Complicated but fun!
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
Jilted on the eve of his wedding by Margaret Langton, Charles Moray has spent four years travelling the world, during which time his father has died and Charles has inherited the family home. Now back in England, he turns up unexpected at the house one evening, to find the doors unlocked. Cautiously entering, he hears strange voices and hides in a place where he can spy on the people who seem to be having a strange meeting. He is shocked to see a man in a grey rubber mask, apparently giving out mysterious orders to a stream of underlings who are called in to see him, referred to only as numbers instead of names. Charles is even more shocked when he recognises No. 26 as his lost love, Margaret Langton. Meantime, we meet young Margot Standing, freshly returned from school in Switzerland on the death of her extremely rich father. Margot is expected to be the heiress, but her father appears to have left no will, and questions are being asked as to Margot’s legitimacy. And then Margot goes missing…
I laughed at the complexity of the real blurb for this book when I read it, but now having tried to write my own little blurb I realise it’s not easy to summarise! The plot of the book is complicated in the extreme, but Wentworth handles it beautifully so that the reader is never left feeling lost. Despite this being billed as the first Miss Silver book, Charles is the real lead character, and he and his little group of friends are great fun to spend time with. Those friends soon include Margaret, though the question of why she is No. 26 in Grey Mask’s gang is left unanswered until late on in the book. It’s obvious that Charles and Margaret are the main love interest, if only Charles can work out what’s going on and save Margaret from whatever she’s become involved in. But there’s a secondary romance between dizzy but delightful young Margot Standing and Charles’ silly-ass friend Archie – I felt their romance would have fitted well in either Wodehouse or Heyer!
Miss Silver has a small but important role. Because Charles is worried about Margaret’s involvement in whatever’s going on, he doesn’t want to go to the police, so he approaches Miss Silver on the advice of a friend. She is a professional private investigator, though an unlikely one, who knits babies’ bootees while conducting meetings. In this one, she’s a bit too miraculous and all-knowing, with no real insight into how she achieves her amazing results. There are also some derivative elements in the book, such as Grey Mask being a kind of take on Moriarty – the centre of a spider’s web of criminality where no one knows the names of the people above them in the organisation. However, it’s done well enough for the derivation not to be too off-putting, and there’s plenty of originality in other aspects to off-set it.
Forget credibility! The story becomes more ridiculous as it goes along, but fortunately the four central characters have become so much fun by then that I didn’t really care. It makes sense in that there are no gaping holes or loose ends, but that doesn’t mean it’s in any way believable. I had a good idea as to who Grey Mask might be from fairly early on, mainly because the hiding of his identity was a little clumsy – for a start we know from the beginning that he’s a man which immediately eliminates at least half of the characters. The underlying motive of the gang becomes clear quite soon, and the story is as much about keeping Margot safe while finding a way to bring the criminals to justice without risking Margaret’s involvement becoming known while sorting out the various romances… still with me? As I said, it’s complicated! But it’s also a lot of fun, and I raced through it with a smile on my face – who could ask for anything more?
Book 16 of 80
This was the book chosen for me by the Classic Club Spin Gods, and they picked a winner this time!
