Susan Green

After a brief visit with two of the lesser-known (lesser-known today, I mean; they were famous in their time) female authors of the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction, I am back to familiar territory with the so-called Queens of Crime: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.

I started with the first book in Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series, A Man Lay Dead. I really, really wanted to like it, mainly because Marsh was a New Zealander and therefore almost one of us. But it was another English house-party murder, and I am basically over the upper classes.  Sigh.

As usual, the setting is a country estate with a grand house – this one is called Frantock Hall – at its heart. Its owner, Sir Hubert Handesley, is famous for hosting extravagant weekend parties and his collection of unusual, rare and stabby antique weapons. His guests are a thoroughly nice young journalist, Nigel Bathgate; Nigel’s philandering cousin Charles Rankin; Sir Hubert’s niece Angela; unhappily married couple Arthur and Marjorie Wilde; Rosamund Grant, who is in a secret relationship with the caddish Charles; and a Russian doctor, Dr Tokareff. Servants abound, but in this house there is, unusually, a Russian butler, Vassily.

The weekend begins with cocktails and dinner, after which Sir Hubert invites his guests to play the ‘Murder Game’ (a popular parlour game in the 1930s) in which a secretly assigned murderer ‘kills’ a fellow guest, who then have to deduce his or her identity.  Naturally, someone – the womanising Charles –  is really murdered. There are seven suspects, but every single one has an alibi, and Detective Chief-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of the Metropolitan Police is called in to solve the puzzle.

Roderick Alleyn is one of the ‘gentleman detectives’ who were so popular between the wars, only in this case, he is a professional policeman and not an amateur like Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion. With his aristocratic family and background (educated at Eton, just like Boris Johnson!), he’s not your usual copper but at times he behaves a bit like an upper-class twit. It seems as if Marsh didn’t know quite what she wanted him to be in this first book. Marsh herself spoke critically of A Man Lay Dead, recognising that it had some serious flaws. The sub-plot featuring Bolsheviks, a secret Russian brotherhood and a priceless ritual dagger is simply silly and as for the ‘ingenious’ murder method…really?

Marsh went on to write 32 Roderick Alleyn novels, so I plan to read one of the later ones to see how he turns out.

Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) was born in New Zealand, worked there as an actress and in 1928 moved to London to pursue her career. For the rest of her life she divided her time between the UK and her homeland. She wrote A Man Lay Dead after reading one of Dorothy Sayers’ novels, and thinking that she could do that, too. 

Christianna Brand (1907-1988) published steadily for most of her writing life, from her debut novel Death in High Heels in 1941 to her last short stories for detective magazines like Ellery Queen’s in the early 1980’s. Her output spanned  detective fiction – including 7 in the Inspector Cockrill series – mysteries, romances and children’s books. She was a prolific short story writer for magazines, anthologies and collections; she published under her own and five different pen names. Nothing if not versatile! But she seems to be mostly forgotten today, except for her Nurse Matilda books, which served as the source material for Emma Thompson’s Nanny McPhee.

Heads You Lose (1941) was her first Inspector Cockrill book. It’s classic British crime. English house party, country estate, a cast of family, friends and servants, heavy snow and two particularly gruesome murders. As you might expect from the punning title, they are decapitations.

Stephen Pendock is the handsome, middle-aged squire of Pigeonsford, and an attentive, much-liked host. His house guests are an old friend, Lady Hart, with her twin granddaughters Francesca and Venetia as well as Henry Gold (Venetia’s husband) and another young man, now in the army, called James Nicholl. He’s been a frequent visitor to the neighbourhood since his youth. A village neighbour, Grace Morland, moons around the house yearning after Pendock, and her niece, actress Pippi Le May, pops up from London and visits the big house as well. I counted at least nine servants. Trotty, Miss Morland’s maid, and Bunsen, Pendock’s butler, are the most prominent.

Brand clearly enjoyed the puzzle aspect of the murder story. On the face of it, both  murders seem impossible. Several perpetrators are suggested; a possible scenario is proposed, investigated and discarded before the murderer is found. On this first outing, Inspector Cockrill seems undeveloped as a character, and it is the upper-class and privileged of Pigeonford who are most fully drawn.

Which could be a bit of a hitch for current day readers. The twins, Francesca and Venetia, are a couple of very spoiled young ladies whose Nanny should have put in the naughty corner more often. I think they are meant to be charming. But, for example, their insistence that their pampered dog be allowed into the inquest seems simply rude and their tangled emotions are sheer self-indulgence. I kept thinking, for God’s sake, people have been killed here. And there’s a war on!

