Review of Jill Paton Walsh's The Late Scholar

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh

First off, I should say that Dorothy L. Sayers is my all-time favorite mystery writer and her Gaudy Night, set at Oxford University, is the one mystery that I re-read regularly. Despite those things, I don't object to the idea of someone else coming along and continuing the story of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, or of setting one of those continuations at Oxford, which Sayers brought so powerfully to life in Gaudy Night.

The Trustees of Dorothy L. Sayers's estate gave permission to Jill Paton Walsh to continue the Wimsey/Vale series, and The Late Scholar (Minotaur Books, June 17, 2014) is the fourth book she's published in the series since 1998. Maybe it's because Paton Walsh is herself a graduate of Oxford University that I found this book to be the most assured of all of her continuation books.  But more than that, this book is heartfelt and has a comfortable feeling. Those may be odd adjectives to apply to a murder mystery, but they really do apply here.

Lord Peter, who is now the Duke of Denver, is by hereditary gift the Visitor of the college of St. Severin's at Oxford. He is a Balliol College (at Oxford) man himself, and his wife, mystery writer Harriet Vane, is a graduate of Oxford's (fictional) Shrewsbury College. When Peter is called upon as Visitor to settle a dispute over whether St. Severin's should sell a manuscript and buy land with the proceeds, he and Harriet use this as a good excuse to spend some time at their alma mater.

One of the initially troubling aspects of St. Severin's calling on Peter to step in is that the voting about the matter is deadlocked because the college's Warden has gone missing. Peter learns that there have been other attacks on college dons with voting rights on the issue––and soon there are still more. (It reminded me of that great title, Landscape with Dead Dons, from Robert Robinson (1956).) Clearly, some sleuthing is in order and that's what Peter, Harriet and Peter's man Bunter set out to do.

The investigation is carried out in that good, old-fashioned Golden Age tradition of the "fair play" mystery novel. Pay close attention and you can put the clues together along with the detective.  Meanwhile, though, you will also get to listen in on learned academic discussions about the manuscript; experience dinner at the college's high table; visit with Harriet's eccentric old colleagues at Shrewsbury College, whom you will remember from Gaudy Night; enjoy a couple of river walks and views out over Oxford's famous dreaming spires; and even spend a little time with Peter's delightfully dotty old mother.

It's the pleasure of a fair play mystery and of feeling at home again in Lord Peter and Harriet's Oxford that made this such a comfortable read. And heartfelt not only because Paton Walsh has such respect for Lord Peter (whom she has called "the best company who has ever lived in my inner world"), but because she, like Dorothy L. Sayers, portrays murder as a tragedy and a waste, and its perpetrator as a damaged person who has lost a moral compass.

Purists might find it annoying that Paton Walsh writes with a more modern sensibility, by which I mean that even if Sayers had written a Wimsey/Vane book in the 1950s, when this one is set, she almost certainly wouldn't have included a reference to the couple spending a romantic afternoon in bed, and she wouldn't have had Bunter sitting down at the table with Peter and Harriet. But I'm not a purist and I'm not bothered by these scenes, which are a very minor part of the novel anyway.

I do have some small quibbles. There is a large group of college fellows who are part of the plot and it isn't always easy to keep them straight or remember who is on which side of the manuscript controversy. Bunter isn't as much a part of the detection work as in the Sayers books, and I felt his relative absence. The poetry-quoting and learned banter between Peter and Harriet felt less natural and lively than it does in the Sayers books. But I didn't find these quibbles detracted much from the pleasure of the book.

Is this as good a read as a Dorothy L. Sayers original in the Lord Peter/Harriet Vane series?  I'd say certainly not as good as Strong Poison, Gaudy Night or Busman's Honeymoon, but better than Have His Carcase. But since we're not ever going to get more Dorothy L. Sayers books, I'm happy to have Jill Paton Walsh's books. And this is the best of them so far.

