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At the Villa Rose

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 7 months ago

Mason, AEW - At The Villa Rose (1910)

 

Who killed wealthy Madame Dauvray and then robbed her house? What happened to Dauvray's protegee, Celie, who vanished the same night the victim died? Would the young girl have something to do with this filthy crime? These are some of the questions Inspecteur Hanaud has to answer. One of the books that paved the way for Golden Age and modern crime fiction as a whole, At The Villa Rose holds amazingly well. Plot is brilliant, though marred by an “inverted” second part revealing the truth much too soon. Hanaud and his moronic sidekick, Ricardo, are great creations, and probably served as models for Christie's Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings. Also and maybe above all, Mason was a born storyteller and provides some highly suspenseful moments.

 

Xavier Lechard


Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

Mason’s At the Villa Rose appeared in the same year as Chesterton’s monumental Innocence of Father Brown and had as great an effect on the future of the detective story. Indeed, it is – if we except Doyle’s four full-length accounts of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, of which, indeed, only The Valley of Fear (still to come when this was published) is an orthodox detective story of the modern variety – the first proper detective novel. We are presented with the murder of a rich, elderly and rather foolish old woman, with suspicion falling on her companion, who vanished in a motor-car. Insp. Hanaud of the Surêté, assisted by the middle aged dilettante Mr. Ricardo (no doubt a relation of Christie’s Mr. Satterthwaite), sorts through a number of clues, both physical (footprints, tears in the sofa cushions and ominous stains) and psychological (the relations between the principals in the case) and arrests the culprits, the identity of one of whom at least I never considered for an instant. The novel does not end there, however, for the capture of the villains comes only halfway through. In the manner of the times, we are treated to several chapters describing the case, but far more successful than Doyle, for they are not lengthy flashbacks into the past of another country, but the events of the night in question as told by the companion and one of the criminals, with a genuine frisson of evil in the pages leading up to the murder of Mme. Dauvray. An early classic of the genre, which Mason would surpass with The House of the Arrow.


Middle-aged Julius Ricardo is on holiday at Aix-les-Bains. One evening at the casino he notices Celia Harland, beautiful companion to wealthy Madam Camille Dauvray. Rescued from starvation, and probably worse, by her kind-hearted employer, Miss Harland is now romantically involved with rich young Englishman Harry Wethermill. Both men are staying at the Hotel Majestic, and next morning Wethermill bursts into Ricardo's room with the news Madam Dauvray has been murdered at the Villa Rose, her confidante and maid Helene Vauquier bound and chloroformed, and Miss Harland, madam's car, and all her extremely valuable jewelry are gone. Wethermill insists Inspector Hanaud of the Paris Surete, also holidaying in the town, aid the local authorities with their investigation, not least in finding the missing girl, even though he appears to be the only person who believes her innocent of the terrible crime.

 

My verdict: Several undercurrents swirl about the villa and red herrings abound. Was the young woman using her skill as a faux medium to hoodwick her employer and if so, why? How was a vital witness killed in a cab which did not stop in its journey between station and hotel? What can be deduced from a pair of cushions? The identity of the murderer is well concealed. There are clews for readers to spot as they go along, but I missed most of them!

 

E-text

 

Mary R

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