Femme Noir

I had my reservations about a mystery featuring an 11-year-old sleuth who was already an accomplished chemist. However, I was not yet acquainted with Miss Flavia de Luce of Buckshaw, the rambling old wreck of a country manor outside of the village of Bishop’s Lacey.

Colonel Haviland de Luce, father of Flavia and her generally abusive older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, is perpetually certain that they must give up Buckshaw, left to him by his adored and long-dead wife. The money has run out, and there seems to be no solution. But in the short term, the Colonel has rented out the place to Illium Films as a movie set.

It’s nearly Christmas, and the film company has arrived with its caravan of trucks, crew, performers, and director. The most famous actress in their known world, Phyllis Wyvern, and her frequent leading man, Desmond Duncan, have come also, all of them occupying the many empty bedrooms of the house, and filling the halls and rooms with endless bits of gear and lighting.

It’s interesting enough to draw Flavia out of her beloved chemistry lab, left intact by her deceased Uncle Tar, complete with equipment, supplies of chemical components, and his copious and instructive notes on the specifics of chemistry. When Phyllis Wyvern arrives, she recognizes Flavia immediately. Her picture has appeared in the newspapers more than once; much to the huge dismay of the local constabulary, Flavia has been instrumental in the solving of crimes. Phyllis Wyvern has more than a passing interest in crime, for good reason.

Flavia develops a friendly relationship with the world-famous actress, but her favored companion is Dogger, her father’s old army friend who is the indispensable man about the estate, and seems to know everything, especially what to do when things go wrong. Of course things do go wrong. Several things.

Flavia is concerned with her own dilemma at this time, solving the disturbing question of whether there is, or isn’t, a Father Christmas. She knows her father can’t really afford the excellent laboratory equipment she asks for, and yet, it always arrives on Christmas morning. So she cooks up a substance in the lab that will keep Father Christmas glued to the chimney if he comes. This will turn out to be a very inspired idea.

Phyllis Wyvern decides to do a good turn for the local vicar, who needs a new roof for the church, and offers to do a fundraiser for him. Colonel de Luce suggests they do it at Buckshaw. On the night of the event, however, there’s a terrible storm, and almost the entire village is stuck in the old mansion, camping out everywhere.

There couldn’t be a more inconvenient night for a murder, from the point of view of the police, with all the film people and the entire village all crammed into the same house. Too many suspects would be in breathing distance from the corpse. Needless to say, that’s the night when they have one.

The police try to keep Flavia firmly out of the business, not because they want to protect her child-like innocence, but more because they don’t want an 11-year-old solving their crime for them. They ought t know better than to try.

So yes, I opened this book with reservations, in spite of the rave reviews on the cover and inside pages. Somehow the thought of an 11-year-old detective had no cachet for me. It only took a couple of pages to give up entirely to Flavia’s winsome genius. This book is an odd and captivating treat, entertaining from beginning to end, beautifully written, and the prelude to many more hours of reading other Falvia de Luce adventures.

Kinky Friedman is an author who writes about his detective alter-ego, also named Kinky Freidman. Kinky the character lives in a loft on Vandam Street in New York’s SouthVillage, and maintains his office there as well. But in this story, Kinky is not doing much business, because he has been seriously laid up with a long-latent case of malaria he’s been carrying around for years.

In spite of the fact that his strain of malaria is by far the most dangerous, his Indian doctor, Dr. Skinnipipi, wants to release him to the care of his friends, the Village Irregulars, who get called upon from time to time to do some work for him on a case.

Dr. Skinnipipi clearly needs a hospital bed, and sends Kinky home with his devoted friends. Even in his delerium, Kinky is not sure this is a good idea. After all, he knows his friends. There’s McGovern, the hard drinking journalist, who has selective deafness and exasperates him with a constant “Say again?” and Ratso, the neurotic compulsive eater–who willingly plays Watson to his Holmes– and a bunch of others with a particular mania for drunkenness.

They pretty much leave him alone in the bedroom to alternately sweat, freeze, and hallucinate. They are busy in the living room, camping out amidst empty beer bottles, dead soldiers of harder stuff, and overflowing ashtrays. Between the excesses of alcohol and the close quarters, they’re also having a few loud disagreements, often on the subject of who gets to sleep on the sofa. Kinky’s cat adds her touch to the imbroglio by leaving her “Nixons” everywhere, and especially on the backpack belonging to Ratso, the one she doesn’t like.

