Death at Half-Term
44. Josephine Bell, Death at Half-Term
It’s half-term at Denbury, an English boarding school for boys, and that means a great deal of chaos and disruption to the school’s normal routine. The boys’ families are visiting for the holiday, the school is gearing up for the traditional fathers-versus-sons cricket match, and a traveling theater company has been hired to perform Twelfth Night. The holiday soon takes a turn for the sinister when one of the actors collapses just after the play’s final curtain. He dies shortly thereafter, and the evidence points to murder. Fortunately, amateur sleuth David Wintringham is present for the holiday since his nephew is a Denbury student. Together with the Scotland Yard inspector assigned to the case, David helps to uncover the truth about the actor’s death.
Bev at My Reader’s Block mentioned this book as one of her top 100 mysteries, and the combination of prep-school setting and Shakespeare intrigued me. This novel is a fairly typical 1930’s mystery, complete with intelligent amateur sleuth, numerous subplots and romances, and a climactic revelation of the murderer with all the main suspects present. Since I like these kinds of mysteries, I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t find it particularly unique or exciting. I felt that there were too many characters; it was hard for me to keep them all straight, and most of them had nothing to do with the mystery at hand. There was a sweet romance between two teachers at the school, but again, it was totally irrelevant to the story. Apparently there are many other David Wintringham books, so perhaps I would have liked this one more if I had more context about him and his life. Overall, this was a pleasant read, but not particularly noteworthy.
N.B. This book has also been published as Curtain Call for a Corpse.
It’s half-term at Denbury, an English boarding school for boys, and that means a great deal of chaos and disruption to the school’s normal routine. The boys’ families are visiting for the holiday, the school is gearing up for the traditional fathers-versus-sons cricket match, and a traveling theater company has been hired to perform Twelfth Night. The holiday soon takes a turn for the sinister when one of the actors collapses just after the play’s final curtain. He dies shortly thereafter, and the evidence points to murder. Fortunately, amateur sleuth David Wintringham is present for the holiday since his nephew is a Denbury student. Together with the Scotland Yard inspector assigned to the case, David helps to uncover the truth about the actor’s death.
Bev at My Reader’s Block mentioned this book as one of her top 100 mysteries, and the combination of prep-school setting and Shakespeare intrigued me. This novel is a fairly typical 1930’s mystery, complete with intelligent amateur sleuth, numerous subplots and romances, and a climactic revelation of the murderer with all the main suspects present. Since I like these kinds of mysteries, I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t find it particularly unique or exciting. I felt that there were too many characters; it was hard for me to keep them all straight, and most of them had nothing to do with the mystery at hand. There was a sweet romance between two teachers at the school, but again, it was totally irrelevant to the story. Apparently there are many other David Wintringham books, so perhaps I would have liked this one more if I had more context about him and his life. Overall, this was a pleasant read, but not particularly noteworthy.
N.B. This book has also been published as Curtain Call for a Corpse.