The Widow of Bath

by Margot Bennett, Martin Edwards (Contributor)

First published in 1952, The Widow of Bath offers intricate puzzles, international intrigue, and a richly evoked portrait of post-war Britain, all delivered with Bennett's signature brand of witty and elegant prose. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Martin Edwards.

Hugh Everton was intent on nothing more than quietly drinking in the second-rate hotel he found himself in on England's south coast―and then in walked his old flame Lucy and her new husband and ex-judge, Gregory Bath. Entreated by Lucy to join her party for an evening back at the Bath residence, Hugh is powerless to resist, but when the night ends with the judge's inexplicable murder, he is pitched back into a world of chaos and crime―a world he had tried to escape for good.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Classics, Crime, British Literature, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Scottish author Margot Bennett was born in 1912 and worked first first as a copywriter in the UK and Australia and then as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War before turning to writing. Her output in crime fiction was relatively small, yet successful: The Man Who Didn't Fly was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was runner-up to Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison for Best Novel at the Edgars in 1956, and she won the Gold Dagger two years later in 1958 with Someone from the Past. She was also chosen to contribute a short story to the second CWA anthology, Choice Of Weapons, edited by Michael Gilbert.

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Run, Rabbits, Run!

Hugh Everton bumps into some old acquaintances in a hotel bar and accepts an invitation to dine with retired Judge Bath and his much younger and glamorous wife, Lucy. Tensions are high, since it becomes clear that Everton and Lucy once had a fling, and the other two guests, Atkinson and Cady, both seem to be watching the clock carefully, as if waiting for something to happen. And something does! A few minutes after the Judge has retired to bed, a shot is fired, and he is found dead on his bedroom floor. But by the time the police arrive, the body has disappeared…

While the world of vintage crime is a wondrous thing in which I’ve spent many happy hours over the last few years, occasionally I’m reminded that some authors become “forgotten” for a reason. I had a mixed reaction to Bennett’s earlier entry in the BL’s Crime Classics series, The Man Who Didn’t Fly, but this time my reaction was pure – this has to rank as one of the worst books in the series to date. I got so tired of it that I more or less gave up two-thirds of the way through, skimming the last few chapters to find out whodunit, although I can’t say I cared much.

There are three problems with it – major problems, that don’t leave much in the way of positives. The first is the truly dreadful style. The second is the convoluted and overly complicated plot. The third is the clumsy characterisation of a bunch of truly unlikeable, pretty despicable people – and that includes the hero. Some writers have a natural flow that may not be especially literary but is great for telling an interesting story. Others write so well that the writing itself can make up for some weaknesses in plot or characterisation. And then there’s Bennett. It seems to me as if she thought up a story (I’m sure there must be one buried in there somewhere) and then decided to experiment with style, with the end result being that the whole thing reads like a pastiche of the more realist mystery novels that were just then, in 1952, coming into vogue. It’s not dark enough to be noir, but she has attempted to give it that noir atmosphere of amorality and a kind of existential despair. She makes everything deliberately vague, not in a plot sense but in a writing sense, so that the book never flows – all the time the reader is left trying to catch up with things that should be made plain, but aren’t: for example, starting chapters with ‘she’ rather than a character name so that for the first couple of paragraphs we don’t know which character we’re reading about. I found it all intensely irritating.

Although it’s written in third person, we see the action almost exclusively through Everton’s eyes. Everton is a weak and cowardly man with a criminal background and a depressed and depressing outlook on life. He doesn’t respect anyone, and so it’s hard for the reader to get past his self-pity and misanthropy to see any good in any of the other characters. Most of the other characters sneer at him, and he sneers right back. But he also sneers at the one or two who try to be nice to him, which makes him deeply unpleasant to spend time with. I’m convinced Bennett thought that having an unlikeable lead character was terribly “modern”, and in that she’s right – that’s exactly why the Golden Age died as authors began to despise the conventions that had made the genre golden.

