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The Incredible Crime
Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder.
Prince's College, Cambridge, is a peaceful and scholarly community, enlivened by Prudence Pinsent, the Master's daughter. Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence is a remarkable young woman.
One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days' hunting. On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard—who is pursuing a quarry of his own.
Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge. It falls to Prudence to unravel the identity of the smugglers—who may be forced to kill, to protect their secret.
This witty and entertaining crime novel has not been republished since the 1930s. This new edition includes an introduction by Kirsten T. Saxton, professor of English at Mills College, California.
"This British Library Crime Classics reissue features richly evocative settings, an appealing romantic subplot, and sly nods to other fiction, including that of the author's illustrious ancestor."
- Publishers Weekly
Prince's College, Cambridge, is a peaceful and scholarly community, enlivened by Prudence Pinsent, the Master's daughter. Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence is a remarkable young woman.
One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days' hunting. On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard—who is pursuing a quarry of his own.
Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge. It falls to Prudence to unravel the identity of the smugglers—who may be forced to kill, to protect their secret.
This witty and entertaining crime novel has not been republished since the 1930s. This new edition includes an introduction by Kirsten T. Saxton, professor of English at Mills College, California.
"This British Library Crime Classics reissue features richly evocative settings, an appealing romantic subplot, and sly nods to other fiction, including that of the author's illustrious ancestor."
- Publishers Weekly
246 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1931
93 people are currently reading
451 people want to read
About the author
Lois Austen-Leigh
5 books11 followersLois Emma Austen-Leigh, the granddaughter of Jane Austen’s nephew and thus the great-great niece of Jane herself, was born and brought up in Winterbourne, Gloucester, on 10 July 1883. Her father was the Rector in the town. They later moved to Wargrave in Berkshire. While there Lois kept a diary and she had one unusual pastime in that she rode a motor-cycle wherever she went.
During the First World War, 1916-1918, she worked as a gardener for the Red Cross in Reading, while her sister, Honor, was a nurse in Malta and France. After the War, she became a companion to her widowed aunt. Then, after her aunt’s death in 1926, she had a house, Cob House built at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast for herself and her sister. Possibly this was financed an inheritance from her aunt.
She and her sister were an integral part of the Aldeburgh community with Benjamin Britten playing the piano on visits to their home and writer MR James was also a family friend. It was at Cob House, allegedly on the writing desk of her famous great, great-aunt used, that she wrote four mystery novels between 1931 and 1938.
The first of these The Incredible Crime was set in the university city of Cambridge, knowledge of which she had gathered when visiting her uncle [some state (erroneously) that it was her father] Augustus Austen-Leigh (1840-1905), who was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, from 1889 to 1905.
All four of her novels received good reviews, the first of which The Times Literary Supplement at the time of publication commented, ‘as a piece of writing and analysis of character the book is of a much higher order’, with ’some good pictures here of university life, some not too exaggerated portraits of childlike dons, and a real feeling for country life and sports’. The reviewer added, ‘Miss Austen-Leigh might consider a more serious vein of writing.’
Another contemporary reviewer called the author ‘something more than a writer of mystery stories. True, her plot is the very essence of mystery and her characters very clearly defined, but her work contains something more … Passages of unusual beauty constantly recur, especially in her descriptions of Cambridge and the coast of Suffolk.’
Despite all the critical acclaim, she would always say, ‘I only write to keep myself in champagne.’
After her fourth novel, the Second World War broke out and she and her sister worked for the emergency services throughout the duration. And although she lived for 23 years after the war, she did not write any more novels for the last 30 years of her life. Indeed, her work had been long forgotten until The Incredible Crime was republished in the British Library Crime Classics series in 2017.
She died in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on 14 February 1968. She left an estate of £43,969.
Her crime novels were:
The Incredible Crime (1931)
Haunted Farm (1932)
Rude Justice (1936)
The Gobblecock Mystery (1938)
During the First World War, 1916-1918, she worked as a gardener for the Red Cross in Reading, while her sister, Honor, was a nurse in Malta and France. After the War, she became a companion to her widowed aunt. Then, after her aunt’s death in 1926, she had a house, Cob House built at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast for herself and her sister. Possibly this was financed an inheritance from her aunt.
She and her sister were an integral part of the Aldeburgh community with Benjamin Britten playing the piano on visits to their home and writer MR James was also a family friend. It was at Cob House, allegedly on the writing desk of her famous great, great-aunt used, that she wrote four mystery novels between 1931 and 1938.
The first of these The Incredible Crime was set in the university city of Cambridge, knowledge of which she had gathered when visiting her uncle [some state (erroneously) that it was her father] Augustus Austen-Leigh (1840-1905), who was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, from 1889 to 1905.
All four of her novels received good reviews, the first of which The Times Literary Supplement at the time of publication commented, ‘as a piece of writing and analysis of character the book is of a much higher order’, with ’some good pictures here of university life, some not too exaggerated portraits of childlike dons, and a real feeling for country life and sports’. The reviewer added, ‘Miss Austen-Leigh might consider a more serious vein of writing.’
Another contemporary reviewer called the author ‘something more than a writer of mystery stories. True, her plot is the very essence of mystery and her characters very clearly defined, but her work contains something more … Passages of unusual beauty constantly recur, especially in her descriptions of Cambridge and the coast of Suffolk.’
Despite all the critical acclaim, she would always say, ‘I only write to keep myself in champagne.’
After her fourth novel, the Second World War broke out and she and her sister worked for the emergency services throughout the duration. And although she lived for 23 years after the war, she did not write any more novels for the last 30 years of her life. Indeed, her work had been long forgotten until The Incredible Crime was republished in the British Library Crime Classics series in 2017.
She died in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on 14 February 1968. She left an estate of £43,969.
Her crime novels were:
The Incredible Crime (1931)
Haunted Farm (1932)
Rude Justice (1936)
The Gobblecock Mystery (1938)
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June 3, 2017
Published in 1931, this novel was written by Lois Austen-Leigh; the granddaughter of Jane Austen’s nephew. This is very much in the Golden Age tradition of mysteries, although Austen fans may be interested to know that she wrote her novels at the same writing desk as Jane Austen and that this is the first of four published novels; the others being Haunted Farm (1932), Rude Justice (1936) and The Gobblecock Mystery (1938). Lois Austen-Leigh’s Uncle Augustus was Provost of Kings College, Cambridge and so she was obviously familiar with the academic setting that she features in this book.
Indeed, this novel features two very popular settings for Golden Age mystery novels; combining part of the story in the academic setting of Cambridge and part set in a country house. The heroine of this book is Prudence Pinsent, the only child of the Master of Prince’s College and a retired bishop. Prudence, like so many characters in these novels, has to have a character trait – in her case, it is that she uses bad language. This was obviously daring in the early 1930’s, but translates less well now. That said, it is no more tenuous than Nicholas Blake’s character, Nigel Strangeways, constant drinking of tea (as an example) and the author may have relied on this less in later books.
Prudence is going to stay with her cousin, Ben Temple, at Wellende Old Hall in Suffolk. On the way, she bumps into Captain Harry Studde, who informs her that there are suggestions her cousin, Lord Wellende, is somehow central to a smuggling plot – or, rather, that someone in his estate is involved. Furthermore, this smuggling of drugs, is, he believes, being distributed in Cambridge. This ties the two storylines together into an involved plot, involving ex members of the intelligence service, shady staff, smuggling and suggestions of poisoning plots… However, where this book fails is in the fact that the plot unfolds without too much help from the central character; whose story is side tracked with a romance storyline that seems to squash, rather than enhance, her independent spirit.
As such, this is a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoyed the setting and I love Golden Age mysteries generally. With the author being linked to Jane Austen it did make it interesting to read. However, it was slightly disjointed and Prudence could have been more involved in the actual investigating. Still, an interesting read and I would try another novel by this author. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
Rated 3.5
Indeed, this novel features two very popular settings for Golden Age mystery novels; combining part of the story in the academic setting of Cambridge and part set in a country house. The heroine of this book is Prudence Pinsent, the only child of the Master of Prince’s College and a retired bishop. Prudence, like so many characters in these novels, has to have a character trait – in her case, it is that she uses bad language. This was obviously daring in the early 1930’s, but translates less well now. That said, it is no more tenuous than Nicholas Blake’s character, Nigel Strangeways, constant drinking of tea (as an example) and the author may have relied on this less in later books.
Prudence is going to stay with her cousin, Ben Temple, at Wellende Old Hall in Suffolk. On the way, she bumps into Captain Harry Studde, who informs her that there are suggestions her cousin, Lord Wellende, is somehow central to a smuggling plot – or, rather, that someone in his estate is involved. Furthermore, this smuggling of drugs, is, he believes, being distributed in Cambridge. This ties the two storylines together into an involved plot, involving ex members of the intelligence service, shady staff, smuggling and suggestions of poisoning plots… However, where this book fails is in the fact that the plot unfolds without too much help from the central character; whose story is side tracked with a romance storyline that seems to squash, rather than enhance, her independent spirit.
