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The Last House-Party
Forty years after the last of the Countess of Snailwood's fashionable political house parties, a move to repair her fantastic clock reconnects the sole survivor of those waltz-filled weekends with newly perceived, tragic events and people
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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146 people want to read
About the author
Peter Dickinson
142 books156 followersPeter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 11, 2014
A concise New York Times review from early 1983, one of a handful in this column by Newgate Callendar (what a name!), had this to say:
My reaction differed in some respects. The book's time shifts were probably intended to be unsettling (which may be what the Times reviewer meant). It's as if the story were being dragged toward a discovery that it wanted to avoid. As for the crime, it was disturbing but not hard to credit. That the book played with formal elements of its genre is probably why one of my former English teachers recommended it to me, and it's part of what I enjoyed.
Another British entry -THE LAST HOUSEPARTY by Peter Dickinson (Pantheon, $12.95). Mr. Dickinson is one of the more original mystery story writers of the decade, and he generally manages to create something that breaks the mold. In fact, one wonders if ''The Last Houseparty'' really belongs to the mystery genre, even though a crime is committed at one point.
A sort of ''Brideshead Revisited'' affair, the book hops around in time in a rather unsettling way. Its characters are very British upper class, there is a great deal of political and other kinds of talk, there is a castle and a tower clock that play a large part in the plot (but disabuse yourself of the notion that this book is in any respects a Gothic), and at the last houseparty there is a nasty crime that one finds hard to believe. Mr. Dickinson is as suave and sensitive as ever, but readers who look for the classical amenities in a mystery story should steer clear of this one.
My reaction differed in some respects. The book's time shifts were probably intended to be unsettling (which may be what the Times reviewer meant). It's as if the story were being dragged toward a discovery that it wanted to avoid. As for the crime, it was disturbing but not hard to credit. That the book played with formal elements of its genre is probably why one of my former English teachers recommended it to me, and it's part of what I enjoyed.
February 18, 2009
This man makes me proud to be classified as a mystery writer.
February 11, 2017
Expertly constructed. Not sure how I'd never heard of this author, who has dozens of books.
December 23, 2016
After reading 55% of the book and jumping back and forth from the late 1930's to 1980, you finally find out the "mystery" in the plot. And by that time, I also figured out the ending. The majority of the time you are subjected to the blustering, venting, whining and political outlooks of a lot of characters that are never fully developed and you never really care about.
July 8, 2021
[The review will contain spoilers, although as is often the case with Dickinson, the mystery is of secondary importance.]
"The Last Houseparty" is another one of Dickinson's historical mysteries, set partly or mostly in the past (the book has alternate chapters set in 1938 and the present day of the early 80's when the book was written, though the former are generally longer) and concerning a never-solved crime. But though the atmosphere is far from Chandleresque, Dickinson writes noirs: individuals commit crimes, but at least some of the guilt clearly adheres to English aristocratic society, depicted as decadent, prejudiced, and corrupt. The titular event occurs at Snailwood Manor, a (made-up) center of '30s high society thanks to the exclusive parties organized by the glamorous Countess Zena Snailwood. But as Dickinson slowly takes us through one of these parties -- as the title indicates, the last one, though of course nobody knows this yet -- we see the ugliness underneath the glitz. Zena herself is not just an adventuress but a tyrant, one whose insistence on having her own way extends to trying to bully her secretaries into sleeping with her husband, a task she prefers not to perform herself. Her husband is equally tyrannical, albeit in a petty and ineffectual fashion. But it's not just about personalities and poor treatment of the servants: Zena is close friends with Sir Charles Archer, a politician, journalist, and leading Nazi sympathizer, and the Snailwood Gang that centers around them (loosely based on the historical Cliveden Set) is all for appeasement. The press baron Sir John Dibbin, who has a nearby estate, is, if anything, even more dictatorial than Zena, and clearly runs his empire for reasons other than the search for truth. Finally, there's the broader perspective, provided by the two outsiders, Prince Yasif and Professor Blech. The prince, who hails from an imaginary Persian Gulf shiekdom, remarks on how the racism he experienced at Harrow was made easier to bear by the fact that it was clearly not as heartfelt as the anti-Semitism he saw around him, and points to British chicanery and double-dealing in the Middle East. The professor, an Eastern European Jewish emigre, diagnoses the anti-intellectualism of the British elite and forecasts the country's coming decline. It seems almost inevitable that the party will culminate in a crime, one that indicts not just the criminal but the whole milieu.