In comparison to the Patricia Wentworth novels, these two books were more individual and better written – but less satisfactory. That’s because tone is wildly uneven; I kept being jerked out of the narrative by my strong reactions to Brand’s treatment of several of the characters. They are the outsiders, of course. The spinster Miss Morland is unmercifully pilloried for her failure to attract the man she loves; Pippi le May’s actressy glamour is cheap and not quite clean; we’re never allowed to forget that Henry Gold, Venetia’s husband, is a Jew and ‘not one of us’; the servants are inferiors to be patronised or laughed at.  I suppose if you are an insider, it’s OK. If not – it’s cruel.

I found the same issue – cruelty –  with Cat and Mouse.
It is a claustrophobic psychological thriller set in rural Wales. Journalist Tinka Jones arrives to visit one of her magazine’s advice-column correspondents – known only as ‘Amista’ –  a young Welsh girl. Letter after letter, like a serial story, Amista has told of her life on an isolated hilltop with her guardian, Carlyon, and his two servants. She details her daily life, the beautiful Welsh hills and valleys, her growing love for Carlyon, their sudden romance, his proposal of marriage, her great happiness… When the letters stop, Tinka is curious.

She finds a lonely and gloomy house, a Heathcliff-like owner, two servants and the news that no-one has ever heard of Amista. But if she doesn’t exist, how did she know so much about the house, the staff and Mr Carlyon? Why is the policeman, Mr Chucky (yes, really) keeping watch? When she is forced to stay the night, Tinka realises that there is another inhabitant. It is Mrs Carlyon. Is she Amista?  But the young woman has been in a car accident and is now terribly scarred, disabled, unable to speak. A dramatic scenario for a tense, creepy thriller. but…

…it was just so disturbing to read Brand’s descriptions of disfigurement. She uses the language of disgust; ‘monstrous ruin’, ‘muffled animal bleatings’, ‘an unrecognisable mask of a woman’, ‘incoherent gobblings and gruntings’, ‘a poor, shuffling, bowed creature’ with ‘pig-like eyes’. Tinka tries to act towards Mrs Carlyon with compassion but because the revulsion is so visceral, it’s tough reading. With other characters, too, there’s the same disdain for the lonely spinster, the vulgar and cheerful nurse, the uneducated Welsh servant.

I read crime novels to relax (yes, I know; it’s not quite right, is it?) a more conventional writer might be a better bet. I’m on to Ngaio Marsh next.

What you see when you see a blank page is very much what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting into gear of something not ready to happen – an echo of what you feel when you walk past sights the eyes are blind to: bus queues, whitewashed shopfronts, adverts pasted to lamp posts, or a four-storey block on Aldersgate Street in the London borough of Finsbury; where the premises gracing the pavement include a Chinese restaurant with ever-lowered shutters and a faded menu taped to its window; a down-at-heel newsagent’s where pallets of off-brand cola cans block the aisles; and, between the two, a weathered black door with a dusty milk bottle welded to its step, and an air of neglect suggesting that it never opens, never closes.

Mick Herron’s readers know immediately where they are; outside Slough House, home to Jackson Lamb and his crew of MI5’s duds and failures. They are known as the ‘slow horses’, and widely regarded in the secret service as a pack of bumbling, incompetent clowns. But they are Lamb’s clowns. Anyone who messes with them, messes with him, too. And for an overweight, out-of-condition, flatulent, nicotine-dependent, down-at-heel functioning alcoholic, he does a good job of dealing out retribution.

All the books are based on this premise, but so far, it hasn’t got stale.
In this instalment, the loathsome former politician Peter Judd – who must be modelled on Boris Johnson – and First Desk ice-queen Diana Taverner are duelling yet again. The action unspools from one small detail, a missing book in River Cartwright’s grandfather’s library. And that’s all I’m saying. No spoilers.

My older brother, who loaned me this one, tells me he rates Herron A+ – up there with John le Carre – because the writing, the characterisation, the dialogue, the setting, the back-stories, the plots all dovetail together seamlessly. No hitches or hiccups in the reading experience. Perfect examples of their kind. And with a kind of cliff-hanger at the end, there’s the extra pleasure in knowing that there are more Slow Horses to come.

I’m heading into 2026 with my usual summer fare – crime novels. There’s something about a hot day and a murder…they just go together. A bit like a G&T.

I thought I’d do a little review of lesser known – today, at any rate – British female crime writers of the ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction. The ‘Queens of Crime’ are usually given as Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham. But there were other prolific and popular writers and one of them, Patricia Wentworth, had her own elderly spinster detective. Maud Silver is a creation to rival Miss Marple, and I’ve just read four of them.

The Grey Mask was the first Miss Silver book and a riot of pulp fiction crime cliches – but perhaps they were new at the time. The book certainly whipped along, with a long-suffering heroine (didn’t she know that no one likes a martyr?), a masked criminal mastermind, a brooding hero – jilted by the heroine – just returned from several years exploring jungles, deserts and assorted uncivilised places and a supporting cast of dodgy servants. There was an idiotic but gorgeous heiress, a Bertie Wooster-ish best friend and a series of coincidences, lucky escapes and (spoiler) a thrilling last-minute rescue. I guessed the identity of Grey Mask early on, but it didn’t spoil the fun of following the twists and turns. Then there was the cool and professional way Miss Silver unravelled the whole plot.

