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The Black Cabinet
Chloe Dane inherits a fabled ancestral estate—and plunges into deadly danger—in this novel of romance and suspense from the author of the acclaimed Miss Silver Mysteries The lowly assistant to a London dressmaker, Chloe Dane yearns for a new life. She has bittersweet memories of being a carefree child playing hide-and-seek at Danesborough, her family’s magnificent country estate. Decades later, the ancestral mansion has been restored to its former glory—and Chloe is shocked to discover that she is the sole heir. Danesborough is not the sun-filled, evergreen place she remembers. The trees are bare and the house is shrouded in mist. But the enormous gold-and-black lacquered Chinese cabinet in the drawing room is exactly the same. Chloe’s childhood imagination created an entire story out of the intricate carvings on the a flowing river filled with boats and fishermen and one frightening man she called Mr. Dark. But now, as Chloe begins to uncover Mitchell Dane’s true motives for bequeathing her the centuries-old manse, she has a very real reason to be The truth about what’s hidden in the black cabinet will soon threaten her life.
159 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1925
197 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Wentworth
162 books522 followersPatricia Wentworth--born Dora Amy Elles--was a British crime fiction writer.
She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey. She married George Oliver Turnbull in 1920 and they had one daughter.
She wrote a series of 32 classic-style whodunnits featuring Miss Silver, the first of which was published in 1928, and the last in 1961, the year of her death.
Miss Silver, a retired governess-turned private detective, is sometimes compared to Jane Marple, the elderly detective created by Agatha Christie. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott and is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson.
Wentworth also wrote 34 books outside of that series.
She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey. She married George Oliver Turnbull in 1920 and they had one daughter.
She wrote a series of 32 classic-style whodunnits featuring Miss Silver, the first of which was published in 1928, and the last in 1961, the year of her death.
Miss Silver, a retired governess-turned private detective, is sometimes compared to Jane Marple, the elderly detective created by Agatha Christie. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott and is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson.
Wentworth also wrote 34 books outside of that series.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
December 30, 2022
Young and beautiful Chloe Dane works at a dressmaker, Miss Allardyce’s in the small town of Maxton. Here Chloe and her friend Rose Smith stitch the fine creations ordered by their clientele, and she and Rose also share a bedsit. But Rose is soon going to be married and moving to Assam, and Chloe is not the most keen on continuing at Miss Allardyce’s in her absence, and hopes that something will turn up. And indeed it does, but not at all what Chloe imagined. As a child, Chloe has been brought up in a country manor, Danesborough, owned by her grandfather. After his death, while her education had been paid for, the money and home went to a distant relation, and Chloe was left to earn her living. But now, all of a sudden, she finds that the relation, Mr Dane wishes to leave everything to her—the house and his fortune. He invites her for a visit and also reveals that there are some people (his former associates) out to seek the source of his fortune, locked in a safe newly installed behind a black cabinet which has been a fixture in the house, and which Chloe remembers from childhood. She is the only one to be told the whole secret, including the key/combination that opens the safe, putting her in grave danger.
On inheriting Mr Dane’s fortune, as Chloe moves into Danesborough, she finds that there are many out to access what is hidden in the safe (again, the blurb reveals this but I’d forgotten by the time I started reading, so there is some level of secrecy till this happens), including Mr Dane’s secretary Leonard Wroughton, who is always lurking around. Mrs Wroughton is mousy and subservient and no help to Chloe while the other servants report to Wroughton. Soon Chloe finds herself a virtual prisoner at Danesborough—cars sent away, telephone disconnected, and gates locked! Who can she trust amidst all this, and does she manage to escape all who are out to get at the Black Cabinet?
