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BRUSH WITH DEATH, A by Sheila Pim Rue Morgue Press, June 2002 156 pages $14.00 ISBN: 0912530496

Imagine that your brother -- a famous but impecunious artist -- with whom you've exchanged Christmas cards (his messages composed by his wife) for ten years suddenly writes and asks if you will put him up for a time. His doctor believes that he is being poisoned by successive small doses of arsenic and that a change of environment will do him good. Hester Fennelly, living comfortably in Dublin with her husband Paul and her grown daughter Barbara, must face this dilemma. She suspects that acceding to brother Fergus Gandon's wishes will be a recipe for trouble. And it is. Fergus first makes a pest of himself, forcing the household to bend to his wishes. He finishes the Irish Times crossword first, one of Paul's major diversions, and he so insults the very competent parlormaid that she gives notice.

Worst of all, the arsenic attacks have not ended, despite Paul's chance of residence. There is a serious episode at the Fennelly home. Both Fergus and his wife resist calling the police, but Paul insists. The police from the country and Dublin work as a team to uncover the source of the arsenic. As Pim says in the "Cast of Characters" at the opening of the book, "No dumb coppers here." They are an intelligent and methodical group, though it's the rookie who's right about the source of the arsenic.

Pim has a wicked sense of humor. In the "Cast of Characters," Mosney, the Gandon's "general factotum" is identified as an ex-convict. We wait to see of what he was guilty. Murder? Burglary? Kidnapping? Mosney's crime was that he had presented himself to farmers as a representative of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and offered to sell them telephone poles for fire wood. When the farmers began cutting down the poles, the scam was uncovered, and Mosney was arrested.

The Irish delight in gossip and rumor is spoofed after the country people see the police at the Gandon's home. "...some said there were troops in it as well. It was generally believed that Mr. Gandon was in prison instead of in hospital and that he was a secret agent of Russia."

Though the book is presented as a gardening mystery, gardening itself plays little part. However, when Hester sees a dahlia in a painting offered as a still life by one of the Dutch Masters, she realizes that the picture is a fake, because dahlias weren't available in Holland at that time. Thus begins a chain of events that uncovers art forgeries that have gone on for many years, a scheme that provides the motive for the attempts on Fergus' life.

The book bogs down a bit in the last third when technical descriptions of arsenic and the types available at various times and in various places become tedious. But all in all, Pim provides an entertaining look at Dublin's 1950s art world and life in upper middle class Dublin society.

Note: This book was originally published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1950

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, August 2002

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