Note: I received an advance reviewing copy of this book. Versions of this review may appear on other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Investigating the Detectives

Most mystery readers have a few detective series that they follow closely, as much for the characters as for the stories. And authors are very clever, releasing personal information about their characters' current and prior lives very s-l-o-w-l-y. They can take quite a few books to build up a reasonably robust picture of the protagonist's life and character for the curious reader. During a recent spate of hurry-up-and-wait appointments, I had time to ponder a few of the more memorable detectives whose adventures have enlivened my days.

Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley, eighth Earl of Asherton and Scotland Yard Inspector, is a very interesting character with a brooding Heathcliffe touch. He was in college when his father died, leaving him with the title and estate and some responsibility for a younger brother, Peter. The tangled relationships within his family and his guilt at the accident that crippled his best friend, Simon Allcourt-Saint James, led him to abandon his mother and brother after his father's death in favor of the police force. He has acquired quite a reputation as a ladies' man, and goes home to his estates as seldom as possible. His friend Simon is engaged to Deborah, who had an earlier fling with Lynley, whose interest in her lingers in the early books. Lynley's partner, Sergeant Barbara Havers, comes from an entirely different working-class background. Her father is critically ill, and her mother beginning to show signs of incipient dementia. Barbara's in-your-face attitude and gritty hardscrabble home life is quite a contrast to Lynley's, whom she initially loathes. You can follow this cast of characters through a satisfying series of now 17 Lynley books, the first of which, A Great Deliverance, won numerous prizes. Several of the stories have appeared on PBS, with actor Nathaniel Parker in the title role.

I am seriously intrigued by Louise Penny's compassionate, philosophical Armand Gamache in her Three Pines series, and have followed the gradual unfolding of his personality and life with avid interest from book to book. An honest, observant, even-tempered man, he has reached his position of Chief Inspector of the homicide department of the Sûreté du Québec through effort and talent alone. In contrast to Lynley, Gamache's home life is full and satisfying, if seldom glimpsed by the reader. He has been married for many years to the elfin Reine-Marie, and they have two grown children; a son in Paris and a daughter in Québec. We learn early that Gamache had been orphaned in childhood, and that there is something odd about his late father. Gamache is a supportive leader and mentor to his team, who trust him implicitly. His relationship with his second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is paternal as well as professional. It is not until Gamache meets the coldest woman in the series that I got a fuller––if viciously biased––picture of Gamache's father from a deliberately hurtful woman who happened to be the mother of his friend Peter Morrow, a Three Pines artist.

The town of Three Pines, in the beautiful secluded Eastern Townships of Québec, is as much a character in this series as the people. The author says "Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in the valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back." Artists, damaged people, and general misfits tend to find it and settle there, offering a heady brew of characters for the novelist. Cell phone and television reception are unreliable; the village gets its outside news from visitors or the newspapers. Even the postman lingers there, to have an espresso in Olivier's bistro and watch the enchanted, slow-moving panorama. Most of the cases in the series are set in or have their roots in this hauntingly beautiful hamlet.

It is hard to believe that Sister Mary Murderous introduced me to this series only a few years ago. I feel that I have known this place and these people forever; yet each book offers fresh insights into the place and characters. The author has finally approved a series of made-for-TV movies based on the series, which PBS will surely pick up for viewing in the states. Curiously, actor Nathaniel Parker, who played Thomas Lynley, will also play Gamache. He didn't work well for me as Lynley, so I will be curious to see how he meets my expectations as Gamache––a more demanding role and character.

The author has said that the character of Gamache is modeled on her husband of many years. If so, these books are a remarkable collection of love letters to a  good and fortunate man and a place many of us have dreamed of finding someday. Each of the eight books in this character-driven series has been a feast of personalities and place, well worth lingering over and rereading. The last, The Beautiful Mystery, closed with an unhappy resolution for the characters, so I am hoping for a better outcome from the next book, How the Light Gets In, due for release in August.

Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey was my first serious fictional crush, and one of my most enduring. Dorothy L. Sayers's Golden Age aristocratic detective is the second son of the late 15th Duke of Denver and the half-French Dowager Duchess Honoria Delagardie, who is a recurring and charming character throughout the series. His brother, the current Duke, is a traditionalist and a bit of a stuffed shirt, and his younger sister Mary fancies herself a bluestocking and a Socialist. While Wimsey presents himself as an affable idiot in society, his keen gift of logical deduction and strong sense of responsibility involve him in the solution of murder mysteries and occasional sensitive diplomatic missions for His Majesty's government.

At the beginning of the series, he is suffering from what today we would call PTSD, as a result of having to order men to their deaths during World War I. His mother and doctors are in despair; he stays in his bed at Denver, terrified to give any order to anyone for fear of possible consequences. Not until his army batman Mervyn Bunter shows up and takes him in hand does he begin to recover. I remember a bit from one of the early books when his mother comes into the London flat and Bunter beams at her and carols "My Lady, he just told me to take away this damned slop and bring him some sausages."  While he continues to recover, Wimsey has recurring bad episodes when murderers are hanged as a result of his investigations throughout the series.

Not until the fifth book, Strong Poison, does Wimsey meet the love of his life, a woman who eludes him through most of the rest of the series. Young author Harriet Vane is accused of having poisoned her artist lover because he was unfaithful. Wimsey becomes involved in the case at the request of a friend, and proves the lady's innocence. He also falls deeply in love with her, and thereafter proposes at least once per book, but she will have none of him. The endless permutations of this most prickly and poetic romance enliven the rest of the series until and even after the lady yields. Common knowledge has it that Sayers herself fell in love with her detective, and even if she didn't, many readers around the world certainly did. The older books in this series of 13 contain references that are shockingly politically incorrect by today's standards, but were ordinary and expected usage for the period in which they were written. At the request of Dorothy L. Sayers's estate, author Jill Paton Walsh completed Sayers's final Wimsey/Vane novel, Thrones, Dominations.  She has since published two more Wimsey/Vane novels, A Presumption of Death and The Attenbury Emeralds.

All of these series are worth reading in order, and rereading from time to time. I am a bit in love with all of these detectives. (Fortunately, my husband isn't the jealous sort.) While I may forget parts of which mystery occurred in which book, I can pretty well track the development of the characters and their relationships throughout the series. They are developed enough to provide good company in boring or frightening times, and never yammer or intrude when not wanted.

Location, location, location

That's what real estate is said to be all about. Some mystery series aren't all about location, but they tend to be inseparable from certain addresses.

221B Baker Street, London

Is there anyone who doesn't know Sherlock Holmes's famous address? When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes series, street numbers on Baker Street didn't go above 100, but in the 1930s, the street was renumbered and––presto!––a large building occupied by the Abbey Road Building Society received the numbers 219-229. For many years, the company employed a secretary just to answer the large volume of mail they received addressed to Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. They enthusiastically embraced the Holmes connection and placed a plaque on the front of the building.

But then, a problem arose. In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, located at 239 Baker Street, got the head of the local Westminster council to put a 221B Baker Street plaque on their building and claimed the right to receive all mail with that address. This sparked a long-running battle among the museum, the building society, the council and the postal service. The struggle finally ended 15 years later, when the building society moved to a new location.

Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (formerly 239 Baker Street)

Holmes's office is said to be on the first floor at 221B Baker Street. As you probably know, what Americans call the first floor is the ground floor in Britain, while their first floor is what we call the second floor. When Watson and Holmes go looking for a flat to rent (in A Study in Scarlet), they find 221B Baker Street to be "a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished and illuminated by two broad windows."

Blogger Russell Stutler has spent some years figuring out the layout of 221B Baker Street, carefully reading all the stories multiple times. Here is his concept. Note that Mrs. Hudson has a small room off the study and another downstairs, while Watson's room is upstairs.

In Conan Doyle's day, Baker Street was a quiet area of residences for well-to-do Londoners, across from Regent's Park. Today, it's a bustling area, with 221B located just around the corner from the tourist mecca of Madame Tussaud's wax museum.