The plot starts out as a straightforward mystery, a mix of whodunit and howdunit, but soon descends into a convoluted mess, incorporating everything from blackmail to fugitives from the failed Fascist regimes of Europe. If she’d stuck to the basic plot it might have been a fairly good, if run of the mill, murder mystery, but each new chapter seemed to be adding another rabbit for the reader to chase, with the result that this reader lost all interest in trying to keep track of the original bunny.

No, I’m afraid this one was a major miss for me.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, this is such an odd little duck. I gave it 4 stars (rounding up from 3.5) and Leah, below, gave it 1 star and...I think we're both kind of right?

She's summed up the story below very well so I won't reiterate, just point out that it's a post-war whodunit in a dingy little seaside town that quickly involves criminal gangs, fleeing war criminals, and international conspiracies. It also involves unlikeable characters, impenetrable dialogue, and characters taking rash and at times downright stupid actions that often make zero sense. It's often deeply annoying to read.

And yet, I found it very worthwhile. Part of it is just the weird baby it is of British Golden Age mysteries and American hard-boiled style—seeing the actions and emotions of a Chandler novel transplanted to a sort of hellish Butlins is fascinating, particularly if you're a fan of both subgenres. It doesn't work all the time, but seeing how it succeeds and fails, and why, was engaging enough to keep me going through some of the more infuriating bits. The other part is that Bennett is a beast at prose, and I mean that as a compliment. Throughout, there are gorgeous little turns of phrase and descriptions that made me stop just to appreciate the artistry (and I'm usually not nearly so precious).

Maybe that's my sum-up. If you're looking for a ripping yarn, this isn't it. If you're a detective fiction fan and feel like exploring one of the weirder beasts of the genre, this is well worth your time. But don't just take my word for it...

[Bev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hugh Everton, who has served a short prison sentence for a dud check he never should have written, is adjusting to life after prison by working as a dreary food/hotel critic making his way along the coast. He's made his way to a particularly dreary little hotel with really bad food and extraordinarily bad waiters. But Everton's life is about to get more exciting. In the hotel bar, he meets Jan who he once thought he was in love with. Then his old flame Lucy comes in with her husband, the ex-Judge Gregory Bath. Bath is Jan's uncle. In their entourage is a man named Gerald Cady and another man named Atkinson, who Everton is sure he knows by an entirely different name. It's such a cozy little get-together. Lucy turns on the charm and invites Hugh back to the house for some drinks. As soon as he gets in the house, Hugh realizes there is an air of tension and everyone seems to be waiting for something to happen.

They sit down for a nice little round of bridge, the judge invites him to the balcony to look at the sea--and to have an uncomfortable little chat. The judge heads to bed and Hugh returns to the bridge game where everyone keeps glancing at their watches. And then something does happen. They all hear a shot and Lucy decides she ought to go see what it's about. The judge's room is a mess and Bath lies shot in the middle of the room. Hugh gets curious about what happened, why Lucy insisted he be there, and what all those poor waiters at his hotel have to do with everything. He'll get knocked out a couple of times, someone else will die, and the police will be pretty exasperated by his meddling--but in the end, he'll figure out whodunnit.

*******Spoilers ahead--though nothing explicit about who did it. Read at your own risk******

I seem to be an outlier amongst my Golden Age mystery friends here in the blogging world. Both Kate at Cross Examining Crime and Sergio at Tipping My Fedora have given this very positive reviews. Martin Edwards (of Do You Write Under Your Own Name) sings her and its praises in his introduction to the British Library Crime Classics edition which I read.

Margo Bennett was one of the finest British crime writers of the 1950s, and The Widow of Bath, first published in 1952 is one of her most impressive books. The mystery puzzle is intricate, the characterization strong, the setting evocative, and the prose elegant and witty.

