Tag: Patricia Wentworth

Who Pays the Piper? by Patricia Wentworth

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Dean Street Press| 2016| 255 pages| e-book|3.5* rounded up to 4*

This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. After my disappointment reading The Red Lacquer Case by Patricia Wentworth I decided to see if Who Pays the Piper? was any better. And I’m delighted to say that it is. It was originally published in 1940, so 16 years later than The Red Lacquer Case. It’s the 2nd book in the Inspector Ernest Lamb Mysteries. This new edition published by Dean Street Press features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Description from Dean Street Press:

Lucas Dale, new owner of King’s Bourne, was flirting with danger when he showed his priceless collection of pearls to the guests assembled in his period salon. But when, under threat, he forced lovely Susan Lenox to break her engagement and consent to marry him, he started a train of events that inevitably led to murder, shattering the quiet of the English village. Bill Carrick, Susan’s former fiancé, is the primary suspect, but as Inspector Ernest Lamb and Detective Frank Abbott soon discover, Dale’s questionable past offered motives of revenge and greed to darken the mystery. Motives which would lead another victim into the path of murder…

It’s a murder mystery, so that may explain why I prefer this one to The Red Lacquer Case, as I do enjoy crime fiction more than stories about enemy agents and unconvincing kidnappers that left me feeling exasperated. Who Pays the Piper? is complicated, with many twists and turns, convincing characters and plenty of suspects with plausible motives, along with red herrings – very much like some of Agatha Christie’s plots.

The title is part of the saying ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ meaning that the person who provides the money for something decides what will be done, or has a right to decide what will be done. The ‘piper’ in the title is Lucas Dale, who in the opening pages declares that he always gets what he wants. And having bought Bourne House from Mrs O’Hara what he wants is Susan Lennox, her niece. He forces her to agree to marry him and break her engagement with Bill Carrick, which in turn makes him a prime suspect when Lucas is found dead, shot through the back of his head. Bill had been overheard threatening to kill him. 

But he is not the only suspect and it is down to Inspector Ernest Lamb and Sergeant Frank Abbott (who also appear in some of the Miss Silver books) to investigate the case. They discover Dale’s questionable past includes others with a motive to kill him. There is his ex-wife wife, Cora de Lisle and Vincent Bell, his American business partner who both wanted money from Dale. I thoroughly enjoyed trying to unravel it all, even though when the murderer was revealed I was rather surprised.

The Red Lacquer Case by Patricia Wentworth

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Dean Street Press| 2016| 224 pages| e-book|2*

This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. I decided to read The Red Lacquer Case by Patricia Wentworth for this event. It was originally published in 1924. This new edition published by Dean Street Press features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Description from Amazon:

There was a hand pressed against the window, a large hand that looked unnaturally white, the blood driven from it by the pressure of a man’s weight. The light showed the pale fingers—and the still paler palm crossed by a dark, jagged scar.

Young Sally Meredith is distracted from her jam recipes by a visit from uncle Fritzi, who is accompanied by a mysterious red lacquer case containing a deadly secret. A band of unscrupulous international agents are close behind, and when the eccentric uncle disappears into the night the lacquer case is stolen. But Sally is now the only person who knows how to open the case – she is kidnapped, her life in terrible danger.

Meanwhile Bill Armitage, formerly Sally’s fiancé and still in love with her, begins with the aid of Scotland Yard to search for her. The ending of this clever detective story is, unexpected and piquantly, in high contrast to the preceding terrors.

Previously I’ve read two books by Patricia Wentworth, The Girl in the Cellar, the last of her Miss Silver books, which I didn’t think was very convincing, and The Brading Collection, the 17th Miss Silver book,which I thought was much better. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Red Lacquer Case: A Golden Age Mystery. It’s a romance/spy thriller, very much in the same vein as Agatha Christie’s first Thomas and Tuppence novel, The Secret Adversary, a spy/detective story that is fast and furious with Tommy and Tuppence landing themselves in all sorts of dangerous situations.

In The Red Lacquer Case, Sally, a former suffragette, finds herself in danger when her uncle Fritzi shows her how to open the red lacquer case, a cigar case, in which he has placed his formula for a deadly gas that he thinks enemy agents are determined to get from him. The case has a pattern of raised roses and fishes with goggling eyes. Her tells her

You touch here and here, pressing, and, with the other hand, touching this flower on one side and this on the other, you pull.

But, he tells her, if you try to open it without knowing the correct sequence it will release enough acid to destroy the formula inside.

