The Bad Quarto

Imogen Quy #4

by Jill Paton Walsh

Another foolhardy Cambridge college-climber has died attempting Harding's Folly. This time it's John Talentire, one of the brightest young dons at St Agatha's, and the verdict is accident, compounded by idiocy.

But Imogen Quy - her name rhymes with 'why' - can't help wondering how such a clever young man died so stupidly.

And when a wildly eccentric production of Hamlet is interrupted by a murder accusation, Imogen has to look into it, uncovering more crime than she expected.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Academia

292 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 22, 2007

About the author

Jill Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss in London on April 29th, 1937. She was educated at St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley, and at St. Anne's College, Oxford. From 1959 to 1962 she taught English at Enfield Girls' Grammar School.

Jill Paton Walsh has won the Book World Festival Award, 1970, for Fireweed; the Whitbread Prize, 1974 (for a Children's novel) for The Emperor's Winding Sheet; The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award 1976 for Unleaving; The Universe Prize, 1984 for A Parcel of Patterns; and the Smarties Grand Prix, 1984, for Gaffer Samson's Luck.

Series:
* Imogen Quy
* Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane

Reviews

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

All Is Well That Ends Well

By the same token, one can say that all that ends irksomely is irksome however well it might have started. And Jill Paton Walsh’s novel The Bad Quarto begins rather well, namely with a dead lecturer by the name of John Talentire, who has apparently plunged into death while foolhardily trying to make a jump from the window of his tower room to the library building across the narrow street. The coroner comes to the conclusion that the man’s death was an accident, due to his safety rope’s not being knotted properly, but Martin Mottle, friend of the deceased believes in murder most foul, and he resolves to expose the murderer with the help of the dumb show in a layman production of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. By the way, I don’t know if you can really enjoy this novel unless you are familiar with the tragedy of the Danish prince.

At the centre of this Cambridge murder case there is once again Imogen Quy, the “friend to all the world”, as her policeman chum calls her, and as usual she smothers her environment in her blanket of utter helpfulness. This time she is not only worried about Martin Mottle, who causes a campus scandal with his unsubstantiated murder accusation against a college professor, but also about the student Susan Inchman, who comes from a dysfunctional family and is admitted to the college via a scholarship. Believe it or not, Imogen is so ready to help wherever help is needed that in one situation she even volunteers to write the minutes of the drama group’s emergency meeting! I have been condemned to sit through a lot of conferences in my life but never ever have I witnessed anybody volunteering to write the minutes. Such a degree of self-sacrifice simply does not exist, not even in a goody-two-shoes like Imogen Quy. Be that as it may, our protagonist gets immersed in the doings of night climbers – young men who tackle Cambridge buildings at night for the fun of risking their lives –, in questions of cot death and the shaken baby syndrome as well as in scholarly debates about Shakespeare, and somewhere in the mix of all these lies the solution to the murder mystery.

There are good passages in this book as when Mottle demonstrates to Imogen that the place in the middle of the alley where the victim’s body hit the ground is ample proof that this death could never have been the result of a knot of the safety rope coming loose, and one can also say that the author leaves hints here and there which will help you to guess who killed John Talentire, and it was also good to see that Walsh is very critical of the kind of postcolonial literary bullshit criticism that reviles any work of literature that has been written by a white man. That’s why she has Imogen summarize John Talentire’s words in a lecture on Shakespeare as follows:

”John Talentire conceded at once that objectivity in the judgments of works of literature was problematic. However, this did not mean that any opinion, however vacuous, ill-informed, prejudiced and inattentive to the text, was as good as any other. In particular a universal relativism should not by any respectable person be made the occasion to base judgement on a priori theoretical systems [!] which dictated, ahead of any encounter with the play, or poem or novel itself what its worth must be – or more often could not be. In this opinion many of the judgements masquerading as being part of ‘theory of literature’ were political, based on class envy, and appealing strongly because they relieved students of the labour-intensive need to read poems, plays and novels, and to read attentively and with an open mind.”

