The Five Red Herrings

 

By Dorothy L. Sayers

Lord Peter is vacationing in Scotland and naturally someone gets murdered. The area where he is staying is very scenic and a popular spot for landscape artists, several of whom have studios there. 

One of the artists, Campbell, is an unpleasant fellow who seems to get into arguments with pretty everyone who crosses his path. On the days before his death, Campbell gets into an argument with his neighbor, Ferguson, whose garden wall Campbell damaged with his vehicle. He also tangles with Farran, whose wife Campbell has a crush on. There is also Strachan who banned Campbell from the golf club and Gowan and Graham who have both had beefs with Campbell. And finally there is Waters, a particular friend of Lord Peter's and who got into a drunken argument with Campbell the night before Campbell's body was found with its head bashed in. All of these men are artists and all are skilled enough to have faked a painting in Campbell's style.

Because the killer went to a lot of work to make it look like Campbell died when he fell while out doing a landscape painting. This required the murderer to produce a fresh painting in Campbell's distinctive style. At first the authorities feel certain Campbell died by falling but Lord Peter shows up at the murder scene and quickly realizes that something vital is missing from the scene. Spoiler: turns out to be a tube of white paint. The painting would not be possible without this white paint so someone took the tube of paint and that someone must be involved in some way in Campbell's death. 

Anyway, the police accept Lord Peter's conclusions and together they investigate the six artists in the area who have had confrontations with Campbell and who have the skill to copy his painting style and who are unaccounted for at the time of the murder.  

This was an OK story. A lot of the plot consists of cops investigating train time tables. Frankly I just skipped most of that. I don't understand train time tables. The best part of the story is discovering what the five innocent artists were up to that fatal night. So I did enjoy that part of it. But tracking their movements via trains, cars and bicycles wasn't quite so much fun.

See also a review by Taking the Short View.

Gryphon in Glory

 

By Andre Norton

A Witch World story

A continuation of the story told in The Crystal Gryphon  in which Joisan and Kerovan once again go their separate ways only to come back together later on in the story.

Kerovan is still feeling inferior and decides to set Joisan free so she can find love with a "normal" person. But Joisan is stubbornly refusing to accept his rejection of her and set off after him when he leaves on a military mission, determined to join him despite his refusal. Kerovan is traveling to the Waste, in search of allies in the war against the invaders from overseas. He is successful in his quest, finding a race of shapeshiftering warriors who are alarmed to discover that the enemy is seeking forbidden knowledge in the Waste.

Meanwhile Joisan has set out to follow Kerovan and she has fallen in with two strangers, Elys and Jervon. Elys and Jervon first appeared in the novella, Dragon Scale Silver. While traveling in the Waste, Joisan gets kidnapped by the Thas, monstrous underground rat-men She frees herself by using the power of the crystal gryphon, which was given to her by Kerovan at the start of the first book. 

But when she manages to find her way to the surface, she comes out nowhere near where she last saw Elys and Jervon. She finds an abandoned castle in which she can shelter and there are even some fruits to eat in the old orchard. She climbs the castle tower and sees a road off in the distance and shortly discovers Kerovan and Elys and Jervon traveling on the road. Kerovan is still struggling to find self-acceptance and continues to turn away from Joisan. He has been having strange dreams and they are both experiencing strange visions. He has given up on his original quest and is now concentrating on sorting himself out and Joisan is just hoping that eventually he will realize he is the only man for her.

This was an OK story. Pretty much follows the same pattern of one or two young people on a quest of discovery and self-discovery, always involving evil magic and good magic and often featuring magical animals and people who have magical abilities but are not trained to use them. 

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The Return of Jeeves

 

By P. G. Wodehouse

In post-WW II Britain, the landed gentry are finding the new socialism difficult. High taxes are making huge estates too expensive to keep up. One such member of the landed gentry is Bill Towcester (pronounced "toaster"), the ninth Earl of Towcester. All that is left of his estate is Towcester Abbey, a huge old building that is falling to bits.