As such, this is a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoyed the setting and I love Golden Age mysteries generally. With the author being linked to Jane Austen it did make it interesting to read. However, it was slightly disjointed and Prudence could have been more involved in the actual investigating. Still, an interesting read and I would try another novel by this author. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
Rated 3.5
June 21, 2024
Unincredible
Review of the Poisoned Pen Press eBook edition (July 7, 2017) of the British Library Crime Classics (BLCC) paperback (July 4, 2017) of the Herbert Jenkins hardcover original (1931).
I had good luck recently with another BLCC Kindle Deal of the Day in Capital Crimes: London Mysteries so when The Incredible Crime was offered for $1.99 I took a chance on it. Unfortunately it proved to be a rather dull affair with barely any crime and investigation to it. I ended up having to mementoize* in order to finish. Instead of a mystery plot there is a lot of tedious recounting of dinners and rugby playing at Cambridge University and fox-hunting in Suffolk (which at least reminded me of the Oscar Wilde line: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable." 😂).
The setup here is that Prudence Pinsent, the daughter of a Cambridge don, is asked by a British Coast Guard officer to be his eyes and ears for a possible drugs smuggling operation which may be centred in Cambridge and receives its illicit goods via a coastal estate owned by her cousin. Prudence (who is introduced as a supposed feisty spinster, but succumbs to romance in the end) fumbles around her cousin's estate trying to determine if the sounds she hears in the night are due to ghosts, rats or a smuggling crew boating down an underground river below the house. She draws the completely wrong conclusions about everything.
The source for the cover image seems to have been a railway poster.
The "crime and solution" is revealed in the dialogue in the final 2 chapters (the final 5% of the book) between police officials. The culprit is someone who had not been detected at all by Prudence and who had only brief cameo appearances up until that point. There is the final "twist" that our heroine ends up falling for another Cambridge don who cleaned himself up and got new teeth in order to win his lady love.
So, be warned, The Incredible Crime is neither incredible nor much of a crime story. Tags of Not So Thriller Fiction and an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert are required for this one. It has a curiosity value of being written by Jane Austen's great-great niece and supposedly on Austen's own writing desk. Oliver Tearle (see link below in Other Reviews) sums it up as "in many ways, her strengths as a novelist are the same as Austen’s: not in constructing grand plots or tackling political issues, but in capturing the chatter of the upper-middle-class English drawing-room."
Footnote
Other Reviews
To read some more positive impressions you can check out:
Lois Austen-Leigh’s Incredible Crime by Oliver Tearle, Interesting Literature, August 2017.
[Abstract Only} Gothic Crimes and Flawed Detection: Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime (1931) and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) by Lee O'Brien, The Journal of Detection, Fall 2021.
Soundtrack
W.A. Mozart's String Quintet No. 4 in G minor K. 516 (1787) provides a small clue in the investigation due to one character's whistling of a motif from it. You can watch and listen to a performance of the complete work on YouTube here.
Trivia and Links
The British Library Crime Classics series are reprints of forgotten titles from the 1860's through to the 1950's. You can see a list at the British Library Crime Classics Shop (for North America they are reprinted by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press). There is also a Goodreads Listopia for the series which you can see here.
Review of the Poisoned Pen Press eBook edition (July 7, 2017) of the British Library Crime Classics (BLCC) paperback (July 4, 2017) of the Herbert Jenkins hardcover original (1931).
I had good luck recently with another BLCC Kindle Deal of the Day in Capital Crimes: London Mysteries so when The Incredible Crime was offered for $1.99 I took a chance on it. Unfortunately it proved to be a rather dull affair with barely any crime and investigation to it. I ended up having to mementoize* in order to finish. Instead of a mystery plot there is a lot of tedious recounting of dinners and rugby playing at Cambridge University and fox-hunting in Suffolk (which at least reminded me of the Oscar Wilde line: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable." 😂).
The setup here is that Prudence Pinsent, the daughter of a Cambridge don, is asked by a British Coast Guard officer to be his eyes and ears for a possible drugs smuggling operation which may be centred in Cambridge and receives its illicit goods via a coastal estate owned by her cousin. Prudence (who is introduced as a supposed feisty spinster, but succumbs to romance in the end) fumbles around her cousin's estate trying to determine if the sounds she hears in the night are due to ghosts, rats or a smuggling crew boating down an underground river below the house. She draws the completely wrong conclusions about everything.
The source for the cover image seems to have been a railway poster.
The "crime and solution" is revealed in the dialogue in the final 2 chapters (the final 5% of the book) between police officials. The culprit is someone who had not been detected at all by Prudence and who had only brief cameo appearances up until that point. There is the final "twist" that our heroine ends up falling for another Cambridge don who cleaned himself up and got new teeth in order to win his lady love.
So, be warned, The Incredible Crime is neither incredible nor much of a crime story. Tags of Not So Thriller Fiction and an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert are required for this one. It has a curiosity value of being written by Jane Austen's great-great niece and supposedly on Austen's own writing desk. Oliver Tearle (see link below in Other Reviews) sums it up as "in many ways, her strengths as a novelist are the same as Austen’s: not in constructing grand plots or tackling political issues, but in capturing the chatter of the upper-middle-class English drawing-room."
Footnote
*mementoize
məˈmenˌtōˈīz/
verb / neologism
Definitions:
• 1. to tell a story in reverse order, as in the film Memento (2000) by director Christopher Nolan.
“Christopher Nolan didn’t invent reverse chronology story telling, but his film title Memento is the easiest to make into a verb: mementoize."
• 2. to read a book in reverse order to finish it, especially when reading it in forward order is not very interesting or compelling.
“The book was so dull I had to mementoize it in order to get through it."
• 3. a fictitious word invented for use in book reviews by The Lone Librarian™.
Other Reviews
To read some more positive impressions you can check out:
Lois Austen-Leigh’s Incredible Crime by Oliver Tearle, Interesting Literature, August 2017.
[Abstract Only} Gothic Crimes and Flawed Detection: Lois Austen-Leigh’s The Incredible Crime (1931) and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1818) by Lee O'Brien, The Journal of Detection, Fall 2021.
Soundtrack
W.A. Mozart's String Quintet No. 4 in G minor K. 516 (1787) provides a small clue in the investigation due to one character's whistling of a motif from it. You can watch and listen to a performance of the complete work on YouTube here.
Trivia and Links
The British Library Crime Classics series are reprints of forgotten titles from the 1860's through to the 1950's. You can see a list at the British Library Crime Classics Shop (for North America they are reprinted by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press). There is also a Goodreads Listopia for the series which you can see here.
August 30, 2017
such promise! cool elements!
BUT the romance was enraging - the guy wanted to prove he was her superior in all fronts and the novel lets him. SAD FACE
BUT the romance was enraging - the guy wanted to prove he was her superior in all fronts and the novel lets him. SAD FACE
May 8, 2017
There were elements of ‘The Incredible Crime’ that I really really loved and elements that I wasn’t so keen on. My interest was thoroughly piqued when I learnt that Lois Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen and like her famous aunt, she can weave a good story together.
Prudence Pinsent, our main character is sassy, bold, beautiful and can swear like a sailor. Her days are spent surrounded by the learned, educated professors and scholars of Prince’s College, Cambridge and she has certainly learnt to hold her own among such company. I liked her, she grabs life by the balls!
Cambridge and life in the college are described to perfection, you really get a true sense of the grandeur and intelligence that walk the corridors. Suffolk is our second setting and this too is beautifully described. And that good old country manor house theme is used wonderfully.
At times for me, this book did seem a little disjointed. It jumps around a fair bit, one moment your reading about Prudence then the next chapter will be following another character. I would just get in the flow of one person’s story then the tale would switch to someone else. The smuggling mystery also wasn’t really a main feature of the book, there doesn’t seem to be much unravelling of who is involved, it just seems to happen without much investigating.
Despite the fact I felt the book was a little all over the place whilst reading, I did enjoy it. ‘The Incredible Crime’ is entertaining, funny and sits well within Golden Age crime fiction. I would happily read more from Lois Austen-Leigh so hopefully The British Library will re-publish some of her other work.
Prudence Pinsent, our main character is sassy, bold, beautiful and can swear like a sailor. Her days are spent surrounded by the learned, educated professors and scholars of Prince’s College, Cambridge and she has certainly learnt to hold her own among such company. I liked her, she grabs life by the balls!
Cambridge and life in the college are described to perfection, you really get a true sense of the grandeur and intelligence that walk the corridors. Suffolk is our second setting and this too is beautifully described. And that good old country manor house theme is used wonderfully.