While the Irregulars fight for the sofa and occasionally take off to do a work assignment, Kinky gets well enough to look out a window and smoke a cigar. He sees an episode of brutal domestic violence in the building next door, and later sees the man who beat the woman loading a gun. He becomes convinced that the woman he saw is in real danger. His friends try to verify if this really happened, or if it’s just another one of his fevered delusions. Of course, they see nothing, and start to worry if Kinky is finally around the bend for good. With friends like his, it might not be surprising.

But they humor him, and another old friend, who has an actual detective agency in Hollywood, comes to New York to help the Irregulars sort out if there is really a big problem next door, or if Kinky just needs humoring until the psychiatric crew takes over. He arrives with surveillance gear and sets up the Irregulars on a 24/7 watch.

But finally they do see her. And they even try to help her out of her difficult situation. In order to find out what happens next, you have to read the book.

However, the discovery of the woman next door does lift the spirits of the Irregulars, because at last they’re sure that Kinky wasn’t hallucinating any more. This is a good thing, in this crowd of dysfunctional types. Kinky is by far the least damaged of the bunch.

Both Kinky Friedmans, author and character, have weird, eccentric humor and a highly idiosyncratic world view. They’re so bad they’re refreshing, in a world where bad behavior isn’t nearly as popular as it once was. In this book, Kinky is absolutely incapacitated, but still thinking fast, so it will be most entertaining to find out what he does when he’s well—in the next book.

There’s something magical about starting the year with a book so good that you can hardly find the words to acclaim it. It left me speechlessly satisfied. Or perhaps it was just post-holiday fatigue that left me unable to think of enough superlatives.

However, it isn’t easy to describe the many way in which this book envelops readers, because it does so in many ways at once. “Strange” is an apt descriptor for this tale of characters, situations, fascinations, and obsessions of a rarified breed. It balances murder, mystery, obscure religiosity, classical music, critical reason, love, psychology, and fine wine in a literary varietal that’s simply delicious.

The heroine, Dominique Charpentier, is a juge d’instruction—that is, a judge who does not try cases, but researches them—and she is an expert on the subject of sects. Five years prior to the time of this story, the judge met André Schweigen, the police commissaire investigating a group suicide and murder– people who were poisoned, and one who was shot, all of them resting peacefully in death.. Now Schweigen has summoned the judge again, when a second group of adults and children are found in exactly the same situation, all poisoned, except one who has been shot. They have the same joyful expressions, and the one killed by a bullet is the sister of the man shot five years earlier. They never found the gun, or any reason for the deaths of these people, all successful, important members of French society.

For Schweigen, this crime is almost an answer to his wildest dream, the chance to see the judge again. She has haunted him for five years, this elegant, serious woman who lives for her work. The brief affair they had during the first investigation consumed his thoughts, ruined his marriage, and now she is back again. The judge will keep him at arm’s length, always. Schweigen calls her incessantly, rages and storms, and throws himself into the routines of painstaking police investigation, to keep turning up reasons to call her.

The people in these two events were from an old aristocratic family in the great wine-growing region of Languedoc, where the judge grew up. She has childhood memories of the great fêtes at the chateau. As she questions friends of the family, she goes to Lübeck to meet the contemporary composer and world-famous conductor, Friedrich Grosz. It is a fitting home base for the Compser, as it is as dark and medieval a city as one could imagine, home to the first hospital in Europe, a grim and gothic house of death where victims of the plague ended their days. The Composer is an aging and gigantic man of monumental stature and mood, whose first meeting with the implacable judge is terrifyingly rude.

While in Lübeck, the judge and her brilliant pierced Goth assistant, Gäelle, search for the printer that may have bound a curious book found among the remains of the murder-suicide, written in several languages, and one that is code, and find that it is the bible of a secret sect known simply as The Faith. Grosz knows a great deal about the Faith, and as he meets with the judge, he, too, becomes fascinated by her. Even though he is both a suspect in an investigation, a composer and conductor of music, which the judge doesn’t understand, and a believer in this Faith that welcomes death, the judge finds the Composer’s imposing demands for her love harder and harder to fight. At 42, the judge is torn between two men who love her so adamantly that she is forced to choose one.