I hate to disagree with such eminent reviewers and writers, but Bennett's book doesn't do a whole lot for me. I may agree that most of the characters are well-drawn--but none of them are engagingly well-drawn. The judge, though his time on stage is brief, is possibly the strongest character. We get a solid sense of his commitment to law and order...the foundation of why he had to die. Our "hero" (I use the term loosely) Hugh is well-drawn as a conflicted, bitter, goop. He just oozes along getting himself into all kinds of trouble--mostly because he has some sort of fatal attraction Lucy, but also because he just can't seem to stop meddling in police business. [You'd think with his background, he'd want to fly under the police radar--but, no.] Lucy is supposed to be some sort of femme fatale luring Hugh to his doom. She's definitely not a nice woman to know and Bennett makes that plain enough through her descriptions. What one wonders is with all the pointers about what a bad girl she is why on earth does it take Hugh so long to catch on? Hugh and Jan seem to go out of their way to be as unpleasant as possible to each other. Even after Hugh "sees the light" about Lucy and seems to think he's really in love with Jan. Then, at the end, the two kiss and suddenly declare themselves engaged. But there's no sense at all that these two people are really getting along and will ride off into the romantic sunset together. In fact, as the book ends, the two aren't even in the scene together. The other guests on the night of Judge Bath's death are less distinct. Other than descriptions of what they look like, I have no real sense of Atkinson and Cady at all. I know that Cady is an unpleasant fellow, but if you asked me to describe him right now without referring to the book at all, I couldn't tell you a thing about him as a person. [And I just finished the book.] And don't get me started on Inspector Leigh. Yes, he's described perfectly for the type of policeman he is: "Inspector Leigh was a shadowy, yawning figure....a flabby, loose man, with a truculence that suggested he was not the perfect bureaucrat." And not the perfect detective either. He's hardly seen and when he is we don't see him doing a whole lot of detecting. He has two moments--in the beach dressing shed and in regards to the balcony--but that's it.

And elegant and witty prose? Um, no. Unless I'm totally missing something. Dorothy L. Sayers managed to be both elegant and witty when she had Lord Peter and Harriet interact during Have His Carcase. Harriet is still bruised and struggling with her feelings of debt and gratitude (and attraction to Peter, though she doesn't want to admit it). She lashes out at him--much as Hugh and Jan lash one another--but Sayers' prose is everything Bennett is reported as being, but isn't. Even at her most bitter, Harriet is far more elegant and witty than Hugh or Jan will ever be. They are dreary, bitter, and cruel. Beyond the interactions between the two, the prose style is just, quite honestly, confusing to me. For example, when Hugh isn't being outright unpleasant to Jan, he speaks in this supposedly lyrical, literary style--throwing in quotes here and there like a chef who has no clue how to cook, but knows one should toss in some herbs and spices (what kind doesn't really matter) to make things flavorful. There is no flow and the quotations and allusions a) make no sense to this reader and b) don't seem to have much to do with what he and Jan are talking about. The same thing happens when he speaks with Mrs. Leonard--except they both do it.

The plot is fine--nothing spectacular--and the motive makes perfect sense, given the character of the judge. Though how we were supposed to know that particular person would have that kind of motive before we're told at the end, I don't know (or I missed it as I worked my way through the supposedly elegant prose). I'm hoping that The Man Who Didn't Fly (which is waiting on the TBR pile) provides a more entertaining mystery. ★★ Though, as noted above, others have liked The Widow of Bath much more than me, so your mileage may vary.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Caro (carosbookcase) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a Folly, a merino millionaire’s folly; perhaps there were some carved sheep on the lawn. The judge had lived in the Colonies. Had the house tugged at his heart-strings, or whatever judges fastened their hearts with? But retired professional men like to live by the sea, even when the sea means an inland suburb of Bournemouth.
This was not Bournemouth. The house stared down across the bald cliff into the dark depths.

Set in a rundown seaside community with a seedy underbelly, Margot Bennett’s The Widow of Bath is the perfect late-summer read.

While working for a travel agency, or “degourmetizing” himself, as he calls it, Hugh Everton is sitting in an awful hotel on the south coast of England when he runs into a woman from his past, Lucy, with her new husband and former judge, Gregory Bath. Hugh accepts the unexpected invitation from Lucy to come back to their home for drinks. When what was sure to be the world’s most boring party comes to a grinding halt with the judge’s murder, Hugh begins to wonder if coming across Lucy in that hotel was less of a coincidence and more of a setup.

