A Murder Is Announced

A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends, please accept this, the only intimation.
--The North Bentham News and Chipping-Cleghorn Gazette, Personals

Now who, Miss Lemon asks, could resist such a tempting little advert?

Certainly not any of the residents of Chipping Cleghorn, who show up, each in turn, at the home of Letitia Blacklock, expecting at the very least to get a decent glass of sherry, if not a game of murder.

There's Mrs. Swettenham -- who finds the advertisement too strange: "Not at all like Letitia Blacklock, who always seems to me such a sensible woman" -- and her son, Edmund. The Easterbrooks (Colonel and Mrs.), Bunch Harmon, the vicar's wife, and the cozily situated Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd, as well as some quite distant cousins of Miss Blacklock and her hysterical cook Mitzi, from somewhere in middle Europe.

When the clock chimes half past six, however, the murder turns out to be no game at all. The lights go out, shots are fired, and a bullet finds its mark in the body of one Rudi Scherz, a Swiss national working at the Royal Spa Hotel in Mendenham Wells. Two others barely miss Miss Blacklock, the unsuspecting hostess.

The obvious questions for Inspector Craddock are these: 1) Who placed the notice announcing the murder for all and sundry to see? 2) What was Rudi Scherz doing at Little Paddocks? 3) Was someone trying to kill Miss Blacklock? 4) What on earth is the motive?

True to Agatha Christie in top form, A Murder Is Announced folds into a classically perplexing puzzle.

A little investigating reveals that Miss Blacklock is likely to inherit a large sum of money, should her employer's widow predecease Miss Blacklock. And that, my dear readers, seems likely to happen soon.

Of course it takes a villager to know a village, and so Miss Jane Marple descends upon Chipping Cleghorn, armed with her knitting needles and the village parallels required to untangle this mysterious small-town murder.

Mrs. Christie has oft been criticized (as recently as in the newly published Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James) for her stereotyped characters and sleight of hand. Miss Lemon thinks this unfair. What many of Mrs. Christie's critics fail to recognize is her mastery at interpreting character quirks, her gift for writing snappy dialogue and most of all, her ingenious plotting skills. All of these graces are present here.

The Name of Annabel Lee

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we --
Of many far wiser than we --

Like that Old Bailey Hack, Horace Rumpole, Miss Lemon sometimes finds it restorative to quote a bit of poetry when faced with a puzzling set of circumstances. Certainly so must have Julian Symons, the creative mastermind behind a string of great whodunits, including The Plot Against Roger Rider, The Blackheath Poisonings and The Name of Annabel Lee.

For Mr. Symons's poetry professor turned sleuth (the excellently named Dudley Potter), however, the life and creative works of Edgar Allan Poe turn from a scholarly pursuit into something a bit more sinister.

Dudley Potter, like countless academics before him, had given up on love when he meets, seemingly by chance, the aptly named Annabel Lee Featherby. In a blink, the pair end up living together in their inevitable 'Kingdom by the Sea' ... and then things go terribly wrong.

Dudley wakes one morning to discover a vicious hangover and a note on the mantlepiece. His love envied by the angels above is gone. With nothing more than the clues in Poe's work to go by, Dudley tries to find her. His quest, not surprisingly, reveals more closeted skeletons than even Poe can lay claim to.

So, my dear readers, if you like poetry and mystery, and the two twined together, there's little doubt you shall like The Name of Annabel Lee.

Interestingly, Mr. Symons seems to have a bit in common with his protagonist. He was a poet and literary critic of some renown, as well as the founding editor of Twentieth Century Verse, a London-based poetry journal that rivaled New Verse in its heyday. He was also, like his fictional protege, a visiting professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and, not ironically, the 1961 and 1973 recipient of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award. He was the 1982 MWA grandmaster.

Mr. Symons departed this earthly realm on 19 November 1994.

The Killings at Badger's Drfit

Miss Lemon was pleasantly surprised at how much she recently enjoyed reading two entries in Caroline Graham's Midsomer Murders series, which feature the worldly Chief Inspector Barnaby and his sometimes surly partner, Sergeant Troy.

The duo from Causton CID make their debut in The Killings at Badger's Drift, with Badger's Drift being a quaint little English village not so unlike another fictional scene of murder among the tea-sipping set: Flaxborough.

In Badger's Drift, a spinster English teacher on the trail of a ghost orchid spots something among the flora that's far more sensual -- and scandalous.