At times for me, this book did seem a little disjointed. It jumps around a fair bit, one moment your reading about Prudence then the next chapter will be following another character. I would just get in the flow of one person’s story then the tale would switch to someone else. The smuggling mystery also wasn’t really a main feature of the book, there doesn’t seem to be much unravelling of who is involved, it just seems to happen without much investigating.
Despite the fact I felt the book was a little all over the place whilst reading, I did enjoy it. ‘The Incredible Crime’ is entertaining, funny and sits well within Golden Age crime fiction. I would happily read more from Lois Austen-Leigh so hopefully The British Library will re-publish some of her other work.
January 6, 2023
Much is made in the introduction to this reissued Golden Age novel that Lois Austen-Leigh is the granddaughter of Jane Austen's nephew. And there were moments, reading this, that I caught a glimpse of the wit and language style of Jane, and wondered whether she was doing it on purpose. For a few minutes here and there the thought did cross my mind that this was a bit like the sort of mystery Jane Austen would write, with wit and romance and cleverness. (It had the kind of cursing JA might have used had she been writing a hundred or so years later: "and what the something something ’ave yer to do with me?" Heh.)
But … the cleverness of the book seemed to falter in the delivery of the actual mystery, the "incredible crime". In fact, I had a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what was meant as the "incredible crime". There was a lot of circumlocution about smuggling drugs in the style of all the stories of past centuries, and a lot of exploration of whether it was sporting or not (which, the consensus was that rum or such was all right, but not drugs), and who was involved, and was it okay if the drugs weren't going to be marketed, and wait really who was involved … I was a bit – pardon the pun – at sea for big chunks of the book.
One reason for my state of I have no idea what's going on was – I admit it. I skimmed parts of it, because there were a chunk devoted to my old nemesis, bridge, and several chunks spent on my new nemesis: fox hunting. I mean, I'm largely ignorant of fox-hunting. My impression is of rich and bored people riding roughshod over the countryside, and people's crops, chasing a pack of hounds which are (is?) chasing a fox, jumping over fences, falling off occasionally, and, in the end, watching as the dogs tear the fox to pieces? I could be wrong. I'm sure there's much more to it. Heaven knows the reverence with which the process was treated in this book indicates a deep culture behind the … sport. All I can say as a 20-21st century American is that when a character asks "Does it convey what it should to you, when I tell you that in five days’ hunting the hounds have made one six-mile point—point, Harry, and two seven-mile points?" I could only say "No".
There is some extremely uncomfortable pre-feminism … stuff, particularly in men's attitude toward silly and untrustworthy women ("Prudence’s first impulse was to point out to him the unwisdom of belittling the trustworthiness of women in general, to the woman he apparently proposed to trust"). I was mildly dismayed by the way Prudence, the initially strong and capable woman at the heart of the story, went down a rather Taming of the Shrew path. But at least she didn't ride astride when she hunted.
I don't know. I liked parts. There was some nice atmosphere, some nice characterization, some very enjoyable writing … but my mental image of the plot is of a huge tangle of that really fuzzy kind of yarn that loses its integrity in places and just becomes a puff. Was there smuggling? Of what? Who was that spy fellow, and could he be trusted? Who could be trusted at all? Was the puppy okay? And who killed the man who died very late in the plot, and why? It was a mess.
One note which might help the modern, baffled reader: "sported his oak" means "shut his door to indicate he wasn't 'in' to visitors". I must have seen that in the past – I must just never have looked it up before.
Quote I enjoyed:
"This is a very serious allegation that you are making,” said Colonel Marton hoarsely. “Do you quite realize what you are saying, I wonder?"
It was quite obvious that Mary did. “I don’t know about no alligators,” she said cautiously…
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
But … the cleverness of the book seemed to falter in the delivery of the actual mystery, the "incredible crime". In fact, I had a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what was meant as the "incredible crime". There was a lot of circumlocution about smuggling drugs in the style of all the stories of past centuries, and a lot of exploration of whether it was sporting or not (which, the consensus was that rum or such was all right, but not drugs), and who was involved, and was it okay if the drugs weren't going to be marketed, and wait really who was involved … I was a bit – pardon the pun – at sea for big chunks of the book.
One reason for my state of I have no idea what's going on was – I admit it. I skimmed parts of it, because there were a chunk devoted to my old nemesis, bridge, and several chunks spent on my new nemesis: fox hunting. I mean, I'm largely ignorant of fox-hunting. My impression is of rich and bored people riding roughshod over the countryside, and people's crops, chasing a pack of hounds which are (is?) chasing a fox, jumping over fences, falling off occasionally, and, in the end, watching as the dogs tear the fox to pieces? I could be wrong. I'm sure there's much more to it. Heaven knows the reverence with which the process was treated in this book indicates a deep culture behind the … sport. All I can say as a 20-21st century American is that when a character asks "Does it convey what it should to you, when I tell you that in five days’ hunting the hounds have made one six-mile point—point, Harry, and two seven-mile points?" I could only say "No".
There is some extremely uncomfortable pre-feminism … stuff, particularly in men's attitude toward silly and untrustworthy women ("Prudence’s first impulse was to point out to him the unwisdom of belittling the trustworthiness of women in general, to the woman he apparently proposed to trust"). I was mildly dismayed by the way Prudence, the initially strong and capable woman at the heart of the story, went down a rather Taming of the Shrew path. But at least she didn't ride astride when she hunted.
I don't know. I liked parts. There was some nice atmosphere, some nice characterization, some very enjoyable writing … but my mental image of the plot is of a huge tangle of that really fuzzy kind of yarn that loses its integrity in places and just becomes a puff. Was there smuggling? Of what? Who was that spy fellow, and could he be trusted? Who could be trusted at all? Was the puppy okay? And who killed the man who died very late in the plot, and why? It was a mess.
One note which might help the modern, baffled reader: "sported his oak" means "shut his door to indicate he wasn't 'in' to visitors". I must have seen that in the past – I must just never have looked it up before.
Quote I enjoyed:
"This is a very serious allegation that you are making,” said Colonel Marton hoarsely. “Do you quite realize what you are saying, I wonder?"
It was quite obvious that Mary did. “I don’t know about no alligators,” she said cautiously…
The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
December 5, 2017
I do not like to be critical. I approach every book with the idea that it will be a wonderful reading experience and I will enjoy several pleasurable hours in another world. So it always comes as a disappointment when a book does not live up to the hype. THE INCREDIBLE CRIME by LOIS AUSTEN-LEIGH was a huge disappointment. It has been out of print over 70 years. I can understand why. In a word, it simply isn't good.
Lois Austen-Leigh was a grandniece of Jane Austen. That would appear to be her only qualification for writing. From the start I found things--I don't know the technical term for it--that just weren't right. "The sunlight lit up the old grey fountain in the middle of the court, and splashes of color made by the late autumn flowers in the bed surrounding it." What does that even mean? "...splashes of color...surrounding it." It's a dangling phrase that doesn't modify anything. What is she referring to? I have no idea.
"She gave her father his coffee, and proceeded to help herself to the hot dish." Again, what hot dish? And dish of what? Or does she consume warm porcelain for her meals?
Or this. "...you do that by going down the Cam into the Ouse by Ely, by Denver Sluice into the Wash." Austen must not have been writing for an American audience because unless you actually know the neighborhood or have a map of it before you, you have no idea what the people are talking about or where they are going. Further, these directions have nothing to do with the story so why bother including it?
Finally, there's this wonderful piece of description: "His hair was way too long, he had whiskers, and one or two front teeth were missing; moreover he was imperfectly shaved..." Well, duh! If you just said he had whiskers it would stand to reason he wasn't perfectly shaved. That sort of writing is just plain sloppy.
Nor is Austen in any hurry to get things underway. In Chapter One, the ladies play bridge and talk. In Chapter Two, they go for a drive and talk. In Chapter Three they vist a manor house and talk. This is billed as being a satire or a parody. Which to me implies it should be slightly humorous. Sorry but I'm not going to wait forever for the humor to kick in. Either establish it from the start or forget it. If you watch the Three Stooges they do something funny in the first minute. Law & Order has a murder take place before the opening credits. Perry Mason introduces the characters and someone gets killed inside of 5 minutes. Briscoe and Green don't sit around shooting the breeze and Perry and Della don't drink coffee waiting for a case to pop up.
The heroine, Prudence, is not especially interesting. She's beautiful (naturally) and upper class (of course) but otherwise there's nothing to her except for a tendency to cuss. And there too, we get an inconsistency. When Prudence curses, it's "d----d." When the males curse, it's spelled out "damned." Again, why?
