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A Return to the Golden Age British Mystery
It is 1923. Kitty Worthington, completing a year in a Swiss finishing school is, returning to England for her debut year as she turns 21. An unmarried young woman of the upper classes cannot travel alone, so she is accompanied by her very stuffy older brother Edward.
“Murder on the Golden Arrow,” by Magda Alexander opens with Kitty discovering Ned much less stuffy than Kitty believed. She learns he had a paramour. Worse, traveling on the Golden Arrow from Dover to London the woman is poisoned. While sitting across from Kitty and Ned.
A Scotland Yard Detective Inspector aboard the train, Robert Crawford, takes charge of the investigation. Since Ned gave the poisoned woman medicine immediately before dying Kitty fears Crawford suspects Ned. The dead woman was blackmailing Ned. Kitty knows Ned did not commit the crime, but he seems the obvious suspect.
She believes Scotland Yard will focus on the obvious suspect, Ned will end up hanged for a crime he did not commit. She decides to solve the crime herself, lest the guilty party get away. She has never investigated a mystery before, let alone solved one. Investigating constitutes interfering with a police investigation. Not letting these things deter her, she plunges in regardless.
Kitty feels smothered by 1920s upper-class conventions. Her mother’s desire for Kitty to find a noble husband leads to comedy. But Kitty also learns as the book progresses that her family does not consist of one-dimensional cutout characters of her expectations. Nor are they as bound to convention as she believes. She discovers that neither her investigation, nor the behavior of Scotland Yard detectives follows the stereotype set in the detective fiction she has read.
Those who read and enjoyed Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series or the Peter Wimsey mysteries will probably enjoy this book. It is set in the same time period and same social setting in post-World War I England. Alexander may not be a deft as Bowen or Dorothy Sayers, but this book has the same mix of status and whimsy as the other books. Crawford is cut from the same mold as Sayers’s Charles Parker. While Kitty is neither as sophisticated nor worldly as she imagines herself, this adds to the book’s charm.
“Murder on the Golden Arrow,” is a delightful first novel in a promising new series. Intended as a light fun read, it delivers on that promise.
Murder on the Golden Arrow,” by Magda Alexander, Hearts Afire Publishing, 2021, 216 pages, $4.01 (Ebook)
This review was written by Mark Lardas who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in Literature
I love these things. My grandma had stacks of them.
Forwarded to Mrs. Tabby, who is quite the fan of British mysteries. Thank you for being a conduit to books that may be of interest.
Thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely be “checking” it out – of the library.
Thanks, @seawriter. Sound like fun.
Many years ago on our honeymoon in Ireland, I was introduced to my wife’s distant cousin, the Marquessa de Zahara. A clever and attractive Irish-American girl born in Kansas, she soon moved in higher circles and married a titled Spaniard and high-ranking diplomat. Shortly after they were married in 1946, while they were travelling together by train, he died–almost certainly poisoned. The police suspected but could not prove their Indochinese manservant did it. There were no vacationing Scotland Yard inspectors or women of a certain age from St. Mary Mead on the train, so alas it remained unsolved.
https://www.nytimes.com/1946/06/11/archives/marquis-de-zahara-spanish-counselor-in-embassy-at-paris-dies-on-a.html
Fascinating.