Despite finding himself mixed up in a murder inquiry, Hugh manages to maintain his sense of humour, adding a lightness to a book that would otherwise feel more like hard-boiled crime.

From the start we know that Hugh is holding something back. We know he has a shaded past, but we don’t know how much he is to blame for it. Near the beginning of the book, just after the judge has been found dead, Hugh goes out in the dark to look for a missing dog, despite the possibility of running into a fleeing murderer. That scene got me rooting for him, but it was his sardonic wit that kept me entertained as he tries to uncover what happened to the judge.

Margot Bennett does an incredible job of providing the reader with the clues to puzzle out whodunit, though, they would have to be a much better armchair detective than I!

My only regret when reading this book, is that I read it too quickly. As Martin Edwards states in his introduction, “this is a book to be savoured”. I couldn’t agree more! I’m eager to try the other titles of Margot Bennett’s that British Library Publishing have republished, The Man Who Didn't Fly and Someone from the Past .

[Lady Wesley]

Nope. I didn't like this writer's almost comedic style, and all of the main characters were unlikeable. I rarely give up on a book, but this one just did not work, and there are so many other Golden Age mysteries on my list.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the British Library Crime Classics series, this fourth novel from Scottish author Margot Bennett was a little disappointing. It felt like a pseudo-noir novel without engaging characters or a fast-paced plot. The protagonist, Hugh Everton, was noncommittal at best, weak and evasive at worst; I never felt like he gave me any reason to root for him even though he found himself caught up in a crime that had nothing to do with him. The local police who are investigating find his attempts to solve the crime annoying, hampering their investigation and distracting them. The femme fatale from Hugh's past, Lucy (the titular widow), is a picture of venality and vanity, and the reader is left wondering why he ever got involved with her in the first place. This was adequate entertainment but could have been a lot stronger. 2 1/2 stars rounded up to three.

[Adam Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this new BLCC entry recently at Dogberry & Finch in Okehampton, at the very moment where the shop owner discovered she had won a Muddy Stilettos Award. With that transactional background, I had high hopes for this book, and it was certainly a very good read.

With a Chaucerian title, The Widow of Bath focusses on the adventures of Hugh Everton, whose past flirtation with criminality catches up with him while he's staying at a coastal hotel. When he's invited to the home of former judge Gregory Bath, his host ends up dead while his guests are downstairs playing cards. But the responses of the other guests to this event convince Everton (and the reader) that there is much more going on, especially with Lucy, the eponymous widow.

The ensuing mystery is an interesting mix of classic amateur detective and thriller. Everton has the tendency to get himself overly involved in situations, leading to some high-action sequences. But the murder puzzle itself remains at the heart of the book until the very last chapter. And the writing throughout is wonderfully evocative, witty and engaging. I look forward to reading some more of Margot at some point.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similarly to “Someone from the past,” unlikable characters doing dumb things do not prevent this from being an enjoyable read.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not always had good luck with the British Library Crime Classics but that was totally not the case with this one.
The writing is quite spare and measured and the plot is complicated. Having been written in the 1950s it seems more modern somehow.
The one thing that doesn’t stand the test of time is that police officers would interview people in front of other interested parties. Shades of Miss Marple perhaps.
I really enjoyed the length of this, the writing style and the flawed characters. The author has other books republished by BLCC and I will definitely get them too.

[Adam Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A nice little 50s whodunnit with a murdered former judge and an oddly assorted group who spend his final night with him.

I really enjoyed the tone and humour in this book - Margot Bennett is clearly a great writer and there are some fantastic one liners in the book. Sadly the plot isn’t quite as good - at times stretching credibility with fairly implausible actions by the characters.

An enjoyable read however!

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having only managed to get through one- third of "The Man Who Didn't Fly", and having seen that Julian Symons approved of this one, I hesitated before taking the plunge- appropriately considering the number of people who end up in the sea during the action of this book.

"The Widow of Bath" is beautifully-written, but the plot is ludicrously overdone, and the characters mostly cardboard and intensely irritating.