And more than one resident of Badger's Drift proves willing to go to any length to keep Miss Simpson's find a secret.

In Written in Blood, the fourth entry in the Midsomer series, the Midsomer Worthy writer's group gets more material than it ever could have hoped for after one of its founding members is found bludgeoned to death after a key meeting.

What binds both of these novels together, beyond the recurring characters, is Ms. Graham's clever way of revealing the dank and twisted recesses that accompany the human condition. Everyone in these stories, it seems, has something to hide -- if not something of which to be outright ashamed.

Ms. Graham also has an exceptional sense of humor, and quite frankly, a gift for delicious satire. Whether she's skewering the absurdities of post-modern theatre (viz, Brian Clapton's "Slanghwang for Five Mute Voices" in Written in Blood) or Mrs. Barnaby's complete and total lack of culinary skill, Miss Lemon promises you that you will laugh, aloud and often, while reading her work.

Cats and dogs also make excellent characters in the Midsomer series. The author makes an Irish wolfhound and a stray cat called Kilmowsky come more vividly to life than entire casts of characters featured in weaker novels that Miss Lemon has read.

In sum, she thinks that if her readers enjoy a cracking good murder with their afternoon tea, then they will enjoy just about anything by Caroline Graham.

Lonelyheart 4122

Miss Lemon, my dear readers, fears she has met her match.

Never did she expect to find within the pages of Colin Watson's Lonelyheart 4122 a character of such remarkable individuality and on par (if you will pardon Miss Lemon for saying so) with the more enigmatic creations of Mrs. Agatha Christie herself -- Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, Mr. Harley Quinn, and, er-hem, Miss Felicity Lemon.

(If my Christian name comes as a surprise, take comfort in the fact that it's been an extraordinarily well-kept secret. Even Mr. Poirot didn't discover it until 1955, when working on the Hickory Dickory Dock case.)

The character to rival Miss Lemon's sphinxdom is one Miss Lucilla Teatime, described as "remarkably trim and handsome." Indeed, those with the fortune to meet Miss Teatime instinctively approve of her ... "for there was in her appearance the flattering suggestion that she had taken pains to spare one personally the spectacle of yet another dumpy, disgruntled, defeated old woman."

Hmmm. Miss Lemon is not entirely sure that the foregoing passage is complimentary. Then again, perhaps isn't wasn't meant to be. In any case, Miss Teatime, just arrived from London, is far and away more than the regular folk of Flaxborough ("a market town of some antiquity with remarkable social and political intransigence") bargained for.

Shortly after her arrival in said town, Miss Teatime becomes a client of a matrimonial agency with a dubious reputation for success. Two of its women clients had recently laid hold of large sums of money and then went missing. Which is where Inspector Purbright comes in.

Come to think of it, Purbright rather reminds Miss Lemon of her dear friend Japp: tall, gangly, well-meaning but sometimes a little slow on the uptake. Perhaps there's more of Agatha Christie in Colin Watson's work than he'd care to admit.

What Miss Lemon is sure of, however, is that fans of her can't help but become fans of him.

School for Murder

"I write only to entertain," said Robert Barnard.

After reading School for Murder, and enjoying it immensely, Miss Lemon could hardly quarrel with that assessment.

The novel has all that a connoisseur of the British mystery could hope for: an insular setting (this being Burleigh, a third-rate boys' school in a remote corner of the county of Swessex), a poisoning, a cast of shady characters and a quirky detective -- all served with a dish of delightful satire.

Mr. Barnard, it seems, is known for his incisive observations and dramatic wit. The Burleigh School, with its penny-pinching headmaster (the superbly named Edward Crumwallis), substandard boarding annexe, out-of-date texts, grubby gamesmaster and hated head boy, makes the perfect stage on which he can exercise his skills.

One need look no further than the opening gambit to see that one is in for a treat: "A fly buzzed in the Staff Common Room of Burleigh School. It provided a fitting accompaniment to the voice of headmaster."

Mr. Crumwallis is busy bewailing newfangled curricular standards. Why Golding, when one can just as easily have Black Arrow or Westward Ho, he fulminates.

Dorthea Gilberd (Junior English, Junior History) isn't snowed. "Or, to put the matter more honestly, thought Dorthea Gilberd, tearing her glance from Tom Tedder, why don't they prescribe books that Burleigh School has already got copies of?"

