2 1/2 stars. Well written and characters but it was a little obvious. 180 Lucy is a little annoying - one of those Golden Age heroines who's a cross between Dickens' too-good-to-live girls, and a more modern Daring Young Thing. The result can be hard to take. And, it's poison again.
Still, Dalton is a really good writer, and the feel of these books is like a cozy blanket. Not as silly as early Wimsey, not as precious as Alleyn, not as rich a stew as Campion; I don't know why they fell by the wayside, but I'm very glad they've been reprinted.
Also - superficial I guess, but I love these covers. I spend some time just looking at them. 180
It’s hard not to compare this book to Agatha Christie’s works. It has the same pacing and generally a similar setting and cast of characters. It even has the private eye who is so much smarter than every policeman but universally mistrusted.
The plot itself was really rather weak. People, particularly the police have to act in the most obstinately oblivious manner for it all to work, that it did become strained after a while. I knew who was guilty almost from the start. Of the whole book, the ending is probably the strongest part of the whole story.
Even so, I was quite engrossed. I wanted to know if the innocent sheltered young lady really could reform a gigolo. I wanted the uncle’s mysterious profession to be revealed. Then, the solution became obvious. Okay, I was still interested in the characters. Until everyone’s actions become a little unreasonable. Then After that I didn’t find it as intriguing.
Content warning
There were numerous ‘mild’ curse words. The foul language is comparable to Agatha Christie’s works. Affairs are discussed discreetly.
180 The third of the Hermann Glide novels, and in some ways the weakest.
It is engagingly written and full of vivid characters, but the perpetrator and motives were a tad too obvious for me and I awaited a surprise twist. There was one surprise, but it did not have real impact on the solution..
The manners and mores of 1930's English society are neatly portrayed and one felt nothing but admiration for the two pairs of star-crossed lovers who defied convention and the odds.
I wonder how much of the author's own life-experience was used here?
Enjoyable and easy-to-read.
3.5 stars 180 Thought this one started out a little slow. So it took me a little while for my interest to be piqued. But, boy howdy, how it was.
This is one of her Hermann Glide stories. He doesn't enter the picture until halfway through the book.
Bertha inherited and half-siblings Claire, Mark, George, and Winnie are left dependent on her. It is questionable how there George and Winnie even are, they seem to be mental cases with not a very good grasp on reality, but in different ways. Winnie has a fantasy love life and George seems to spend his time cutting out and pasting pictures in a book. Not sure if these two were actual siblings of Bertha's or if they were also half-siblings. But Mark and Claire came from a second marriage of their father.
One night when it seems as though no one can verify their whereabouts, someone puts some arsenic in Bertha's tea/cocoa/late night drink. They don't believe Bertha did it to herself because she would have said something to the maid and cook who were tending to her.
Mark is the first suspect. Especially since he is seeing the young daughter of a local magistrate. She is also the niece of a visiting intelligence officer (his late sister's daughter) and he feels a sense of responsibility for her. And Mark doesn't have a very good reputation - check forgery and he was kicked out of the house by the father, possibly in lieu of going to jail. Claire isn't doing much better. So the law is suspicious of both of them. The uncle pulls in Glide for help. He's not sure what is going on but is trying to save the girl's reputation.
I was stumped until Dalton gave it away. Then I just went you can't be serious. She was.
I like her books. Whether they're with Glide or Collier, or both. 180 An okay Moray Dalton, with a sleazy gigolo hero which is fun. Well written as ever, but the plot's a bit thin for her and the murderer pretty obvious. 180 I’m so pleased Dean Street Press has reissued the output of Moray Dalton between 1924 and 1951. This is the first I have read and I was both engaged and impressed. The writing is more than competent, some of it elegant. The characters are well delineated and the plot flows, holding interest. Best of all. Moray’s characters are not wholly black hats or white hats. They are flawed, make stupid choices, defy convention. This messiness, however, does not guarantee guilt. Dalton also, refreshingly, writes about women in their 20s, 30s, 40s who form relationships and strain against patriarchal control.
I really look forward to plunging into a promising Golden Age series which promises some healthy comparisons with the four queens. 180
Murder in the poisoned bosom of a genteel, if alarmingly dysfunctional, family in the English countryside.
Dennyford is a “peaceful little place . . . where the most exciting thing that could happen would be the lowering of somebody’s golf handicap. . . .” Or so the locals used to think. But young Lucy Rivers is in love with handsome Mark Armour, the local police’s chief suspect in a most dreadful murder case – the initial slaying (that of Mark’s domineering older sister, Bertha), and another which follows it, appear to have been done by means of arsenic. The true killer is finally unmasked, with credit going to the wily Hermann Glide, working in parallel with Inspector Collier of Scotland Yard. Death in the Cup (Hermann Glide #3)