I confess, I only made it through 4 chapters, so mark this DNF. I don't mind a slow build where appropriate. But if you're doing satire, or parody, or pastiche, or whatever you want to call it, you need to get that first dig in early. When someone tells you a joke and says "wait for it" it's generally not worth waiting for.
So again, I really wanted to like this, and I plowed through 4 chapters of talk waiting for something to occur. But after that my patience gave out. Maybe it turns into a brilliantly funny satire in chapter 5. If so, it's my loss. But I've too many things on my to-do list to spend time waiting. If you have something to say, then say it. And if you haven't then shut up.
Lois Austen-Leigh was a grandniece of Jane Austen. That would appear to be her only qualification for writing. From the start I found things--I don't know the technical term for it--that just weren't right. "The sunlight lit up the old grey fountain in the middle of the court, and splashes of color made by the late autumn flowers in the bed surrounding it." What does that even mean? "...splashes of color...surrounding it." It's a dangling phrase that doesn't modify anything. What is she referring to? I have no idea.
"She gave her father his coffee, and proceeded to help herself to the hot dish." Again, what hot dish? And dish of what? Or does she consume warm porcelain for her meals?
Or this. "...you do that by going down the Cam into the Ouse by Ely, by Denver Sluice into the Wash." Austen must not have been writing for an American audience because unless you actually know the neighborhood or have a map of it before you, you have no idea what the people are talking about or where they are going. Further, these directions have nothing to do with the story so why bother including it?
Finally, there's this wonderful piece of description: "His hair was way too long, he had whiskers, and one or two front teeth were missing; moreover he was imperfectly shaved..." Well, duh! If you just said he had whiskers it would stand to reason he wasn't perfectly shaved. That sort of writing is just plain sloppy.
Nor is Austen in any hurry to get things underway. In Chapter One, the ladies play bridge and talk. In Chapter Two, they go for a drive and talk. In Chapter Three they vist a manor house and talk. This is billed as being a satire or a parody. Which to me implies it should be slightly humorous. Sorry but I'm not going to wait forever for the humor to kick in. Either establish it from the start or forget it. If you watch the Three Stooges they do something funny in the first minute. Law & Order has a murder take place before the opening credits. Perry Mason introduces the characters and someone gets killed inside of 5 minutes. Briscoe and Green don't sit around shooting the breeze and Perry and Della don't drink coffee waiting for a case to pop up.
The heroine, Prudence, is not especially interesting. She's beautiful (naturally) and upper class (of course) but otherwise there's nothing to her except for a tendency to cuss. And there too, we get an inconsistency. When Prudence curses, it's "d----d." When the males curse, it's spelled out "damned." Again, why?
I confess, I only made it through 4 chapters, so mark this DNF. I don't mind a slow build where appropriate. But if you're doing satire, or parody, or pastiche, or whatever you want to call it, you need to get that first dig in early. When someone tells you a joke and says "wait for it" it's generally not worth waiting for.
So again, I really wanted to like this, and I plowed through 4 chapters of talk waiting for something to occur. But after that my patience gave out. Maybe it turns into a brilliantly funny satire in chapter 5. If so, it's my loss. But I've too many things on my to-do list to spend time waiting. If you have something to say, then say it. And if you haven't then shut up.
October 23, 2019
DAME AGATHA CHRISTIE AND HER PEERS
BOOK 22
It's great that Poisoned Pen Press is republishing "British Library Crime Classics" as many novels from "The Golden Age of Mysteries" have long since disappeared. Louis Austen-Leigh is "the granddaughter of Jane Austen's favourite nephew" writes Kirsten T. Saxton in the introduction to the edition I read. But what, exactly, is the appeal?
CAST - 3 stars: I liked the rather oblique opening here: Prudence Pinset (the only child of the Master of Prince's College), Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Maryon, and Susan Skipwith play bridge. From there, Austen-Leigh takes us into Cambridge and into the story in which only Prudence is a major player. There is a Duke, several Lords, a number of Professors and, well, one tall man dressed as follows: "...his trousers were of an almost godly fullness..." But after closing the book, Prudence is the only character that really stands out, other than the guy and his trousers.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: Oh,Temple Fortress! An 800-year-old castle with canals and underground passages and odd noises. Prudence has relatives who have lived there since day one. Naturally, it is haunted, having been 'trafficked with witches and magicians...'. Plus, we have the academia setting of Prince's College in Cambridge. Intellectuals sound really smart and whistle things like 'the G Minor Mozart Quintet.' (Take note, a clue!) And there are more canals, which reach rivers, some of which reach the sea and all this is just perfect for...
PLOT - 2: ...smuggling something. What is it and Who is doing it? "Some girl was powdering her disgusting little nose by the covert side," pens the author, and this seems to hint at that "What". Then again, there has been smuggling for 800 years, many kinds of things, so could it be just medical supplies for the college or for experiments at the castle? Here is the problem: there is more about Prudence bathing and falling in love (her heart sometimes dances with joy...perhaps about the full trousers...) than any "incredible crime." Then there is the quality of writing:
Colonel Marston: "This is a serious allegation..."
Mary: "I don't know about no alligators..."
I kid you not. These lines are here!
INVESTIGATION - 2: Prudence hangs around the castle, listens, looks, finds a hidden staircase (of course!), falls madly in love (of course!) and discovers who is doing what.
RESOLUTION - 1: I kept waiting for "The Incredible Crime", darn it! If anyone found it, please let me know. (And, no, the needlessly horrific mention of children burning to death in a cinema isn't it, and DOES NOT belong in ANY "Golden Age of Mystery" novel. And for that, in and of itself, I have to give this element just 1 star.)
SUMMARY: 2.4. The appeal? The name. Otherwise I doubt this would have been republished. Now, there are some very good Austen-type lines like, "...but marriages, however suitable, seldom afford universal satisfaction..." And there is a 'social comedy satire' aspect. But for me this didn't work as a 'crime classic'. However, the name "Austen" and "British Library Crime Classics" and lovely artwork on the cover is probably enough for most mystery lovers (like me) to open the pages and still enjoy certain aspects. Particularly the haunted castle. Oh, and the trousers. One must ask: What, exactly, is that guy smuggling?
BOOK 22
It's great that Poisoned Pen Press is republishing "British Library Crime Classics" as many novels from "The Golden Age of Mysteries" have long since disappeared. Louis Austen-Leigh is "the granddaughter of Jane Austen's favourite nephew" writes Kirsten T. Saxton in the introduction to the edition I read. But what, exactly, is the appeal?
CAST - 3 stars: I liked the rather oblique opening here: Prudence Pinset (the only child of the Master of Prince's College), Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Maryon, and Susan Skipwith play bridge. From there, Austen-Leigh takes us into Cambridge and into the story in which only Prudence is a major player. There is a Duke, several Lords, a number of Professors and, well, one tall man dressed as follows: "...his trousers were of an almost godly fullness..." But after closing the book, Prudence is the only character that really stands out, other than the guy and his trousers.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: Oh,Temple Fortress! An 800-year-old castle with canals and underground passages and odd noises. Prudence has relatives who have lived there since day one. Naturally, it is haunted, having been 'trafficked with witches and magicians...'. Plus, we have the academia setting of Prince's College in Cambridge. Intellectuals sound really smart and whistle things like 'the G Minor Mozart Quintet.' (Take note, a clue!) And there are more canals, which reach rivers, some of which reach the sea and all this is just perfect for...
PLOT - 2: ...smuggling something. What is it and Who is doing it? "Some girl was powdering her disgusting little nose by the covert side," pens the author, and this seems to hint at that "What". Then again, there has been smuggling for 800 years, many kinds of things, so could it be just medical supplies for the college or for experiments at the castle? Here is the problem: there is more about Prudence bathing and falling in love (her heart sometimes dances with joy...perhaps about the full trousers...) than any "incredible crime." Then there is the quality of writing:
Colonel Marston: "This is a serious allegation..."
Mary: "I don't know about no alligators..."
I kid you not. These lines are here!
INVESTIGATION - 2: Prudence hangs around the castle, listens, looks, finds a hidden staircase (of course!), falls madly in love (of course!) and discovers who is doing what.
RESOLUTION - 1: I kept waiting for "The Incredible Crime", darn it! If anyone found it, please let me know. (And, no, the needlessly horrific mention of children burning to death in a cinema isn't it, and DOES NOT belong in ANY "Golden Age of Mystery" novel. And for that, in and of itself, I have to give this element just 1 star.)
SUMMARY: 2.4. The appeal? The name. Otherwise I doubt this would have been republished. Now, there are some very good Austen-type lines like, "...but marriages, however suitable, seldom afford universal satisfaction..." And there is a 'social comedy satire' aspect. But for me this didn't work as a 'crime classic'. However, the name "Austen" and "British Library Crime Classics" and lovely artwork on the cover is probably enough for most mystery lovers (like me) to open the pages and still enjoy certain aspects. Particularly the haunted castle. Oh, and the trousers. One must ask: What, exactly, is that guy smuggling?
