Bonett, John and Emery - Old Mrs Camelot (1944)

Credited as a solo production by Emery Bonett, and dedicated 'To John', Old Mrs Camelot is a fairly typical specimen of the Genus Romantic, though with a little more attention given to clueing than is normal in productions of this genre. Chapter headings are quotations from English literature, and the story centres around how the main character gets her man, although the question of why anyone would want such a petulant and feeble specimen is left unresolved.

Robina Adams is an art student who falls hopelessly in love with the tutor Alistair Johnson; but since he is shy, and she is bashful, and this is England in the 1930s, neither of them do anything about it until cruel fate tears them apart, and it takes the onset of World War II to bring them together again. Robina follows Alistair to the small town of Croome, where he is working in a camouflage painting unit, and finds accommodation in the house of Mrs Camelot, an elderly upright spinster with Breeding. There is a good deal about Mrs Camelot, and a good deal more about Croome society, and a good deal too much about Robina's remote and burning passion for Alistair, but eventually the author is recalled to her duties and Mrs Camelot makes her exit due to gas inhalation on page 131, leaving slightly more than half the book for the investigation.

As we all know, there is nothing like a good murder to smooth the path of young love. Robina is suspected, Alistair rushes to her aid, and together they blunder about after red herrings until the correct conclusion becomes too obvious for them to avoid. I suppose this could be classified as a war novel, although the war, like the police, plays only the most peripheral of roles. The book is quite readable, and there are a few fair early clues, although most of the others are planted in a heavy-handed rush as the denouement approaches. The characters are well, if lightly, drawn, but there is really nothing to distinguish this book from all its similarly-plotted sisters, including the wish-fulfilment that turns arty plain Robina into an heiress and the idol of Croome's male population. It evidently required John Bonett's participation to help Emery produce books that were more than run-of-the-mill.

Jon.