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. 

Three Blind Mice

Miss Lemon doesn't feel that she is going too far by saying "Three Blind Mice," the first story in this eponymous short-story collection by Agatha Christie is perhaps one of her all-time best.

And as her devoted readers will agree, when it comes to pacing and plot, Dame Agatha is no slouch at the mystery in short form.

Neither one of these elements in stinted in "Three Blind Mice," where the mise-en-scéne draws the reader in without delay: a blizzard bears down on the lonely guesthouse of Monkswell Manor, while its novice proprietors await with anxiety and uncertainty their strange list of guests.

As it so often happens in stories by Agatha Christie, not all ends up well at the Manor. First one murder occurs; then another. And while one of the guests at Monkswell picks out a haunting little nursery tune on the piano: Three blind mice; Three blind mice / See how they run; See how they run; another lays a trap that may well prevent the murder of a third.

There's quite a bit of history behind Mrs. Christie's story, a wicked play on the old Mother Goose rhyme by the same name. "Three Blind Mice" made its debut as a radio play in May 1947 and was broadcast in honor of Queen Mary's 80th birthday celebration. Mrs. Christie later worked the radio play into a short story in December 1948, and, then, in 1949, into a stage drama, which is now best known the world over as London's longest-running-ever play, The Mousetrap.

The play opened at The Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End in 1952 and starred Sir Richard Attenborough -- and it was a tremendous success. Meanwhile, the short story had been published in a magazine in the U.S. and then was collected and published, in 1950, in Three Blind Mice and Other Stories. But Mrs. Christie wavered when it came to having a similar sort of collection published in the U.K., as so many people had yet to see The Mousetrap.

And so it is still today. The Mousetrap continues its historical run in London's West End (now at St. Martin's Theatre) and "Three Blind Mice" as a short story is still only available in the States. An interesting fate for both works.

What Miss Lemon enjoyed seeing most especially in the short-story version were the little elements sprinkled within the narrative that were clearly drawn from Mrs. Christie's own experience after World War II, with the sudden shortage of affordable houses and domestic servants. Rationing was another issue that adds an interesting plot dimension. In all, "Three Blind Mice" is excellent fun -- but do respect Mrs. Christie's wishes and don't read it if you haven't yet seen the stage version. 

Do you have a favourite short story by Agatha Christie? Miss Lemon would love to hear what it is.

The Smooth Face of Evil

Miss Lemon recently took a holiday jaunt to New York City, where she spent time browsing in The Mysterious Bookshop on Warren Street in TriBeCa. This august emporium (devotedly exclusively, one might guess, to Miss Lemon's favourite subject) is the place in North America to acquire new, second-hand and rare copies of a broad range of the novels of crime, mystery and suspense most worth having.

To wit, for $3 Miss Lemon picked up The Smooth Face of Evil (1984), a gripping tale of vintage psychological suspense by Margaret Yorke.

If it is cliche to say that once she began reading this story about the smooth talking con artist who meets with his comeuppance in a most unexpected way, she could not put it down -- well then, you will have to excuse Miss Lemon's triteness, for it is the truth.

From the moment Terry Brett smashes his stolen Vauxhall into Alice Armitage's illicitly borrowed Volvo, and then alters the details of the event to make things seem like they happened the other way round, Miss Lemon was hooked. She suspects her readers will be, too.

As is her wont, Ms. Yorke graces The Smooth Face of Evil with the most telling points of psychological detail. Alice Armitage, for instance, is a lonely and aging (though in now way frail or elderly) widow who is manipulated into going to live with her son, Giles, and daughter-in-law Helen far from the Bournemouth coast where she lived independently and happily. When Alice arrives at Harcombe House, she quickly sees that she is welcome only for the money she brings from the sale of her house, as Helen quickly dispatches her to a frigid attic apartment. In short, isolated and unwelcome, she is ripe for conning.

Terry Brett is the sort who can talk his way out of trouble and into the hearts and purses of even the most worldly of British housewives. The rewards for these endeavours, along with an occasional car theft, are handsome.

Sue Norris, a tenant of the Harcombe House Lodge, who lives there, unmarried, with Jonathan, meets Terry after the smashup. Worldly is not quite the way to describe Sue. Despite Terry's charming curls and neat suit, Sue picks him out for what he is, and a strange alliance is formed.

Just who ends up conning whom -- and who runs the risk of murder Miss Lemon shall leave for her readers to discover. The journey to the crime's unraveling is nine-tenths of the fun.

The Murders of Richard III

My dear readers: Have you ever wondered whether Richard III really did murder those innocent babes in the Tower to secure his position on the English throne?

Miss Lemon must tell you that she likes to ponder that tricky bit of history every now again. So it was with great pleasure that she picked up The Murders of Richard III (1974), by Elizabeth Peters, wherein the main characters seek to suss out the truth behind the much-maligned reign of dark King Richard.

Their parlour-games of re-enactment, however, quickly turn treacherous as one by one the various characters that were supposed victims of Richard III fall into mischief and even worse.

Will Jacqueline Kirby, Ms. Peters' spirited librarian-cum-sleuth who sets on the case with her prodigious handbag and formidable store of knowledge sort out the tangled histories and the mystery of the Ricardian trickster in time to stop a murderer?

Miss Lemon leaves it to her readers to find out.

She will say, though, that those who like medieval history are certain to like this book. Ditto for admirers of Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, which the book gently spoofs. For if there was ever a figure from history who has swirling about him more mystery than Richard III, Miss Lemon would like to meet him.

Elizabeth Peters is one of the nom de plumes for Barbara Mertz, a respected historian and author of nearly 70 books, including works of nonfiction. Two of these are now considered classic works of popular history: Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs and Red Land, Black Land. She earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 1952. Mystery Writers of America awarded her the MWA Grandmaster in 1998.

