The Franchise Affair

Life had been sailing along rather comfortably, if not rather dully, for Robert Blair, senior partner of Blair, Hayward and Bennett, the next-to-only legal firm in the village of Milford. Miss Tuff had been relied upon to bring his tea (petit-beurre Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; digestives Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays) on the same lacquered tray with the same white linen napkin at precisely the same time for nearly a quarter of a century. As the last post of the day went at 3:45 in the afternoon, it was often Mr. Blair could knock off as soon as four for a late-afternoon round of golf.

Lassitude and golf weighed heavily on Mr. Blair's mind when on an afternoon in April, difficult to distinguish from thousands of others, the phone rang a minute after tea and the last post, and the Franchise affair began.

The facts of the case in Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair (1949) turn out to be as sensational as they are seductively credible.  Robert Blair finds himself coming to the defense of two women whom the villagers quickly brand as witches. Are they guilty of the charges that are laid against them?

My dear readers, trying to work out whether they are or they are not quickly becomes the most compelling aspect of the novel.

Inspector Grant makes a small cameo appearance, but in actuality the investigation of the alleged crimes in the Franchise affair is up to Robert Blair. If Miss Lemon found anything wanting in this near-perfect mystery, it is that in the end, coincidence rather than the labour of the little grey cells put paid the mysteries of the Franchise affair. But it is a small criticism of what is an otherwise highly enjoyable whodunit.

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

Only the other day, a brightly coloured package arrived at Miss Lemon's door. Imagine her delight when after untying the ribbon she discovered a book bedecked in a shade Miss Lemon could only describe as eponymous. It was the latest in the Flavia de Luce series:  A Red Herring Without Mustard.

The package reminded Miss Lemon that there was another book by Alan Bradley with a similarly eccentric title that sat among her prodigious bookshelves, patiently awaiting her attention.

Dismayed at having neglected the followup to such a delightful debut as The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Miss Lemon set to The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag with alacrity.

She wasn't disappointed. After making a brief adjustment to her suspension of disbelief to the incredible precociousness and cultural wisdom of the novel's eleven-year-old detective, Flavia de Luce, she found many of the same narrative pleasures and surprises as she found in Mr. Bradley's first novel. Only this time it is July, not June, and the murder victim is a puppeteer rather than a philatelist.

Once again, Flavia attempts to poison her older sister, Feely. Once again, she carries out harrowing experiments in her laboratory to find out things that perhaps she'd be better off not knowing. Once again, she cloaks her tale in a colourful cape of amusing metaphors and wry philosophical observations. 

In short, this is a novel not to be missed. And as it refers to several of the events in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, it may be prudent to read it before cracking A Red Herring Without Mustard.

Now if you're wondering (and who isn't?) where Mr. Bradley comes up with these madcap titles, he is gentleman enough to tell you, just after the flyleaf:

Sir Walter Raleigh to His Son
Three things there be that prosper up apace, 
   And flourish while they grow asunder far;
But on a day, they meet all in a place,
   And when they meet, they one another mar.

And they be these; the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
   The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;
    The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.

Now mark, dear boy -- while these assemble not,
   Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
   It frets the halter, and it chokes the child. 

Indeed, my dear readers, mark this well. For in it, you'll find many a clue; perhaps even before Flavia de Luce does.

Orchestrated Death

It's been some time since Miss Lemon has picked up a whodunit so absorbing that she could not put it down again until she'd gotten to the end.

That was exactly the case with Orchestrated Death (1991), by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, which features the debut of Inspector Bill Slider and his sergeant, Jim Atherton.

Jim and Bill. The names don't promise much in the way of originality or wit, do they? Don't be fooled. This mystery crackles with snappy one-liners and wry observations about everything from marriage --  the reasons for 'which ranged from the insufficient to the ludicrous' -- to hair colour. Slider's son Matthew makes friends with 'a boy called Sibod, with such flamingly red hair that it looked like a deliberate insult.' 

Her faithful readers must know by now that Miss Lemon has absolutely nothing against red hair. Nor shall her readers take amiss any of clever banter that's batted back and forth between Slider and Atherton, the pair of which bring to mind Inspector Barnaby and Sergeant Troy in the British mysteries by Caroline Graham.

The premise of Orchestrated Death is smart and simple: the body of a young woman is found naked in a tenement in West London, and the only thing to identify her is the mark on her neck made by the chin-rest of her violin. And a rare and expensive violin it turns out to be.

Though largely without family or means, it seems the murdered woman, a second-chair player from the Birmingham Orchestra, owned a Stradivarius.