It is beyond belief that people would act as they do here.Hugh Everton, for instance, goes from bedazzled drip to tough action man in less time than Clark Kent takes to become Superman. The villains are so bright that they can improvise and devise new plans in seconds. The police were just on the point of dealing with the villains when Everton chanced to blunder in...and so on.

Only the writing propelled me to persevere, but I am sure others will find this a compelling read.

Difficult to rate.

A grudging 3.5 stars.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everton is a damaged man, working a menial job, when he runs into Jan, whom he once loved, and her aunt-by-marriage, the disasterous, beautiful Lucy. Lucy's husband, a retired judge, is found dead but fortunately Everton can provide an alibi for Lucy and her two sinister friends--just as they can alibi him. For years, Everton has tried to avoid more trouble, thinking of himself as a coward. But gradually, despite his continuing attraction to Lucy, he realizes that he wants to find out what happened to the judge, and fight back against the people who have ruined his life.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like your mysteries with a shoal of red herrings, this classic novel of 1952 now reprinted in the wonderful British Library Crime Classics series is definitely one for you. Martin Edwards, in his fascinating Introduction, appreciates the book as one of the talented Margot Bennett’s novels. He quotes Julian Symons “She uses as mere incidents tricks that would serve other writers as material for a plot.” Bennett lays out so many ideas that would normally dominate an entire mystery, her characters have got back stories, she throws in possible solutions as fast as she introduces new questions. There is the impossible murder without a body, unshakable alibis, the non-functioning telephone and the dog that may have barked in the night. There are many suspects, known and unknown to the main character, who himself has a significant record. There are cultural references to the 1950s, such as the after effects of War on a small coastal town, the self-satisfaction those who campaign to keep it ‘unspoilt’, ignoring the growth of housing and the dubious supply of workers to the town’s amenities. This is a novel of so many possibilities all held expertly together with a firm hand, while the central mystery of an infamous murder plays out. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to read and review this excellent mystery.
The novel begins in the restaurant of a hotel. Hugh Everton is a young man who is obviously compiling some sort of report on the establishment as he scribbles notes to himself. Having asked for a chicken pie he is served a substitute “He ate his veal-and-ham pie without tasting it; this was easy enough, as it had no taste.” Moving onto the bar he encounters a young woman he knows, Jan, and enquires after her uncle, a retired judge, named Bath. When the older man enters in the company of his younger wife, Lucy, Everton exchanges some barbed comments with her, as well as being introduced to their companions, Atkinson and Gerald Cady. Everton obviously has history with Lucy and is convinced that Atkinson is in fact an imposter, as he has bad memories of a man who resembles him in so many ways. It is when the party retires to the judge’s house that a murder occurs that is remarkable in many ways, not least the speedy disappearance of the body. Thus, Lucy becomes the Widow of Bath, and a complex and multi–layered mystery evolves in which Everton is not the only one in danger.
This is an admirable book in which the reader is drawn along by sheer momentum. There are so many ways in which the author draws attention to other possibilities without diverging too much from the central questions that it is extremely skillfully written. As Everton tries to investigate a murder, he encounters those who think they know something, as well as those who make themselves scarce at the thought of involvement. There are important social elements of the time thrown in to reflect the time; the public obsession with true crime, the appearance and disappearance of those who struggle to cope, the urge to follow ambitions to do more. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys classic mysteries as well as those who enjoy a book with real insight into times past, as it was written in an age similar to our own in some ways, but radically different in others.

[David Dunlap · Rating 2 out of 5]

Following an attempt on his life in Paris and a short stint in prison, Hugh Everton has taken a position with a travel magazine, making the rounds of English hotels and reviewing them. He finds himself in a seaside town (unnamed) at a hotel with surly foreign waiters...and discovers that he has again crossed paths with the glamorous Lucy, her husband (the retired judge Gregory Bath), and a man now called Atkinson (though Everton knew him in Paris as Ronson, the man who had thrown him into the Seine to drown). There is a young man named Cady with them -- and Hugh is about to renew his acquaintance with Jan Deverell, the judge's niece. Lucy invites everyone back to their house for drinks and conversation; it is not long before a shot rings out upstairs and Lucy has become the title character: the widow of (Judge) Bath. When the police arrive, however, the body has mysteriously vanished, washing up on shore several days later. Everton finds it difficult to refrain from asking questions and finds himself drawn into the mystery of the judge's death, much to the annoyance of the local inspector. -- I wanted to really like this classic British mystery, originally released in 1952, but, while I enjoyed the flights of wit and humor and sharp observation in the writing, I found the characters inexplicable and the situations curiously uninvolving. Things got quite intriguing toward the end (and the resolution to the central mystery had an unexpected twist to it), but it was a case of too little, too late -- for this reader, at least!