Bill is so broke he has turned to being a bookie to make ends meet. Disguised with an eyepatch and a fake mustache, Bill travels to the various horse races and accepts gamblers' bets on the outcomes. So far it has worked very well and Bill was able to start spending a little money on the Abbey. 

But then one of the gamblers wins big and Bill doesn't have the cash on him to pay the man. So he runs away, pursued by the man, Captain Biggar. Biggar is a man of the world and a big game hunter who has returned home to Britain for the first time in years.

Bill has a hot prospect who is showing interest in buying his house, Rosalinda Spottsworth, a fabulously wealthy widow with a strongly romantic side. Introduced to Bill by his sister, Monica, Rosalinda is hoping the house is haunted and Bill is hoping she doesn't notice how rundown the place is. Rosalinda, Monica and her husband Rory are all staying at the house.

Too bad for Bill, but Biggar has traced Bill's car to Towcester Abbey and when Rosalinda finds out he is in the house, she asks Monica to invite him to stay because he is a very old friend of hers. Monica agrees, without telling Bill. When Bill finds out that Biggar is actually staying in his house, he can only hope that his bookie disguise will keep Biggar from recognizing him. But the cat is let out of the bag when Monica's dimwit spouse Rory unearths the disguise from a chest in full view of Biggar. 

Meanwhile, Jeeves. Jeeves has been working as Bill's butler while Bertie Wooster is in a reeducation camp for the idle rich. It was Jeeves' idea that Bill become a bookie. Jeeves was actually working as Bill's sidekick in the bookie business, also wearing a disguise similar to Bill's. And now it is Jeeves who must save Bill from Captain Biggar's righteous wrath and at the same time help Bill talk Rosalinda into buying Towcester Abbey and also keep Bill's fiancée Jill from finding about the bookie business as she is anti-gambling. 

This is a fun read, full of jokes and nonsense like this choice example: "'Good heavens,' said Monica, 'bells at Towcester Abbey don't ring. I don't suppose they've worked since Edward the Seventh's days. If Uncle George wished to summon the domestic staff, he just shoved his head back and howled like a prairie wolf.'" 

This book was published in 1953 and by then Wodehouse was in his seventies. But it is just as silly and enjoyable as his earlier works. Wodehouse was a prolific author and probably best known for his short stories and for his most famous creation, Jeeves. 

Bath Tangle

 

By Georgette Heyer

Nobody expected the Earl would die in his early fifties. He left behind his daughter Serena and his wife Fanny. Fanny was the Earl's second wife and is a couple years younger than her stepdaughter Serena. The Earl was a very wealthy man and he and Serena moved among the upper classes of Regency Britain secure in their place in the world. Although Serena is not the Earl's heir, she knows she will inherit a large fortune, including the  estates of Hernesley and Ibshaw. The Earl's main residence, Milverly Park, will pass into the hands of his heir, Hartley Carlow, who is now the Sixth Earl of Spenborough and Serena's cousin.

When Serena was younger, she was engaged to Ivo Rotherham, a friend of the Fifth Earl and a near neighbor, a man Serena knew all her life. Like Serena and the Earl, Ivo is also a man of wealth and property. Ivo has a reputation as an unpleasant and haughty person. Serena, also a rather haughty woman, clashed frequently with Ivo and broke off their engagement. So when her father's will was read and she heard that her father had appointed Ivo as her trustee, in control of all her money and of whose approval she would have to get if she ever wanted to marry in the future, she just about exploded. 

Clearly it is her dead father's attempt to bring Serena and Ivo back together as he was very disappointed when she broke it off. 

Serena and Fannie move into the Dower House when Hartley and his family move into Milverley Park. But living so close to her old home is hard on Serena, especially as she observes all the changes the new owners are doing to what was her home for all her life. So she and Fanny move to Bath for a change of location and for a chance to socialize a bit more than they were able to do living in the Dower House.