It felt as though it were no accident that this book should come into my hands at New Year’s, as it’s New Year’s Day when the second set of bodies are found, and Schweigen calls the judge again. It was also on New Year’s Day, eight years ago, when I first saw the town of Lübeck and attended a concert at the church where the Composer himself will conduct in this tale, as did many of the greatest composers of Europe, including Bach. And in the first days of the year, it is a special pleasure to read an author whose other books promise more pleasures for the coming seasons.

The Law and the Lady was first published in serial form in an English magazine called The Graphic. By the time this work began to appear, Collins was already a highly successful writer, and could make his own terms with publishers (the idealized state of every writer’s existence). When a Victorian editor changed a sentence, which he felt was too racy, Collins was able to extract an apology and correction in the next issue.

Some critics have felt that this book is perhaps less sophisticated than his previous literary successes, like The Moonstone or The Lady in White. However, this novel does champion early feminist causes, as the protagonist, Valeria, refuses to accept the secondary role in life, and against all opposition, takes on a man’s role to save her marriage—a shocking thing for a Victorian woman to do.

The orphaned Valeria’s clergyman uncle and his wife, the Starkweathers, have raised her in a small town in Northern England. While they are lovely people, Valeria is stifled in the country. However, a stranger to the region, Eustace Woodville, quite literally sweeps her off her feet. She falls off an embankment watching him fish, and Eustace helps her up and sees her home.

Valeria entrances Eustace and a romance ensues. They are married in short order. However, soon after the marriage, she can see that her beloved husband suffers from some unknown torment that he will not reveal. She demands his disclosure, but he would rather leave her than expose his secret. She is determined to uncover it..

Of course she does, and it’s not pretty: Eustace has been married before, and lived with his first wife at the family estate in Scotland. When the first wife, whom he married to save her reputation, dies under mysterious circumstances, Eustace is tried for murder. The jury brings in the Scotch Verdict, one unique to Scotland, which basically says “We think he’s probably guilty, but we don’t have enough evidence.”

Valeria refuses to accept that Eustace had murdered his wife, and if she is mad about anything, it’s that he didn’t tell her of his previous marriage. But in fact, Eustace never loved his first wife or did anything improper with her, and acts out of sheer compassion when he marries her. But he is devastated that anyone should think him a possible murderer, and believes that if Valeria knows his secret, she will always suspect him every time they argue, and live in terror that her tea is poisoned.

Not only does Valeria not believe the Scotch Verdict, but she is adamant about fighting it. She undertakes reopening the investigation herself. She goes to meet the people who testified on his behalf, and finds the most curious batch of friends. One is an aging roué addicted to social functions and young women. Another is one of the most curious characters in all of detective fiction, Miserrimus Dexter.

Miserrimus was aptly named when he was born without legs; otherwise he is a handsome man who seems to have some talents. But he is a Grade A eccentric given to behavior that rides the very fine line between absolute madness and artistic license.

As Valeria move forward in her most unsuitable plan for a woman, Collins reveals some things about Victorian England I never realized. The most remarkable is the amount of drinking that went on. Valeria gets plied with booze at every social meeting and meal, and to fortify her when things are rough and she feels faint. No wonder the Victorians could uphold the standards of the age: they were too stewed to do much else.

Valeria (Latin for valorous woman) must have been a shocking role model for the Victorian woman. So although this novel is thought to be unsophisticated by the literary standards of Collins’ work, it is a milestone in the development of the women’s movement. If you love Victorian fiction, as I do, you will certainly find much to enjoy in The Law and the Lady.

Philosophy is an abstract pursuit. Unlike the sciences, which demand rigorous testing of hypotheses that produce repeatable results, philosophical hypotheses are a matter of opinion. The philosopher can give examples of how their theories might play out in the world of actual events, but any old philosopher can turn up evidence to back up their point of view.

For example, Philosopher A may say that human nature is good, and point to the observable rise in volunteerism, foundations, and philanthropy. Philosopher B will counter that human nature is bad, and use rising episodes of abuse, and whatever other unsavory statistics they can muster. People who follow philosophical thought will be attached to one genius or another, depending on their own points of view.

In Gregorio’s brilliant Critique of Criminal Reason, the small-town magistrate Hanno Stiffeneiis has received orders from the king to go to the town of Königsberg,, where a series of brutal murders has been committed. Hanno has no idea why he has been chosen to perform this service, beyond the fact that the city’s magistrate, Procurator Rhunken, is ill. Hanno has been banished from this city in the past, where his estranged father still lives, and where he met the greatly esteemed philosopher, Immanuel Kant.