Once again, Patricia Wentworth drew me in with her writing from the very start. Fast paced, and exciting, the book keeps one reading and also keeps up the sense of danger and suspense as well as possibilities of romance for Chloe who has her share of admirers, of whom two in particular interest her as well. While we know some of the ‘villains’ of the piece right from the start (Wroughton of course heads this list), there is also a hidden danger known to Chloe only by a nickname, as menacing or perhaps even more so than the others. This forms the mystery to which the answer is not revealed till right at the end, and wasn’t something I was able to guess either.
To Chloe herself I had mixed reactions. She is young, pretty and fun loving, and what I liked was that she is spirited and faces every challenge that comes her way—having to move from place to place to outwit her pursuers. But then again, more than once she also behaves a little too foolishly for my liking. Granted that she is young and naïve, and she says almost at the outset that her instinct is to trust people, something without which she’d be as good as dead, but she’s been warned by Mr Dane to not trust anyone, and yet she seems to let out everything (literally blabs) she knows to the first person she meets; and even when she’s been betrayed once, goes and does so all over again. And her silliness doesn’t stop there either.
The Black Cabinet is not your conventional Golden Age mystery, but more an adventure–mystery; it can perhaps even be described as romantic suspense, but it is a great deal of fun. The mystery element (of which of her potential suitors was ‘in’ with the crooks), I thought was kept up well throughout, and despite literally knowing that Chloe was making mistake after mistake (though she does act sensibly in fits and starts) and revealing far too much to those she shouldn’t trust that much immediately, I enjoyed reading about her escapades and seeing how things were finally resolved! While I mayn’t have enjoyed this as much as the only other standalone, The Dower House Mystery, which I’ve read by Wentworth, it still made for a great read!
p.s. For those who enjoy such things, there's a snappy Pekingese who enjoys China tea with Marie biscuits
On inheriting Mr Dane’s fortune, as Chloe moves into Danesborough, she finds that there are many out to access what is hidden in the safe (again, the blurb reveals this but I’d forgotten by the time I started reading, so there is some level of secrecy till this happens), including Mr Dane’s secretary Leonard Wroughton, who is always lurking around. Mrs Wroughton is mousy and subservient and no help to Chloe while the other servants report to Wroughton. Soon Chloe finds herself a virtual prisoner at Danesborough—cars sent away, telephone disconnected, and gates locked! Who can she trust amidst all this, and does she manage to escape all who are out to get at the Black Cabinet?
Once again, Patricia Wentworth drew me in with her writing from the very start. Fast paced, and exciting, the book keeps one reading and also keeps up the sense of danger and suspense as well as possibilities of romance for Chloe who has her share of admirers, of whom two in particular interest her as well. While we know some of the ‘villains’ of the piece right from the start (Wroughton of course heads this list), there is also a hidden danger known to Chloe only by a nickname, as menacing or perhaps even more so than the others. This forms the mystery to which the answer is not revealed till right at the end, and wasn’t something I was able to guess either.
To Chloe herself I had mixed reactions. She is young, pretty and fun loving, and what I liked was that she is spirited and faces every challenge that comes her way—having to move from place to place to outwit her pursuers. But then again, more than once she also behaves a little too foolishly for my liking. Granted that she is young and naïve, and she says almost at the outset that her instinct is to trust people, something without which she’d be as good as dead, but she’s been warned by Mr Dane to not trust anyone, and yet she seems to let out everything (literally blabs) she knows to the first person she meets; and even when she’s been betrayed once, goes and does so all over again. And her silliness doesn’t stop there either.
The Black Cabinet is not your conventional Golden Age mystery, but more an adventure–mystery; it can perhaps even be described as romantic suspense, but it is a great deal of fun. The mystery element (of which of her potential suitors was ‘in’ with the crooks), I thought was kept up well throughout, and despite literally knowing that Chloe was making mistake after mistake (though she does act sensibly in fits and starts) and revealing far too much to those she shouldn’t trust that much immediately, I enjoyed reading about her escapades and seeing how things were finally resolved! While I mayn’t have enjoyed this as much as the only other standalone, The Dower House Mystery, which I’ve read by Wentworth, it still made for a great read!
p.s. For those who enjoy such things, there's a snappy Pekingese who enjoys China tea with Marie biscuits
Read
September 16, 2019A good thriller about a lone young woman who is made a rich man's heir and targeted by a gang. Genuinely tense and stifling atmosphere as the plot thickens around her, and with a proper sense of peril. There's a fun "which of the two guys is the baddie" plotline (staggeringly obvious tbh but Wentworth seeds suspicion with a heavy hand so you can play along).
