In this encomium to the British mystery writers the author adores, main characters Ginevra Bishop and Sidney Braithwaite are students at Oxford University in 1951. Thrown together when a beloved librarian suffers a “heart attack” at their feet, the two are recruited by MI5 to investigate a Russian spy ring. Gin comes from upper class England; Sydney is a coal miner’s son with physical and emotional wounds from the war. The two, supposedly unfit for one another based on their class differences and contrived bickering, start making googly eyes at one another on page four and continue to do so every five pages or so throughout the book. The precise timing of clues popping up, blatant red herrings, coincidental paths crossing, and predictable dialogue are all assembled by an author who has read too many mysteries and romances but has not yet commanded the skills needed to write one.
The miner and his posh ‘amour’ was surely an improbable pairing that should have been left in the pages of DHLawrence.
The subtleties of the English class system in the 50s are really best left to those who were there.
Good detective fiction is extremely hard to write. The writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction are best left for those who come later to enjoy while a modern, American writer would perhaps be more successful in a setting they they have experienced.