In his first meeting with Kant, Hanno raised the question of what goes on in the mind of a murderer—a question that has perplexed Kant ever since. When the city’s magistrate fell ill, Kant urged the king to call on Steifeniss to solve the murders, as Hanno has his own reasons for having more insight into such matters than most—reasons which led his father to banish him from his sight.

By 1804, when this story unfolds, Kant has lost favor with the philosophic community, but retains the king’s ear, and arranges Hanno’s summons. He has provided his protégé with a phenomenal source of information—what may be called the world’s first forensic facility. In this grisly, dark laboratory, Kant shows Hanno and his stalwart assistant, Sergeant of Police Amadeus Koch, the severed heads of the victims floating in a cloudy liquid and other evidentiary bits. Kant has paid the guardsman first called to the scene of the crime to draw the victim in situ and to record whatever other evidence is left behind by the perpetrator. All the victims are kneeling and holding something in one hand; none of the severed heads show looks of fear, and all have a small wound in the back of their necks.

Hanno follows clues that lead him to the wrong conclusion about why the murders have been committed, and the wrong people are arrested for the crimes. Two of them, who are guilty of Jacobim sentiments—one of whom has committed an unrelated murder– hang themselves in jail. One woman, a beautiful albino who earns her living performing abortions, is murdered as she flees prosecution. But it is only when Hanno rethinks Kant’s advice that his assessment of the motive changes; he explores the physical evidence left behind in pursuit of his perpetrator, and the motive becomes stranger and darker than the reader might imagine.

Like many historical mysteries, this one led me to do some research about Immanuel Kant. Philosophy, it turns out, was not his only interest; science was an equal preoccupation. He lived in the age when forensic science was an emerging field, and it is not at all unlikely that he turned his own mammoth intellect to this study.

Some mysteries are just for fun, and others soothe the urge for intellectual content while still immersed in genre fiction. Gregorio fills both needs more than admirably. This is the second novel I’ve read about Hanno Stiffeniis, and I look forward immensely to the third.

I signed up for the mystery reader’s challenge on the superb site for mystery fans, MY READER’S BLOCK, and pledged to read (and review) 16 books written before 1960 by the end of the year. Since I review only books I’ve really liked, I read far more than those I mention here. Lately I’ve gone back to favorite authors from the challenge period, and of course that meant including Rex Stout.

Typically, when I pick up one of the Rex Stout books I haven’t read in years, I want to go back to the old New York brownstone where most of them take place, and wile away a few hours in Nero Wolfe’s office, enjoy a dinner cooked by Fritz, admire Theodore’s patience as Wolfe gets in the way of his orchid cultivation in the rooftop greenhouse, and follow Archie around as he devastates female sources of information with his charm. It’s not unlike going home on a visit: you know what it’s like, and you don’t really want it to be any different.

As a result, I rarely pick up those novels in which Wolfe is out of the comfort zone. Wolfe makes everyone, murderers included, come to him. This week, I read The Black Mountain, which primarily takes place in Montenegro, the corner of the former Yugoslavia where Wolfe grew up. I am reminded in this book that Wolfe wasn’t always an urban hermit; he grew up climbing mountains, herding goats, and frequently crossing the Adriatic. Another long forgotten piece of his history came back, too: he has an adopted daughter.

Very few things will make Nero Wolfe leave his house, with the possible exception of dining at Rustermann’s. He is confronted, as this book opens, with one of them: his old friend from Montenegro, Marko Vukcic, who owns Rustermann’s, has been shot and killed when leaving his house. Wolfe’s first unexpected move is to go to the morgue, to place two old dinars on his friend’s lifeless eyes—a pledge they had made to each other in their youth, to be the one who did it when the first of them died.

Wolfe is determined to find his friend’s murderer. As the investigation goes on, and neither Wolfe nor the police are making any headway, his adopted daughter comes to see him. They have never gotten along all that well anyway, but Carla is a tempestuous character who is devoted to the cause of the Montenegrin underground, which equally despises the Russian domination and Tito government. She and the dead restaurateur were both active in underground support of the Spirit of the Black Mountain, sending money and arms shipments to the rebels.

Carla decides she must go back to Montenegro to act, and sends messages back to Wolfe through an agent in Bari. When the agent phones to say that Carla has been killed, Wolfe realizes that he must go himself. He contemplates going alone, as this will be a dangerous expedition, but decides, in the final analysis, that he is too used to having Archie backing him up.