Not long after moving there, Serena chances to meet an old boy friend of hers, Hector Kirkby. They rekindle their romance and become engaged. But it doesn't take Serena long to understand that Hector is not the man for her. Hector also may be realizing that he is not the man for Serena. He is actually rather fearful of Serena's bad temper: "Forbid her! I?" he exclaimed. "She would most hotly resent it! Indeed, Lady Spenborough, I dare not!" 

Meanwhile Ivo has announced that he is engaged to silly young girl of seventeen. So the two people who are clearly meant to be together find themselves engaged to marry the wrong people. It is a tangle, indeed.

Serena is not serene. She is a woman of strong opinions and used to getting her own way and accustomed to ruling the roost. Raised as the only child of an important and wealthy man, she is more than a little haughty and arrogant, as only those of her class can be. She is one of Heyer's less appealing heroines. And Ivo is one of Heyer's less visible heroes. He only makes a few appearances in the story and vanishes from the main part until he shows up towards the end. We don't see his and Serena's courtship at all, really, only in Serena's determination that Ivo not be jilted again do we realize how much she loves him. His love for her is not apparent at all until the very end of the story. Kind of a strange romance and not one of Heyer's better efforts, I think.

Review by Deb Barnum on AustenProse.

Retief of the CDT

 

By Keith Laumer

A collection of five Retief stories:

• Ballots and Bandits
• Mechanical Advantage
• Pime Doesn't Cray
• Internal Affairs
• The Piecemakers

These are five of the best Retief stories, featuring engaging aliens and funny plots.

In Ballots and Bandits, Retief gets involved in local politics on the planet Oberon. The denizens of Oberon are a variety of sizes of squirrel-like creatures, ranging from as tiny as a mouse to larger than human beings. The largest Oberons are the Tsuggs and they have political ambitions which they are attempting to implement by force. Retief visits the Tsugg chieftain and manages to become their representative to the Terran embassy.

Mechanical Advantage finds Retief and Magnan on Verdigris, a planet of ancient abandoned cities. Apparently the people that built the cities have vanished long ago. Not surprisingly, the Groaci are there too and despite the Terran prior claim are busy looting the ruins of their valuable antiquities. Retief and Magnan stumble across an underground garage full of large, dangerous, intelligent machines. The machines awaken and challenge the two Terrans but in the process Retief wins their support and turns them loose on the Groaci.

Pime Doesn't Cray features one of Laumer's weirdest aliens. Described as looking like a pile of spaghetti, they all speak in Spoonerisms: pime doesn't cray instead of crime doesn't pay. It makes for a bit of tricky reading but I found if you don't try to translate it to normal, the meaning still comes through just fine.

Anyway, the Terrans are building a magnificent theater as a gift to the locals of Squale. But the day before the theater is to be unveiled, it vanishes.  Of course, the Groaci are behind the theft but with the help of his spaghetti-like chauffeur Chauncey, Retief will make all straight.

On the planet of Quahog, the Terran delegation in Internal Affairs wants to make contact with the local ruler, His Supremacy. But the terrible weather and violent winds and aggressive wildlife has the Terran diplomats holed up in a cave and subsisting on snacks and champagne. 

But when Retief and Magnan arrive, they discover the "aggressive" wildlife are the emissaries of His Supremacy and they must communicate by telepathic touch. While the other diplomats cower in the cave, Retief and Magnan head off to the His Supremacy's castle which turns out to be just a low mound of hills as the climate is too extreme for any buildings to last for any amount of time. But shortly after they arrive, His Supremacy becomes violently ill. Fortunately, even medical care is not beyond the capabilities of the ever-ready Retief.

The Piecemakers starts off with the Groaci in a standoff against the Slox, both of them claiming the planet Yudore as their own. Retief and Magnan are there to broker a peace between the two groups but end up crash landing on Yudore. There they find out the locals are all of one mind and what that mind wants is company. Anyone who lands on Yudore finds their spacecraft immediately disabled in order to keep them from ever leaving.

I first read these stories decades ago. I enjoyed them as much this time as the first time I read the stories. My favorites are Ballots and Bandits, Pime Doesn't Cray and Internal Affair. The other two stories were not quite as appealing but still enjoyable.