September 27, 2021
Dangerous inheritance…
Chloe Dane’s family were once rich and lived in their ancestral home, Danesborough. But the family fell on hard times and now Chloe, at twenty, is an orphan, working in a dressmaker’s shop in the little town of Maxton. She’s not a languishing heroine though – she’s full of life and finds plenty of ways to have fun, and being very pretty is never short of admirers. Now her best friend is getting married and going off to India and Chloe is feeling that she needs a change. Out of the blue she is contacted by the new owner of Danesborough, a sort of distant cousin also called Dane, who is looking for someone to leave the property to when he dies. Chloe spends a week with him in Danesborough and develops an instinctive dislike of him. But then he dies, and she finds herself mistress of the house – or at least she will be when she comes of age in a few months time. Then, in the safe inside the black cabinet in the drawing room she discovers a dangerous secret and suddenly finds herself in grave danger, not knowing whom she can trust…
This is a lot of fun! Chloe is a lovely heroine, full of charm, brave, a little foolish, but determined to do the right thing at all costs. She has two main admirers and the reader quickly realises one of them is probably a baddie while the other is a goodie, but it’s not clear which is which till the end. The romantic element is as important as the mystery, and a lot of the suspense is around whether Chloe will pick the right man, both for her present safety and her future happiness. Both men are rather charming in different ways, and I must admit that, like Chloe, I changed my mind about which was the good guy several times through the course of the book.
There are also people who both Chloe and the reader know for sure are baddies – old Mr Dane’s secretary, Wroughton, and his friend Stran, who are determined to get hold of the documents from the safe inside the black cabinet. The only way they can do this is to find the combination to the lock, which only Chloe knows. So they need her alive, and they need to find some way to pressure or trick her into giving them the combination. And until Chloe reaches her majority, she can’t simply sack Wroughton and get rid of him. But she is equally determined that they won’t get the documents…
The characterisation is great, of Chloe especially – a hugely likeable heroine – but of all the other characters too. Wroughton is ostentatiously bad, but several of the other characters are beautifully ambiguous, both to Chloe and the reader, so that it’s impossible to fully trust anyone. Is Wroughton’s wife a poor little bullied creature who wants to help Chloe, or is she her husband’s willing partner, playing a part? Martin and Michael, both apparently in love with Chloe, but is one of them a member of the gang, trying to trick her? Are the servants loyal to Chloe, or to Wroughton? Chloe doesn’t know, and nor do we.
Wentworth puts poor Chloe through peril after peril, and she does a great job of building the tension as the story progresses. But it never gets too bleak – Chloe’s general high spirits mean she’s never down-hearted for long, and her natural courage and determination may falter occasionally but always spring back. And, although she gets help along the way from unexpected quarters, in the end it’s her own strength of character that carries her through. Thoroughly enjoyable – I raced through it, and am looking forward to reading more of Wentworth’s books soon.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Chloe Dane’s family were once rich and lived in their ancestral home, Danesborough. But the family fell on hard times and now Chloe, at twenty, is an orphan, working in a dressmaker’s shop in the little town of Maxton. She’s not a languishing heroine though – she’s full of life and finds plenty of ways to have fun, and being very pretty is never short of admirers. Now her best friend is getting married and going off to India and Chloe is feeling that she needs a change. Out of the blue she is contacted by the new owner of Danesborough, a sort of distant cousin also called Dane, who is looking for someone to leave the property to when he dies. Chloe spends a week with him in Danesborough and develops an instinctive dislike of him. But then he dies, and she finds herself mistress of the house – or at least she will be when she comes of age in a few months time. Then, in the safe inside the black cabinet in the drawing room she discovers a dangerous secret and suddenly finds herself in grave danger, not knowing whom she can trust…
This is a lot of fun! Chloe is a lovely heroine, full of charm, brave, a little foolish, but determined to do the right thing at all costs. She has two main admirers and the reader quickly realises one of them is probably a baddie while the other is a goodie, but it’s not clear which is which till the end. The romantic element is as important as the mystery, and a lot of the suspense is around whether Chloe will pick the right man, both for her present safety and her future happiness. Both men are rather charming in different ways, and I must admit that, like Chloe, I changed my mind about which was the good guy several times through the course of the book.