Maud Silver is an elderly maiden lady, with a deceptively mild manner. A good listener, kindly, sympathetic, deeply principled and religious, a lover of Tennyson and Victoriana – but she differs from Miss Marple in that she is no amateur. Miss Silver is a businesswoman who runs her own detective agency. It operates by word-of-mouth and among the aristocracy and genteel middle class, she’s legendary for getting people out of scrapes and retrieving stolen letters and jewellery.

I enjoyed all of the  Miss Silvers I read – Grey Mask (1928), Spotlight (1947), The Ivory Dagger (1950) and The Gazebo (1955) – for their intricate plots, claustrophobic atmosphere, mild romances and perhaps above all their vintage English-ness. ‘Cosies’, they’d be called today – but in the last of these, Wentworth’s depiction of a selfish, manipulative mother and put-upon daughter was almost painful. I suppose it almost goes without saying that the reader will encounter in passing the racism, xenophobia, snobbishness, narrow-mindedness, class prejudice and sexism of the era. Wentworth and Miss Silver enjoyed a long career; the last in the series was written in 1961.

Patricia Wentworth was the pen name of Dora Amy Elles (1878-1961). She was the daughter of an Indian army general, Sir Edmond Elles, and Lady Elles. She grew up in India and was then educated in England. Her first husband was also an Indian army officer; when he died suddenly in 1906, she returned to England with her daughter and two step-sons. She remarried (another military man) in 1920, and dictated all her novels to her second husband.

She had instant success as a writer, though not in the crime genre, with her first novel A Marriage Under the Terror, set during the French Revolution. She wrote 32 Miss Silver novels, and over 40 other books.

I do love Kate Constable’s annual Reading Roundup – thank you, Kate! Each year I plan to be more committed to record keeping, and each year I fail. My husband has set me up with a Goodreads account so I can keep a tally, but I have read six books so far this year and haven’t opened it yet. Doesn’t augur well, does it? However I would like to track my reading through the year. I have a few hunches; comfort reading probably peaks in winter, and my appetite for crime may increase with hot weather. We shall see.

By going back over my book group and library histories, plus my posts, I have pieced together a rough Roundup. The stats are:

57 books completed.

Of the books I actually read,
32  were fiction and
25 were non-fiction.
I generally didn’t count gardening, cookery and art books if I only looked at the pictures

15 were by Australian authors
27 were by UK authors
and there were a smattering of European and Japanese authors.

I only read 2 children’s books (!!!!) this year, which I find hard to believe…

20 books were from my own library,
of which 14 were books I bought this year.

I read 6 Kindle books, usually while I was travelling, but sometimes because I couldn’t borrow the book from the library or buy it cheaply.

I finished 24 library books this year, but I borrowed a lot more. For instance, I borrowed 33 novels that I didn’t finish. A few pages was enough with some of them. Which is why libraries are so wonderful!

The gender split was 38 female and 19 male authors.

The 2025 novels that have stayed with me are Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, The Bees by Laline Paull and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. And for non-fiction, Place of Tides by James Rebanks, Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee and Somebody Is Walking On Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez.

Typing one-fingered is VERY slow. My punishment for over-enthusiastic close-pruning of a wayward geranium – I pruned my fingertip.
So super-short posts until it heals.

I have read and enjoyed Bookish and Call for the Dead. And as Bugs Bunny would say, “That’s all, folks!”

...Blake left the great wen of London for the freedom of the sea.
It was as though he had been given a secret key. All the things you wish had never happened? AI and satellites playing pinball among the stars? All the ways we went wrong? Blake offered a remedy. He needed no opium, no drink or drugs or kites to attain such a suspension of doubt; he was there already, physically intoxicated by the incalculable hardship and glorious possibilities of life here on earth. He saw and felt this in his own body, incarnate in his flesh; in the planet spinning round the sun, the sea being tugged by the moon. He was an astro-priest launched into the unknown, ready to leave the shell of himself in the alien dust as the sun turned black and his spirit hurtled on.

Risingtidefallingstar (yes, all one word) from 2017 was my introduction to this writer and I was excited to see William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. Hoare is one of those people who write wonderful – to me, anyway – often strange, slightly bewildering combinations of genres. Here he traces the legacy of artist, poet, visionary and mystic William Blake through artists, film makers, writers, eccentrics, poets, war heroes, outsiders, outlaws. He goes back to Milton, Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon, and forward to Oscar Wilde, T.E.Lawrence and Derek Jarman in an unclassifiable tapestry of English history, biography, travelogue, memoir, nature writing, religion, spirituality and more.