As Slider and Atherton try to reckon how their victim came by a fiddle worth well-nigh £1 million, the suspects, the inconsistencies -- and the bodies -- begin to pile up. But what Miss Lemon found most compelling is that along the way, Slider, sleepwalking through life married to a woman he no longer understands, is suddenly awaken by a chance encounter with a witness. The relationship that develops is at once as poignant as it is believable; and it adds just as much tension to the narrative as the murders do.

Miss Lemon promises that should you pick up Orchestrated Death, you'll not be disappointed. Now, she must run. She has a date for the symphony. 

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.

Forgotten Book Friday: The Hours Before Dawn

It's been some time since Miss Lemon has offered something for 'Forgotten Book Friday.' With the New Year 2011 right round the corner, perhaps it's time she got back into the habit. And what better book to suggest for the occasion than Celia Fremlin's gothic suspense chiller, The Hours Before Dawn (1958).

Exhausted with the care of her infant son, Michael, whom she can't get to settle through the night, and two young girls, Louise Henderson feels like her life is unraveling. Her husband feels neglected, her neighbours complain, and she can't keep up with the endless household tasks.

When the Hendersons decide to take in a lodger, Vera Brandon, Louise in her sleepless stupor wonders if she isn't imagining things: like Vera creeping into Michael's room when she said that she would be going out; Vera's seducing of her husband; a nagging feeling that she's somehow met Vera Brandon somewhere before.....

Anyone who has read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper will be sure to sympathize with Louise's mounting terror. Is she really going mad, or does Vera Brandon intentionally mean her harm?

Though the subject matter does not readily suggest it, Ms. Fremlin is a keen observer of human nature, and her prose is evidence of her extraordinarily sharp wit. Her most brilliant portrayals are those of the children, especially Harriet, who sets tea out in the hallway (where it is inevitably trod upon) for her Teddy yet argues with the inexorable logic of a Socrates.

It is a wonder and a shame to Miss Lemon that Celia Fremlin is today largely forgotten. One could do worse than to resolve to remember her in the New Year.

The Dead of Jericho

Miss Lemon finds many things to like about Chief Inspector Morse, first made famous in the Oxford mystery novel series by Colin Dexter and further lionized by iTV. Although Morse and his sidekick, D.S. Lewis, obviously descend from the Holmes and Watson and Poirot and Hastings tradition, there is much that's modern and original about the pair's depiction.

Morse lives in Oxford, rather than London. He drives a Lancia.  He has an indefatigable appetite for English ale and cigarettes and can't get enough of Wagner. Like Miss Lemon, he has an obsession with working crossword puzzles. His hair is thinning and his waist is thickening. He's a bachelor, but not necessarily a confirmed one. In short, Morse is irresistibly human.

Except ... that we don't know his Christian name. (For the incurably curious, it is eventually revealed in Death Is Now My Neighbour 1996.)

Unlike many detectives who have preceded him, however, Morse isn't afraid to admit when he is wrong. Whether it's his failure to pick up the next round or the alacrity with which he'd like to pin the solution to a crime on the plot of a Greek tragedy, Morse is not infallible and never afraid to say so. Even if the tone of his admission is surly.

In The Dead of Jericho (1981), Morse finds a fleeting spark of romance with a woman who several weeks later is found hanged. Was it suicide? Or murder?

As Morse and Lewis investigate, they turn up a past that could have been written by Sophocles: a child given up for adoption; a father killed in a road accident; a rumoured love affair between a woman and a much younger man.

Just how close Dexter's plot hews to Aristotelian ethics, she shall leave for her readers to discover. She's sure you'll enjoy Morse's antics along the way.

Safely to the Grave

Miss Lemon doubts she has ever met a character in mystery so unrelentingly pernicious as Mick Harvey.

He's a villain to outdo all of Margaret Yorke's villains. And she, the mistress of the psychological thriller, knows how to paint startling portraits of evil.
 
When we first meet Mick, he is not only rough with his wife, Beverley, and a thundering bully to his neighbours, but he also quickly reveals himself to be mean, cocksure, prone to drink and quick to blame others for all of his own shortcomings. His hair is permed, he wears a weak mustache and the beginnings of a beer belly.

Just the sorts of things one hopes to find in an anti-hero, aren't they?

But there is nothing redeeming or heroic about Mick Harvey. After cleaning out Beverley's purse and spending the evening at the Cricketers, Mick tries to run two women off the road who are returning from a night at the ballet. When Marion Quilter and Laura Burdock decide to report the incident of dangerous driving to the police, they set off a chain of events that seems as much the product of ill fate as random chance.

Miss Lemon isn't revealing too much when she says that Mick proves more than once that he's not afraid to kill anyone who stands in his way: not even a dog.   

This is in many ways an upsetting novel. And yet ... as much, my stalwart readers, as you will want to put down Safely to the Grave (1986), Miss Lemon tells you that you will not be able to do so.