All this works amazingly well because the historical sections of the book are a master class in worldbuilding, something which is not limited to fantasy and science fiction. Snailwood is, after all, not a real place, merely an approximation of such: the fact that the reader feels that they have some idea of what it should be like and how it should work is a disadvantage as much as an advantage. To make it feel as real as it does is a triumph, but one that doesn't only depend on Dickinson's ability to lay out the house and the grounds (providing a history for each), describe the gardens and the art, and so on and so forth. It also requires providing characters who feel real and whose relationships with each other make sense: after all, most readers will have only a vague idea of how reasonable the layout of Snailwood is, but characters who feel flat or forced will kill the suspension of disbelief very quickly. Yasif and Blech are perhaps the best examples of this: their characters are established quite early, when they both happen to arrive on the same train. Blech is a Zionist bigwig, potentially making it difficult for Yasif to meet him, but the worldly-wise professor opens the conversation by saying that he has been corresponding with the prince's uncle, allowing Yasif to remain in what Dickinson refers to as "the sphere of light comedy". This is clearly a role adopted in defense against having to represent the Arabs, as Zena, in her capacity as a political hostess who has decided to give a party on the theme of Palestine, wants him to, though he is not quite able to avoid doing so entirely: Blech, on the other hand, is clearly used to playing the role of unofficial ambassador of the Jews and is happy to take it up once again. Conveniently for Dickinson, in both cases this is exactly the role that he needs his characters to adopt. Neither Blech nor Yasif necessarily have a ton of depth, but they don't have to: they simply have to offer the kind of realism that makes it seem that Dickinson has really conjured up the atmosphere of high society in 1938.
The only character who doesn't quite have this quality is Vincent Masham, from whose viewpoint (at third person) we mostly experience the party. Vince is a stolid young man, seemingly every inch the stiff-upper-lip soldier, who, as one of the childless Lord Snailwood's nephews and a possible heir to the estate, is naturally part of the proceedings. His job is mostly to listen to the other guests and agree with them, or at least not disagree too strongly, but it becomes steadily clearer that he dislikes Zena, is made uncomfortable by her circle, and is growing more and more agitated as the weekend goes on. It also becomes increasingly likely that he is Victor Mason, the retired mechanic who, in the present-day sections, is working on fixing the Snailwood clock, one of the casualties of the party thanks to a fire set by an unknown hand. Other casualties include Lord Snailwood, who suffers a stroke that, the book suggests, was deliberately caused by Zena (in a fashion reminiscent of Andrew killing his great-uncle in "Perfect Gallows"); his mechanic, killed when the fire in the clock tower weakened the supports and brought the clock weights down on top of him; Vince, who disappeared; and Sally, the 7-year-old daughter of Zena's secretary, who was raped in her room. Suspicion naturally fell on Vince: Sally, subsequently adopted by Vince's cousin and best friend Harry after he married her mother, hopes to establish that she was assaulted not by Vince but by Archer, who was strongly suspected of having been a pedophile, and also to get Mason to admit to being Masham and take his place at Snailwood. But this Mason absolutely will not do, because the truth, though never spelled out clearly, is far darker: Vince did carry out the assault, hoping to frame Archer in order to prevent Harry from accepting Archer's offer to join his political faction in return for a seat in Parliament. (The possibility that this was an excuse he used to justify the assault to himself is left to hang in the air, though there's no suggestion that he has carried out other such crimes since.) Again, there's a parallel to "Perfect Gallows", where the crime is in some sense, albeit less deliberately, the price of escape from the upper classes: Vince is clearly happier as the working-class mechanic Mason than he was as the possible next Earl of Snailwood, though unlike the case of Andrew Wragge, there will be no absolution for what he has done. But though Vince can't be forgiven -- Sally, having constructed her life around what turns out to be a lie, is victimized once again when the prince, now Emir, returns to Snailwood as a prospective purchaser and unknowingly gives Sally the clue that makes everything clear -- the houseparty, and the way of life it represented, are not simply a glamorous background for a terrible crime: they have a share in the guilt.
