The body of
a young parlour-maid is found buried in the grounds of the grand house Miss
Dalrymple just happens to be visiting to write an article about for her
magazine, and she gets involved in the investigation when it becomes obvious to
her that the local police are far too obtuse and incompetent to identify the real
killer.
This style
of this novel is reminiscent of the Jeeves and Wooster series, which I grew up
watching and still adore. I found it difficult to get on board with Wodehouse’s
prose, but maybe I was just a bit too young for it. The light-hearted tone and
quaint idioms used are amusing, and outdated social prejudices
abound, although not in the heroine, who is suitably modern and open-minded.
As this is the
second novel in the series, I felt a little excluded when familiar characters
from the previous novel were introduced, although they were always briefly
explained rather than just shoved in without any background. The narrative voice
has an odd habit of jumping around between characters unexpectedly, in the
middle of a scene rather than between sections, and this as well as the
exaggerated period language made it difficult for me to really immerse myself
in the story.
That said, the
characters are all easy to picture and for the most part very likeable, and the
Parslow family in particular, who own the house where the body is found, are all
wonderfully vivid. Some careless editing means that the occasional punctuation
mark is absent, which I personally find very annoying but I know it probably
wouldn’t bother most others as much. All in all, The
Winter Garden Mystery is a charming light read, and the mystery keeps you
guessing right until the end.
Next up: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
