Miss Lemon's Mystery Roundup, 2011

Aside from a fragrant cup of Earl Grey, there is almost nothing Miss Lemon likes more than tucking in to a delicious mystery. The more British that mystery, the better.

Miss Lemon had many quiet moments to pause and reflect on these small quirks of inclination. So as the year 2011 draws to a close, she leaves her readers with just a few of her very favourites -- for their own reading and ruminating pleasure:

1. The Blackheath Poisonings (1978), by Julian Symons. In this Victorian-styled mystery, the twisted branches of the Mortimer family bear strange fruit indeed. Readers will find no shortage of suspense and sensation in this case of poisoning that is teased out in a cache of letters. 

2.  The Documents in the Case (1930), by Dorothy L. Sayers. Speaking of epistolary accounts of poisonings, one doesn't have to search too far to find a Golden-Age model for Symons' excellent mystery.

3.  Three Blind Mice (1947), by Agatha Christie. While it is difficult to choose just one work by Agatha Christie as a favourite, Miss Lemon likes this one for its well-drawn set. When the snow begins to fall outside, this is just the book to have by your side.

4. Master of the Moor (1982), by Ruth Rendell. Having made quite a name for herself as doyenne of the psychological novel, there is no book that better shows off Ruth Rendell's virtuosity than this moody mystery. If you've not yet read it, delay no longer!

5. Lonelyheart 4122 (1967),  by Colin Watson. One might think twice about trolling the lonelyhearts column for love after reading this satirically delicious romp through Flaxborough with the delightfully devilish Miss Teatime. It saddens Miss Lemon that Colin Watson is a mystery novelist largely forgotten today.

Here's to reading many more excellent mysteries in 2012!

Sins of the Fathers

Let's face it. Nothing seems a bigger nuisance than when a well-meaning amateur decides to try his hand at the work of a professional. Just ask Mr. Poirot, or, in the case of Sins of the Fathers (1967), Chief Inspector Wexford.

Wexford feels nothing but annoyance when the Reverend Henry Archery goes poking into a grisly case of axe murder that Wexford closed more than twenty years ago. It's an imposition that Wexford never would have tolerated had it not been at the Chief Constable's insistence.

And so we see little and hear less from Wexford, his nose out of joint, in this second in the series that features the prickly chief inspector and his more tractable sidekick, Mike Burden, by Ruth Rendell. Instead the focus is on the desultory investigations of Henry Archery, whose son wishes to marry the daughter of the infamous axe murderer. Archery would like to prove the man, who has already hanged for his crime, innocent.

Barring that, of course, Archery would stop the marriage. What turns up in the course of Archery's questionings opens the eyes of more than just the residents of Kingsmarkham, where no one and nothing seems to be quite as it should twenty years hence.

Miss Lemon's readers have no doubt noticed the plural indicator in this aptly titled novel: for as the Reverend Archery himself discovers, not even the most chaste of men are immune to the frailties of the human condition -- a discovery, Miss Lemon might add, that makes Archery that much more sympathetic and gives the novels an absorbing subplot.

Forgotten Book Friday: A Fatal Inversion

Here it is, already two weeks into the New Year, and what is Miss Lemon doing? Not keeping up with her posts, evidently.

To rectify this dereliction of literary duty, Miss Lemon offers her readers another Forgotten Book Friday selection: A Fatal Inversion (1987), by Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine.

While laying to rest their spaniel, the most recent owners of Wyvis Hall in Nunes, Suffolk, unearth a dark secret, the relics of ten years past when a group of men and women barely past their teens had the ill-founded idea to start a commune. They called it 'Ecalpemos.' And there's your 'fatal inversion.'

Flash forward ten years and the keepers of this secret -- Adam Verne-Smith, Rufus Fletcher and Shiva Manjusri -- each in his own way relives the past and begins to panic as he pieces together the clues the police might find that will implicate him in what should have been a long-forgotten crime.