When it comes to the past, Ms. Peters knows whereof she speaks.

Six Feet Under

Yes, my dear readers, you all know it by now. Miss Lemon loves to grouse about Inspector Thanet. Reading Six Feet Under (1982), by Dorothy Simpson, has done little to change that proclivity.

Stuffy and self-satisfied, the Inspector could rival M. Poirot, were it only that he had a sense of humour.

But the poor man in trying.

Now that his partner, DC Mike Lineham, is about to enter the matrimonial state (the only state, by the way, that Luke Thanet thinks fit to live in, so it's high time), he turns his moral apprehensions homeward. 

And my, does Inspector Thanet find something to fret about: His wife Joan is thinking of ... how could she? ... joining the workforce. Life, Thanet predicts, will never be as sweet, harmonious, or comfortable as it is with Joan waiting for him quietly at home.

While he gnashes his teeth over this familial conundrum, a more serious domestic drama unfolds in the bucolic village of Nettleton. Carrie Birch, an introverted spinster devoted to the care of her invalid mother, is found murdered.

Who would want to harm a woman so drab and selfless as Carrie?

As Thanet and Lineham go digging, they turn up plenty of dirt, as it were, on Carrie and the few villagers she lived among.

Miss Lemon doesn't feel as though she's giving much away if she says that Thanet is wise and decent enough to see from the business in Nettleton that a stranglehold put on a loved one is no way to ensure that love is returned.

As Miss Lemon said, he is trying. Despite Inspector Thanet's irritating ways, this is a smartly plotted and psychologically insightful mystery.  Well worth the read.

Happy Birthday, Agatha Christie

The happy day is upon us once again: today marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Agatha Clarissa Miller, in Torquay, England. As we all know now -- but couldn't possibly have foreseen then -- she grew up to become the bestselling and perhaps most ingenious mystery writer of all time.

With the day in mind, Miss Lemon thought it apt to give a mention to the few of Dame Agatha's many publications (eighty detective novels, short-story collections and plays; eight novels under the nom de plume, Mary Westmacott; and two memoirs in all) that she most frequently ranked among her favourites.

By the order in which Sir Max lists them in Mallowan's Memoirs, they are:

1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). This is also one of Miss Lemon's all-time favourites. So clever is the plotting, so intricately masked is the murderer that critics cried foul when this masterwork first appeared. But no violation of the conventions of mystery has ever been proved. Sour grapes, perhaps?
2. The Pale Horse (1961). Agatha Christie prided herself on her knowledge of poisons -- an erudition she gained while working in the dispensary of Torquay Hospital during the first World War. The plot of this novel shows her pharmaceutical training to its best advantage.
3. The Moving Finger (1943). Smart characterization, snappy dialogue, and a plot that zips right along make this book the perfect illustration of all that is good about Agatha Christie. This work also employs Miss Lemon's favourite but most disturbing plot device: the anonymous letter.
4. Endless Night (1967). Set in a fictional rendering of Max and Agatha's beloved Greenway, both cite this work as one of their favourites for its strong psychological exploration and classic struggle between good and evil.

With these books in mind, Miss Lemon bids you a very happy Dame Agatha Day!

Mallowan's Memoirs

As we near the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth (15 September 1890, for those who need reminding), Miss Lemon thought, what better way to celebrate the double-diamond jubilee than with a view of the grande dame of mystery through the eyes of archaeologist and Asiatic scholar, Max Mallowan?

And what better place to get that view than from Mallowan's Memoirs: The Autobiography of Max Mallowan (1977). The book is excellent for its vivid recollections of the digs at Ur, Nineveh, and Chagar Bazar, among others; its plates and illustrations of people, excavation sites and artifacts; and of course its observations on life with Dame Agatha. He was her husband, after all.

Fourteen years younger than Agatha, Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan  (he was knighted in 1968) was a classmate of Evelyn Waugh at Lancing and went on to earn a B.A. in classics at Oxford. After graduation, he foundered a bit until being invited to join Leonard Wooley as an apprentice at Ur, an ancient city, now located partway between Baghdad and the head of the Persian Gulf.   

The odyssey at Ur is where Sir Max's absorbing tale begins. He describes the notoriously difficult nature of the Wooleys -- both of Leonard and even more so, of Katherine, who is gently portrayed in Agatha's Murder in Mesopotamia (1936). But it was Katherine's imperious nature that brought Max and Agatha together. She ordered Max to escort Agatha, who was on her second excursion to the Middle East, on a round-trip tour of Baghdad. He found the task -- and the mystery writer -- so agreeable that Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie were married on 11 September 1930.

The two -- Max no great mystery fan and Agatha no great archaeologist -- in the end made an interesting pair. And the marriage -- despite rumours of Max's affair with Barbara Parker, whom he married after Agatha's death -- was a happy one. Indeed, Mallowan's Memoirs is dedicated to Rosalind, Agatha's only child, 'with love.'

What Miss Lemon finds so intriguing about reading Mallowan's Memoirs is how his perspective aligns with that found in Agatha's varied works. In fact, they complement each other quite smartly. To have read Agatha's autobiography or Come Tell Me How You Live (1946) or any of her works set in the Middle East is to get a special sense of insight when reading Max's account.

Sir Max himself gives a charming perspective on Agatha's novels and craft, though he is careful to stop short of offering literary criticism. The critic of detective fiction, he wryly observes, 'must be either a knave or a fool,' for the elegance of the narrative lies in the arc from crime to solution. One cannot discuss mysteries intelligently, he writes, without discussing their endings.

Miss Lemon will bear that in mind.

In the meantime, she will say that this post is part of a series, the Agatha Christie Blog Tour, intended to commemorate her life and work. If you like Agatha Christie and her milieu, stop by and have a look round.