And then, we get direct quotes from the lecture:

”Let us suppose for a moment the man actually has read the plays of Shakespeare, or seen them on the stage. Let us suppose that it is his sincere judgement that they are not particularly good. Now let us consider what qualities are required to have come to this judgement in good faith. Firstly, perhaps primarily, the man must be spectacularly deaf to the beauties of Shakespeare’s language, immune to the appeal of precisely and beautifully articulated meaning. Then, I should think, he would have to be completely uninterested in the varieties of human character, in moral dilemmas of any kind. He must on the other hand be very ready to fall in with fashionable thinking of the present day, especially if it is politically correct and, indeed, largely, political. He must be unresponsive to the usual human emotions, to the famous pity and fear aroused by tragedy, and he is probably hard to make laugh if he finds absolutely nothing to admire in the comedies. […] Now you might innocently suppose, ladies and gentlemen, that contempt for the masses was incompatible with a Marxist outlook on the world; but you would be wrong, at least where academic Marxists are concerned. Safely ensconced in seats of learning in the West, they have long contrived to combine theoretical admiration for the proletariat with elite disdain for the masses. I regret to tell you that I think that one of the things wrong with Shakespeare in the minds of these learned gentlemen is precisely that he is loved by countless ordinary people, and read in almost every language on the face of the globe. What everybody can understand and enjoy, like a production of Twelfth Night, or Macbeth, is clearly inferior to Abdelazar, or The Dutch Lover, which most of us have never heard of.

This is criticism in the guise of priesthood. It has two very undesirable results. It makes impressionable undergraduates imagine they can score by making clever derisive remarks about a very great dramatist; and it makes clever people assume that only those who cannot see what’s good about Shakespeare could admire Aphra Behn, who was actually an interesting and highly innovative writer, well worth the disinterested attention of those of us who can see what’s good about Shakespeare […]

A long quote, I’m sorry to say, but one well worth copying seeing that since the time Walsh penned this novel, wokeism has been festering more and more in the humanities, so much so that they are probably irretrievably lost in the mires of glib and irrational hatred of one’s own western cultural heritage. One good side effect of Talentire’s lecture was that it put Aphra Behn on my reading list.

But why only two stars if there is so much to say for the novel – with the qualification that the protagonist is simply unbearable and that it does have its lengths from time to time? It was the ending which nearly spoiled the entire book for me: Imagine a father who has such a bad conscience because of false decisions and beliefs in his past that he allows the murderer of his son to get off the hook with a lie just because the murderer happens to be one whose childhood was marred through one of the father’s decisions. Is that not a father who tries to lighten his own conscience by condoning in the killing of his son? Or, even viler, a young woman who kills a young man just because his father has wronged her family, and who then is starting to study to become a lawyer – under condition to go into therapy. There are probably different outlooks on what justice actually is, but this pat solution left me with a foul taste in my mouth. And they all lived happily ever after.

Miching mallecho!

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read Jill Paton Walsh's continuations of Dorothy L. Sayers' work, so when I spotted this in the library, I was curious enough to pick it up. It's the most recent in a series, unfortunately, but that doesn't get in the way too much -- though there's a definite woodenness about the central character Imogen, which might or might not have been helped by reading the previous books.

Walsh's choice of detective is an interesting one. Shades of Harriet Vane are made painfully obvious by the references to Gaudy Night, but the position of Imogen specifically is something new to me, and Walsh dodges a lot of the formulae of the classic mystery story. There is something in Imogen Quy's handling of the mystery that harks back to Lord Peter again, though; isn't her demand for Susan to see a psychiatrist just another version of Lord Peter's warnings and gifts of time for murderers to commit suicide? Both take justice into their own hands, believing in their own right to judge.

Altogether, it didn't really pull together into a whole for me. The idea seems quite fresh, and yet the chain of actions doesn't ring true to me.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by this author. I found it wooden and somewhat stilted. It took the first half of the book to get to the alleged crime and mystery. There was one long, tedious passage on recognizing shaken baby syndrome that could have been condensed into a couple of tightly written paragraphs. The saving grace of the book is the ending.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book opens with a tragic accident--at least that's what the inquest determined. There is a place at St. Agatha's College, Cambridge, nicknamed "Harding's Folly--a gap between a window in the tower room of Fountain Court and a pediment on the New Library. Though discouraged by college authorities, it is a tradition among the "Night Climbers" to try and leap the gap. The Night Climbers scale all sorts of buildings--not only in Cambridge--for sport.

The tragedy occurs when John Talentire a brilliant, outspoken research fellow attempts the leap and falls to his death. Imogen Quy, the school nurse and sometime amateur sleuth, is on the spot just after the accident. The inquest is over and the death declared accidental while his friend Martin Mottle is away from college. When Mottle returns and hears what little has been released, he can't believe that Talentire, an expert climber would have died just that way. He manages to get an amateur drama society to put on a production of Hamlet and (unbeknownst to the rest of the players until it actually happens) substitutes his own "play within the play" which dramatizes what he believes happened the night his friend dies. The play may not be the thing wherein he'll catch the conscience of the king, but he does hope that it will expose a murderer. The odd thing is...Talentire's father insists that Mottle drop his investigation. And both Mottle and Miss Quy wonder why....