September 2, 2020
I picked the audio of this title because I’ve liked a lot of books in the British Library Crime Classics series, and because I’m a total sucker for crime fiction set in Oxford and Cambridge.
This one isn’t particularly Cambridge-centric, by which I mean that I didn’t feel like it was soaked in the academic atmosphere. Yes, there were several characters who were Cambridge dons, but it was a lot more about activities away from the university.
I liked the book to start with. The narrator was pretty good, and the dialog was Golden Age appropriate. It’s not a whodunnit, though. Not your classic Golden Age puzzle mystery. The story just goes along, it becomes clear that someone among the characters is involved in smuggling dangerous drugs, our charming Prudence Pinsent tries to figure it all out, while Scotland Yard is doing the same. But the answer is just handed to us by the professional detective. We’re not given clues and opportunities to figure it out for ourselves. That was disappointing.
The story more or less kept my interest as I went along, despite way, way, way too much about fox hunting. I did eventually up the narration speed somewhat, which is always a sign I’m not enjoying the book a lot. And then the old-fashioned sexism really chapped my hide. Prudence is a lively young woman with her own mind, but her friend remarks that she’d a lot rather be thought pretty than smart, and she’s probably right. But it’s when Prudence alters her interests and ideas to conform to her love interest’s that I swore loudly in disgust.
So, not an utter waste of time, but I sure wouldn’t recommend it.
This one isn’t particularly Cambridge-centric, by which I mean that I didn’t feel like it was soaked in the academic atmosphere. Yes, there were several characters who were Cambridge dons, but it was a lot more about activities away from the university.
I liked the book to start with. The narrator was pretty good, and the dialog was Golden Age appropriate. It’s not a whodunnit, though. Not your classic Golden Age puzzle mystery. The story just goes along, it becomes clear that someone among the characters is involved in smuggling dangerous drugs, our charming Prudence Pinsent tries to figure it all out, while Scotland Yard is doing the same. But the answer is just handed to us by the professional detective. We’re not given clues and opportunities to figure it out for ourselves. That was disappointing.
The story more or less kept my interest as I went along, despite way, way, way too much about fox hunting. I did eventually up the narration speed somewhat, which is always a sign I’m not enjoying the book a lot. And then the old-fashioned sexism really chapped my hide. Prudence is a lively young woman with her own mind, but her friend remarks that she’d a lot rather be thought pretty than smart, and she’s probably right. But it’s when Prudence alters her interests and ideas to conform to her love interest’s that I swore loudly in disgust.
So, not an utter waste of time, but I sure wouldn’t recommend it.
January 11, 2018
Sooooo disappointed. Thought perhaps since it had been exhumed after 70 years and put in a lovely new cover and also the niece of Jane Austen (woo woo, it must be good right?) I'd found a treasure. What a dump.
And it could have been so good! Who doesn't love a crime set in Cambridge?
Writing actually pretty shoddy. Just all over the place, and worse still, nothing really happens.
The romance is absolutely implausible. First the guy is described as a total slob (whiskers, dirty, needs a shave, missing front teeth) and then all the sudden he gets a wash, some dentures and he's masterful and imposing and attractive?? And enough that this strong-willed heroine fairly cows to him? Pretty lame.
And then the mystery?? What the? What even was it? It was all so murky. Perpetrated by an almost unknown that we hear about for about one paragraph. ???
Again, so disappointed. I kept hoping it would get better. It could have been great I think. The classic British mystery bones were there.
And it could have been so good! Who doesn't love a crime set in Cambridge?
Writing actually pretty shoddy. Just all over the place, and worse still, nothing really happens.
The romance is absolutely implausible. First the guy is described as a total slob (whiskers, dirty, needs a shave, missing front teeth) and then all the sudden he gets a wash, some dentures and he's masterful and imposing and attractive?? And enough that this strong-willed heroine fairly cows to him? Pretty lame.
And then the mystery?? What the? What even was it? It was all so murky. Perpetrated by an almost unknown that we hear about for about one paragraph. ???
Again, so disappointed. I kept hoping it would get better. It could have been great I think. The classic British mystery bones were there.
February 24, 2025
About 2.5 stars. Admittedly I did rush through this a bit to finish it before my Kindle Unlimited subscription ended, so perhaps take my opinion with a tiny grain of salt. But I did almost quit on it in the first few chapters before deciding to rush through it...however, it picked up a little bit once Prudence started off for her first visit to her cousin's estate.
It has a bit of an odd structure, or lack of structure, with most of the characters seeming to know most of what was going on, with just one small piece of information that explains everything being held out till the end. With the author seemingly going out of her way to build up certain characters as sympathetic, but also all the evidence pointing to their guilt, you kind of know that there is going to be some twist in the tail that will reveal things are not what they seem. Also it just seems to be a book that throws in a little of everything—Cambridge, smuggling, secret passages, poison, ghosts, espionage, hunting, boating, loyal servants, scientific experiments...a kind of Irish stew of English mystery ingredients. And then suddenly an unlikely romance starting up in the middle of things that almost feels like a separate story. None of these elements are really bad in themselves, it all just feels a bit helter-skelter.
It has a bit of an odd structure, or lack of structure, with most of the characters seeming to know most of what was going on, with just one small piece of information that explains everything being held out till the end. With the author seemingly going out of her way to build up certain characters as sympathetic, but also all the evidence pointing to their guilt, you kind of know that there is going to be some twist in the tail that will reveal things are not what they seem. Also it just seems to be a book that throws in a little of everything—Cambridge, smuggling, secret passages, poison, ghosts, espionage, hunting, boating, loyal servants, scientific experiments...a kind of Irish stew of English mystery ingredients. And then suddenly an unlikely romance starting up in the middle of things that almost feels like a separate story. None of these elements are really bad in themselves, it all just feels a bit helter-skelter.
February 10, 2020
An odd book, parts of it gallop along and you're in the grips of a ripping yarn with an incredible female adventurer who just wants to get to the bottom of a mystery, then it drags on and on! It's a bit of a book of two halves.
A good jape but it just didn't grab my attention and I really wanted it to! Sadly a decidedly average read, but still not a terrible one.
A good jape but it just didn't grab my attention and I really wanted it to! Sadly a decidedly average read, but still not a terrible one.
June 16, 2018
This was written in 1931 and the author used the lingo of the day, which at times, I found confusing. If I understood the mannerisms and lingo better, I think I would have enjoyed the book more. Its no fault of the author, as she was writing for the audience of her time. The plot was decent and the crime was interesting.
May 3, 2023
What fun, I thought A mystery by a connection of Jane Austen, set in a Cambridge college, written in the golden age. But actually, unfortunately, this features a rather confusing plot and a regressive social viewpoint. Prudence, dauagher of a retired bishop who is master of a college, is independent--hard, some of her friends think. She finds that she only achieves happiness when mated with a dominant male. Unfortunately, she suspects him and her cousin of being drug smugglers, a thought she fights until they are vindicated. Unfortunately, what they are doing doesn't appeal too much to a modern reader, either. Not once of the British Library Crime Classics finer moments.
May 28, 2025
Not great. Honestly, I've already forgotten pretty much everything about this book one week after finishing. None of the characters have stuck in my head, and all I remember about the mystery is that no one really seemed to be investigating much for most of the book, and then suddenly at the end it was cleared up. Oh, wait, now I'm remembering that I was puzzled by the main character. She seemed frumpy at first, but then I was told she was pretty. She seemed smart and independent at first, but then I was told she was not that bright and needed to accept a man as her better. There was also a lot of fox hunting, which made more sense at the end but wasn't very amusing in the middle. Sorry, Jane Austen, I think your writing gene didn't get passed down.
June 19, 2017
I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press. Thank you.
When I saw this book had been written by Lois Austen-Leigh how could I possibly resist? Even if it was just to find out the quality of the writing that would have been enough, but to see it listed as a mystery as well, ah - just no way to pass that up. So, was I impressed with the writing talent of the granddaughter of Jane Austen's favorite nephew? Yes I was. I was also pleased that the writing was so good that I eventually forgot to even think about comparisons between the two writing styles. They don't come close to being the same and that's just fine.
The story was first published in 1931 and takes place in Cambridge, Prince's College, and one of the venerable old country estates located in Suffolk with the mandatory resident ghostly presence. But is the manor house really haunted or is that just atmosphere being used by the author to heighten the interest of readers? The story takes place during the time between the World Wars, but politics isn't a driving force of the plot. Instead we have smuggling and the questions of who might be smuggling, what they might be smuggling, and how the police will ever penetrate far enough into the rarified air of the inner workings of college and the inner halls of a very private home. The main character is a young woman of independent nature and extreme loyalty to family and friends. Prudence must discover the truth about the smuggling but she's afraid the answers may lead her to some incredibly difficult choices.