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10. Surprisingly fun read, with a lot of good twists. I actually bought this book because I was going to end up in Bath, England a few weeks later and I *thought* that the title of the book referred to a widow living in Bath...imagine my surprise when I cracked open the book in Bath only to find that the widow's deceased husband is Mr. Bath. Haha.

I liked this book more than I expected to, because going off the first chapter or so I didn't think I'd like the main character much. And actually I didn't come to like him any better over the rest of the book-- he reminded me of Nick in the Great Gatsby (a character I hate and a book I hate even more), in that he seemed to be lacking in whatever it is that makes people human. He did have more initiative than Nick, which I appreciated, but he was similarly soulless.

Sometimes books just have The Thing. There isn't a lot I can point to in this book that's standout amazing (and frankly it's been too long and I don't remember all the things I was originally going to say about it); there's plenty of good, but I've read a lot of decent mysteries that didn't hold my attention like this one did. This one had The Thing, the something that holds your attention and doesn't let go until the last page.

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

There seems to be a lot of mixed reaction to this book, so I guess this isn't for everyone, but I really enjoyed it.

It's the early 1950s, and Hugh Everton is just trying to make ends meet as a low-rent travel critic bopping around England. In a dingy seaside hotel he runs into Lucy, whom he was once in love with, Lucy's husband (a retired judge, the Bath of the title), her niece Jan (ditto on the love part?), as well as a few other unsavory characters. He gets caught up in coming to their house for an evening when Judge Bath unfortunately is murdered.

And so starts the story, with a little bit of everything: gangsters, secret identities, war criminals, smugglers, and even a new age poet. Hugh determines that he will solve the mystery, making up for a past wrong done to him.

This really is a book with everything, a mash-up between a golden age British mystery and the up and coming American hard boiled PI novels, with some espionage thrown in for fun. Hugh is a wise-cracking character, always acting rashly but also trying to do the right thing. A wild story that somehow works.

[Vic Lauterbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This unusual novel has very good dialogue. Its ferocious wit reminded me of Lovejoy at his best (when Jonathan Gash still had fun writing about him). It reads like a more modern novel, a bit stream of consciousness in some sections. In atmosphere, this is an anti-cozy, although the term cozy hadn't been invented in 1952. It has the setting of a cozy, but the 'feel' of a hard-boiled detective novel. Ms. Bennett does a fine job of writing about unpleasant characters without giving away who the real villains are. She manages to make several of them sympathetic. Our hero Everton isn't as cynical as he'd like to think he is which makes him likable, although his stubbornness gets a bit tiresome at times. Rooting for a stubborn fellow with lots of problems could have made this book depressing, but it isn't. A strand of hope runs through it like a series of unseen footnotes. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a different kind of vintage detective story.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in post war Margate and there is a sinister under currant of intrigue. Hugh Everton has been around the hot spots of Europe and recognises many familiar faces none than the beautiful Lucy who has married the much older Justice Bath. When he is murder, Bath finds himself at the heart of sinister happenings and suspicious foreigners. Margot Bennett writes in the style of Graeme Greene and attempts to bring this world to life in Margate! What holds it back is lead character Hugh Everton doesn't seem to be attached to any law enforcement agency but is never under suspicion himself while having the ear of Inspector Porthouse. It's a minor quibble in an otherwise enjoyable read even if it means every foreigner is suspicious.