Paton Walsh does well with the academic setting. And she does superb scenes about the life of the mind and question of scholars escaping from the real world that does tribute to Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night in the most gratifying way. In fact, if she had managed to capture Sayers' spirit this well in any of the Lord Peter continuation novels I would have enjoyed them far more. It seems to me that she is far too aware that she's writing someone else's characters and it spoils the effect in the LPW stories. But--when she is writing her own stories with her own characters she excels at capturing the academic atmosphere.

I wish the mystery had been stronger. Previous Imogen Quy novels have featured Imogen's detective skills in a much better light. Here her investigations just aren't as interesting or inspired. Mottle really does the work of exposing the culprit and then the ending really isn't satisfying, at least not in the way the culprit is revealed and justice is meted out. ★★★ --primarily for the academic setting and atmosphere.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.

[Barbm1020 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jill Paton Walsh has done some fine storytelling in the past. A Parcel of Patterns was memorable. I picked this one up thinking it was a mystery but it's more a celebration of Cambridge University life as experienced by the upper crust. There's a miscarriage of justice in the background with dire consequences, a theme which seems to be a comment on irresponsible arrogant "expert testimony" but that ends up being dismissed rather than resolved. The only suspenseful part is "night climbing" where young men practice their rock-climbing skills on old buildings, often to their deaths. And we don't always find out how that ends up. The Shakespeare references are there because there's a student theater club, and of course every actor wants to play Hamlet. Well written for its type but as a mystery a lightweight, imho.

[Anne Fenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining crime novel set in the world of modern Cambridge University. Main character Imogen Quy is a nurse associated with the university. The plot involves night climbers, various medical matters, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and amateur actors. There’s a light touch to the story, although it doesn’t downplay grief, murder, they’re shown to affect both privileged and under-privileged here. It’s well written, with a focus on people, not excessive violence.

[Kalina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate the ending of this book so much that it kind of ruined the entire series for me. Extremely unsatisfying and very far from any sort of justice.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was browsing a few weeks ago among the fabulous displays done by the Lit staff at the Central Library and happened across a familiar author writing in an unfamiliar genre. Jill Paton Walsh has been one of my top 10 favorite young adult authors ever since Ellin Chu made me read A Parcel of Patterns years ago. Imagine my surprise and delight when I fouund that she’s now writing mysteries for adults.

The Bad Quarto is the latest in her Imogen Quy (rhymes with “why”) series. Imogen is a nurse at St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University, but moonlights as a part-time sleuth. Devoted mystery readers know that the Universities in England are awash with mystery and intrigue, and in the grand tradition of Dorothy Sayers, St. Agatha’s is no different. This time around, Imogen must unravel the mysterious death of a promising scholar, which becomes tied up with a production of Shakespeare’s “Bad Quarto” version of Hamlet, which which leads her to the daring “night climbers” of Cambridge, and finally to a sad and dangerous young woman.

Imogen is everything we want in a sleuth – single, self-possessed, empathetic, smart, funny, daring — a real Nancy Drew. She handles all the (many) characters throughout the story with aplomb. The story is short, a mere 265 pages, but Paton Walsh packs a lot into that small space — almost too much. There is an over abundance of characters here and I did have some trouble keeping them all straight at times. However, Paton Walsh ties up the ends into a neat little bow, leaving me wanting more of Imogen Quy. I will be looking for her earlier titles now, and waiting for the next in the series.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book the most of the four, although they were all good. This one has the underlying theme of Hamlet - a college group is putting on a production based on the bad quarto, which is considerably shorter than the better-known version. The other theme is climbing - a group that tries to climb all the inaccessible places in Cambridge. When a young man falls to his death it is deemed an accident, but his friend disagrees. The friend ropes in the Hamlet group - the Kyd Players - to put on the play with him playing Hamlet, promising them a large amount of money, which they desperately need. At the same time, a scholarship student gets Imogen Quy's interest - is she somehow connected with the previous death? New characters kept showing up, and the two themes got a bit tangled, and made it a bit difficult to follow without concentrating! Canal boats also make an appearance, which was very interesting. I hope there will be more books in this series.

[Michale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paton Walsh brings Imogen Quy back to life in this, her latest book in the series. Unlike the third book in the series, this rendering of Imo is spot-on. Her loves and motivations make good emotional sense, and tie in perfectly with the delightful mishmash of a Shakespearean mystery. "The play's the thing," she quotes, and I had to pull out my "Hamlet," although I have only my Folger Library edition from high school, not the "bad quarto" of the title. Paton Walsh refers repeatedly to Sayers' "Gaudy Night," one of my favorite Lord Peter mysteries, and she manages to evoke a similar academic England. One I would very much love to visit, but I doubt is really there.