So Archie finally gets to go out of the country and see the world—that’s great, since he never seems to get out of New York much. Archie is far too hip to seem excited about it, but he does muse wistfully, as the plane traverses Europe, that the great capitals are left or right of their flight path; their destinations, Bari and Titograd, are not exactly stops on the grand tour.

As Americans, Archie and Wolfe can’t get visas into Montenegro, and must be ferried there discretely and anonymously in an uncomfortable old boat. They will walk miles, climb mountains, sleep in haystacks and caves, and confront enemies of every sort, including fleas. Usually it’s Archie who must give detailed reports to Wolfe of information gathered, but in a country where Serbo-Croatian is the only language, it’s Wolfe’s turn to make the reports.

Even in this far-flung corner of the world, the name Nero Wolfe is too well known. They must travel under aliases and in clothing that doesn’t hint of New York. They will take outrageous chances and tell wild tales to find Marko’s murderer, and of course they will. As this story ends, we come perilously close to losing Wolfe forever—potentially the greatest loss ever in detective fiction.

Lizanne Steffanson came to New York looking for a secretarial job, but with another agenda: to find out who killed her husband, Dene. Work is hard to find, and she is living in a rented room in a flat shared by students and other tenants, surviving on a frugal budget. She spends whatever bits of money she can afford going to places, like theaters, where she might see the people she knows were somehow implicated in her husband’s death, because she saw them there, in that tiny Vermont town where she grew up, around the time he died.

Her temporary job is about to end, and out of desperation, she answers an ad she sees in the paper: Wanted: a beautiful girl. One not afraid to look on danger’s bright face. Room 1000, The Lorenzo.

Although she isn’t classically beautiful, she is desperate, and decides to apply. Unexpectedly, Bill Folker gives her the job. He also gives her $5,000 to spend on clothing before she starts, and provides her with a suite at the Lorenzo adjacent to his, separated by the office.

She has no idea what this job entails, but when she begins, he tells her. He represents the oldest son of the Viljaas family, Stefan. Knut Viljaas left his estate to be divided among his three sons, and to make sure that the estate is evenly divided, he cuts a check into three triangles, gives a triangle to each son, and gives one of them a seal of the cross-eyed bear. The check can’t be cashed without the three parts, and the seal of the bear stamped on each of them.

Her job is to get to know the second son, Lars, who plays the piano in a nightclub, and will absolutely not admit to being a Viljaas. She is to engage him, and somehow wrangle from him the third of the check and the seal. What Bill Folker doesn’t know is that Lizanne’s dead husband, Dene, was the third of the Viljaas sons, and that she has the seal of the bear, and her marriage license, in a safety deposit box in a bank.

There is more at stake in the Viljaass family fortune, too. There are vast holdings of mines, that produce resources vital to the war effort, and all the sides in the war in Europe, as well as interests in the United States, all want control of them. With Dene missing, and presumably dead, Stefan reputedly in Sweden, and Lars disputing any connection to the family, the estate cannot be settled, and Stefan, through Bill Folker, remains in control of the mines.

Lizanne quickly becomes acquainted with Folker’s circle, people who have all known each other for a long time. The Viljaas family grew up next door to Ambassador Bruce, whose son, Dinky, is staying with Bill, and daughter, Alix, is Folker’s lover. A huge and terrifying man named Guard Croydon was Alix’s husband. Lizanne is frightened of all of them, except for Lars. It doesn’t take long to figure out that Stefan Viljaas will go to any lengths to control the family fortune, including murder—and as an heir to Dene’s share of the fortune, Lizanne fears for her life—if they should find out who she really is, and what she has.

This story is wildly complicated, changing from moment to moment. Lizanne—and the reader along with her—can never quite figure out what side these people are on, who can be trusted, and who knows what. It’s a page-turner.

Dorothy Hughes wrote 14 mystery novels in the ‘40s and’50s. Three of her novels were made into films. She was an Edgar award winner, and a Grand Master of The Mystery Writers of America. That is hardly surprising—she wrote tight, suspenseful, and absolutely compelling books.

Like most avid readers, I spend a lot of time looking at books, turning them over and reading the notes on the back cover. The notes on the back of this book began with, “When Sadie Walela decides to pursue her childhood dream of owning a restaurant… Sadie discovers that life as an entrepreneur is not as easy as she anticipated.” I didn’t have to read any farther to put it on my stack of reading to take home.

