keep wondering when someone will finally stop making remakes of Agatha Christie novels for the fifth time, and start making Miss Silver movies/ITV shows, . . then again, better not ruin it I guess
This case was great, You think you know half of what is going on but end up not knowingof the mystery, While not always a surprise, the way things turn do leave you with a little gasp and I just kept wanting to know more of the story, the characters, how it will all turn out.
I also love how characters keep returning, even previous minor characters you forgot about suddenly turn up being main characters, it is such a pleasure!
Definitely another good book by Wentworth, I cannot get enough of Miss Silver and her experiences! Not as good as some in the series.
There are too many characters introduced all at once in the beginning and even a family tree doesn't help matters much, The descriptions of the old smuggling inn, The Catherine Wheel, lack any sense of creepiness or atmosphere and the whole book comes across as somewhat superficial, Miss Silver is, of course, always in good form and manages to solve the case despite the police interference!,A nice series of gentle murders, very English, but the authors habit of having Miss Silver “gently cough” or “softly cough” every time she wishes to make an observation about something, or ask a pertinent question got old very fast.
A speaking look or a raised eyebrow or some other device needs to be added to her “I am a gentile lady amp dont want to interrupt the men except they are getting it all wrong” arsenal.
I need these comfort reads just now, and this one fit the bill, but this literary device was enough to annoy amp make the rating lose, There was certainly a heavy air of intrigue and mystery emanating from the old inn high on the cliff top, The CatherineWheel had once been a home for pirates and smugglers, but now it looked like it was harbouring a murderer,
It began with an advertisement in the paper requesting descendants of the late innkeeper, Jeremiah Taverner, to stay for a weekend at the inn, They arrived, a mixed assortment, at the family reunion eager to discover the secrets of their ancestry, But one of them was then hideously murdered, bringing the inn's stormy past into frightening focus,
Scotland Yard, already suspicious of drug smuggling in the area, sends Maud Silver to investigate, Typical Miss Silver story, well done, but nothing particulary special about it, I did have a little problem with how Miss Silver handled one situation, She never misses a trick, but she overlooked an obvious possible twist and it bothered me, A bit on the fence about this, it is the first book I have read in the Maud Silver series, I enjoyed it more than not but less than I thought I would if that makes sense, I have to say Miss Silver's habit of coughing before she said anything really grated on my nerves and it may not have irritated me so much if the author hadn't written a note at the start of the story mentioning it.
Also the character of Maud Silver struck me as a little bit too much of a copy of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, I've now readof theMiss Silver mysteries, This is theth in the series, They are all pleasant cozy reads, with different plots and new personalities for Miss Silver to observe and analyze, but other than giving a synopsis of the plot, it is hard to give a meaningful review of each one.
It does seem that each one has at least one really disagreeable character that either becomes the victim of murder or turns out to be the perpetrator, and in a way that makes them satisfying.
Patricia Wentworth really knew how to make you dislike certain characters, It also seems that more often than not, blackmail is involved and more central to the crime than the other big motivators of greed and hatred, I particularly enjoy how the relationship between Maud Silver and the Scotland Yard man, Frank Abbot continues to develop,
Recently I viewed new presentations of a couple of Miss Marple stories on PBS Masterpiece Mystery and do think there are some similarities between Miss Marple and Miss Silver.
It has been many years since I read the Agatha Christie mysteries, but I am finding that I really like Miss Silver, as a personality, better, and I think she is much more clever and subtle and not so doddering.
I wonder why PBS has not done these mysteries, and if they did, who would they get to play Miss Maud Silver, Old Jacob Taverner's father had many siblings, and now Jacob is gathering some of their descendants at the old smuggling innthe Catherine Wheelthat's been in the family since theth century.
He claims he's in search of an heir, but he
keeps asking the diverse relativesmost of whom had never met each other beforewhat their grandparents told them about the Catherine Wheel, particularly about secret passages and rooms.
Then the inn's bartendera byblow cousin, and an extremely unpleasant sortis found murdered in the main hall, There are plenty of suspects, but fortunately Miss Silver, detective extraordinaire disguised as a mousy exgoverness with an irritating cough and perpetual knitting projects, had already weasled her way in at the request of Scotland Yard, to investigate possible smuggling.
Now she has two things to solveif the local inspector will listen to her,
I must admit I like this kind of mystery, Smuggling, secret passages, old family secrets, Cornwall, and a detective completely untortured and unwrappedup in her own plotstealing issues, It's oldfashioned, of course, and I can't love Wentworth's attitude towards women and what they want in a mandoes any woman really want a man to bully her and tell her what to do and what not to do I did appreciate that the main female character, young Jane Heron, could stand up to her attractive bully, but she fell for him anyway, and he's the male romantic lead.
I preferred the Scotland Yard detective Frank Abbott, who brought in Miss Silver, and smiled when the local inspector fumed and fussed about her, Abbott never seemed to feel the urge to tell her what to do, But anyway, a good classic mystery with lots of atmosphere and interesting characters, I'm a huge fan of Patricia Wentworth's books, and especially her Miss Silver books, but I really feel this is the weakest of her works, and not as engaging or as fresh or enjoyable as many of her other books.
This reminded me a little too much of sitelinkJamaica Inn it wasn't terrible, but it didn't have enough of the cosy imagined England that I read Wentworth for.
Because two things were quite certain, Whatever Jeremy said or Jeremy did, two things were quite certain, She was going to go down to the ChatherineWheel, and she was going to have that hundred pounds,This one was a little hard to get through, I love Patricia Wentworth and usually her books are wellpaced and flow smoothly, but this one was like riding in a stickshift car with a new driver, I felt like the story would shoot forward and stall, Then it would ride along for a bit and stall,
There are a LOT of characters in this book, which is a usual challenge for her stories, Most of them have the same last name, which does confuse things, I felt like most of them were pretty flat, Even the setting fell a bit flat, despite the promising premise a smuggler's hideaway with hidden tunnels Yes, please, I think there was just too much happening,
I still recommend reading it, Patricia Wentworth is a skilled writer and her mysteries are always surprising, This one just isn't my favorite, .