[Karin Jacobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn't great literature and it isn't a very mysterious mystery--but it's fun. The book includes many of my favorite elements: a likeable woman detective, a British university setting (Cambridge), and lots of urban climbing. I'm sure I'll be reading more Imogen Quy mysteries--probably soon.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this and soon realized that I needed to read "Hamlet" before proceeding. I did that, but then parts of the book were blindingly obvious, so that was a pain. The story felt very disjointed. It converged, of course, because it's a mystery, but it wasn't a tight plot. Overall, not a good effort from JPW.

[Andy Plonka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read any of Walsh's books for adults and, since this is the 4th in the series maybe not the best place to start, but I learned a bit about Shakespeare and a bit more about Cambridge. The mysterious element was the plus to the equation.

[Sharon]

reviewed by the Times-Dispatch; 4th in Imogen Quy series; academic in tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers

[Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always uncomfortable when the detective makes decisions about justice, totally ignoring the courts.

[Ramblingsofabookworm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was bored throughout most of this novel. Kinda liked the story but it was too boring to keep me interested in even continuing. But I did, just to put a closure to it.

[Meg Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this -- a non-tedious murder mystery in an academic setting.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave it a five if for no other reason than the rant against those that want to remove Shakespeare from the curriculum of high schools and universities. Well said Ms. Walsh! Well said.

[yukkie_cerveza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imogen Quy is the nurse at St. Agatha’s College, the University of Cambridge. One summer evening, on her way home, she discovers the body of a young man who has fallen to his death between the college’s new library and the residential tower. The victim is one of the college fellows, and it seems he died attempting a dangerous student dare known as “Harding’s Folly.”

Though the death is officially ruled an accident, a young man soon emerges who is convinced it was murder. What’s more, he sets out to expose the culprit by staging a play modeled on “Hamlet”...
-------------------
This is the fourth and final installment in the mystery series, featuring Imogen Quy as the amateur sleuth, by British author Jill Paton Walsh, who passed away 5 years ago, in 2020.

While it may appear to be a straightforward mystery surrounding the death of a young fellow—is it accident or murder?—the novel reaches beyond that. It offers a sobering reflection on the nature of academia itself: not a realm of absolute truth, but a battleground where numerous theories clash—sometimes sharpening each other in constructive ways, other times degenerating into endless cycles of attack and rebuttal.

In keeping with this theme, the case, too, ends not in the clear illumination of a singular truth, but in a conclusion that seems to relinquish such an ideal altogether—a highly unusual and striking resolution.

As is mentioned twice within the novel, “The Bad Quarto” serves both as an homage to and a rebuttal of Dorothy L. Sayers’s “Gaudy Night.” I haven’t yet had the chance to read “Gaudy Night” myself, but I hope to open its pages soon—and, in doing so, return to “The Bad Quarto” with new insight.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imogen is a Nurse at St. Agatha's College at Cambridge. She has been made a fellow, a Dean, to give her some standing. She makes a fascinating Detective because of her medical knowledge and astute character. But apart from that she is self-reliant, kind and observant. There is a death at the college a night jumper who falls, apparently accidentally. There is a young female student, on a scholarship, angry and defiant. Imogen's boarders, a lovely young couple, Fran and Josh, who are students in a Drama group. And there is Shakespeare and Hamlet. Slowly over the course of a few weeks these story threads come together and a tale of murder as retribution and scholarly intrigue unfolds. Beautifully written, settings are explained while leaving room for reader input, the characters are real and interesting. Just a little slow at the beginning and once you get used to the "Cambridge University" accent and language it works well. It was written in 2004, which now seems a generation ago. but I found it a great read, I wanted to know the ending so read this in two days. And I haven't read thrillers for years. It reminded me of P. D. James works, where time is taken to fully develop characters, settings and tension. A great read.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much a modern version of a Golden Age amateur detective novel: very proper, almost prim (despite some of the grubby things within); very stagey and almost wooden in places (appropriate considering the clever play-within-a play-within-a-play moment); circles around the privileged and cloistered albeit with interventions from the lower orders (and not merely the Cambridge college setting is involved in producing that); and it’s conducted and wrapped up in a rather nice, almost implausibly satisfying (if not ‘happy’) manner.

My tastes may have darkened slightly since the days of devouring Christie, Sayers, Marsh and Allingham — or perhaps I just expect something edgier from a contemporary writer?