I also had a lifelong dream of owning a restaurant, and like Sadie, I discovered how challenging restaurant ownership really is. Also like Sadie, I was besieged by every crazy person in the neighborhood, who came in daily—although my clinically disturbed customers never pointed a shotgun at me, or threw huge rocks through my front windows. They just asked for a glass of water or obsessed about how they had to call Mother right away, or she’d be mad. But back to the story…

Sadie Walela has grown absolutely weary of working in the banking business, and wants a new life. She buys an old café in the town of Liberty, Oklahoma, not far from the Cherokee lands where she has grown up. She buys it from a lovely, older woman, Goldie Ray, who discovers that she is in poor health and wants to travel before it’s too late; but a few days after the restaurant is sold and Sadie takes over, Goldie is shot and killed.

No one can imagine why anyone would want to kill Goldie. She was beloved by the community, and she had just healed an old rift with her sister, who was coming to town to go on vacation with her. With the family issue solved, she hadn’t an enemy in the world…or did she?

Someone is not happy about Sadie taking over the café, either. On Sadie’s first day in her new premises, the town’s resident madwoman points a shotgun at her, and the next day, she throws a big rock through her newly painted front window.

Goldie’s regulars are there all the time and making their own coffee, because Goldie had given them all keys. At first, Sadie is not comfortable with this at all, and adds “change the locks” to her to do list, but it is reassuring to have protection when someone threatens to kill you. The same regulars leave more money behind than she would have charged them, so maybe she wouldn’t change those locks after all.

The day after Goldie is shot, her sister arrives ready to go on vacation. Instead, she goes to the funeral, and assures Sadie that she will back her up in the kitchen until the place is up and running, or as long as she wants her to stay. In fact, Goldie’s sister turns out to be a godsend, and soon the café is running beautifully.

The question of Goldie’s death haunts Sadie, and she can’t help searching for the reason why someone would want her dead. She finds that behind the cheerful face of the lovely old spinster who is now departed, there were secrets from a very different past. When she finds out what they are, she finds herself at the wrong end of yet another shotgun, and this time, she nearly doesn’t walk away.

There were many things about this particular mystery that made me glad I’d been seduced by my shared obsession with its protagonist. Hoklotubbe does a wonderful job of drawing the eccentricities of small-town life and the characters that inhabit it. She also brings in much of her own Cherokee heritage, sometimes in contrast to Red’s, the Creek Indian among Goldie’s regulars.

This book was entertaining as a mystery, and equally fascinating as a work of sociology. I’ll happily read another of this author’s books, even if Sadie does sell the café at the end of this one.

Two years ago, in October of 2009, my friend Drew gave me this domain name. He said, “I was going to use this for another project, but I thought it was a great name for a mystery review site, if you want to do one.” I had never considered doing a mystery review site until he brought it up.

At the time, I was reading a great vintage mystery by Ngaio Marsh, and so that was my first review. This week, I happened coincidentally to be reading another Marsh novel; I had come full circle, and I’m celebrating the second anniversary of this site with another immersion in this author’s incredible work.

In the first Marsh book I reviewed, she transports the reader to Italy in a tale that was so culturally accurate that it was almost as good as an airline ticket; but it is the clever English detective, Roderick Alleyn, who travels there to sort out the imbroglio. In Colour Scheme, the author deposits us in the wild lands of New Zealand, easy walking distance from a Maori village, at the mud bath resort ofWai-ata-tapu.

The landscape is primordial, and the ancient culture of the Maori survives in a community that is loyal to the Commonwealth that has subsumed it and the old ways as well. An English family owns the resort, and they have endeared themselves to the natives by converting their facility to a hospital, and caring for the Maoris during an epidemic in their first years of operation. Colonel Claire and his wife, their daughter Barbara, and their son Simon, operate the resort in a thoroughly unprofessional, but absolutely well-meaning manner.

At one point, Colonel Claire found himself in debt, and borrowed money from a blowhard man of business named Questing. He has never been able to pay him back, and when this story opens, Questing has made it clear that he’s going to take over the joint any day now and run it like a real business.

Business takes a turn for the better when Mrs. Claire’s brother, the cranky Dr. Ackrington, is approached by a colleague to who is treating the famed Shakespearian actor, Geoffrey Gaunt. Ackrington is asked if the mud baths will be beneficial for Gaunt’s condition. The doctor agrees, but with no reservations about the limitations of the service of the resort.

