A Fête Worse Than Death (2007) by Dolores Gordon-Smith

As has become clear by now, I really enjoy the works of Dolores Gordon-Smith. Her books make a genuine effort to emulate the Golden Age novels of yore, and even when she falls short, she still gives a charmingly written and dense mystery to chew on. I decided to go back to the beginning of her Jack Haldean series to enjoy it in full.

A Fête Worse Than Death opens at the village fête, run by Jack’s aunt, Alice. He’s enjoying the festivities, aside from the heat, but runs into a fly in the ointment: Jeremy Boscome, a former fellow officer. Boscome was only in the Royal Air Force to escape the front lines of World War I and was a notorious nuisance. A reputation he lives up to here, getting drunk, making insinuations, and being a pest, before crashing in the fortune teller’s tent to sleep it off. He’s seemingly left alone in there, but when someone peeks in, they find that he’s been shot in the head.

This murder is soon followed up by one of Boscome’s compatriots catching a bullet to the head in his hotel room. Luckly for Jack, the investigator in charge, Superintendent Edward Ashley, has heard about his previous work in crime solving and is willing to let him assist. Boscome was a vulture who had a nasty habit of prodding people’s emotional weaknesses, and Jack suspects he was making money off of blackmail. But against who? The truth lies in Boscome’s memoirs, where he recounts how a traitorous officer led good men into a German ambush in the tunnels under the battlefield…

Gordon-Smith does a good job here. There’s plenty of mystery and intrigue. There’s a love triangle of sorts. Marguerite Vayle has fallen for a war hero with movie star looks, Colonel Whitfield, but one of her trustees, Hugh Larwrence, opposes the marriage on the grounds that the colonel comes off as a gold-digger. There’s also shady parentage, more murders, the works. She evens hints at an impossible crime with Boscome’s death. It seems, if not impossible, certainly very unlikely that anyone could have slipped into the tent and shot him without being seen or heard. She doesn’t make much of this (although the clue that explains it is what breaks the case for Haldean), but I wanted to make a note of it. I predicted some of the plot twists in advance, but I can see someone less familiar with her work not reaching the same conclusions I did. The mystery isn’t as complex as her later ones, but there’s still plenty of theorizing for characters and reader alike to chew on.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the cluing is, again, a little weak. Haldean points out multiple little indications during his explanation at the end, and fair enough. While reading the explanation, I was impressed at how easily Gordon-Smith slotted the killer’s actions into earlier parts of the book. But those elements really only point to the killer after you know who they are. You can’t look at them and deduce who the killer is from them. I also think that there needed to be one or two more suspects for the reader to, er, suspect. Now, part of this is just the fact that I’ve read enough of Gordon-Smith to get a feel for how she constructs her stories, but the killer stood out to me here. She does a good job of spreading suspicion around, but I think another potential killer would have served her well.

All in all, while this isn’t my favorite of Gordon-Smith’s novels, it is still a good read. Remember that this was her first book and that she would get much better. You could certainly do worse than starting here if you’re prowling around looking for a new author. Recommended for anyone looking for good historical mysteries. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Invisible Event, My Reader's Block.