Over night the case is stolen, thus setting in motion a sequence of events that sees Sally being kidnapped and in terrible danger as the kidnappers try to get her to open the case. Sally is plucky and feisty, able to withstand whatever they try, but she is also naive. Meanwhile Bill Armitage, formerly Sally’s fiance and still in love with her, begins with the aid of Scotland Yard to search for her. At this point the narrative becomes very repetitive and irritating and my interest flagged to the point where I couldn’t wait for the book to end. Sadly, after many twists and turns, the ending, in one final twist, was just irritating and unbelievable. It left me feeling exasperated. I think this book began well, setting up an interesting mystery, but then became tedious reading, and ended, I thought, in such a disappointing way.

I have one more book by Patricia Wentworth to read, Who Pays the Piper? and I’m hoping it will be better than this one.

The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’m falling behind with reading for my 20 Books of Summer Challenge as I didn’t read any of them in July. I decided to read one of the shorter books to get back into the swing of the challenge and chose The Girl in the Cellar, a Miss Silver Mystery first published in 1961, by Patricia Wentworth (1878 – 1961). I wrote about the opening paragraph in this First Chapter, First Paragraph post.

It begins well as the main character finds herself in the dark in a cellar, not knowing who she is or how she got there. She is standing on the cellar steps and there is a dead girl lying at the bottom of the steps. She doesn’t recognise the dead girl either. She finds a bag beside her on the steps, which she doesn’t think is hers, but takes it with her as she escapes from the house and finds herself standing at the end of a road. She gets on a bus where she meets Miss Silver, who seeing how confused and frightened she is, takes her for a cup of tea and offers to help her. A letter in the handbag is addressed to Mrs James Fancourt and it seems that her name is Anne and she is to stay with her husband’s two aunts.

I think the opening of the book is the best part, setting up a scene of suspense and mystery. For most of the book Anne is suffering from amnesia but there is so much repetition of what little facts Anne knows that it became tedious reading, because it’s not just Anne who goes over and over what has happened but other characters too. I think the repetition lessened the sense of suspense, and overall, I thought the book was odd and not very convincing. There are too many coincidences, improbabilities, and loose ends.

This is the last of the Miss Silver Mysteries, published in the year Patricia Wentworth died. The first in the series was published in 1928. Miss Maud Silver is a retired governess who became a private investigator. She likes to help young lovers in distress – in The Girl on the Cellar, a ‘damsel in distress’ and she loves to knit and is a very sympathetic listener. I’ve only previously read one of the Miss Silver books, The Brading Collection, which is a much more convincing book.

As well as the 20 Books of Summer Challenge, this book qualifies for  Bev’s Vintage Mystery Cover Scavenger Hunt in the category, ‘Damsel in Distress’.

First Chapter, First Paragraph: The Girl in the Cellar

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

First chapterEvery Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros to share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book that she’s reading or planning to read soon.

I didn’t read any of my books for the 20 Books of Summer Challenge in July, so I’ve got some catching up to do. One of the shorter books on my list is The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth, in which Miss Silver helps Anne, who has lost her memory, but who thinks she has witnessed a murder.

It begins:

She looked into the dead unbroken dark and had neither memory nor thought. She was not conscious of where she was, or of how she had come there. She was not conscious of anything except the darkness. She did not know if time had passed. There seemed to be no sense that it went by, but it must have done, because the moment when she knew nothing but darkness had changed into a moment in which she knew that her feet were on stone, and that she must not move from where she stood.

Blurb:

A young woman regains consciousness and finds herself on some cellar steps. At the bottom of the steps there is the corpse of a dead girl. She cannot remember who she is, what has happened or why she is there. Terrified and confused she manages to find a way out and as she flees she runs into Miss Silver, who offers to help her.

A letter in her bag is the only clue to her identity. But by investigating what has happened to her will she find herself in danger? Can she trust the letter writer? And who is the girl in the cellar?

This is a Miss Silver Mystery (there are 32 in the series), first published in 1961, the year that Patricia Wentworth died. She was born in India in 1878 and wrote dozens of best-selling mysteries being recognised as one of the ‘mistresses of classic crime.’She died in 1961 and was as popular in the 1940s as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. Miss Silver, a contemporary of Miss Marple ‘was her finest creation‘.

What do you think? Would you keep reading? I think this opening paragraph sets the scene well, with the sense of danger and mystery to make me want to know more.