to all the other fiction. I used to spend a lot of time there.
DeleteMy biggest regret in regard to those Hilary Tamar novels is that there are only four of them....
DeleteMarty - I suppose if you have a cat detective it is unreasonable to balk at UFOs? or not?
DeleteI have used libraries with a crime section, it somehow seemed to be like cheating, though I know that's ridiculous. I liked hunting through the novels. In bookshops OTOH I much prefer a dedicated crime section.
Jotell: I know, wouldn't it be wonderful if there were more of them...
LOL I see what you mean about cat detectives! (I don't think Koko actually detects, but there's a bit of woooo-woooo in his behavior.) The books generally focus on more, um, terrestrial matters so the UFO surprised me. Or maybe I can suspend my disbelief only so far!
DeleteIt would probably help my objectivity if I was a bit more pro-cats in real life....
DeleteMy nearest branch of Waterstones bookshop doesn't just have a crime section; it has a Cutesy Crime sub-section! I shall press on with the cats and Qwill - I'm intrigued by his nomadic nature (within the first three books, covering less than a year, he's lived in two hotels and three different apartments).
DeleteSovay
That is very niche. In my Waterstones they are all mixed in together with the other fiction. tchah.
DeleteI guess putting the cutesy books in one section helps in avoiding them....Sovay, Qwill eventually does get a fixed abode in the next books. (I found his new digs rather intriguing.) He still does quite a bit of travelling--with the cats, of course--so doesn't lose his nomadic nature entirely. Truly a Roving Reporter!
DeleteHonestly, this cat is out of control. Are you making this all up to see if you can get it past me 😀😀😀?
Delete"I was prepared to read anything in the 70s" and early 80s. I was stationed overseas, there was of course no Internet and only AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, one channeland that awful). I practically lived at the base library.
DeleteI'm tempted to say, 'even O Douglas Shay?' but that would be cheap, because I did enjoy them!
DeleteI'm contrasting then and now: then I was always looking for books in the 70s and 80s, searching and searching.
I dont know if it's availability, the internet, knowing I can afford to buy what I want, or there are just more books around, but it feels different now.
Perhaps then I genuinely feared that I might run out of books, but I would never think that now.
Yes, Moira, Koko does exist--in fiction, anyway!
DeleteI knew you wouldn't really be teasing me!
Delete"... the respectable wives of various respectable men." Such an achievement for them. Along with smearing lipstick on one's cheek (??) Although, even if they were achievers in their own right, the magazines would no doubt have ignored that.
ReplyDeleteI certainly remember devouring Patricia Moyes in the late 60s, early 70s. Everything the library had. Gosh, that was long ago....
Patricia Moyes had rather old-fashioned milieux for her books - it always surprises me because she herself was a very go-ahead career woman, working at Vogue, travelling and so on. You wouldnt know from most of her female characters.
DeleteThe trend for dual-use blusher/lipstick cosmetics obviously passed you by! It was quite the thing when I was young and experimenting. The old 1970s magazine make-up ads on pinterest tell the story....
And helped me formulate a useful policy: if something says it is dual-use, reversible or one-size, then it will be useless at all its formats. Not 100% true, but a helpful guide.
Maybe Moyes was afraid that independent females would scare away readers. I hope she wasn't like Phyllis Schlafly, relegating women to the home while spending her own time everywhere else!
DeleteYes, there've been a few public figures who didn't seem to live by the same rules they imposed on everyone else. the UK TV presenter Paula Yates (a sad figure in the end) was always telling people how to parent, and why they should stay at home with their kids.
DeleteI read somewhere that Laura Ashley liked to be seen as the stay-at-home mother who only ran a little business as a side project in the evenings after the children were asleep. But - she put them to bed at four o'clock in the afternoon, telling them it was night...
DeleteSusan again: Makeup, eh? Actually it all passed me by. Except for dabbling a bit with eyeliner in high school, I've never messed with the concept or expense or time-consumption of make-up. What you see is what you get. :^))
DeleteBirgitta: I heard that story about Laura Ashley, and it made a deep impression on me. Dreadful behaviour of course, but sometimes with my own beloved children at a chaotic 5 o'clock I would think longingly of her plan. I never did it, but...
DeleteSusan: perhaps if you'd had a combined blusher/lipstick it would have changed your mind.
DeleteI can imagine a frazzled mom wishing she could just bundle the kids off to bed when things got too hectic! But how did Ashley convince her kids that it was night-time? Or does it get dark that early in Britain?
DeleteWell to be fair, the time of darkness varies throughout the year! I hated going to bed while it was still light when I was a child, I can't be the only one who remembers that, but I don't suspect my mother of lying to me 😉
DeleteJust one more thing... I once heard the late, great P.D. James give a talk on clues. Her point was that clues have to be buried among lots of other trivia, so as not to be too obvious, and therefore detective novels are some of the very best texts to read if you want to learn about daily life in a certain time or place. (For instance, if you want to learn about the advertising business in the 1930s you should read Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers.) And then, at the end of the talk, she said that the masterpiece when it comes to hiding clues is not a detective novel at all, but Jane Austen's Emma. But of course.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I have always said the same, not copying PDJ. The domestic trivia has to be correct, so that the clues can hide in plain sight.
