Appointment With Agatha discussion

The April side read.

I plan to read this if i can finish my other books!

This is a reread for me, but I remember liking it the first time around, so I'm also planning on reading it.

Hope to read it later in the month.

This book and author will be firsts for me - I'm excited to see what I think!

The Key was available from my online library, so I squeezed it in at the end of March.
It’s my first Wentworth and I adored it!

Goodness, I nearly missed this. So, we're on to Wentworth, eh?

I'm sure I have this one, so will join in the read. It's a first read for me. But not a first meeting with Miss Silver.

I'm looking forward to reading this one.

I've started this tonight and I am liking it so far. But I cannot help a certain similarity to this month's Agatha read.

BrokenTune wrote: "I've started this tonight and I am liking it so far. But I cannot help a certain similarity to this month's Agatha read."

True, but not nearly as outrageous! :)

Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large) wrote: "BrokenTune wrote: "I've started this tonight and I am liking it so far. But I cannot help a certain similarity to this month's Agatha read."

True, but not nearly as outrageous! :)"

I'm glad to hear it!

BrokenTune wrote: "Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large) wrote: "BrokenTune wrote: "I've started this tonight and I am liking it so far. But I cannot help a certain similarity to this month's Agatha read."

True, but not ..."

Also, the scientist's motivations are rather different ... (almost the exact opposite, in fact).

I just started this today and am enjoying it

This is a reread for me. I'm at 27% and I'm remembering why I so enjoy reading Patricia Wentworth. I find her books highly comforting.

Also started today. :)

Christine PNW wrote: "This is a reread for me. I'm at 27% and I'm remembering why I so enjoy reading Patricia Wentworth. I find her books highly comforting."

They're the perfect literary comfort food.

I’m reading from an old paperback with one of those wonderful noir type covers

I'm 20% through this, the first seven chapters, and I'm impressed. The writing is so much better than in 'The Case Is Closed' which is the only other Wentworth/Miss Silver book I've read. It seems that seven years at a novel a year made a great impact.

Wentworth has a talent for description that enables her to capture the spirit of a place and the character of a person in very few words.

I loved the initial description of the street that Harsch was on:

"Of the two roads, one runs as straight as a ruled line, set with pompous examples of Victorian shop architecture. The other comes sidling in on a crooked curve and shows an odd medley of houses, shops, offices, with a church and a filling-station to break the line. Some of the houses were there when the Armada broke. Some of them have put on new pretentious fronts. Some of them are no better than they should be from a cheap builder’s estimate. Taken as a whole, Ramford Street has a certain charm and individuality which the High Street lacks."

I felt that I'd seen that street. There's one like in many English cities even today.

The village is so authentic, I feel it could have been set in one of the Somerset villages near me: Newton Stl Loe or Farrington Gurney. It's more than a good description of the village of the kind Christie might give, which always seemed to me to 'a map to help you solve the puzzle'. This gets the feel of living in a village for generations so that each location is overlaid with memories.

Garth is a good narrator and I love Miss Sophy. Miss Meade shows promise but it's too early to say.

Mike wrote: "I'm 20% through this, the first seven chapters, and I'm impressed. The writing is so much better than in 'The Case Is Closed' which is the only other Wentworth/Miss Silver book I've read. It seems ..."

I agree that she improves dramatically over the first three Miss Silver mysteries. The first, Grey Mask, is (in my opinion) fairly abominable. I'm surprised I went on to read more given how much I disliked it. An old BL friend (Tigus) recommended that I try out Latter End, which was really good, so I decided to give her a more thorough go and have ended up really enjoying her books. I like The Case is Closed, but maybe only in comparison to Grey Mask?

Christine PNW wrote: "Mike wrote: "I'm 20% through this, the first seven chapters, and I'm impressed. The writing is so much better than in 'The Case Is Closed' which is the only other Wentworth/Miss Silver book I've re..."

I didn’t enjoy The Gray Mask either.

Deborah wrote: "I didn’t enjoy The Gray Mask either."

It's hard because a lot of people insist on reading series in order - and with more modern series, this makes sense because often there is an overarching narrative that is lost by reading out of order - but no one should even read Grey Mask, in my opinion. It's just terrible, and is a bad introduction to Miss Silver. When I'm recommending the books to people, I always tell them emphatically not to start with that one!

Agree that this often pushes people off from a series when the first book isn´t good.

I´m 50% through and a bit disappointed that Miss Silver appears so late. Like the story and characters so far though.

Christine PNW wrote: "Deborah wrote: "I didn’t enjoy The Gray Mask either."

It's hard because a lot of people insist on reading series in order - and with more modern series, this makes sense because often there is an ..."

Patricia Wentworth was a romance writer before she started to write mysteries.

Grey Mask is a book by a romance writer trying her hand at mysteries, and clinging to *every single* romance cliché of her age in an attempt to make the story hold together (while also bringing in every single mystery cliché of the time for good measure).

The following four -- but especially the following two -- books of the Miss Silver series are essentially written in the same vein, though Miss Silver has more of a presence and the clichés are no longer *quite* as dominant.

The Key, by contrast, is a book by a mystery writer who has found her footing in the genre and who just likes to include a romance angle in her mysteries. The romance element is still fairly stereotypical, but the overall plotting, characters, and atmosphere are much more solid than in the first book. Wentworth just wouldn't have been able to write The Key at the time when she delivered herself of Grey Mask.

Michaela wrote: "Agree that this often pushes people off from a series when the first book isn´t good.

I´m 50% through and a bit disappointed that Miss Silver appears so late. Like the story and characters so far ..."

That's not untypical for the series, though -- she rarely appears earlier than before the end of the first 1/3, and it's not unusual for her to only show up in the second half of the book. Wentworth almost always makes sure to establish that particular book's setting, conflict, and non-recurring characters in depth first.

Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large) wrote: "Christine PNW wrote: "Deborah wrote: "I didn’t enjoy The Gray Mask either."

It's hard because a lot of people insist on reading series in order - and with more modern series, this makes sense beca..."

That explains a lot. The writing in The Key seems very confident and the pacing works well.

Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large) wrote: "Michaela wrote: "Agree that this often pushes people off from a series when the first book isn´t good.

I´m 50% through and a bit disappointed that Miss Silver appears so late. Like the story and c..."


I wonder if they were called Miss Silver Mysteries when they first came out.

I quite often prefer the Poirot books where he makes a late appearnance-

I love Miss Sophy's slap down style. When Miss Doncaster is slagging off Mrs Motram we get this exchange, starting with Miss Sophy:


And do you know, I like Mrs Mottram. She is always so pleasant.’

Miss Doncaster snorted. ‘She hasn’t the brain of a hen!’

‘Perhaps not – but there are such a lot of clever people, and so few pleasant ones.’

Now that's a put-down to savour.

Michaela wrote: "Agree that this often pushes people off from a series when the first book isn´t good.

I´m 50% through and a bit disappointed that Miss Silver appears so late. Like the story and characters so far ..."

I’m about a third and am still waiting for her appearance

Mike wrote: "I wonder if they were called Miss Silver Mysteries when they first came out."

Why shouldn't they? She *is* the recurring character for whose detective work (and idiosyncracies) people were reading the books.

I had a look at Dorothy L. Sayers's crime fiction reviews (Taking Detective Stories Seriously: The Collected Crime Reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers), and while she doesn't seem to have reviewed a single book by Wentworth, in other cases (e.g., Gladys Mitchell) she more or less takes it for granted that her readers know that this is a book from a series (Mrs. Bradley), and she immediately proceeds to review the book as such, and to look at how Mitchell handles the book series's overall premise (psychoanalytically-based deduction) in this particular installment.

I am an occasional romance reader and one of the things that I like about the Miss Silver books is the romance subplots. Christie does a bit of the same thing with the matchmaking Papa Poirot, but I think that Wentworth actually does it better.

The one thing that readers will pick up on very quickly in the case of both writers, though, is that the romance subplots very definitely takes certain suspects out of the running for the position of murderer (although, as we will find in at least one of Christie's books (view spoiler)[Taken at the Flood (hide spoiler)], she turns THAT idea on it's head, too. In a way that is worthy of a barf emoji.

I've read a few chapters and have figured out who the "romantic leads" are, and at least one villain.

I have started this one; it's my first 'Miss Silver' mystery, but I have read several of Wentworth's earlier books that Dean Street Press have republished.

Christine PNW wrote: "The one thing that readers will pick up on very quickly in the case of both writers, though, is that the romance subplots very definitely takes certain suspects out of the running for the position of murderer (although, as we will find in at least one of Christie's books (view spoiler), she turns THAT idea on it's head, too. In a way that is worthy of a barf emoji."

Re: The book mentioned in your spoiler: Yes, so very true about the emoji. I think (view spoiler)[ Christie wants the reader to be suspicious about the alleged "love interest", though, because the heroine is very rightly suspicious about him, too.

The one book where I think the guilt / innocence thing is handled much more ambiguously is Sad Cypress -- Christie's actual book, that is, not the TV adaptation, which by altering the timeline of the narration basically does away with the tension revolving around this particular question from the first second. (hide spoiler)]

And I agree that Wentworth generally handles romance better than Christie -- with the possible exception of Christie's Sad Cypress -- and yes, in Wentworth's and unfortunately also in Ngaio Marsh's books, too, once you've figured out the lovers you can generally not only determine who most certainly *didn't* do it but also how, from a storytelling POV, things need to pan out in the end ... which more often than not is at least an indirect clue as to the murderer as well.