I liked the writing of this novel, so that's a plus, but I did not like all the emphasis put on hunting and fox hunting in particular. Firstly, I didn't understand the language of fox hunting so I had no idea what was happening during the scenes and there were a lot of those scenes. So minus points for the fox hunting. Also, minus points for all the talk of rugby. And this would be a good time to say that this novel is a suspense novel, not a murder mystery. I didn't realize that would be the case for a long time so I kept waiting for something that never was going to happen. Would I recommend this novel to another reader, definitely yes, but I would also make sure they knew what they were going to be getting. There are three other mystery novels written by Lois Austen-Leigh but I have no curiosity to track them down and read them. I was initially interested in reading this book because I am a lifelong fan of Jane Austen fiction so I was curious and that curiosity has now been satisfied.
When I saw this book had been written by Lois Austen-Leigh how could I possibly resist? Even if it was just to find out the quality of the writing that would have been enough, but to see it listed as a mystery as well, ah - just no way to pass that up. So, was I impressed with the writing talent of the granddaughter of Jane Austen's favorite nephew? Yes I was. I was also pleased that the writing was so good that I eventually forgot to even think about comparisons between the two writing styles. They don't come close to being the same and that's just fine.
The story was first published in 1931 and takes place in Cambridge, Prince's College, and one of the venerable old country estates located in Suffolk with the mandatory resident ghostly presence. But is the manor house really haunted or is that just atmosphere being used by the author to heighten the interest of readers? The story takes place during the time between the World Wars, but politics isn't a driving force of the plot. Instead we have smuggling and the questions of who might be smuggling, what they might be smuggling, and how the police will ever penetrate far enough into the rarified air of the inner workings of college and the inner halls of a very private home. The main character is a young woman of independent nature and extreme loyalty to family and friends. Prudence must discover the truth about the smuggling but she's afraid the answers may lead her to some incredibly difficult choices.
I liked the writing of this novel, so that's a plus, but I did not like all the emphasis put on hunting and fox hunting in particular. Firstly, I didn't understand the language of fox hunting so I had no idea what was happening during the scenes and there were a lot of those scenes. So minus points for the fox hunting. Also, minus points for all the talk of rugby. And this would be a good time to say that this novel is a suspense novel, not a murder mystery. I didn't realize that would be the case for a long time so I kept waiting for something that never was going to happen. Would I recommend this novel to another reader, definitely yes, but I would also make sure they knew what they were going to be getting. There are three other mystery novels written by Lois Austen-Leigh but I have no curiosity to track them down and read them. I was initially interested in reading this book because I am a lifelong fan of Jane Austen fiction so I was curious and that curiosity has now been satisfied.
May 15, 2018
(Spoilers)
Overall I enjoyed this, but I'm left completely confused by the ending and have no idea who actually did kill Lord Wellende, or if he just died of natural causes.
Overall I enjoyed this, but I'm left completely confused by the ending and have no idea who actually did kill Lord Wellende, or if he just died of natural causes.
November 25, 2025
Nothing, and I truly mean nothing, will convince me that the titular Incredible Crime is that this nonsense got published not once but actually TWICE. It very possibly is the best written (in terms of prose and dialogue) terrible book I have ever read. The actual crime itself just sort of potters along at the level of a very boring Enid Blyton rip off for about two thirds of the book, slightly ramps up for a bit and then decides it should probably get around to dangling a death or something at you in the last few pages. Except it’s not really a suspicious death, just a bloke dying of a completely previously unmentioned heart disease but in a way that possibly makes it slightly promise to be interesting for at least the last couple of chapters (but really isn’t). Then a barely mentioned character is revealed to be the villain. But that’s not the biggest crime of the book
No, firstly there’s this really weird subplot in the last few pages whereby the noble Lord and the hot headed academic have not in fact been smuggling drugs in and out of Suffolk (what is this drug? God knows except it makes it look like you have Scarlet Fever and gives you some sort of a rash) but in fact been experimenting with it to - and I’m not kidding - try and create some sort of next level of evolution. Except they do it on foxes for some reason, which seems to be a very half hearted justification for page after page of sentimental, sickly and frankly nauseating prose about how great hunting is. This leads into the second and biggest crime
Most crime novels which are set in the aristocracy are written by people in the upper middle classes. They write books in this milieu that are intended to make the upper classes both something to admire but also to send them up a little. It’s clearly an aspirational thing but the reading public also want their noble browed gentry to be balanced out by cads, bastards and arrogant shits. So for every genuinely noble nobleman there’s at least one bigot or demented rotter who either gets killed or is a prime suspect for much of the book. It’s a fine balance and it wasn’t until this book that I realised how fine that balance so often is. Because Austen-Leigh has nothing except for full on sentimental adoration of nobility. She’s not just a snob, but one of the most unquestioning and frankly naive writers about the gentry you will ever come across. It’s just bizarre
And thus we come to the final problem. Austen-Leigh is clearly a very talented writer of prose and dialogue. That her characters are all stock figures doesn’t become apparent until you realise there are in fact very little attempts for there to be double bluffs or use archetypes against each other. She’s just a very witty writer whose ideas are terrible. And because she was the great-great niece of Jane Austen there’s been a very unwarranted fascination in her books. The central relationship, if we can even call it that, is almost absurdly reliant on the style created by her famous ancestor it sometimes feels like a piss take, but I don’t think a snob like Austen-Leigh would dare do that. It’s staggeringly bad. At first I felt sorry for someone whose career seems to have ended with an unfortunately named novel called The Gobblecock Mystery, but after finishing this she should be grateful to be remembered for anything at all. Beyond terrible
No, firstly there’s this really weird subplot in the last few pages whereby the noble Lord and the hot headed academic have not in fact been smuggling drugs in and out of Suffolk (what is this drug? God knows except it makes it look like you have Scarlet Fever and gives you some sort of a rash) but in fact been experimenting with it to - and I’m not kidding - try and create some sort of next level of evolution. Except they do it on foxes for some reason, which seems to be a very half hearted justification for page after page of sentimental, sickly and frankly nauseating prose about how great hunting is. This leads into the second and biggest crime
Most crime novels which are set in the aristocracy are written by people in the upper middle classes. They write books in this milieu that are intended to make the upper classes both something to admire but also to send them up a little. It’s clearly an aspirational thing but the reading public also want their noble browed gentry to be balanced out by cads, bastards and arrogant shits. So for every genuinely noble nobleman there’s at least one bigot or demented rotter who either gets killed or is a prime suspect for much of the book. It’s a fine balance and it wasn’t until this book that I realised how fine that balance so often is. Because Austen-Leigh has nothing except for full on sentimental adoration of nobility. She’s not just a snob, but one of the most unquestioning and frankly naive writers about the gentry you will ever come across. It’s just bizarre
And thus we come to the final problem. Austen-Leigh is clearly a very talented writer of prose and dialogue. That her characters are all stock figures doesn’t become apparent until you realise there are in fact very little attempts for there to be double bluffs or use archetypes against each other. She’s just a very witty writer whose ideas are terrible. And because she was the great-great niece of Jane Austen there’s been a very unwarranted fascination in her books. The central relationship, if we can even call it that, is almost absurdly reliant on the style created by her famous ancestor it sometimes feels like a piss take, but I don’t think a snob like Austen-Leigh would dare do that. It’s staggeringly bad. At first I felt sorry for someone whose career seems to have ended with an unfortunately named novel called The Gobblecock Mystery, but after finishing this she should be grateful to be remembered for anything at all. Beyond terrible
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2023
Made it about 80 pages in this. Was intrigued as the author is the great niece of Jane Austen and did much of her writing at Austen’s desk. Would that it were better written as a result!
The novel starts off all right, four women at a bridge party in Cambridge. Prudence Pinsent (why not just make if Pringle and go all in?) is the only child of the Master of Prince’s College and fully grown. We are told she’s a fiercely independent woman but all we are given to prove it is a few episodes of swearing. (The daughter of a bishop!) After several chapters setting up the Cambridge life and mentioning a few of the professors without spending long enough to establish their characters whatsoever, we are whisked to the seaside estate of Lord Wellende, replete with underground caves and ideal for smuggling.
That seed has been planted by a chance encounter Pru has during a lunch stop on her drive to Suffolk. Captain Studde of the coast guard confides highly sensitive information about his current case to Prudence for apparently no reason… he suspects that her cousin Lord Wellende is involved somehow in the smuggling ring, or at the very least someone on his estate is taking advantage. What Prudence is supporting do with this info is unclear. And she doesn’t do much with it initially. She arrives, goes on a fox hunt, gets more suspicious info just handed to her in passing, and then heads home for a bath and a cuppa tea with Mary, the long serving and loyal family help. Mary of course instantly unburdens herself and her concerns about Lord Wellende and the wily Prof Temple. He’s another estranged family cousin, though he has made three visits recently and after every one Lord Wellende has been left shaken and sick. Is it nerves or blackmail or something even more sinister?
