Daly, Elizabeth - Evidence of Things Seen (1943)

Clara Gamadge is staying with her maid Maggie in an upstate cottage while Henry is away on war work. Things start slowly: a solitary figure in an old poke bonnet and dress is seen hanging around nearby; the door to the attic is monkeyed around with. Clara learns that her acerbic neighbour, Miss Radford, is actually a rich landowner, and that her sister, Mrs Hickson, died in that same cottage. Then there is an accident - or is it? - and Miss Radford ends up with a broken ankle on the spare bed in Clara's cottage. The figure in the bonnet makes another appearance, Miss Radford is killed, and Gamadge returns to find his wife suspected of murder. With the aid of a shrewd sheriff, he triggers a flurry of activity that ends in the murderer's death.

As with Daly's other books, it is the writing that makes Evidence of Things Seen entertaining. The plot this time is simply nonsense: no rational murderer would dress up as an emaciated corpse and expect to fool an observer ten feet away; and the idea that ghostly visitations could distract the police from making a proper investigation was hackneyed long before 1943, and never very plausible to begin with. The murderer's scheme is reasonably clever, if we accept that everyone else will do exactly what they are supposed to, but I don't advise anyone to try it in real life. The atmosphere in the early chapters nearly redeems the book, but as a Daly this is well below average.

Jon.

American mystery at its most British. With a few tweaks here and there the setting of this novel could be sucessfully shifted to the mother country. Clara Gamadge encounters a murdering ghost in a country cottage -- or does she? Hubby Henry Gamadge, released from mysterious war work, arrives to save the day.

The opening and middle portions of this novel are pleasingly suggestive of the great classical ghost story writer MR James, though I couldn't believe the ultimate rationale for the ghostly deception (this is not The Burning Court!). Later it becomes rather too obvious who the culprit is and the novel thereby loses some of its interest. Because you can see the gears working, EOTS not in the league of Christie of the same era or the best of the other Crime Queens, but it is certainly similar in its genteel, literate milieu and tone; so it should please Crime Queen fans.

Curt