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If you find lots of explicit sex in your murder mystery distasteful, stop reading right now. This is not your kind of novel. The cover is actually tame in comparison to the contents. But for those of you who are still with me: the good news is that not only is the sex a lot of fun, so also is the actual mystery itself. The novel is a witty send-up of British cozies. Its narrator, young Boston-born Edward Mitchell, has read everything he can find by Conan Doyle, and has lately been taken by "a new English writer of promise, Agatha Christie." (Though the language belongs very much to the present, the novel is set in August 1925.) So 'Mitch' is elated to be on the scene of an actual murder mystery. Boy Morgan, Mitch's best friend at Cambridge, where he is taking postgraduate medical studies, has invited him for a weekend at Sir James Eagle's estate on the Norfolk coast. (Boy's fiancee is Sir James's daughter.) Since Mitch has been scheming from the time he first saw Boy to seduce him, he accepts with alacrity. During a game of Sardines (you'll just have to read the novel for an explanation), Mitch is on the verge of achieving his goal when the fiancee's scream announces her discovery of a body. Mitch is now torn between his "two passions: cock and crime." But he cannot miss the chance to test his skills against Holmes's, so he puts the seduction momentarily on hold. If he is going to find the murderer, he realizes there are a number of pertinent questions he must answer. Who exactly was the victim, this Reg Walworth? Why has an innocent servant, Charlie Meeks, been hauled off to the police station and (Mitch discovers as a result of seducing a constable) been tortured there? Is Sir James in deep financial straits, as rumored? Why has his son Rex disappeared on an unscheduled trip to London just as his fiancee arrives? And just what is the nature of the all the heated activities going on between upstairs and downstairs? Mitch's probing is of two distinctly different sorts as a result of his discovering he can use sex as a way to get at the truth, particularly when a reporter appears on the scene. Though Boy never wavers in his intention to marry his fiancee, he, it turns out, has been equally scheming to seduce Mitch. The latter reflects with equanimity: "Every great detective needs a loyal assistant, and after I'd spent the night 'training' Boy Morgan he was every bit as loyal as I could wish. As sidekicks go, he wasn't the brightest -- but I comforted myself that even Dr Watson wasn't always quick off the mark." Plus, Boy has capabilities Watson never displayed. The plot tumbles often into the lowest Chaucerian comedy, as for example when Mitch must find a way to secrete a crucial roll of film in a place the villain will never think of looking. But despite the story's multiple interests, the reader never loses sight of the mystery itself -- probably because the author thinks the reader will need to pause often to start breathing normally again, Mitch periodically sums up where the case stands at the moment. (Actually I wish more mystery writers were so obliging). At the case's end Mitch admits that his seductions were: "More successful, to tell the truth, than my attempts at sleuthing, which were, at best, hit or miss." But all ends happily with Mitch managing to get his man while he is getting his men.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, May 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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