House party

[sartorias]

Jennifer Stevenson on the house party farce. These are so much fun to read when they work!

I think my favorite is by Wodehouse, one of the many house party comedies of manners involving Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. My usual inability to remember titles gets whacked especial with these. I think it might be Right Ho, Jeeves, but it contains my

Comments

[whswhs]

The term I've seen used for the mystery set at a house party is the "cozy." It's not my favorite genre taken straight, but I quite enjoyed seeing what Walton did with the form. I suppose you could say that my favorite Wimsey, Gaudy Night, is an academic version of it: Few settings are seemingly as "cosy" as a women's college at Oxford where old graduates are gathering together for a social event, and the only possible suspects are faculty, students, and servants. In fact, given the ideological subtext, I wonder if Gaudy Night ought to be taken as ancestral to Farthing.

[sartorias]

O, yes yes yes. Excellent observation.

[houseboatonstyx]

Farthing has a whole sub-genre of ancestors more closely related than Gaudy Night, whose nearer descendant might be Miss Pym Disposes. And I do wish that Walton or someone would explain to me why Pym does not withdraw her charge when she concludes it was false!

As for the term 'cozy', it has expanded beyond a house party to include people scattered throughout a US rural area, or apparently just about any mystery with a lot of recipies in it.

[supergee]

Patrick Dennis, writing as Virginia Rowans, did a book called House Party. If memory serves, it was amusing and very much of the genre.

[sartorias]

I thought I'd read all his books. That one I haven't seen. Thanks!

[hand2hand]

THis may be the same one I know about.

[ryrostad]

If you're in the mood for baffling & complex -- there's always The Sacred Fount by Henry James! Not exactly a charming, witty light read -- but it's amusing on a certain level, and is a sort of mystery.

[sartorias]

Oh, I've never read that one! Thanks.

[asakiyume]

No recs, but I do like them conceptually for the way you get to really explore differences in personality, and for the importance of dialogue as a way of revealing character.

[houseboatonstyx]

I found Milne's The Red House Mystery rather charming early (1922) house party. It reads like it's inventing or at least introducing something unprecedented, though that might just be introducing a planned series detective (which series did not follow, as Milne wrote no more mysteries).