Written in a passionate, lush, headlong style, the narrative goes in multiple directions and makes unexpected connections (how about William Blake, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash?). It’s a wild ride. And so dense and intricate that I’m going to have to borrow it from the library again. And perhaps, again after that.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

My friends are still all worked up about Eva Peron, and I try to explain that the mistreatment and moving around of her body is unusual but by no means anomalous in this country (Argentina) and particularly in this cemetery (Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires). There is a real obsession with opening graves, removing bodies, relocating them, kidnapping or hiding them, which, I think, is a national characteristic. My friends are horrified when I say that, but there’s really no point in denying it.

I like cemeteries. No, I love cemeteries. There have been times in my life I’ve been obsessed with cemeteries. I usually try to find an excuse to put a cemetery scene in my books – in How Bright Are All Things Here and Verity Sparks and the Scarlet Hand, they’re pivotal – and in the mid-1980s I wrote a prize-winning short story, The Lost Children inspired not just by the famous Lost Children memorial in Daylesford cemetery but by all the little, half-forgotten graveyards I’ve explored. You can read intertwined family histories, find mining accidents, drownings, fires and other tragedies, be reminded of the high child mortality of the 19th century, and discover some extraordinary names – Saddington Plush, one of the main characters in the Verity Sparks series, I lifted from a stone in the Angaston cemetery in the Barossa. I haven’t yet found a use for Sideney (was it meant to be Sidonie?) Dumayne, but I’ve saved it up for later.

So. These are my credentials. It stands to reason that Someone Is Walking On Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys is right up my alley. Enriquez is an Argentinian journalist, novelist and short-story writer. She’s followed her passion for music and cemeteries around the world, following her favourite bands and/or visiting legendary graveyards in Italy, Spain, France, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Germany, the USA, Cuba, the UK and even Rottnest Island, WA. It’s both amazing and fabulous, in the true sense of the words, full of ghost stories and legends and extraordinary real-life historical details. Like the totally bonkers story of what happened to Eva Peron’s corpse. I can’t do justice to it; you’ll have to read it yourself.

I loved the way she weaves these complex narratives out of monumental masonry, inscriptions and statues. The book is a hybrid of journalism, travel writing, history, memoir: she’s a generous writer, with an eye for the macabre and the poignant, alert to politics and injustice and sheer absurdity. The story of the drowned graveyard! I’ll give you a precis; when the cemetery of the small town of Villa Epecuen in Buenos Aires province was flooded, the local authorities didn’t like the look of tall monuments and the tops of mausoleums sticking up above the water. So they had workers in boats go around and smash them up. Of course, the water receded. And left behind were all these ravaged, truncated monuments, coated in salt from the floodwater.

Enriquez and her Australian husband have recently re-located to Tasmania, and I expect she will be able to find a story or two on her travels around the island.

Grave in the Chinese Section of the Castlemaine Cemetery. Photo taken circa 1967

That night, Anna told me many threads of stories. Some were about this little farmstead in Vega where she lived now, others were about strange-sounding islands across the sea. Sometimes the whole tale tumbled out of her, sometimes it would unspool slowly. Some of her stories were about ducks, some were about island life, and others were about trading. Some were about the early nineteenth century, others about the previous week, as if time passing changed nothing. It was a bewildering tangle, but Anna knew where each one belonged, like a weaver threading a loom. Unlike me, she could already see the beautifully crafted cloth. She wanted me to understand that her people were woven into the fabric of this place. She was the descendant of a family of ‘eiderdown kings’, folk who gathered and sold a rare and precious product – the feathers of the eider duck. From the north-western shores of Europe, her people had brought eiderdown to the world.

I’d read Rebank’s previous books – A Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral – about his experience of farming in the Lake District of the UK, and so I knew of his passionate engagement with restoring balance to British agriculture. I can understand how his years of struggle and activism had left him feeling tired and despairing; ‘I could no longer see the point in trying to mend our fields when everything around us was so broken. I once had endless reserves of hope and self-belief, but they were beginning to run out.’
He had encountered elderly ‘duck woman’ Anna and her work seven years earlier; somehow he knew that he needed to go back to see her. Place of Tides is the record of the season spent with Anna and her friend and apprentice, Ingrid, on a remote island off the coast of Norway. Since the Viking era, islanders have gathered and traded the magically light and warm down of wild eider ducks. From when they start in the bitter cold, to when the down is finally gathered  in the long flowering days of summer, the trio work to ensure the survival of this ancient tradition.

I enjoyed everything about this story; the rhythms of the work and weather and season, the evolving relationships between the two duck-women and Rebanks, the harsh island landscape of rocks, sea and sky, the gentle lessons in connection that helped heal the burnt-out Rebanks – and of course, the ducks.