I'm sure I've read this in the last ten years. I remembered the district nurse (and that I don’t think much
of her taste in men) and the old lady who paints ineffectual watercolours
despite her own strong personality. And that there’s a trout and an ongoing
feud about fishing rights, but the mystery left me so cold I couldn't even remember the murderer.
We start the book with Nurse Kettle (for that is her name) at the top
of a hill looking down on a lovely little village thinking how every prospect pleases, but not finishing the quotation because she believes that here not even man is vile.
And then the inhabitants seem to spend the rest of the book
trying to be unpleasant enough to prove her wrong. Everyone from the supposedly penitent Sir
Henry Lacklander, who has written his memoirs to confess to espionage, but is safely dead
before they come out - thus leaving someone else to make the hard decision to publish and take the flak - to his widow,
who tells Alleyn the truth only when she knows it’s already come out, to the second wife of the murder victim, about
whom everyone is appallingly snobbish, but whose main offence seems to be her
‘manner’.
Even the obligatory young couple in love seemed dreary and worthy. Maybe it’s the setting, maybe it’s that I can’t get excited
about trout fishing, but I found this book especially slow.
No comments:
Post a Comment