In between the end of his historical Sgt. Cribb series and the beginning of his contemporary Peter Diamond series, Peter Lovesey experimented with a variety of non-series novels, a couple of which I’ve looked at. One of those books was Bertie and the Tin Man, a book starring Bertie, Prince of Wales and the future King Edward VII. I was interested, but the reviews I read indicated that this was more of a thriller than a straight mystery. But Lovesey’s second Bertie book, Bertie and the Seven Bodies, looked more promising. I read the Soho Press omnibus edition containing all three of the Bertie books with an introduction from Lovesey. In it, he says that the book was meant for the centenary of Christie’s birth, further whetting my appetite. Lovesey might not be a patch on the Queen of Crime, but perhaps this tribute would be worthwhile.
The book opens with Bertie getting an invitation to a shooting party at Desborough, the estate of one Ameila Drummond. Bertie wants to go for the shooting and for the widow, though his wife Alexandra (“Alix”) intends to accompany him to prevent any funny business. Also at the party are the hostess’s brother, Marcus Pelham, the charitable and giving Sir George Holdfast and his wife, Moria, a shy and stuttering poet (but an excellent shot) Wilfred Osgot-Edge, Jerry Gribble, His Grace the Duke of Bournemouth, commoner Claude Bullivant, and Jerry’s latest fling, actress Queenie Chimes. There are also other assorted guests, such as the famed explorer Isabella Dundas and other members of the household. All in all, it promises to be an exciting party, with shootings and parlor games and even a ghost story.
And then Miss Chimes faceplants into her dessert. She is dead by morning. A natural, if shocking death. Bertie isn’t concerned. Then during Tuesday’s hunt, Jerry is found dead of a gunshot to the head. Clearly, Bertie thinks, a grief-stricken suicide. He and the other discoverers endeavor to cover the whole thing up. Then on Wednesday, during a game of Sardines, another guest is found stabbed and shoved into the dumbwaiter.
At this point, Bertie starts to suspect that there’s a murderer afoot.
Guiding his conclusions are the pieces of paper left by the bodies, each labeled with the day of the week. It seems inexplicable until Alix notes that the days are a reference to the poem, “Monday’s Child”:
“Monday’s child is fair of face,
“Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
“Wednesday’s child is full of woe…” And so on and so forth, only the killer is replacing “child” with “corpse.”
To grant Bertie his due credit, once the magnitude of what’s going on sinks in, he takes, if not competent, certainly decisive action, taking control of the investigation with the help of Inspector Sweeney (who’s really his bodyguard). Lovesey strikes a good balance between Bertie’s inflated ego and incompetence versus his role as a detective. His dumb decisions are usually justified in the moment, and his more boneheaded or amorous actions are quickly called out by either his own narration or other characters. But as the Crown Prince, he has the ability to throw his weight around and gain information from the other suspects, no matter how much they dislike him personally. Lovesey keeps the story moving at a good pace, and there’s plenty of wit and amusement to be found.
The mystery is pretty solid too. While there aren’t much in the way of clues per se—and the key clue is an offhanded comment that I’m sure most readers will miss—you can make a genuine guess at who the killer is if you really think about what’s going on. Lovesey provides some nice false solutions along the way, one of which I dare say will be most readers’ first guess at what’s going on. I do wish the rhyme had been better implemented. Early on, Lovesey does a good job at playing with the ambiguity with some of the lines to misdirect the reader about who will be next, but in the end some of the connections are very tenuous, and the killer’s motive for working the rhyme in gets handwaved. But I liked the motive for the murders, which casts a more somber light on some of the preceding events and gives the ending a darker hue when you realize what Bertie has done.
But I can honestly say that I liked this book. I was getting skeptical of Lovesey as a mystery writer (he’s a very good writer in general), but this revived my faith some. Not a stone-cold classic of the genre, but a fun read that tries to give the reader a legitimate mystery. I’m tempted to give Bertie and the Crime of Passion a shot based on the strength of this, but we will see. Recommended
Other Reviews: Mystery*File, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Mysteries Ahoy!
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