Who Killed the Curate?

WHO KILLED THE CURATE?  Joan Coggin (1944)

Who Killed the Curate? introduces Lady Lupin Lorrimer Hastings, the beautiful, dutiful new wife of Andrew Hastings, vicar of St. Mark’s in the tiny town of Glanville.  Lady Lupin tries her best but she really isn’t cut out to be a vicar’s wife, having only a nodding acquaintance with affairs ecclesiastical.  As she puts it, she’s still struggling to distinguish the Jews from the Jesuits.  When she joins Andrew’s flock the formidable ladies of the town, and there are several, set their sights on her, intent upon securing Lady Lupin as the prize recruit for their various organizations.  What should Lady Lupin do?  Should she head up the Temperance Society?  The Mothers’ Union?  The Girl Guides?  The Sunday School?  The competition is fierce.  The only thing the women of Glanville can agree upon is their dislike of the unpopular curate, Mr. Young.  When he’s murdered, Lady Lupin and friends set out to solve the crime.

 Alright, let’s just get this out of the way at the beginning:  there’s absolutely no detection in this detective novel.  Everything is left for the big reveal at the end, in which a parishioner’s secret returns to haunt him/her, but you would never have guessed who or what or why because there just aren’t any clues.  HOWEVER, I’m going to read the other three books featuring Lady Lupin.  I’m willing to forego the absence of an adequate amateur detective (and any actual detection) because the book was a brilliant depiction of small town life and the jockeying for eminence among the inhabitants.  The dialogue is hilarious.  I cannot resist a book that makes me laugh out loud.  And at 157 pages (in the Rue Morgue Press edition), it’s not like you’re investing much time.  You’ll be smiling when you put down this book, as long as you start reading with the understanding that detection is not its strong suit.

Joan Coggin's Who Killed the Curate is one of my entries in the Golden Age Girls category of Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge.

Pamela Branch - Vintage Mystery Review

LION IN THE CELLAR – Pamela Branch (1951)

This is an absolute roller-coaster ride of a book.  In 158 pages, Branch juggles over two dozen characters (including a retired lion tamer, an undertaker, three cleaning ladies, an amateur scientist, a herbalist who dabbles in astrology, various criminals, sweet Sukie Chandor,  her law student husband Hugh and her murderous Uncle George), a horse, a goat, a cat, a stuffed lion, and two corpses.  It’s a tribute to her skill that each character, including the animals, is richly drawn and readily distinguished from the others, which is no small feat when working on a canvas this tiny.  Add black humor, hilarious dialogue and a series of improbable events to the mixture, and you wind up with a real treat.

Young Sukie Chandor is sweet and kind, and nobody at the Carp public house minds that her mother is in an insane asylum and that her grandmother hung for killing five people with an axe.  That is, until Sukie discovers the body of veterinary surgeon Bentley in her yard with a bloody axe nearby.  Sukie doesn’t think she killed him, but she isn’t sure.  All she knows is that she must dispose of the body, and she enlists a few of the regulars at the Carp to help her.  This would be a capitol idea if only the regulars didn’t have a few scores to settle among themselves, thereby spending a great deal of time leaving corpses and clues around to incriminate each other.  Before long, Sukie is raiding the housekeeping money to pay blackmail and Hugh is busy applying the principles of “Criminal Law in a Nutshell” to the situation.  In desperation, Sukie calls Uncle George, a well-dressed strangler with a taste for the good life, to help her dispose of the bodies.  All sorts of mayhem ensues.

This is a rich, frothy confection of a book.  If you like your vintage mysteries straightforward, stay away from this one.  But if you like the madcap, the whimsical and the frivolous, then this will be your cup of tea.  Fans of Edmund Crispin would enjoy Branch’s work.

Pamela Branch is an entry in my “Persons of Interest” category over at Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge.  I'll see if I can sum up Branch in a few phrases:  Born in Ceylon. Urdu speaker.  Horse trainer.  Painter.  World Traveler.  Lived in a tent in the Himalayas and on a houseboat in Kashmir.   Attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.  Hunted with hawks and guns.  At least, this is what she claimed.  After reading Lion in the Cellar, I can see her gleefully indulging in some serious leg-pulling.  I hope it's all true, though we'll never know.  Visit the Rue Morgue Press site here for a more complete bio (from which I extracted the preceding).  I also located a blog post from Caustic Cover Critic which shows covers of her other novels and allows you to read a page from Lion in the Cellar.    

2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge

My reading is all over the place.  One month I'm hooked on detective novels and the next I'm devouring Russian history.  I could never join a book group because I like to read what I want to read, when I want to read it.  The exception for me was Bev's 2011 Vintage Mystery Challenge.  I signed up to read 16 books, and tried to choose authors I hadn't read in a while or had never tried.  I had so much fun that I'm ready for Bev's Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2012.  I'm doing two levels this year:  Golden Age Girls and something in the Murderous Miscellany category I'm calling "Persons of Interest."  These are authors who led very interesting lives.  We'll meet masters of real-life espionage, former POW's, dancers, and a woman who fled Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution.  This one will be fun.  Here's the list.

Golden Age Girls:

The Lighthearted Quest - Ann Bridge (1956)

The Shape of a Stain - E.X. Ferrars (1942)

The Bells of Old Bailey - Dorothy Bowers (1947)

Who Killed the Curate? - Joan Coggin (1944)

The Black Smith - Constance & Gwyneth Little (1950)

Green December Grows the Graveyard - Maureen Sarsfield (1945)

Home Sweet Homicide - Craig Rice (1944)

Murder on the Purple Water - Frances Crane (1947)

Persons of Interest (Murderous Miscellany):

Lion in the Cellar - Pamela Branch (1951)

An Oxford Tragedy - J.C. Masterman (1931)

Corpse des Ballet - Lucy Cores (1944)

Death in the Quadrangle - Eilis Dillon (1956)

Murder Makes Me Nervous - Margaret Scherf (1948)

She Shall Have Murder - Delano Ames (1948)

The Widening Stain - Morris Bishop (1942)

Be Shot for Sixpence - Michael Gilbert

The Vesper Service Murders - Van Wyck Mason (1931)