[Vivienne · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Not in anyway related to Chaucer's The Wife of Bath or Karen Brooks recent 5 star interpretation of the Chaucer classic.)
For me, this book was a complete waste of time! I only continued reading it (and I hardly ever DNF!) because it was a poorly chosen (by me, so only myself to blame) part of a book challenge.
It was first published in 1952, but that cannot be used an excuse for the fact that it was, for me, abysmal! It would, I guess, be described as a murder mystery, but the plot is convoluted (and not in a clever way) with additional complexities being regularly and irrelevantly introduced and the characters shallow and superficial: I was unable to relate in any significant way to any of them.
The most positive thing I can say about this book is that it isn't too long. *

[CQM · Rating 3 out of 5]

A peculiar whodunnit with more twists and turns than a particularly convoluted rollercoaster.
There is some very nice writing but, excellent twists aside, it's a little slow and doesn't really kick in until the final third when our 'hero' gets himself into danger.
He's a strange hero and a promising one (embittered former embassy staffer who's served time in gaol and now reviews cheap hotels for a travel agency) but, though his character background promises much, he doesn't really deliver in the end.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hugh Everton is sitting at a crumbling seaside hotel having a terrible meal and feeling perfectly rotten about it but not at all surprised. And that's how the novel opens - an Archie Goodwin 'lite' character basically doing a food review and giving the downtrodden and disinterested waiter a hard time about how terrible he is at his job. It doesn't make you like Everton or the waiter any, but it is an amusing little scene and I was excited to see where the book would go from there given that's the premise.
We soon learn that Everton is a disaffected young man. He's had a rum go of it as a junior agent for the British Embassy in Paris. While there, he meets Lucy, falls head over heels, and is persuaded to fork over all the cash he has to extricate her from a nasty blackmailer and then of course she will run off with him, abandon her husband, and they will live happily ever after. Except all the money Everton has isn't enough, so he's persuaded to open a new account, write a bad check. When that bounces and he's really in a bind he's approached by Freddy Ronson - with an offer he hopes Everton can't refuse. He just wants Everton to drive a few 'refugees' over the border in his customs approved company vehicle for 1000 pounds. Easy money. Unfortunately Everton's ethics kick in and he declines the opportunity. Ronson responds in quick measure by following Everton home late one evening and giving him a knock on the head and helpful shove into the Seine. Everton miraculously manages to survive and gets pulled out of the Seine by a barge, then spends 1.5 years in prison for his check fraud, never implicating Ronson because he wants to protect Lucy.
This is all backstory that we get in the first 30 pages of the novel. After his mediocre meal in the hotel and while he's nursing a whiskey at the hotel bar, Everton bumps into Lucy, Ronson - with different color hair and a new name of Atkinson but Everton's convinced it's Ronson all the same - a weasely looking man named Cady, Lucy's husband Gregory Bath (not long for this world in a book titled The Widow of Bath, I just assumed it referred to the town of Bath, not the husband named Bath) and Lucy's niece Jan, who was Everton's original paramour and the reason he met Lucy in the first place those fateful years ago. Snappy dialogue is exchanged, introductions and re-introductions made, and then Everton is invited back to the house for drinks... where Gregory Bath ends up dead by 11:30, shot in the head. The dog is missing, and soon after, so is the corpse. The phone lines don't work, there's a trip made to the police station, and then when the police arrive there's no body.
The whole writing style is rat-a-tat-tat, like the hard beat of a rapid fire gun. The tone is caustic, the pacing rapid, the red herrings thrown at the reader fast and furious. There's international espionage - Everton plays a leading man, amateur detective, with an element of James Bond meets Archie Goodwin but without the wits or confidence. He's reactive and constantly one step BEHIND those he pursues.
Author Margot Bennet throws phrases and adjectives around without any of them actually sticking to her characters or telling you anything useful about them. For example:
"Inspector Leigh was a shadowy, yawning figure, who, seen through Everton's exhausted eyes, seemed to swell and diminish as leant across the desk. The two men looked at each other silently for a moment, both struggling for perception. Leigh was a flabby, loose man, with a truculence that suggested he was not the perfect bureaucrat." See - what does that tell me about Leigh that's useful?! Is he a good detective? Is he perceptive, insightful? Facts driven? Is he patient with questioning his subjects? Sympathetic? Bennet has just thrown a lot of words at me but I don't feel like I know much about either of the men in the room or how they are handling the conversation!
Or when he bumps into Jan again for the first time:
"He put the glass down again and looked at her. She was a pretty girl with her dark, almost neat, head, spoilt, as usual, by a wisp of hair loose at the back. She had a small nose, a short upper lip, wide-spaced teeth. She had been restless, energetic, melancholy, gay, erratic, and often too earnest." That's SIX adjectives and still tells me diddly squat about Jan as a person or her feelings about Everton after all this time.
Describing Lucy's husband on first glimpse: "His eyes, trying to struggle from the pit, were frozen, masked, and a little bulbous behind his glasses, as though he were doing logarithms in his head. He looked as ancient in experience as a lonely monster in a side-show, but he was only a retired judge."
There's something going on with the wait staff at the hotel - they aren't just "foreign" and disengaged with their work... and there's about five other subplots running. By the time we get to the last page and back to the original body - the judge, on the upstairs floor of his house, with a bullet in his head - I had honestly forgot about that mystery because there were so many others to solve and keep track of!
Still not sure how I felt about this one overall. It was an interesting mash up of American hard boiled film noir detective novels, set in a decrepit English seaside town, with a post WWII spy element, a dash of spoiled love and waylaid hopes, with a sprinkling of crazy car chases and subterfuge akin to James Bond... it's such an eclectic mix with some startling turns of phrase thrown it to boot. It's certainly one of a kind!