"The Last Houseparty" is another one of Dickinson's historical mysteries, set partly or mostly in the past (the book has alternate chapters set in 1938 and the present day of the early 80's when the book was written, though the former are generally longer) and concerning a never-solved crime. But though the atmosphere is far from Chandleresque, Dickinson writes noirs: individuals commit crimes, but at least some of the guilt clearly adheres to English aristocratic society, depicted as decadent, prejudiced, and corrupt. The titular event occurs at Snailwood Manor, a (made-up) center of '30s high society thanks to the exclusive parties organized by the glamorous Countess Zena Snailwood. But as Dickinson slowly takes us through one of these parties -- as the title indicates, the last one, though of course nobody knows this yet -- we see the ugliness underneath the glitz. Zena herself is not just an adventuress but a tyrant, one whose insistence on having her own way extends to trying to bully her secretaries into sleeping with her husband, a task she prefers not to perform herself. Her husband is equally tyrannical, albeit in a petty and ineffectual fashion. But it's not just about personalities and poor treatment of the servants: Zena is close friends with Sir Charles Archer, a politician, journalist, and leading Nazi sympathizer, and the Snailwood Gang that centers around them (loosely based on the historical Cliveden Set) is all for appeasement. The press baron Sir John Dibbin, who has a nearby estate, is, if anything, even more dictatorial than Zena, and clearly runs his empire for reasons other than the search for truth. Finally, there's the broader perspective, provided by the two outsiders, Prince Yasif and Professor Blech. The prince, who hails from an imaginary Persian Gulf shiekdom, remarks on how the racism he experienced at Harrow was made easier to bear by the fact that it was clearly not as heartfelt as the anti-Semitism he saw around him, and points to British chicanery and double-dealing in the Middle East. The professor, an Eastern European Jewish emigre, diagnoses the anti-intellectualism of the British elite and forecasts the country's coming decline. It seems almost inevitable that the party will culminate in a crime, one that indicts not just the criminal but the whole milieu.
All this works amazingly well because the historical sections of the book are a master class in worldbuilding, something which is not limited to fantasy and science fiction. Snailwood is, after all, not a real place, merely an approximation of such: the fact that the reader feels that they have some idea of what it should be like and how it should work is a disadvantage as much as an advantage. To make it feel as real as it does is a triumph, but one that doesn't only depend on Dickinson's ability to lay out the house and the grounds (providing a history for each), describe the gardens and the art, and so on and so forth. It also requires providing characters who feel real and whose relationships with each other make sense: after all, most readers will have only a vague idea of how reasonable the layout of Snailwood is, but characters who feel flat or forced will kill the suspension of disbelief very quickly. Yasif and Blech are perhaps the best examples of this: their characters are established quite early, when they both happen to arrive on the same train. Blech is a Zionist bigwig, potentially making it difficult for Yasif to meet him, but the worldly-wise professor opens the conversation by saying that he has been corresponding with the prince's uncle, allowing Yasif to remain in what Dickinson refers to as "the sphere of light comedy". This is clearly a role adopted in defense against having to represent the Arabs, as Zena, in her capacity as a political hostess who has decided to give a party on the theme of Palestine, wants him to, though he is not quite able to avoid doing so entirely: Blech, on the other hand, is clearly used to playing the role of unofficial ambassador of the Jews and is happy to take it up once again. Conveniently for Dickinson, in both cases this is exactly the role that he needs his characters to adopt. Neither Blech nor Yasif necessarily have a ton of depth, but they don't have to: they simply have to offer the kind of realism that makes it seem that Dickinson has really conjured up the atmosphere of high society in 1938.
