Reading Those Classics #16

Classic Set in Ye Olde Teashoppe Englande. The traditional English village mystery was popularized by Agatha Christie between the wars. After WWII the genre I think was running on fumes until the early Sixties saw published P.D. James’ Cover Her Face (1962) and Ruth Rendell’s From Doon with Death (1964). To revive village mysteries, James and Rendell introduced psychological themes that later writers such as Elizabeth George used to such good effect. Which is a long way to say, this psychological thriller set in a village is a rare bird for the 1950s.

Road to Rhuine - Simon Troy

It’s said Ru-ween, is the first thing to make clear. And the second is that I wish were a better writer to convey how excellent this 1952 mystery is, the first of nine starring Inspector Charles Smith.

The setting is a village breath-taking in its beauty, perhaps in the Lake District because Ireland is across the sea. The citizens of the village make a modest living from sustainable eco-tourism. But we shall soon see both beauty and prosperity are endangered by development.

The book opens in the humble office of a private agent, Lee Vaughn. Lee, the first-person narrator of the story, is a fix-it guy, assisting friends and friends of friends out of jams. He’s a veteran of the recent hostilities but as a smallish and timid guy, he employs violence only when he absolutely must. He is a musician at heart but brings to his fix-it jobs, if not a lot of brains, as he readily admits, then competence, conscientiousness and sympathy for his clients.

And heaven knows his clients need all the understanding they can get. Sheila Fabian, though rich and beautiful and popular with her tenants, is quiet, withdrawn, and unforthcoming with information that would help Vaughn reach their goals. Sheila is on husband Number Two. She inherited landed wealth from her first husband but because of a muddle she found out about her new-found affluence only after her second marriage to Stuart Fabian. Brother Fabian is bad and dangerous to know much less live with.

Sheila wants Lee Vaughn to provide protection for her, her two children, her landed estate, and her tenants. Fabian is hated by her two children for obscure reasons. Out of spite, to dismay her and destroy a beautiful place, Fabian wants to develop the neighborhood around her estate. He wants to turn the area in a twee piece of Ye Olde Teashoppe Englande. This plan raises the ire of the villagers who fear the threat of avaricious mega-tourism to their fiercely guarded livelihoods.

Lee Vaughn is puzzled that Sheila Fabian does not resort to the divorce courts or the police or the National Trust for protection from her husband. But Sheila Fabian is a deep one. So is her seven-year-old son Steven, who is so self-sufficient that he comes and goes as he pleases, often staying out all night. He is also friends with seventy-year-old Isiah Jonquil, who minds a garden out of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Sitr into the mix an eccentric female artist; a forthright doctor; a dodgy houseman. All the characters are as quirky as the types we usually meet in village mysteries, but Fabian and his sins are more darkly evil than we will usually see in a traditional English village mystery. In one upsetting scene a corgi is kicked (he is okay though in the end) and one rousing scene depicts mob violence against the property of the dog kicker.

Simon Troy (a pseudonym of Thurman Warriner 1904-74) also uses red herrings, plot twists, and cliffhangers to keep us readers on the edge of our seats. We hardcore mystery fans were lucky that Harper Collins Perennial Mystery Library editions re-published this novel, along with the equally respected Swift to Its Close in the early 1980s. I think Simon Troy is a writer for discerning readers who like a mystery writer who’s a master of their craft, of a mind to present characters and stories that are really different. 

Click on the title to go to the review.

Prize Winning Classic: The Moviegoer – Walker Percy

Classic Novella: Old Man – William Faulkner

Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams

Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara

Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic Set in the Big Apple: Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Classic 19th Century Novel: Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope

Classic Police Procedural: Wolf to Slaughter – Ruth Rendell

Classic War Memoir: Flight to Arras - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic American Mystery: Might as Well Be Dead - Rex Stout

Classic Courtroom Drama: A Woman Named Anne – Henry Cecil

Classic Abandoned: Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon

Classic Set in France: Maigret’s Patience – Georges Simenon 

Classic English Mystery: Hallowe’en Party – Agatha Christie