Noonday and Night
(1977)
1977 Michael Joseph:
Called upon to probe the
mysterious
disappearance of two touring motor-coach drivers, Dame Beatrice
Lestrange Bradley
uncovers a racket which involves stolen antiques, smuggling and murder.
Later, a third driver is
missing, but reappears
to tell a tale which Dame Beatrice suspects is only partly true. The story moves from a stately home in
Derbyshire
to a Cathedral town in West Wales and finishes in a loch-side hamlet not far from Fort William. One slender clue leads to
another until the drama
is played out and the murderer named.
Coach-party addicts may be able
to
recognise the various locations and those who contemplate their first
coach
tour may be reassured by the fact that, according to the story, only
the
driver-couriers get murdered, never the passengers.
My review:
Coach tours have been used by
Miss Mitchell
before, in The Devil’s Elbow (1951), and
so has antique smuggling, notably in The
Dancing Druids (1948), both more than a quarter of a century before
this
tale. When the coach-drivers, Noone and
Daigh, disappear in Wales and Derbyshire, Dame Beatrice is asked to investigate,
and, Laura
Gavin in tow, begins an odyssey which culminates in the discovery of
something
nasty on the gate-house roof, a rather improbable hiding-place. Despite the busyness of travelling, the book
is rather leisurely in pace, with two many interviews with possible
witnesses,
although the second half, which contains both Laura’s adventures in
Scotland and
the burglary with murderous intent of the Stone Cottage, is quite
entertaining. The characters, however,
are flat, and, due to the small number of suspects (two), the
murderer’s
identity is obvious from the beginning (although his character is not
at all) –
thankfully, the villain is a central character, a relief from the
arbitrariness
of many late Gladys Mitchell novels, with two excellent clues, one
about
Commandos, the other about the coach-drivers’ moving the bus. The solution, however, is extremely muddled
and
rather illogical.
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