110A Piccadilly, London

Rumor has it that Dorothy L. Sayers picked 110A for Lord Peter Wimsey's street address in a nod to Sherlock Holmes's 220B. Piccadilly is a good choice for a wealthy second son like Lord Peter. It's home to the Ritz Hotel, Fortnum & Mason and one of my favorite bookstores, Hatchard's. It's described as well-appointed, with a welcoming fire and many, many bookshelves filled with rare editions. Not surprising for a man who is an expert on incunabula (books printed before 1501) and who often has a book auction catalog at hand.

There is no 110A Piccadilly, but there is a 110 and, disappointingly, it's not a house or a block of flats. It's the Park Lane Hotel. More specifically, 110 would be about where the ballroom entrance is. Take a look. It's to the far right in this photo of the hotel.  At least it's across from Green Park, so it would be a nice location if Wimsey did actually live there.

After Lord Peter Wimsey marries Harriet Vane, he and his man, Bunter, say goodbye to Piccadilly and hello to, not Leicester Square, but Audley Square, not far away in Mayfair. The couple move into a place referred to as Belchesters' House, which has a library upstairs with a bookcase that conceals the entrance to a secret room that Harriet adopts as her writing room.

Some contend that the model for the couple's Audley Square house is Number 2, which was a private home built in 1876 and now houses the University Women's Club. That seems an apt location for Sayers and Harriet Vane.  I like to think of Harriet and Peter strolling the one block to one of my favorite places in London, the lush, green and quiet Mount Street Garden.

In Busman's Honeymoon, we learn that Lord Peter buys Harriet a wedding gift of Talboys, a rustic old farmhouse in the village of Paggleham in Hertfordshire where Harriet grew up. They plan to use it as their country home and honeymoon location. When they arrive, they find Talboys not ready for them as arranged. It's locked up tight and it takes some time to gain access. Next morning, they find the chimneys completely blocked––and an even worse find is made in the cellar.

There is no village of Paggleham in Hertfordshire, but there is a Puckeridge that kind of works for me as a place to imagine the Wimseys' country living place.

891 Post Street, [Apartment 401], San Francisco

Dashiell Hammett lived in this building from 1926-1929, and wrote Red Harvest, The Dain Curse and The Maltese Falcon while living there.  Famously, Hammett placed Sam Spade's apartment there in The Maltese Falcon.

891 Post Street.  Apartment 401 is the top apartment on the corner directly facing the camera.

Today, the apartment building has a coin laundry on the ground floor and a parking garage across Post Street. It's on the corner of Post and Hyde, in the Tenderloin. Not the best neighborhood, but the nicer part of the neighborhood, at least, and realtors like to call it Lower Nob Hill. Recently, an apartment was for rent in the building for $1,450 a month. What do you suppose Hammett's rent was for his modest studio apartment?

There is some disagreement, but most seem to think that Hammett––and Spade––lived in Apartment 401, on the northwest corner. The Friends of Libraries USA plague on the outside of the building states it as fact, so let's just go with it. Mystery writer Mark Coggins has a nice story about the apartment here. Here's the illustration on his site of the floor plan.

It's not a very inviting spot, but as long as you're in the neighborhood, you might feel compelled to take a stroll over to the alley where Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, got plugged. There is even a plaque at the entrance to the alley, just off Bush Street above the Stockton Tunnel. Note that the plaque should have a big **spoiler** mark on it!

A guy named Don Herron has been leading a Hammett tour for 35 years. I'm sorry to say I never heard of it when I lived in San Francisco. But if you're interested, he starts out at noon every Sunday in May and September, and it costs $10. If you can't make it in person, Herron has published a book about it called, unsurprisingly, The Dashiell Hammett Tour.

Another stop on the tour is at 1201 California Street, at the peak of Nob Hill. The Cathedral Tower there is thought to be the model for the Coronet apartment building, where Bridget O'Shaughnessy lived. I'm sure she missed her great view of the Golden Gate when Sam Spade sent her to the joint.