This quarto has its own interesting history — purchased new around 2012 for £7.99 (who knows where?); sold to a bookshop in Alnwick, Northumberland, who sold it secondhand for £2.50; presumably this purchaser donated to a charity shop, who sold it on for £1.50 to someone who gave it to another charity shop (or possibly a car boot sale) in North Norfolk where it went for 50p a few weeks ago and was placed in a flat by the sea for me to read :-)

[Anna Katharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Imogen Quy mystery yet! Night climbers scaling the ancient walls of the college; a strange and uneven amateur performance of Hamlet; a slo-mo boathouse chase on the Cam- what's not to love? Walsh has constructed a convoluted puzzle involving students, professors, aging Shakespearean actors, and past injustices that blend almost seamlessly into a somewhat unprecedented finale. I say 'almost,' because the set-up needed to prompt a key action felt a bit forced, with excessive wealth acting as deus ex machina. Beyond that, though, the murder story was rich and intriguing, and I learned more about Shakespeare quartos, and modern Shakespearean criticism, than I ever expected. I was also surprised that Walsh mentioned Sayers' Gaudy Night, and introduced a brief discussion of its veracity. My back went up a bit at the implied criticism of one of my favorite books, but if anyone has the cred to critique her late friend's work, it's Walsh. If college shenanigans mixed with thespian intrigue is up (or, in this case, down) your alley, I recommend The Bad Quarto.

[Chad D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quiet book. The mystery proper doesn't start until halfway through, but that's alright; I was content just following the main character around her Cambridge college as she dispensed medicine and wisdom. She seemed a sensible sort, someone who generally improved the lives of those around her in ways that they were able to recognise and eager to participate in. Bonus points for being playful with Shakespeare--the plot is a kind of fan fiction that writes Paton Walsh's own story into a performance of Hamlet. A weird and powerful ending, a set piece of striking images. Leaves a literary taste in the mouth, as if the book was about more than a Cambridge college--about human nature writ large, or nature writ large, or even something more.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chanced upon the Imogen Quy mysteries quite by accident, but I've loved the three I've read (just the third instalment, Debts of Dishonour, to go). They are classic mysteries in the style of Dorothy L Sayers (Paton Walsh has written several Lord Peter Wimsey novels with the approval of the Sayers estate), and just right for an enjoyable palate cleanser between lengthier, weightier reads. The Bad Quarto is a subtly plotted, multi-stranded, story drawing on the mysterious fraternity of the Night Climbers of Cambridge, college politics and student life. It's only 269 pages long, but packed with incident and twists and turns, and thoroughly engaging.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This last entry in the Imogen Quy series, about the college nurse at St. Agatha's College at Cambridge University, is not as good as earlier entries in the series--not until page 104 of this 244-page book is the reader clued in to what the central mystery is going to be. The long set-up is not boring or irrelevant, but a prologue that reveals the mystery to be solved was perhaps in order. Paton Walsh has forever redeemed herself, however, in her continuations of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane series.

[Bodil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I enjoyed this book, but I am afraid that I can’t say that it is a good book, or even a good read. However, if you know your Hamlet as well as Cambridge, it is quite interesting. Still I found parts of the book rather long-winded, especially the discussion of expert witnesses, cot-death and shaken baby syndrome, and the end was, well, a surprise. But also totally unrealistic!
However, a modern detective story where most people are nice and the heroine can enter into a closed room with a seedy character, without coming to the merest hint of harm, well that’s to be applauded!

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a student at Cambridge dies in an attempt to make a perilous jump from one university building to another, his death is ruled an accident. This verdict is not acceptable to his best friend who employs an altered version of The Bad Quarto - a shortened version of Hamlet,to draw out the murderer. In this setting college nurse, Imogene Quy tries to both find the murderer and prevent further death.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

engrossing and beautifully written

Another in the Imogen series with an interesting puzzle. I enjoyed the characters created by this author. One becomes immersed in this wirld, peopled by scholars, and one learns so many interesting details. In this tale, there is a performance of Hamlet, with beautifully relevant quotations at the chapter headings. Paton Walsh's writing is very satisfying!

[Kathy KS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best mystery ever... admittedly. But if you are in the mood for a quick, easy-going mystery more in the style of some of the greats from the mid 20th century, this will fit the bill. Great for a beach read, airplane trip, or simply to decompress from too much (or bloody, gory novels). I'm rather sad that this is the last Imogen Quy novel.

[Anne]

Very nicely written

Imogen Quy is a wonderful character. She lends herself to detection in the nicest possible way. She is surrounded by equally interesting characters. This story is set at Cambridge. A colleague has died in a fall caused by climbing a building. The story evolves in such an interesting way. A very good read.