9781784708320
Vintage/Penguin Random House, 2017
originally published as Groaning Spinney, 1950
220 pp
paperback
Last week we found ourselves at one of our favorite getaway spots north of here in a cabin in the woods where there is no internet and plenty of time for just sitting around and reading. That is where I read this book, Murder in the Snow, the twenty-third installment of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley series and book seven in my ongoing poison pen mystery reads. Starting late in a series is sometimes but not often problematic for me, but definitely had an impact this time around. It wasn't due to missing previous character development, but rather it was the fact that if I liked the books that came before, having a clunker once in a while is okay if those preceding were pretty good. In this case I had nothing by way of comparison, so I had no clue if this book was an example of one-off awfulness or if the entire series is this poorly written. Obviously, I didn't care for Murder in the Snow all that much -- quite honestly, as the story progressed so too did my confusion and utter boredom.
The novel opens during the Christmas holiday season, and Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley has received two invitations from which to choose, one for a "conference of educational psychiatrists" in Sweden and the other from her "favorite nephew" Jonathan, who with his wfie had a home in the Cotwolds, once a "great estate" that had sold in two lots. The larger part of the former estate had been taken by the Ministry of Education where there is a women's college for prospective educators, with Jonathan and his wife Deborah buying the smaller section, which contained the original manor house where they now live. One of the features on Jonathan's property is a spinney with a gate, where, as he explains to his aunt Adela, a "ghost hangs out," supposedly that of a "local parson of about eighteen-fifty" who is known to hang over the gate. To help take care of Jonathan's property, there is an estate agent known as Tiny, who does double duty for both Bradley and the college and lives with his cousin Bill, both bachelors who are taken care of by the housekeeper Mrs. Dalby Whittier. There is also a gameskeeper, Will North, who has actually seen the Groaning Spinney spectre, so named because of the ghost that haunts the place. Only a short chapter or two after the novel begins, Jonathan receives a letter concerning his wife and Tiny, who, unknown to Jonathan, had previously made a pass at Deborah and was seriously rebuffed. Jonathan is all for going into Cheltenham to see if he can figure out who sent the letter as it contains "grounds for an action for slander," while Deborah suggests he take it to the vicar, "a sensible old darling" who may be able to figure out who might be responsible. The action truly begins as the snow begins to fall heavily, leaving the small village somewhat stranded, and Jonathan comes across a figure hanging over the gate. It isn't the ghost, but rather Tiny's cousin Bill, who had been "dusted over into ghostliness by this last fall of the snow." Things start to become very strange at this point as others, including the vicar, receive "vituperative notes," Bill's housekeeper goes missing and more deaths occur, all of which send Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley into investigative mode to discover exactly what's going on.
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All of the above is the perfect setup for a few hours of armchair detection, but I have to say that Murder in the Snow is actually one of the most murky and boggy mysteries I've ever encountered, so that by the time I got to the final denouement, I could have actually cared less, only happy that the book was over. It is incredibly rare that this happens to me, but in this case my mantra became "oh please get on with it." To be up front about it, I have no clue as to how Mrs. Bradley arrived at the solution she did given the meandering plot she offered her readers. As for the poison pen angle, that part started out strongly, with one major point connecting the letters to the overall murder plot, but it was still not enough to keep my interest strong.
I have a few of Mitchell's books, so I'll give the first one in the series (Speedy Death, 1929) a go to see if perhaps Murder in the Snow was an anomaly in terms of plotting. This one, sadly, I don't really believe I can recommend to anyone, even the hardest-core vintage crime readers.