Don Herron winds up his tour at John's Grill. Sam Spade ate there, so maybe you should give it a try sometime. You can even order the dinner Spade had there: lamb chops with sliced tomatoes and baked potato. Before you pay the bill, check out the replica of the Maltese Falcon upstairs.

West 35th Street, New York City

Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe loved his home, a luxurious Manhattan brownstone. And what's not to like? Three stories with a rooftop greenhouse for Wolfe's beloved orchids; quarters for two live-in staff members, including Fritz the cook, and Wolfe's wisecracking assistant, Archie Goodwin; an elevator to take the rotund Wolfe up and down; a richly comfortable office with Wolfe's custom-made chair.

In the books, several different addresses on West 35th Street are given, nearly all of them in the 900s, which are nonexistent because they'd be in the Hudson River. The Wolfe Pack, Nero Wolfe's fan society, has designated 454 West 35th Street as the probable site of Nero Wolfe's brownstone and had a plaque put on the building in 1996. The thing is, there isn't actually a brownstone there, at least not today. Today it's a not-very-inspiring apartment building:

454 West 35th Street

Ken Darby, author of The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe, claims there were never any brownstones on West 35th Street. Darby speculates that the actual location Rex Stout had in mind was Gramercy Park, probably East 22nd Street.

The Nero Wolfe series televised by A&E used a lovely brownstone at 44 West 76th Street to stand in as Wolfe's place.

44 West 76th Street

Because this brownstone has more than the seven stairs in the front that Rex Stout described for Wolfe's home, the filmmakers were always careful to shoot the front so that it didn't show the stairs or only showed seven of them. Now that's attention to detail! Speaking of which, for a whole lot of detail about the layout of the brownstone, check out John Clayton's blog here. To find out everything there is to know about Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, the brownstone and all of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, our own Georgette is the source. One of these days, I hope she'll write about Wolfe.

Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

After all these big city apartments, it's time to visit a less conventional home for a beloved sleuth. John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee lived on a houseboat called Busted Flush, berthed at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina, in Fort Lauderdale. He gets a plaque from Friends of the Libraries USA too, which you can see in the photo below, just to the right of the fire hose sign.

This isn't really where a berth F-18 would be in this marina's layout, but it's the thought that counts. Nice of the marina to care enough about McGee's fans to recognize him. And MacDonald must have appreciated it too. Not just the recognition, but that it kept fans focused on Fort Lauderdale, rather than on Sarasota, where he lived.

The Busted Flush is named after a poker hand, naturally. In this case, McGee was losing hand after hand, then bluffed a flush and got this 52-foot barge-style houseboat as his payoff. McGee doesn't get to spend much time there, because his cases take him all over, but when he can, that's where he kicks back with a Boodles Gin, enjoying life.

Wherever you call home, I hope you have living companions as tolerant as Holmes's, as loving a life companion as Lord Peter's, as beautiful a home town as Sam Spade's, as much room for your favorite hobby as Nero Wolfe, and as low a purchase price as Travis McGee's.

Casting the Detectives

When a mystery book's character moves from the page to the screen, a lot of changes may occur. I was reminded recently of the casting issue when discussing the late Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series with some friends. You may have seen the three-part adaptation on Masterpiece Mystery! last season, with Rufus Sewell playing Zen. This casting provoked a lot of howls from the more ardent fans of the Zen books. My good friend Georgette opined that Rufus Sewell was as much Aurelio Zen as Owen Wilson would be Josef Stalin. Hmm.

Da!

Duh

What do you think?

Were these two separated at birth?

Caterina Murino & Rufus Sewell

Me, I was fine with Rufus Sewell as Zen. He smoldered nicely, looked great in Italian suits and had explosive chemistry with Caterina Murino, who played Tania Moretti. But I've only read a couple of the books in the series and that was a long time ago. Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd read them all and they were dear to my heart.

What makes for a successful acting portrayal of a beloved mystery book character, then? One thing I do know is that a physical resemblance between the actor and the character isn't a prerequisite. Here is Dashiell Hammett's description of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon:

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-gray eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down–from high flat temples–in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan."