Events take a more serious turn when a series of misfortunes befall the boarding annexe: an ill-placed razor blade, strong booze in the fruit squash ... and then much worse.

In all, it's a school-days satire cum detective mystery that keeps one guessing -- and laughing along the way.

Mr. Barnard, an alumnus of the Royal Grammar School in Colcester, Essex, and longtime university lecturer in English knows well of what he speaks. Miss Lemon is pleased to have discovered him -- and she hopes you will be, too.

One Across, Two Down

It should come as small surprise to her readers that Miss Lemon is an avid worker of crossword puzzles. To enjoy them, one must have a smattering of foreign languages, geography and music, and keep up on popular culture and sport. It's just the sort of activity that calls upon one's logic and resourcefulness. It's perfect for those employed in a library ... or perhaps a detective agency.

Miss Lemon has recently taken to solving American-style crossword puzzles. Less overtly clever than their British counterparts (the punning clues are far fewer), the seeming simplicity of these puzzles is the real challenge. Only an hour ago, Miss Lemon sat sipping her afternoon tea and wrestling with whatever would be a four-letter word for 'Type of shark,' first letter 'L,' last letter 'N.' By the time she got to her last bite of scone, she had it: LOAN.

Only in America would this fish swim in a fiduciary sea.

But lest Miss Lemon be diverted from the true purpose of this column, it is this fondness for crosswords that drew her to Ruth Rendell's One Across, Two Down (1971), and she recommends it for her readers now.

The novel, like her later (and perhaps stronger) Judgment in Stone (1977), is a whydunit rather than a whodunit. But true to the threads that bind all of her fiction, Ruth Rendell doesn't stint on suspense -- or psychological exploration of character.

The character in question in One Across, Two Down, Stanley Manning, has no ambition in life beyond becoming a master setter of crossword puzzles. Oh, and getting his hands on his live-in mother-in-law's £20,000.

When Stanley loses his job at a petrol station, he finds he has little more to do than the daily crossword.

Naturally, Stanley's idle mind turns to murder.

Miss Lemon won't reveal the bizarre set of circumstances that unfold -- one might be able to guess them. But suffice it to say that long before the inheritance comes due, Stanley find himself embroiled in a most unwise investment.

There is perhaps a bit more violence in One Across, Two Down than what Miss Lemon typically cares for, but the clear-eyed deftness with which Ruth Rendell portrays Stanley's motivations -- and the workings of his mind -- make it easy to overlook.

And Miss Lemon must admit, Stanley Manning, in the midst of his paranoid stupor, invents some of the cleverest -- if not craziest -- crossword clues.

She thinks you will enjoy this one immensely. Now if you will pardon Miss Lemon, she thinks she's heard the Evening Standard dropped outside her door.

Third Girl

Critics tend to pooh-pooh the later works of Agatha Christie, deeming many of them bloated, meandering and old fashioned.

Miss Lemon begs to differ with this pronouncement. She holds up for her readers Exhibit A: Third Girl, published in 1966 -- forty-six years after Mrs. Christie's debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Not only are the themes up-to-the-minute (at least for the 1960s), the pacing is sharp and the clues are deftly -- but not unfairly -- disguised.

The plot is this: A young woman, modishly dressed, with long, stringy hair and a faraway look in her eyes walks into Mr. Poirot's office and announces that she thinks she may have committed murder. But, maddeningly, she isn't sure.

Kidnapping, drug-taking, fine-art forgery and murder ensue, and all the while Poirot remains stubbornly at sea -- a most irritating state for the famed detective's little grey cells.

The novel takes its title from a shared-flat arrangement. The young woman unsure of her criminal status is the 'third girl' leasing luxury digs together with an executive secretary and an art gallery employee. Poirot feels sure that this set-up holds the clue to finding how and if a murder took place, but he struggles to uncover it.

Were it not for the help, albeit unasked for, of Poirot's compatriots in crime detection, he probably wouldn't have solved the mystery at all. Indeed, what makes this novel so delightful is its quirky cast of characters (a certain citrus-monikered secretary included among them).

There's Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a prolific crime novelist herself, in between books, who insinuates herself into Poirot's investigations so far as to get koshed on the head.

Georges, Poirot's trusted valet, appears to make a few very helpful character assessments. And then there's Miss Lemon, "who was standing by, waiting to be efficient."

In all, Third Girl is a fun, fast-paced whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie -- no matter what the critics might say.