Gaunt arrives with his secretary, Dikon Bell, and his dresser, Alfred Colly. Questing, already assuming control, has redecorated the premises for their comfort. Fortunately for the Claires, Gaunt is absolutely enchanted with their lack of pretension, and with the innumerable scenes that develop as Questing makes himself odious, as he finds them perfectly theatrical.

At the same time, another guest comes to the resort, a lumbago-ridden dilettante named Septimus Falls. Around them, the signs that a war is raging in other parts of the world become more pressing. A ship is sunk in the near-by harbor. Simon Claire, who is aching to be called up for service, is busily teaching himself Morse Code, and he sees that someone is sneaking up to the face of the extinct volcano facing the resort, and sending signals to enemy. Simon and his uncle are both sure that there is a traitor in their midst, and Questing is their number one suspect.

Much as expected, someone at Wai-ata-tapu is going to expire horribly, and what was formerly an interpersonal drama for the entertainment of Geoffrey Gaunt explodes into a full-force murder investigation. The word is that the situation in the district has brought Roderick Alleyn to investigate, but where is he? You have to read to the very last line to find out.

Marsh writes novels full of fantastic venues, curious and believable personalities, and multiple sub-plots that keep readers up late and fully in whatever place she’s taken them. I wish she were still here to write some more.

This is a book full of mysteries, and yet it might be more appropriately called a tale of espionage. Whatever it was, it was so excellent that it qualified for the category of genre favorites, and was sufficiently full of mysteries to be called one.

Mystery No. 1: For over 50 pages at the beginning of the book, our protagonist doesn’t know who he is. He has been saved from a raft at sea, scarred and suffering from amnesia. He speaks perfect German, and so he assumes he is German. The nurses and a doctor at the hospital where he has been brought give him a name, Klaus Lehmann.

Upon release from the hospital, Klaus Lehman wanders throughout Germany. He assumes that he is a victim of war, and so he goes from one military installation to another, hoping he can find someone who can tell him who he is. No one can identify him. He meets an old woman, Fraulein Rademeyer, who thinks he must be her long-lost nephew, and she takes excellent care of him at her lovely old house in the town of Haspe. When another relative arrives to dispel her belief, she is disconsolate, so Klaus decides that she will be his aunt in any case.

In the years after the First World War, Germany’s economy is a disaster. Money is devalued and buys nothing. The people are starving, and Klaus takes any work he can find to support him and his aunt, after she loses her house and possessions. They struggle for years, moving from shabby apartments to worse, with no solution in sight.

Then an Austrian firebrand appears in Germany, an emotional, dramatic, demagogue named Adolf Hitler. He is the only person who has come forth with solutions to the country’s painful difficulties. Even though Klaus doesn’t particularly like him, he is drawn to the power and hope that he promises, and goes to work for Hitler’s party for several years, rising in the ranks because he is so trustworthy.

On the night that the Reichstag burns, Klaus has a phenomenal epiphany. He isn’t Klaus Lehman at all. He’s Henrik Brandt, a Dutch citizen. As the Reichstag goes down in fames, he realizes that he isn’t Brandt at all; it was just an identity he had assumed for the purpose of espionage. And then it became perfectly clear: he was really Tommy Hambledon, an English spy.

By now, Tommy Hambledon is highly placed in the German high command, becoming the Chief of Police in Berlin. Hitler infuriates Goebbels by saying that Lehman-Hambledon is the only member of the high command that everyone trusts. This begins a covert war between our hereo and Goebbels, as one tries to discredit the other throughout the book.

Other mysteries that compel us: the various crimes that take place when our hero is chief of police and responsible for solutions, and the identity of the renegade underground organization, The German Freedom League, which is carrying on its own secret war against the Nazis. Close to home there is another question: who, exactly, is his admirable servant, Franz?

Tommy realizes that he could not be better placed for his real calling, and uses his office to provide information to the English Home Office. His people in England were convinced that he was dead, but by sheer accident he has wandered into the most helpful of all positions. In order to know what he does with his incredible luck must be left to the reader to find out.

This book offers deep insight into the reality of life in Germany between the wars, the nature of Hitler’s party and associates, and the difficulty of life as a spy. Besides its historical and political value, it is a story of a remarkable character, full of charm and wit. Maybe it’s not entirely a mystery, but I wholeheartedly recommend it anyway.