Humphrey Bogart

David Suchet

That doesn't sound even remotely like Humphrey Bogart, does it? And yet wasn't Bogie near perfection as Spade? Obviously, we need to forget about looks. Instead, the actor must express the essence of the character or make the character his own.

Could there be a better Hercule Poirot than David Suchet? For me, he's Poirot to the life. I didn't dislike Peter Ustinov the many times he played him, but he didn't seem quite right. Albert Finney and Alfred Molina really didn't do it for me. I just hope Suchet gets the chance to achieve his stated ambition to play Poirot in every one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Margaret Rutherford

Joan Hickson

Agatha Christie's other best-known protagonist, Miss Marple, has also been played by many actors. Just in recent years, PBS has shown productions with Julia McKenzie, Geraldine McEwan and Joan Hickson. They all were appealing to me, though I liked Joan Hickson the best. Going back to the old movies, I just loved Margaret Rutherford, even accepting that she wasn't true to the books' descriptions. She was just so far from even a façade of a retiring nature, and every time I'd see her knitting I'd think that about the only thing I could truly imagine her doing with the needle was tenderizing the rump of a fleeing suspect.

Heston: worst Sherlock ever?

Look on Wikipedia to see the list of actors who have played Sherlock Holmes. The list is something like 70 names long, including such unlikely choices as Charlton Heston and George C. Scott. I remember Rupert Everett's 2004 portrayal of Holmes in the TV movie Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stockings was downright painful, though that had a lot to do with the film itself. I think most Holmes aficionados are satisfied with the portrayals of Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. They've formed many people's mental pictures of Sherlock Holmes for decades.

Benedict Cumberbatch

The current Holmes depictions by Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey, Jr., are a little more controversial. I thought Cumberbatch captured the Holmes disdain for conventional behavior and all lesser mortals (pretty much everybody, in other words), while Downey's willingness to do and try anything was appealing even if he didn't seem all that much like Holmes. But I'm not a hardcore Holmesian, so maybe I'm too easygoing on the subject.

Roy Ridley

I am, however, a hardcore Lord Peter Wimsey-ite. It's commonly said that Dorothy L. Sayers modeled Wimsey's physical appearance on Roy Ridley, who was a Fellow and Tutor of Oxford's Balliol College. In Whose Body, Sayers describes him as having "rather hard grey eyes [and a] long, indeterminate mouth" and adds to that "a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding forehead, accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness of his tow-coloured hair." Wimsey's appearance wouldn't stop a clock, but he's no oil painting, either. As Sayers would put it more elegantly, "[a]t no . . . time had he any pretensions to good looks."

Ian Carmichael

On the screen, the two most well-known depicters of Dorothy L. Sayers's creation are Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge. I don't downright dislike Carmichael's portrayal, but he's too bumptious for my taste. And I can't get the picture out of my head of his somewhat pudgy body in a harlequin costume in Murder Must Advertise. It was just not right.

Jeremy Sheffield

Edward Petherbridge

On the other hand, Petherbridge seemed a closer physical resemblance to Sayers's Wimsey, though I'd say a touch too effete. More important, Petherbridge conveyed Lord Peter's yearning for Harriet Vane and his occasional angst about the consequences of his detective work. I'd love to see a remake of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories, but I don't know whom I'd cast as the lead. Maybe Jeremy Sheffield, a British actor who caught my eye recently.

Jason Isaacs

Right now, PBS's Masterpiece Mystery! is televising a three-part series based on Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries. Jason Isaacs, looking very different from his well-known part as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, plays Jackson Brodie. First off, he looks great, with his penetrating blue eyes and weather-beaten but handsome face. He has a voice as warm as a peat fire and personality that's an irresistible mix of wry humor leavened with an air of lifelong loss. Since I've never read the books, I have no way to compare his portrayal to Kate Atkinson's creation. Thoughts about that or other crime fiction characters portrayed on screen?