There are also people who both Chloe and the reader know for sure are baddies – old Mr Dane’s secretary, Wroughton, and his friend Stran, who are determined to get hold of the documents from the safe inside the black cabinet. The only way they can do this is to find the combination to the lock, which only Chloe knows. So they need her alive, and they need to find some way to pressure or trick her into giving them the combination. And until Chloe reaches her majority, she can’t simply sack Wroughton and get rid of him. But she is equally determined that they won’t get the documents…
The characterisation is great, of Chloe especially – a hugely likeable heroine – but of all the other characters too. Wroughton is ostentatiously bad, but several of the other characters are beautifully ambiguous, both to Chloe and the reader, so that it’s impossible to fully trust anyone. Is Wroughton’s wife a poor little bullied creature who wants to help Chloe, or is she her husband’s willing partner, playing a part? Martin and Michael, both apparently in love with Chloe, but is one of them a member of the gang, trying to trick her? Are the servants loyal to Chloe, or to Wroughton? Chloe doesn’t know, and nor do we.
Wentworth puts poor Chloe through peril after peril, and she does a great job of building the tension as the story progresses. But it never gets too bleak – Chloe’s general high spirits mean she’s never down-hearted for long, and her natural courage and determination may falter occasionally but always spring back. And, although she gets help along the way from unexpected quarters, in the end it’s her own strength of character that carries her through. Thoroughly enjoyable – I raced through it, and am looking forward to reading more of Wentworth’s books soon.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
January 24, 2022
I'm giving this 5 stars as it was a fun mystery/romantic suspense, with a charming heroine. I love Patricia Wentworth's writing and humour.
June 1, 2017
This is one of the older Patricia Wentworths that does not involve Miss Silver so it was not reprinted as frequently. Thank you to Dean Street Press for making this and many others available! Here is a link to my review:
http://perfectretort.blogspot.com/201...
http://perfectretort.blogspot.com/201...
September 23, 2024
This one wasn't as good as the other two in the "Three Plucky Heroines" collection. It felt clumsier. From the beginning, when Chloe was scared of someone, and as I reader I picked up on nothing scary about him to the twists and turns at the end that didn't quite work for me, it just rather clunked.
And though I finished it just a skosh past midnight of the 23rd, it was mostly read on Hobbit Day, and it was my eleventy-first book of the year. 😊
And though I finished it just a skosh past midnight of the 23rd, it was mostly read on Hobbit Day, and it was my eleventy-first book of the year. 😊
August 13, 2025
Un roman policier très convenu et très long à démarrer. Je n'ai pas réussi à accrocher et n'ai ressenti aucune surprise : j'ai vu chaque retournement de situation venir de loin. Dommage, j'avais beaucoup aimé Cache cache avec le diable et une aventure de Miss Silver déjà lus de l'auteur mais je n'ai pas retrouvé dans celui-ci ce qui m'avait plu dans les autres...
May 4, 2024
Very suspenseful.
January 16, 2016
Charmant et désuet. Mais l'héroïne est confondante de naïveté. Un brin agaçante. L'intrigue est gentillette. Surtout dans la première partie. Ambiance proche d'un film de Hitchcock. Ou d'un roman de Daphné du Maurier. Un peu faiblard pour le dénouement.
