A Silver Spade

Miss Julia #3

by Louisa Revell

Another of Miss Julia's chatty crime chases -- this combines a camp for exceptionally brilliant little girls and the liquidation of more than one of the adults. Miss Julia, teaching Latin there, is soon in the midst of murder -- one, two and three, and an earlier one -- and all the dissension between the heads of the camp and their staff. Several solutions are proven untrue, all complications vanish with the true one.

Genres: Mystery

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

"Louisa Revell was born Ellen Hart Smith on July 16, 1910 in Owensboro, Kentucky, the only child of a furniture store owner and a schoolteacher. Her mother having died when she was young, she was raised primarily by her father. Smith graduated from Miami University in the early 1930s, then returned to her Owensboro home to live with her father. She spent her twenties writing a biography, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, which was published by Harvard University Press in 1942. Smith followed this book up in 1947 with the first of a series of mysteries featuring retired Latin teacher Miss Julia Tyler from Rossville, Virginia as the main character. After the death of her father and cousins, Smith continued to live in the family house until her death on April 28, 1985. Eschewing any personal publicity, she used the name Louisa Revell, and kept her own a secret, publishing seven Miss Julia mysteries in all":

The Bus Station Murders (1947)
No Pockets in Shrouds (1948)
A Silver Spade (1950)
The Kindest Use a Knife (1952)
The Men With Three Eyes (1955)
See Rome and Die (1957)
A Party for the Shooting (1960)

-- https://starkhousepress.com/revell.php

Reviews

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Julia Tyler was polite but firm--No, she couldn't come and teach Latin at a summer camp in Maine for extremely bright young ladies. It didn't matter how light the duties, how beautiful the location, or how good the pay. She was very sorry that Mrs. Turner had made a trip to Pennsylvania to try and persuade her, but Miss Tyler has remodeling to do in anticipation for a new addition to the family. Wait a minute...what did you say about anonymous letters? Come back here and sit down...

You see, Miss Julia Tyler has a thing about mysteries. She reads them--a lot. And, she's been mixed up in two murders previously and couldn't resist playing amateur detective. As soon as she hears that faculty at the camp have been receiving nasty anonymous letters, she decides that a few weeks teaching Latin at Camp Pirate Island is just what she needs to do. The remodeling can get down without her supervision. But once the murders start and there seems to be no end in sight, she begins to think she made a mistake.

The first death seems almost straight-forward. Captain Benesch was a blackmailer and it looks like one of his victims just had enough and decided to silence him. But who was being blackmailed and for what? Well--there's the late-night activities on the beach which may be covert Nazi-sympathizers. There's talk of a faculty member previously tried and found innocent of murder--but was she really innocent? There's also speculation that Mrs. or Mr. Turner may have hurried Mrs. Turner's aunt to her grave in order to inherit the camp. And one of the faculty might be in the States with false documentation. There's also stories of pirate treasure to be dug up and just who is the camp nurse keeping hidden in the isolation ward?

When more deaths follow, it begins to look like there might be other motives beyond disposing of a blackmailer and tidying up loose ends. We have all kinds of clues--from heavy black gloves (in the middle of summer) to a Coke bottle stamped "Terre Haute, IN" to a smooth seashell-shaped object. And when we're ready for the wrap-up, we have confessions and semi-confessions and an elaborate theory involving two of the little girls. And, then a final twist to the whole kaleidoscope.

This was a great book for a couple of reasons. First (and best--to me, anyway), it is an interesting twist on the academic mystery. Instead of being set at a school or university, we have a bunch of highly intelligent campers learning Latin and Greek and Astronomy and music on an island off the Maine coast. I love academic mysteries and it's always fun to find one with an interesting or different setting. And, second, I figured it out! I knew who and I knew the basic reason why (though I wasn't completely sure of the details of the initial motivation for the first murder in the camp). This didn't detract from the story because I was wondering when our sleuths would figure it out.

The ending is done quite nicely too. If the reader doesn't spot the killer, then it's quite fun to see the various theories explained and then shot down until we get down to the final (correct) solution.

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

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Retired Latin teacher Julia Tyler travels to Maine to fill in at a camp for very smart little girls when the regular Latin teacher is driven out by anonymous letters. She finds the girls charming, and most of the faculty congenial, until one of the instructors is killed. Rumor has it that the emigre was a blackmailer. As a newcomer, Julia is asked to help the camp handyman, who is also a deputy sheriff, as the sheriff is hospitalized. Although Julia is the series "detective," someone else solves the crime.