Well dear reader I will never know because I was so bored by the descriptions of Cambridge and the countryside and fox hunting and dog breeding. Meanwhile NONE of the actual people seem to have anything but the most stereotypical personalities. Almost 100 pages in and not sure WHAT the Incredible Crime title is alluding to. If it’s smuggling… ok then can we focus on that and those potentially involved?
Prudence also just wasn’t that likable, it part because again there’s just no substance or personality there. It’s even less encouraging to find passages like this one awaiting the reader should they be dogged or patient enough to carry on:
“Told you he admired my face!” And then, after a short pause: “I’d far rather he admired my intellect.”
“There are times, said Mrs. Skipwith, when I would like to take you and shake you. That’s not true, as a matter of fact, though I know you genuinely think it is. The truth is, you’ve always been so sure your face is all right, that you’ve never given it much of a thought; but your intellect you are very much less certain of, and so you think more about it in proportion; you’ve a very average brain, my dear.”
Is this supposed to be a compliment? Reassuring? HOW is this supposed to convey a fiercely independent and confident woman? Prudence seems like a completely different, timid little woman here almost. So disappointing. No thanks.
The best thing about this reprint is the beautiful cover art.
The novel starts off all right, four women at a bridge party in Cambridge. Prudence Pinsent (why not just make if Pringle and go all in?) is the only child of the Master of Prince’s College and fully grown. We are told she’s a fiercely independent woman but all we are given to prove it is a few episodes of swearing. (The daughter of a bishop!) After several chapters setting up the Cambridge life and mentioning a few of the professors without spending long enough to establish their characters whatsoever, we are whisked to the seaside estate of Lord Wellende, replete with underground caves and ideal for smuggling.
That seed has been planted by a chance encounter Pru has during a lunch stop on her drive to Suffolk. Captain Studde of the coast guard confides highly sensitive information about his current case to Prudence for apparently no reason… he suspects that her cousin Lord Wellende is involved somehow in the smuggling ring, or at the very least someone on his estate is taking advantage. What Prudence is supporting do with this info is unclear. And she doesn’t do much with it initially. She arrives, goes on a fox hunt, gets more suspicious info just handed to her in passing, and then heads home for a bath and a cuppa tea with Mary, the long serving and loyal family help. Mary of course instantly unburdens herself and her concerns about Lord Wellende and the wily Prof Temple. He’s another estranged family cousin, though he has made three visits recently and after every one Lord Wellende has been left shaken and sick. Is it nerves or blackmail or something even more sinister?
Well dear reader I will never know because I was so bored by the descriptions of Cambridge and the countryside and fox hunting and dog breeding. Meanwhile NONE of the actual people seem to have anything but the most stereotypical personalities. Almost 100 pages in and not sure WHAT the Incredible Crime title is alluding to. If it’s smuggling… ok then can we focus on that and those potentially involved?
Prudence also just wasn’t that likable, it part because again there’s just no substance or personality there. It’s even less encouraging to find passages like this one awaiting the reader should they be dogged or patient enough to carry on:
“Told you he admired my face!” And then, after a short pause: “I’d far rather he admired my intellect.”
“There are times, said Mrs. Skipwith, when I would like to take you and shake you. That’s not true, as a matter of fact, though I know you genuinely think it is. The truth is, you’ve always been so sure your face is all right, that you’ve never given it much of a thought; but your intellect you are very much less certain of, and so you think more about it in proportion; you’ve a very average brain, my dear.”
Is this supposed to be a compliment? Reassuring? HOW is this supposed to convey a fiercely independent and confident woman? Prudence seems like a completely different, timid little woman here almost. So disappointing. No thanks.
The best thing about this reprint is the beautiful cover art.
January 27, 2019
This review can also be found on my blog
Note: I’m not going to spoil concrete events or the whole solution to this book. But to explain what I didn’t like about this book I have to give away a bit more than I usually do, so read at your own risk.
Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen, at one point the inspector quotes from Northanger Abbey and at the beginning, I thought The Incredible Crime would end up being “Northanger Abbey but instead of Gothic novels it’s with crime fiction.”
For everybody whose memory of Austen’s novels is a bit patchy: The heroine Catherine loves gothic novels. Her designated love interest invites her to stay with him and his father General Tilney and their home looks like it came right out of a gothic novel. When then people act a bit oddly around Catherine, her imagination runs wild and she’s convinced that General Tilney killed his first wife and is now after her. Of course, in the end, it turns out that things were very different.
At the beginning of The Incredible Crime, Prudence reads a crime novel, laughs, tosses it away and complains about how these novels are always full of people getting murdered in country houses and this never happens in real life. Not much later she visits her cousin – in a country house – and strange things start happening. But are matters really as serious as they seem?
I am not a big fan of Northanger Abbey, due to it parodying Gothic novels and me having read a grand total of one Gothic novel but I think I would have loved an actual NA-with-crime-fiction with a main character who sees dead bodies under every creaking floorboard. But that’s not what The Incredible Crime turned out to be. Before Prudence visits her cousin, she was already approached by an inspector who raised some suspicions about one of the other houseguests. Once she arrives, one of the servants also has some worrying news and finally, Prudence herself witnesses things that go far beyond “people acting a bit odd”. And she isn’t the only one who’s suspicious; apart from the servant who confided in Prudence there’s also the Scotland Yard detective who is quite sure he knows what’s happening, he just needs a final bit of evidence. So, when in the end, things turn out to be very different from what everybody thought, as a reader, I didn’t go “Haha! How stupid of them to jump to conclusions.” but rather “They made perfectly reasonable deductions based on what they knew and saw and it was a one in a million chance that things weren’t what they thought they were.” which doesn’t make for the most satisfying reading experience. To come back to Northanger Abbey: It would be like having a scene in which Catherine sees Tilney with a dagger bent over a lifeless woman and later found out that he’d only given her a thoracotomy.
All of that is polished with an extremely unsatisfactory romance for Prudence. I wasn’t expecting Jane Austen (or Dorothy Sayers) but I had hoped for something better than one that concludes with “And once the woman learned her place she was happy.”
Note: I’m not going to spoil concrete events or the whole solution to this book. But to explain what I didn’t like about this book I have to give away a bit more than I usually do, so read at your own risk.
Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen, at one point the inspector quotes from Northanger Abbey and at the beginning, I thought The Incredible Crime would end up being “Northanger Abbey but instead of Gothic novels it’s with crime fiction.”
For everybody whose memory of Austen’s novels is a bit patchy: The heroine Catherine loves gothic novels. Her designated love interest invites her to stay with him and his father General Tilney and their home looks like it came right out of a gothic novel. When then people act a bit oddly around Catherine, her imagination runs wild and she’s convinced that General Tilney killed his first wife and is now after her. Of course, in the end, it turns out that things were very different.
At the beginning of The Incredible Crime, Prudence reads a crime novel, laughs, tosses it away and complains about how these novels are always full of people getting murdered in country houses and this never happens in real life. Not much later she visits her cousin – in a country house – and strange things start happening. But are matters really as serious as they seem?
I am not a big fan of Northanger Abbey, due to it parodying Gothic novels and me having read a grand total of one Gothic novel but I think I would have loved an actual NA-with-crime-fiction with a main character who sees dead bodies under every creaking floorboard. But that’s not what The Incredible Crime turned out to be. Before Prudence visits her cousin, she was already approached by an inspector who raised some suspicions about one of the other houseguests. Once she arrives, one of the servants also has some worrying news and finally, Prudence herself witnesses things that go far beyond “people acting a bit odd”. And she isn’t the only one who’s suspicious; apart from the servant who confided in Prudence there’s also the Scotland Yard detective who is quite sure he knows what’s happening, he just needs a final bit of evidence. So, when in the end, things turn out to be very different from what everybody thought, as a reader, I didn’t go “Haha! How stupid of them to jump to conclusions.” but rather “They made perfectly reasonable deductions based on what they knew and saw and it was a one in a million chance that things weren’t what they thought they were.” which doesn’t make for the most satisfying reading experience. To come back to Northanger Abbey: It would be like having a scene in which Catherine sees Tilney with a dagger bent over a lifeless woman and later found out that he’d only given her a thoracotomy.
All of that is polished with an extremely unsatisfactory romance for Prudence. I wasn’t expecting Jane Austen (or Dorothy Sayers) but I had hoped for something better than one that concludes with “And once the woman learned her place she was happy.”