July 7, 2025
Overall, it's a cozy thriller, the hapless heroine fighting alone against the enemies, with great plot, and sweet romance. a delightful mystery-thriller to read, and I had so much fun reading it!
The complete review: https://klasikfanda.blogspot.com/2025...
The complete review: https://klasikfanda.blogspot.com/2025...
July 28, 2019
Trivial. Silly. Unrealistic. Too cute. Yeah. It’s a Wentworth, and yeah—I like ‘em.
April 7, 2025
Plucky Chloe Dane finds perhaps more adventures that she would ever believe possible when a distant cousin approaches her about becoming his heiress.
Chloe was orphaned as a child but still remembers growing up in the country manor of Danesborough, owned by her grandfather. After his death, the family inheritance and the home went to a distant relation. And so, the book introduces her to readers as a seamstress in the village of Maxton, making dresses for society women that she rarely approves of.
The her fortunes appear to change as she is approached by the distant relation who wishes to leave everything he has to her, including the house of Danesborough. He invites her for a visit and she meets his approval, but Mr. Dane also introduces her to the darker, seamier side of his life, and its all hidden in a safe in a black cabinet. When he dies suddenly, she finds that she is the only one to be told how to access the safe, and true to his admonition of "don't trust anyone," she discovers that she is not her own woman — and is very suspicious of the late Mr. Dane's secretary.
When she finds out exactly what is in the safe, Chloe knows what she has to do but she finds herself a virtual prisoner at Danesborough and unable to communicate with the outside world.
I've read several of Patricia Wentworth's mysteries and enjoyed them all. And it is the same with this book, which was first published in 1925. Chloe Dane is smart and clever, and manages to find herself for the most part one step ahead of those who wish her harm, but then again, how many times can she run away from the menace that she feels, especially added in the mix are two charming young men who are interested in matrimony. Who can she turn to? Who will help her? The layers of deviousness are certainly what make this a very interesting and action packed story.
Chloe was orphaned as a child but still remembers growing up in the country manor of Danesborough, owned by her grandfather. After his death, the family inheritance and the home went to a distant relation. And so, the book introduces her to readers as a seamstress in the village of Maxton, making dresses for society women that she rarely approves of.
The her fortunes appear to change as she is approached by the distant relation who wishes to leave everything he has to her, including the house of Danesborough. He invites her for a visit and she meets his approval, but Mr. Dane also introduces her to the darker, seamier side of his life, and its all hidden in a safe in a black cabinet. When he dies suddenly, she finds that she is the only one to be told how to access the safe, and true to his admonition of "don't trust anyone," she discovers that she is not her own woman — and is very suspicious of the late Mr. Dane's secretary.
When she finds out exactly what is in the safe, Chloe knows what she has to do but she finds herself a virtual prisoner at Danesborough and unable to communicate with the outside world.
I've read several of Patricia Wentworth's mysteries and enjoyed them all. And it is the same with this book, which was first published in 1925. Chloe Dane is smart and clever, and manages to find herself for the most part one step ahead of those who wish her harm, but then again, how many times can she run away from the menace that she feels, especially added in the mix are two charming young men who are interested in matrimony. Who can she turn to? Who will help her? The layers of deviousness are certainly what make this a very interesting and action packed story.
October 9, 2020
We meet our young heroine right off the bat in this early stand-alone novel by Wentworth. I've long suspected that the creator of TV's “Foyle's War” was inspired to make his young adventurous driving Samantha character after these sorts of early 20th century heroines, and Chloe is so much like the Samantha character that she could easily have been his inspiration.
I've read all of the Miss Silver books, so I recognize the romantic storyline of a young man wanting to own a car garage, and his love for a possible heiress making their affair difficult, socially. Wentworth used it quite often, for whatever reason, and this early book may well be the first time. We have blackmail as an element of the story, too, which Wentworth used often.