[Chris Burdon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Murder Mystery

This book is in the series of British Library Crime Classics. It is quite a complex mystery with many twists and turns up to the last page, and in some instances was quite difficult to follow but was worth the effort in the end.
There are I believe over 100 books in this series and many very good reads amongst them, some very well known authors and titles, and some lesser known or possibly unknown titles to be discovered and enjoyed.

[Suzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads as though you are watching a movie from the 40's or 50's, the writing and even some of the characters seem to be based on certain actual actors of the times ( particularly Evertson sounds like Cary Grant and inspector Leigh is Alastair Sym ). It is described as sparkling wit and it is quite lively. The plot is a bit convoluted but it keep you guessing with several twists and turns.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully-written novel. I didn't even really pay attention to the plot because I was distracted by the wonderful descriptions. There were some murders, of course, and some convoluted clues to get to the bottom of it all. I didn't much care for the protagonist (or any of the characters) but it didn't matter because I enjoyed the experience of reading this book so much.

[Artur Matos · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't quite understand the 4 and 5 star reviews of this book. This is one of the weakest of the series, and in my opinion should have been kept in the vault. The plot is weak, disjointed, and the attempt at hard boiled dialogue (a la Raymond Chandler) doesn't work at all. A pity given the high quality of the other books in this series. Best avoided.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well-written and evocative book. Despite this, I had some trouble with it because I found it a little difficult to like the majority of the characters. They’re very human, and that frequently makes them unsympathetic. It’s only a little bit a mystery book, and if you want detection here it’s frequently off to one side. But it’s a really good depiction of characters.

[Kim Campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me

I'm sorry to say that I did not like anything about this book! The people are either too stupid or too self absorbed to be taken seriously. In fact they are utterly tedious and I found that I cared not one not for any of them. The plot is probably first rate, but as I couldn't get passed the idiotic cast I never found out if it was any good.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this mystery: it's complex, there's a cast of characters you will love to hate. But there's a mix of golden age and noir, there's a femme fatale, and that's what I expected from this type of book written after WWII.
Margot Bennet is a sort of Marmite author: you love or hate her.
I love her.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Denise Gossow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Getting through this book was a slog. It was a very convoluted plot although everything did tie up at the end with an interesting twist. None of the characters were likeable and some of the dialogue left me wondering what on earth they were talking about, especially at the the start. I won’t be looking for any other books by this author.

[S Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

This is clever, too clever, it’s too tricksy for its own good. I enjoyed this book as a well written curiosity, it glitters with clever dickiness, but I can’t say that I really took to it.