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It is to laugh. It is to giggle and laugh aloud. Then you'll take time to marvel at the skill of author Joan Coggin who creates a cast of a dozen eccentric characters and then hands them a puzzle in the classic traditional English manner. It's a familiar scene, out of Christie, Allingham and even Ngaio Marsh. But from first page to last, Coggin presents us with a group of individuals who are so fine, so distinct, yet whose thought and therefore verbal processes are so far beyond the pale as to be difficult to adequately describe. Essentially the story is this: Lady Lupin Lorrimer Hastings, daughter of the Earl, has become a vicar's wife. Due to the strains of that position and the demands of her young son, she finds it necessary to take a rest away from the cares of family life and those of the parish. Lady Lupin is, young, pretty, unworldly and, throughout this novel, as totally scatterbrained as one could possibly imagine. Yet she is so endearing that one makes the effort to follow her incredible and frequent leaps of logic to a most satisfactory conclusion. What Lady Lupin discovers when she takes a room at her friend Diane Turner's inn is multiple thefts, attempted arson, a botched try at murder, love, and a considerable amount of squabbling. To save the day, in spite of incredibly loopy leaps of logic, Lady Lupin figures out who the perpetrator is and why and in the bargain, brings lovers together and patches up a marriage. One of the principal characters, almost an alter-ego to the sweet lady Lupin is the egotistical and quite nasty Lavina Dyson-Drake, a novelist who tends to call her missing manuscript her child, causing all sorts of late night confusion. The woman is also totally self-centered, a terror on the highway and of questionable taste. The rest can be seen as stand-ins for some recognizable people we frequently encounter, including the young man characterized by his mother as a poet who really wants to work on machinery, an engineer who wants to be a painter, a widow who completely dominates her unmarried but pining daughter, and the ex-army man, Colonel James. That Coggin is able to maintain the insanity of these interactions for an entire novel, yet carry plot through to satisfying conclusion is a tribute to her skill. The novel was written just prior to World War II and evokes a certain quaint, innocent, charm, but Coggin's observations are very much on point. An excellent novel. The reviewer is the author of INNER PASSAGES and A SUPERIOR MYSTERY http://www.Minnesotacrimewave.org/
Reviewed by Carl Brookins, March 2003
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