There is an unfortunate mention of a Dutch South African slur for blacks, that has evolved over the years, but has always been used with disrespect. There are some of these racist words in her books, but they are gone from the last books she wrote, perhaps at the insistence of her publishers.
People behave in odd ways in this book, especially the young woman, Chloe, at the center of the story, who is reminiscent of the young woman in the “Grey Mask”, the first Miss Silver series book. It is not believable that anyone would choose poverty over extreme wealth.
We have some of the story set at a country manor house and estate, which is a favorite setting for many of the author's later books. It is a meandering tale that I'm afraid I skimmed rather than read for the most part. We have a painfully abused wife, an all too common Wentworth character, which is very disturbing, and a heroine who is silly beyond belief.
I've read all of the Miss Silver books, so I recognize the romantic storyline of a young man wanting to own a car garage, and his love for a possible heiress making their affair difficult, socially. Wentworth used it quite often, for whatever reason, and this early book may well be the first time. We have blackmail as an element of the story, too, which Wentworth used often.
There is an unfortunate mention of a Dutch South African slur for blacks, that has evolved over the years, but has always been used with disrespect. There are some of these racist words in her books, but they are gone from the last books she wrote, perhaps at the insistence of her publishers.
People behave in odd ways in this book, especially the young woman, Chloe, at the center of the story, who is reminiscent of the young woman in the “Grey Mask”, the first Miss Silver series book. It is not believable that anyone would choose poverty over extreme wealth.
We have some of the story set at a country manor house and estate, which is a favorite setting for many of the author's later books. It is a meandering tale that I'm afraid I skimmed rather than read for the most part. We have a painfully abused wife, an all too common Wentworth character, which is very disturbing, and a heroine who is silly beyond belief.
September 18, 2022
Poor Chloe Dane is invited to a gathering given by a wealthy friend, also attended by a wealthy, elderly relation. She is invited to his estate - a place about which she had fond memories - and is shown a mysterious black cabinet, and told that she is to be his heir and possessor of the cabinet's contents. Uncomfortable in the household, she returns to her poor lodgings, soon afterward, upon her relations death, returns to the estate, discovers the unsavory contents of The Black Cabinet, is made uncomfortable by the sinister servants, escapes, finds a place to live, takes a position as secretary to a wealthy woman, has to escape that but finds herself in the custody of a potential seducer, escapes THAT and once more finds shelter, only to be reunited with a young man whom she marries AND THEN comes to suspect of being a party to an insidious plot....
Exhausted yet? The escapades of poor Chloe very quickly moved from the suspenseful to the absurd, as the plot whisked her from one plight to the next, and except for Chloe and the plain-spoken landlady, Harriet Rowse, the characterization is pretty thin.
The quixotic plot called up Grant Allen's "Miss Cayley's Adventures" about a poor woman left with a sixpence to her name who goes from one adventure to the next in her resolution to travel the world. Allen's work was a far superior contribution to the "poor girl's plight" genre.
June 1, 2019
For a Golden Era mystery novel written by a rather forgotten author who was rather prolific at the time, this was a decent mystery with a murder, blackmail, greed, some decent twists and turns as there should always be and boy meets girl, marries girl, girl leaves boy right after marrying him, and then seeks him out again only to live happily every after (or at least we hope so).
But, it’s not a five-star novel because it’s not a nail biting book that sets the reader on pins and needles and we know the innocence of the young man Chloe, the protagonist, just marries before she is awake enough to realize it.
It has its bright spots, and a good, quick ending, but not the best book Ms. Wentworth wrote in her long history of many books she wrote.
Bottom line: A decent read but don’t expect a book on par with an AC read.
But, it’s not a five-star novel because it’s not a nail biting book that sets the reader on pins and needles and we know the innocence of the young man Chloe, the protagonist, just marries before she is awake enough to realize it.