Though she offers several incisive psychological portrayals, A Fatal Inversion is not Ms. Rendell's best work. Perhaps it's the multiple points of view interspersed with countless flashbacks to 1976 that make this narrative sag at times. Even so, there are many things Miss Lemon found to like about the novel, such as the 'secret drink' that Rufus always keeps hidden behind a curtain hem, a habit that never changes from his days at Ecalpemos to his successful practice on Wimpole Street and the sign of a true alcoholic.

Readers also learn the shocking reason why Adam is so neurotically anxious about the welfare of his infant daughter, Abigail. The reason Ms. Rendell puts forward is as brilliant as it is sinister.

Master of the Moor

My dear readers: Should you find yourself in want of a dark, brooding novel set among the dark, brooding moorlands of Yorkshire, look no further than Master of the Moor (1982), by Ruth Rendell.

Outwardly bluff and cheerful, the protagonist of this tale, Stephen Whalby, likes nothing better than roaming for hours among the hills, heather and tors of Vangmoor. But on one such solitary ramble, Stephen chances upon the body of a young woman, strangled, and with what must have been silken blonde hair cropped off roughly at her scalp.

The finding upsets Stephen, though it's difficult to detect that from the casual excitement with which he shares the finding with Lyn, his wife:

'You weren't long.'
  'I hadn't got far. Oh, Lord, darling, there's something pretty ghastly up there. A girl and she's dead. I found her lying among the Foinmen.'
  It occurred to Lyn -- fleetingly, to be gone in a moment -- that most men would have broken such a thing more gently to their wives. 

Even so, the event sets Stephen back on his heels, because the moor is more to him than just a place for respite and solitude. No one knows its paths, its stones, its forgotten mines and secret passages better than he does. He's come to feel a sense of ownership. He's even lately begun authoring a column in the local paper in which he styles himself as "The Voice of Vangmoor."

Soon, when another blonde woman goes missing and Stephen insinuates himself into the search, he begins to think of himself as 'Master of the Moor.' Stephen's desire to control all that occurs on the moor becomes a compulsion.

The effect of Stephen's obsession with the moor on the narrative complications is brilliant. Stephen's actions -- discovering the first body and then leading the search for the next -- place him in the unenviable position of prime suspect in the eyes of the local police.

Even Miss Lemon began to wonder about Stephen as his breezy outward behaviour soon shifted to reveal a darker interior. With all his 'Good Lords' and 'Good griefs,' one doesn't know whether his exasperation is simply good-humoured bemusement or something more sinister.

Of the final scene, Miss Lemon will say but this: it leaves one gasping for breath.

In all, Master of the Moor, with its moody setting and psychological suspense, is just the sort of novel to read as October drifts darkly into November. 

The Copper Peacock and Other Stories

My dear readers, you must be thinking, 'Hooray! Another Forgotten Book Friday selection from Miss Lemon.'

Yes. She knows just how much you love them.

This one, The Copper Peacock, by Ruth Rendell, is no more worthy of being forgotten then the other books Miss Lemon has singled out for remembrance. The work is a collection of short stories first published, collectively one assumes, in 1991.

The tales herein -- though none more than thirty pages in length -- carry all the macabre landscapes, psychological aberrations and calamitous fates that signal classic Ruth Rendell.

The book opens with "A Pair of Yellow Lilies,' remarkable both for its irony and surprise. Ms. Rendell's canny knack for realism is fully on display here, too. If the reader's stomach doesn't lurch when unlucky Bridget Thomas turns to discover her bag with all the money she has to her name gone from her library carrel, then that reader must be insensitive. 

"Mother's Help" is unforgettable for the sheer malevolence of its main character, Ivan. "Long Live the Queen," and "The Fish-Sitter" both capture that creepy and uncomfortable aura generated by people who connect too closely with their pets.

The title story, "The Copper Peacock," doesn't appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. Though Miss Lemon promises that it will make one rethink rejecting out of hand that next tasteless gift one receives from a coworker.

The last story of the lot, "An Unwanted Woman" features Ms. Rendell's now familiar Chief Inspector Wexford.

All of these stories, in varying degrees, show just how inventive, versatile and, yes, even wicked, is the mind of Ruth Rendell. Pick up a copy of The Copper Peacock if you can.

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.