REVIEW: Murder Underground
May. 13th, 2018 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMurder Underground: Mavis Doriel Hay The British Library 2014
This prequel to Death on the Cherwell is a bit disappointing. The murder is indeed committed on the Underground, but much of the action takes place in the deceased’s Hampstead boarding house, which is a much less inherently interesting setting than a ladies’ college at Oxford University was. There’s also a lot of discussion about people’s movements and travels.
The remarkably named Euphemia Pongleton wasn’t a very pleasant woman. When she gets murdered, only family members seem shaken up by her death, and that is because of the way it came about as much as anything. Nearly everyone else who knew her, especially the ‘Frumps’ at the Frampton, can’t stop talking about who might have done it and why.
Most of the chapters could have been titled ‘Basil Does Something Stupid’. Basil Pongleton is the deceased’s nephew and appears in ‘Death on the Cherwell’, where he didn’t strike me as being such an idiot. Even if you hadn’t read the other book, it is obvious he is innocent, but he refuses to tell the whole truth to the police – he has (tenuous) reasons for this, which slowly emerge. Anyway, because of it, he gets into a muddle, so much so that I was wondering if nice, sensible Betty, his girl, really wants to spend her life with him. Beryl and Gerry are a much more sympathetic couple of young lovers, if secondary to the action.
The authoress tries to have satirical fun with the residents of the boarding house, and how they interact with the less educated ‘lower orders’, but this mainly makes them hard to like. One of them is a self-aggrandising author, who writes ‘psychological novels’.
I worked out who had done it very early on for me, so the red herrings and misdirections didn’t work, when they generally do in murder mysteries. I like the look of the cover art of this The British Library republication, there’s an introduction that I would suggest avoiding until after you’ve read the story – although I can’t recommend the story, even though there is a map and a family tree.
This prequel to Death on the Cherwell is a bit disappointing. The murder is indeed committed on the Underground, but much of the action takes place in the deceased’s Hampstead boarding house, which is a much less inherently interesting setting than a ladies’ college at Oxford University was. There’s also a lot of discussion about people’s movements and travels.
The remarkably named Euphemia Pongleton wasn’t a very pleasant woman. When she gets murdered, only family members seem shaken up by her death, and that is because of the way it came about as much as anything. Nearly everyone else who knew her, especially the ‘Frumps’ at the Frampton, can’t stop talking about who might have done it and why.
Most of the chapters could have been titled ‘Basil Does Something Stupid’. Basil Pongleton is the deceased’s nephew and appears in ‘Death on the Cherwell’, where he didn’t strike me as being such an idiot. Even if you hadn’t read the other book, it is obvious he is innocent, but he refuses to tell the whole truth to the police – he has (tenuous) reasons for this, which slowly emerge. Anyway, because of it, he gets into a muddle, so much so that I was wondering if nice, sensible Betty, his girl, really wants to spend her life with him. Beryl and Gerry are a much more sympathetic couple of young lovers, if secondary to the action.
The authoress tries to have satirical fun with the residents of the boarding house, and how they interact with the less educated ‘lower orders’, but this mainly makes them hard to like. One of them is a self-aggrandising author, who writes ‘psychological novels’.
I worked out who had done it very early on for me, so the red herrings and misdirections didn’t work, when they generally do in murder mysteries. I like the look of the cover art of this The British Library republication, there’s an introduction that I would suggest avoiding until after you’ve read the story – although I can’t recommend the story, even though there is a map and a family tree.