It has its bright spots, and a good, quick ending, but not the best book Ms. Wentworth wrote in her long history of many books she wrote.
Bottom line: A decent read but don’t expect a book on par with an AC read.
January 3, 2018
Free | The obvious solution was a little wearing | In this book, Wentworth built herself up a red herring, then dipped it in bright colors, attached flashing neon lights to it, and had it set off a siren screaming "red herring!" every time it was dragged across a page. Before even meeting Mr Dane it was clear which of the guys was a villain and which was the hero, so to have to keep waiting for the resolution was frustrating. That said, this was not a plot or story arc that's been overused, and the heroine saved herself multiple times, which I'm all in favor of.
November 29, 2025
So far, the only Patricia Wentworth novels I read were from the Miss Silver series. And it was a long time ago.
This particular novel was a fun read : action, suspense, conspiracy, evil men, who to trust and all that.
I can't say I understand young women who break into a house deep in the country, by themselves, at night, while they know there are evil people inside, but apart from that, I read this as an adventure story, like one of the early Agatha Christie. It was fun.
This particular novel was a fun read : action, suspense, conspiracy, evil men, who to trust and all that.
I can't say I understand young women who break into a house deep in the country, by themselves, at night, while they know there are evil people inside, but apart from that, I read this as an adventure story, like one of the early Agatha Christie. It was fun.
January 4, 2023
The best Wentworth to date
This is the 1st Wentworth I've read aside from the Miss Silvers. The Miss Silvers are s-o-o good that I didnt expect this to be quite as good. W-e-l-l, it's even better ... or perhaps just seems that way having just finished it. At any rate: a great read.
This is the 1st Wentworth I've read aside from the Miss Silvers. The Miss Silvers are s-o-o good that I didnt expect this to be quite as good. W-e-l-l, it's even better ... or perhaps just seems that way having just finished it. At any rate: a great read.
June 28, 2019
I expected a traditional mystery, but this was much more suspense/adventure. Sprinkled with little glimpses of humor, Wentworth shows her usual deftness with characterization, though the plot is stretched thin in some places.
October 11, 2022
This is my second Patricia Wentworth mystery and I am completely smitten with her writing. I never read two books in a row by the same author but I may read a third. Like a box of chocolate bonbons, Patricia Wentworth books are delicious.
January 31, 2025
2.5 stars Maybe I read these in too quick succession, but this was mediocre compared to the previous two Wentworths. Also, the men pursuing the heroine were called Martin Fossetter and Michael Foster and the similar names drove me batty for the first half of the book.
April 27, 2025
This was a different plot than the usual mystery, so that makes it a good book. However, it did drag a little in the middle. As usual for this author, there’s a romance in the story and this was a good one.
August 24, 2025
A pleasure for Wentworth Fans
A few contrivances, a few wicked people, and love wins in the end as in all Wentworths. One must not look too closely at the plotting, but if you are hunting for a quick effortless read, look no further.
A few contrivances, a few wicked people, and love wins in the end as in all Wentworths. One must not look too closely at the plotting, but if you are hunting for a quick effortless read, look no further.
November 24, 2018
So, so! But kept me guessing until the end!
January 3, 2019
Good British mystery
This story kept my interest throughout until the end. The wording was a bit dated but the mystery was very enjoyable.
This story kept my interest throughout until the end. The wording was a bit dated but the mystery was very enjoyable.
July 9, 2020
I read this almost solely because I enjoy British idiom and slang. For that purpose, this novel doesn't disappoint.
I say, it's simply topping!
I say, it's simply topping!
November 5, 2021
Entertaining characters, atmospheric setting, intrepid protag. Very enjoyable.
Read
December 22, 2021This is my least favorite book of the 30+ I've read by Patricia Wentworth. The premise is interesting, but there's a lot of repetition with very little payoff at the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2022
Enjoyable read, not a murder mystery, mildly entertaining.
May 29, 2023
Entertaining! Not the kind of story I was expecting
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews