A quick glance down the left hand column of Random will illustrate most clearly that I have been reading the Miss Silver books of Patricia Wentworth. I discovered these last year at a book sale when I found a couple of the new editions lurking in a corner and thought I would give them a go as I love detective novels, particularly those set in the 1930s and 1940s. I also noted that there were 34 books featuring this character so that if I liked them I would be ok for a while.
Well I did like them and have now read the lot, but I see that the author has written another 34 books, outside of the Miss Silver canon so they will be worth keeping an eye our for as well. The first book featuring this ex-governess turned private detective was published in 1928, The Grey Mask and the final story, The Girl in the Cellar in 1961, the year of Patricia Wentworth's death. It is a shame that the last in the series was so poor and very loosely plotted and even when I read the last page I had no idea of what or why or how. However, the author was 83 when she died and this should be borne in mind by me when judging and I well remember Agatha Christie's later books being incredibly rambling and disjointed. Old age catches up with us all (as I am now beginning to discover), but am grateful that PD James is still writing such elegant prose in her Dalgleish books in her 80's. Long may she continue.
Anyway, back to Miss Silver who really is a simply delightful character. She is timeless and changeless. She has to be as the books are written over a 33 year period and as she is obviously in her 60s when the books start she must be close to 90 near the end. I remember Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh being interviewed about their two detectives, Poirot and Alleyn and Dame A working out that Hercule P with his little grey cells must have been over 100 by the time she finished with him with Alleyn not far behind. Still suspension of disbelief is all.
There is always a description of Miss Silver in each book and it is always the same which is most reassuring to us, the reader, and to whomever consults her:
"With her neat curled fringe, her dated dress - olive green cashmere - the bog oak brooch in the shape of a rose with a pearl at its heart, the black thread stockings and the glace shoes, too small for the modern foot, she might have stepped out of any old fashioned photograph album"
She also manages to express displeasure or disapproval in the most subtle way:
"Mrs Smith said with energy 'I wouldn't want it to go about that I'd been seeing a detective'. There seemed suddenly to be a considerable distance between herself and Miss Silver. Without word or movement, this small governessy looking person seemed to have receded.....the astonishing thing is that Mrs Smith discovered that she didn't want her to go. Before she knew what she was going to do she found that she way saying 'Oh well of course, I know that anything I tell you would be in confidence and perfectly safe"
Miss Silver is hugely admired by Detective Inspector Frank Abbot who calls her his revered preceptress, also by Randall March, the Chief Constable of Ledbury, who she taught as a young boy and while Chief Inspector Lamb is not so keen, even he admits:
"The fact is people don't like talking to the police. This is where Miss Silver comes in. The only thing that stops people talking is being afraid. Well, no one's afraid of Miss Silver....sits there with her knitting and makes herself pleasant and mind you it isn't put on either... she likes people and takes an interest in them and they fairly tumble over themselves to tell her things"
These are hugely enjoyable detective stories. They do fall into a pattern and the drawback of reading them all one after the other is that this is noticeable. The young lovers are always totally innocent. If a couple fall in love you can knock them off the list of suspects straight away (mark you the same can be said of Ngaio Marsh - a handsome young man and a pretty young woman attracted to each other are incapable of murder it seems; Agatha Christie does not always fall into this trap. I can think of some of her titles where the romantic involvement does not mean they are innocent); there is always a second murder and, again, it is usually the death of somebody who has witnessed or who knows something about the first killing and tries a spot of blackmail instead of telling the police. Inevitably, they end up as a corpse. This ploy is used in nearly every single one of Patricia Wentworth's books and is the one aspect of them that I can criticise as it became pretty predictable after a while. but, as I said this is probably because I did my usual binge read, if I had spaced them out a bit I would not have noticed it so much.
You cannot read these books without thinking of Miss Marple with whom of course Miss Silver has great similarity. Both unmarried, elderly ladies, both very sharp and wise, both have a way with maids and what is designated as 'the lower classes' in the books featuring these two Misses, both with nieces and nephews and both happy to sit in a corner and knit, but between each plain and purl stitch they are watching and weighing evidence. It is a pity that Miss Marple has rather cornered the market in the TV and film stakes; Miss Silver seems to be largely unheard of nowadays, I certainly knew nothing of her until my discovery at a book sale last year, and it is highly unlikely that any TV studio would make a series as the similarity to Miss Marple is too marked.
A shame as Miss Silver got there first. The Grey Mask was published in 1928 and Miss Marple made her first appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. I wonder if Dame Agatha was influenced by a reading of a Patricia Wentworth story? Makes you wonder.
