Rating: 5/5
Review:
Very enjoyable
I enjoyed Watch The Wall, Miss Seeton enormously. These books are
always fun, but I found this one especially good.
The plot...oh, who
cares, really? I mean, who reads Miss Seeton for the plot? They’re
always slightly bonkers and this is no exception, involving metal
theft, murder (quite a grisly one, too, by Miss Seeton standards),
misunderstanding and, of course, smuggling. Hamilton Crane enjoys
herself enormously with the Kipling song and other literary
references, even introducing a couple of minor characters with names
from classic novels for us to spot. Miss Seeton is her usual
benevolent self, Plummergen’s characters are as wonderful as ever
and the MissEss’s inspired artworks solve the mystery as always.
It’s terrific fun,
but the real pleasure here is the writing, which is witty,
deceptively insightful into character and extremely skilful. I offer
a couple of very brief examples which I enjoyed:
“In the post
office, the regular gossips were gathered to discuss the latest
doings, and to dissect the characters of the absent in a spirit of
genial malevolence.” And this, after a character has used a number
of (implied, of course) obscure and original swear words in the
course of being arrested: “The voice of [spoiler redacted] was
raised in more vocabulary-enhancing protest as he was led away...”
Profound literature
or gritty thriller it ain’t, but the whole thing was a real
pleasure to read. I don’t want to make direct comparisons, but
there are hints of the prose style of people like P.G. Wodehouse,
Margery Allingham, Colin Watson and others, while keeping a
distinctive voice of its own. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll
like this. Warmly recommended.
(My thanks to
Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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