Miss Silver solves again a new mystery.

In Vihtori's library.

Found the book at Vihtorin Kirjasto's BC bookshelf.

Pretty traditional whodunnit, full of eccentric characters, a murder and the sharp mind of Miss Silver.

From tonight's meetup at Main Library Metso. Thanks! I started reading this on the bus on my way home. While, surprisingly, not everything about the first chapters is smooth (as in bestsellerishly edited), there's still something that keeps me reading. I don't know the first thing about Miss Silver mysteries—Maud Silver herself hasn't made an appearance yet—so am having some trouble adjusting myself to the story.

First off, the biggest obstacle for me was to identify the temporal setting of the novel. I had no previous knowledge of Patricia Wentworth and couldn't tell whether this was maybe some modern-day writer excelling in a vintage style... Reading on the bus, I'd skipped the colophon entirely. Initially, I thought the book was set in a 1920s London (The House of Eliott came to mind), to the extent where, after reading the words the two wars, I hacked my brain for a while to figure out the "other" war. Oops!

[21/08/2012] I kept on reading well into the night. There are certain shortcomings in the narration, and the way the story hovers over an unfixed place in time is just short of maddening. This is the late 1940s, but still not quite... The names of the characters do not ring the Forties: I would associate Albert, Florence, Jane, Marian, Mildred (and Daphne mentioned in the opening chapter) with the 1920s rather than the 1940s. (True, Florence and Mildred were popular names for newborns at around 1900 and 1910, at the time the characters by these names had presumably been born... still, I would've expected names such as Dorothy, George, Helen, James, Margaret, Robert, Ruth.) Al Miller was singing 'Eileen alannah'—the song was recorded in 1913 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUlg6xues78). The styles of clothing, described in some detail, have lost almost all meaning for a modern-day reader: there's nothing there for me to distinguish between the 1920s and the 1940s, for example. Besides, more or less everything in the setting and people's apparel is worn-out, but apart from that it seems the characters suffer from a strange reticence related to the war-time events in the very recent past. Thus far, it has only been Miss Silver who has mentioned her actions during the war; yet the entire cast had been of age (or almost) in the mid-40s. Of course, there is no way the author could have foreseen, or attempted at, a timeless popularity for her books: whatever detail there is, must've been sufficient for readers in the 1950s. Reticence re:war might've been normal at the time, both in literature and in real life—not a matter of concern, let alone something that adds to the blurriness of the temporal frame.

However, I have enjoyed the cast's adventures at the Catherine Wheel partly because of the very clichéd choices: the old inn, the secret passages, the stereotypical malignant characters... Everything coming on a bit too strong to be fully elegant, but then that's specifically the book's peculiar charm. I also love some of the odd detail: I had to google 'Alexandra fringe' and 'Continental knitting'. (I never knew Continental-style knitting, being associated with Germany, fell out of favour in English-speaking countries during World War II: this is one of the few definitive references to the proximity of WWII for sure. Miss Silver, being a generation or two older, still knits after the Continental fashion.)

Also, what sets this one apart from e.g. Agatha Christie's work are the intertextual references. I may be reading too much into them, but they're definitely there. There's a lot from the Bible (I love the most obvious one, John Higgins the carpenter/preacher), but there's also the Three Sisters and many more. Now I don't know quite how to feel about them in a whodunit: particularly when I'm barely halfway through the book and don't know whether or not their function is purely ornamental.

[Later 21/08/2012] I finished reading this. Quite a satisfactory ending, again not quite subtle enough to be elegant in the way Christie is, but still an alright read. Will definitely read more Miss Silver mysteries, should they come my way!

Wikipedia: Patricia Wentworth

To tonight's meetup at Main Library Metso.

Goes to my TBR pile.