DeleteIt would be delightful if Christie, that past master of hiding clues in plain sight, had learned the skill from reading Austen. She might have read "Emma" and thought that placing clues in the boring chatter of someone like Miss Bates would be very effective!
DeleteYes, what a good idea. Christie was exceptionally well-read, she knew her classics very well.
DeleteI have read quite a few of Moyes's novels and this sounds interesting. However I went to have a look on Amazon and the very first review entirely gave the game away! What were they thinking? So I didn't even have to follow your links to know what you were talking about. A true spoiler that means I don't much want to read it now. So be warned, fellow readers ... Chrissie
ReplyDeleteOh no! I just went and looked (safe for me!) and absolutely, what a complete giveaway. Why do people DO that? The second review did the same...
DeleteI had to look . . . in the US, it's the second and third reviews. I thought that reviewer was (a) projecting a lot of current notions onto the book, and (b) had a very poor grasp of social customs and mores at the time of the book's setting. A character of the time might reasonably not suspect, I think.
DeleteI probably won't read the book, but sometimes knowing spoilers means you read with more attention to technique than to plot, and if the thing is cleverly handled it's still enjoyable!
Yes people do tend to bring their current opinions, sensibilities and ways of living to these things. I agree strongly with you.
DeleteAnd your second point - that's why rereading a crime book can be so interesting. In this case I had completely forgotten that key point (which surprises me) but in general it can give you a chance to admire technique.
I just reread one of my favourite crime books for the umpteenth time, and spotted something new!
The dénouement really surprised me. I didn't see it coming and I thought she handled it really well, no sensationalism. The set up of the will and the search was bit tedious though. Not her best -that would be Murder à la mode for me.
ReplyDeleteYes, very good summing up of my views. And I too think Murder a la Mode is her best - but I may be biased in its favour because of the fashion content!
DeleteI think her first two books plus number four (Dead Men Don't Ski, The Sunken Sailor and
DeleteMurder a la Mode) are her best, never really liked the caribean ones of the 1970s. The first time I read in the early 2000s 'Simon Warwick' I was surprised that Moyes tackled the central point in the first place. I wouldn't have expected something like that in a book from 1976. But I wasn't well read in those days...
I haven't read Sunken Sailor (I very much jump around in her oeuvre, not doing them in order) and see it is to be republished next year. I will give it a go.
DeleteI was astonished by the central point of Simon Warwick, so I know what you mean. I really wasnt expecting that.
I always find books with a question as a title automatically intriguing. Like "Why Shoot A Butler?", "N or M?", or that book called something like "Penelope Where Are You?" (although I've forgotten the actual name of the girl in the title!).
ReplyDeleteI guess it's the draw of an unanswered question especially if you can't bear to let one pass.
Could it be "Anna Where Are You?" that Penelope replaced--it's a Wentworth book and it was reviewed here IIRC.
DeleteOh yes! I remember that one. One of the better Wentworths, and unusual clothes opportunities with folksy proto-hippies. Good catch Marty
DeleteOh, well done Marty! Yes that was it!
DeleteAnother reader success story
DeleteI know what you mean, although they are annoying to write about - spellcheck puts a capital letter after any question mark, and you can end up with two: 'Where is my copy of N&M??'
ReplyDeleteBut yes intriguing. Are you there God? It's me Margaret.
Surely the readers and commenters can come up with more question books...
Catherine Aird (mentioned above) wrote “Henrietta Who?”; there are also a couple of Trollope question books - “Can You Forgive Her?” and “Is He Popenjoy?”. Also Anthony Powell’s “What’s Become of Waring?” and of course Christie’s “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?”.
DeleteSovay
Excellent collection thank you!
DeleteThe dual cheek and lip product is still around now, odd and useless though it sounds.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea, given the wide variety of colours in both products. But I think we might mistrust it.
DeleteI suppose it's less painful than pinching your cheeks to make them red. I'm also reminded of the mystery mini-trope of women whose rouge really stands out when they become pale (or "white as a ghost").
DeleteThere's the girls going on an illicit date in Nancy Mitford's Pursuit of Love:
DeleteWe gazed at ourselves, with a tiny feeling of uncertainty, in the looking-glasses. Our cheeks had round scarlet patches, our lips were the same colour, but only at the edges, inside it had already worn off, and our eyelids were blue, all out of Jassy's paint-box. Our noses were white, Nanny having produced some powder with which, years ago, she used to dust Robin's bottom. In short, we looked like a couple of Dutch dolls.