August 18, 2017
Found this on the New Book Shelf at the local library, although it was first published in 1931, and since I have recently delved into reading titles from the Golden Age of Mysteries, it seemed perfect. Add to that the fact that the author is a relative of Jane Austen, whom I also like. Most recently I have been reading Nagio Marsh and Patricia Wentworth mysteries in order, and so the time period in England is a familiar and welcome one.
Caveat: This is more of a suspense novel than a murder mystery. I found the first chapter a bit confusing and referred back to it several times to figure out who was who. (This is something that happens frequently in these mysteries where lots of characters need to be introduced all at once, so it slowed me down rather than put me off.) The atmospheric parts are very well done, Cambridge and the university life are described tongue-in-cheek, and the countryside chapters, including fox hunts, are richly described. Prudence, the main character, stays overnight at an old tavern in Ipswich that also housed Charles Dickens at some point in his history. That was interesting.
The character development and plot unfolded fairly steadily throughout the book, and there were a couple of interesting twists with the characters. Unfortunately, it then seemed as if the resolutions to the story all came together rather quickly and somewhat unsatisfactorily. I am not sure I would follow up with Austen-Leigh's other three titles if they are published. This was her first published book, and one contemporaneous review suggested Austen-Leigh try another type of writing.
Caveat: This is more of a suspense novel than a murder mystery. I found the first chapter a bit confusing and referred back to it several times to figure out who was who. (This is something that happens frequently in these mysteries where lots of characters need to be introduced all at once, so it slowed me down rather than put me off.) The atmospheric parts are very well done, Cambridge and the university life are described tongue-in-cheek, and the countryside chapters, including fox hunts, are richly described. Prudence, the main character, stays overnight at an old tavern in Ipswich that also housed Charles Dickens at some point in his history. That was interesting.
The character development and plot unfolded fairly steadily throughout the book, and there were a couple of interesting twists with the characters. Unfortunately, it then seemed as if the resolutions to the story all came together rather quickly and somewhat unsatisfactorily. I am not sure I would follow up with Austen-Leigh's other three titles if they are published. This was her first published book, and one contemporaneous review suggested Austen-Leigh try another type of writing.
March 10, 2022
'The Incredible Crime' is something of a slow burner in that it seems the crime is so incredible you don't know what it is! But, having said that, it is a book that keeps the interest going for the leading character Prudence Pinsent is an energetic and entertaining personality and those around her respond accordingly.
There are two main locations for the story, Wellende Hall, the country home of Lord Wellende, and the universities of Cambridge where Professors Temple and Stepwith are both dons. And the ambience of the two places are effectively cohesive as Lois Austen-Leigh obviously has a vast knowledge of both. One perhaps comes from her Jane Austen background as she is the great-great niece of Jane while the second comes from her visiting her uncle Augustus Austen-Leigh (1840-1905), who was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge from 1889 to 1905.
And the dons play a significant part in the plot which rumbles along with hints and speculation as to what is going on being dropped along the way by them and all the other participants. And Prudence, who has a love interest as the story develops, is wise enough to put two and two together so that she eventually drops onto the truth of the affair.
At the end of the book one feels quite satisfied that, without blood and guts and great excitement, a nicely conceived story is brought to a satisfactory close.
There are two main locations for the story, Wellende Hall, the country home of Lord Wellende, and the universities of Cambridge where Professors Temple and Stepwith are both dons. And the ambience of the two places are effectively cohesive as Lois Austen-Leigh obviously has a vast knowledge of both. One perhaps comes from her Jane Austen background as she is the great-great niece of Jane while the second comes from her visiting her uncle Augustus Austen-Leigh (1840-1905), who was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge from 1889 to 1905.
And the dons play a significant part in the plot which rumbles along with hints and speculation as to what is going on being dropped along the way by them and all the other participants. And Prudence, who has a love interest as the story develops, is wise enough to put two and two together so that she eventually drops onto the truth of the affair.
At the end of the book one feels quite satisfied that, without blood and guts and great excitement, a nicely conceived story is brought to a satisfactory close.
November 23, 2022
3.5*
Prudence Pinsent, daughter of the Master of Prince's College, Cambridge is invited to go hunting at the home of her cousin, Lord Wellende in Suffolk. On her journey to the house for the weekend, she meets Captain Harry Studde of the coastguard, who alerts her to a drug smuggling ring which connects the Wellende country house to the Prince's college in Cambridge, and it falls to Prudence to investigate.
Happily for me, although the book is subtitled "A Cambridge Mystery", it is mainly set in mid Suffolk. Ipswich is even mentioned a few times, and Prudence stays in the Dickens Room of The Great White Horse. I think this significantly added to my enjoyment of the story, but that said I did find the scenes in Cambridge interesting too. The fox hunting was not for me, but luckily not too distracting.
Overall, this was a comforting and nostalgic read and one of the more fun ones that I have read, having also a tongue in cheek love story and the Suffolk connection. I found the drug smuggling plot a little strange and not as well thought out it could have been, but it didn't affect my enjoyment too much. I have subsequently found out that Lois Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen and I will definitely look out for anything else that she wrote that is republished.
Prudence Pinsent, daughter of the Master of Prince's College, Cambridge is invited to go hunting at the home of her cousin, Lord Wellende in Suffolk. On her journey to the house for the weekend, she meets Captain Harry Studde of the coastguard, who alerts her to a drug smuggling ring which connects the Wellende country house to the Prince's college in Cambridge, and it falls to Prudence to investigate.
Happily for me, although the book is subtitled "A Cambridge Mystery", it is mainly set in mid Suffolk. Ipswich is even mentioned a few times, and Prudence stays in the Dickens Room of The Great White Horse. I think this significantly added to my enjoyment of the story, but that said I did find the scenes in Cambridge interesting too. The fox hunting was not for me, but luckily not too distracting.
Overall, this was a comforting and nostalgic read and one of the more fun ones that I have read, having also a tongue in cheek love story and the Suffolk connection. I found the drug smuggling plot a little strange and not as well thought out it could have been, but it didn't affect my enjoyment too much. I have subsequently found out that Lois Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen and I will definitely look out for anything else that she wrote that is republished.
July 8, 2024
This is an intriguing entry in to the British Library Crime Classics series - according to the blurb this is the first time it has been in print since its original run back in the 30s - and I can sort of see why.
Without giving away spoilers you have several storylines going on here which focus around various characters (although there are several who are more key than others). The book bounces (thankfully not too confusingly or jarringly) between these stories - where by some bisect each other and the confusion they create (and a little mid-direct too I feel as well).
This is a twisting story which on face value appears a lot simpler than it actually is - I will admit I struggled with some of the dated and rather specific terms - this does more often than not show the book its age but it certainly does not make it unreadable - just a little challenging in part
Without giving away spoilers you have several storylines going on here which focus around various characters (although there are several who are more key than others). The book bounces (thankfully not too confusingly or jarringly) between these stories - where by some bisect each other and the confusion they create (and a little mid-direct too I feel as well).
This is a twisting story which on face value appears a lot simpler than it actually is - I will admit I struggled with some of the dated and rather specific terms - this does more often than not show the book its age but it certainly does not make it unreadable - just a little challenging in part
July 25, 2017
I would like to thank netgalley and poisoned pen press for the opportunity to read this book.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, with the connections to Jane Austen and the fact that I love stories from the golden age of crime. However, this book was a let down. It was overly descriptive with little plot and I skimmed most of it.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, with the connections to Jane Austen and the fact that I love stories from the golden age of crime. However, this book was a let down. It was overly descriptive with little plot and I skimmed most of it.
March 12, 2019
Trading in on the Jane Austen connections, Lois Austen-Leigh's novel of Cambridge, murder, smuggling, and romance is a bit more of the latter and a lot less of the former two, even though a lot of the narrative seems to be concerned with that. There's a lot of misdirection in a way that feels a cheat and a late in the game copout that I won't spoil anymore suffice to say that I left this book feeling like Austen-Leigh is a capable enough proser, but a rather conservative plotter in a way that feels like the last gasp of the landed class casting about for someone to pin their crimes on.
October 23, 2018
Slightly disappointing in there wasn’t really a great deal of action until the last 30 pages. But an ok read.
September 3, 2019
I made it through 70 pages and finally gave up. Confusing and tedious.
September 12, 2022
Very British. Quite outdated, obviously. Not much of a plot.
May 8, 2017
A strange and rather muddled story about a possible involvement in drug smuggling by the inhabitants of a Cambridge college and a suffolk country estate. There are a lot of characters, most of whom are not very well developed, and not very much detecting, the solution is not very well done, and very hard to believe. the descriptions of fox hunting are written with most enthusiasm and convincing detail, and at one point the heroine says she is an admirer of the works of Somerville and Ross. The author might have been better off attempting something on the lines of The Irish R.M., rather than this very odd and unsatisfactory detective story.
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