The Saltmarsh Murders (1932)
My review:
Lantern slide map of Saltmarsh village.
Mitchell's fourth book is one of her best—it has all her virtues (humour, imagination, ingenuity, controlled complications, and style), and none of her faults. The village setting is impressive—Saltmarsh is a loud, unruly village, filled with pornography smugglers, adultery, incest, prudishness and several interesting forms of lunacy—as the vicaress remarks, "The village will get itself a name like Sodom and Gomorrah if things are allowed to go on unchecked." The emphasis of the book is on sex, and only the twice-married Mrs. Bradley's interventions can end the perversions. The plot itself is excellent, involving the strangulations of an unmarried mother and a masochistic actress, and possible infanticide. The solution is equally brilliant—a least-likely person, a clever piece of psychological manipulation, and a clever hiding-place for a dead body. The characters are first-class—all are eccentrics, especially the three old women: Mrs. Bradley the detective, Mrs. Coutts the vicaress, and the batty Mrs. Gatty. The story, narrated by the ingenuous curate Noel Wells, has its own charm—Wells is even less intelligent than Christie's Captain Hastings, yet this, surprisingly, is all to the good. The book has been hailed as a classic several times—most noticeably by Nicholas Blake and Patricia Craig—and no wonder, for the book is a sheer delight.