The only character who doesn't quite have this quality is Vincent Masham, from whose viewpoint (at third person) we mostly experience the party. Vince is a stolid young man, seemingly every inch the stiff-upper-lip soldier, who, as one of the childless Lord Snailwood's nephews and a possible heir to the estate, is naturally part of the proceedings. His job is mostly to listen to the other guests and agree with them, or at least not disagree too strongly, but it becomes steadily clearer that he dislikes Zena, is made uncomfortable by her circle, and is growing more and more agitated as the weekend goes on. It also becomes increasingly likely that he is Victor Mason, the retired mechanic who, in the present-day sections, is working on fixing the Snailwood clock, one of the casualties of the party thanks to a fire set by an unknown hand. Other casualties include Lord Snailwood, who suffers a stroke that, the book suggests, was deliberately caused by Zena (in a fashion reminiscent of Andrew killing his great-uncle in "Perfect Gallows"); his mechanic, killed when the fire in the clock tower weakened the supports and brought the clock weights down on top of him; Vince, who disappeared; and Sally, the 7-year-old daughter of Zena's secretary, who was raped in her room. Suspicion naturally fell on Vince: Sally, subsequently adopted by Vince's cousin and best friend Harry after he married her mother, hopes to establish that she was assaulted not by Vince but by Archer, who was strongly suspected of having been a pedophile, and also to get Mason to admit to being Masham and take his place at Snailwood. But this Mason absolutely will not do, because the truth, though never spelled out clearly, is far darker: Vince did carry out the assault, hoping to frame Archer in order to prevent Harry from accepting Archer's offer to join his political faction in return for a seat in Parliament. (The possibility that this was an excuse he used to justify the assault to himself is left to hang in the air, though there's no suggestion that he has carried out other such crimes since.) Again, there's a parallel to "Perfect Gallows", where the crime is in some sense, albeit less deliberately, the price of escape from the upper classes: Vince is clearly happier as the working-class mechanic Mason than he was as the possible next Earl of Snailwood, though unlike the case of Andrew Wragge, there will be no absolution for what he has done. But though Vince can't be forgiven -- Sally, having constructed her life around what turns out to be a lie, is victimized once again when the prince, now Emir, returns to Snailwood as a prospective purchaser and unknowingly gives Sally the clue that makes everything clear -- the houseparty, and the way of life it represented, are not simply a glamorous background for a terrible crime: they have a share in the guilt.
April 30, 2010
This is much more the sort of twisty multi-layered story I expect from something subtitled "A Novel of Suspense," although I didn't find it particularly suspenseful. But the cuts between the 1937 house party and the 1980s present were intriguing, and the pacing was nifty. I figured out one of the big secrets really, really early on, though, and I don't know if that's because Dickinson a) isn't very good at obscurity, or b) wasn't trying to make it very obscure, or c) the secret was so much more surprising and shocking -- perhaps even unspeakable -- in 1980 that Dickinson thought a reader would be unlikely to figure it out in spite of the psychological clues, but put them in so the reader would feel like it all hung together in retrospect. My guess is c), but I may be giving the past too little credit.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, but have nothing terribly deep or profound to say about the content.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, but have nothing terribly deep or profound to say about the content.
January 14, 2018
I read this maybe 20 years ago and thought it amazing and recently read it again and it’s stood the test of time. A keeper. The premise is haunting and really makes you think. Original complex characters. Ending is superb. Only thing that prevents 5 stars for me is the political maundering which gets in the way of a bloody good story. There’s not too much of it but enough to be distracting.
June 3, 2023
2.5
I have a strange love-hate relationship with PD’s novels. I am fascinated by his ideas, his style and his characters but almost invariably I get weary as I read on. But I tend to want to go back and re-read PD’s novels as a I have the notion I may have ‘missed something’
The Last House Party has all the ingredients which I like in a detective story — set in the 1930s (alternating with the 1980s), a castle in the English countryside, an unusual cast of characters (including an eccentric Earl, a Ruritanian Countess, an Arab prince and at least two paedophiles), controversial ideas (yes or no to appeasement with Nazi Germany — Jews or Arabs — should one try to understand, if not show sympathy for, men who reluctantly lust after little girls?) and a shocking crime (rape of a little girl) which, as it happens, is only revealed in the last 1/3 of the novel.
The ‘prolix’ writing (defined thus by a critic of one of PD’s children’s books) is a bore. The political issues under discussion (including ideas of unorthodox sex) ultimately become wearisome too. One simply loses sight of the plot and that’s really what matters if you believe you have picked up a critically acclaimed mystery story (which The Last House Party is). There are too many unnecessary details to do with mechanics, roses and politics. Too much pontificating. Too many conversations that could easily have been dispensed with as they are simply Not Very Interesting. Ultimately the author falls between two stools in his efforts to write a mystery which is also a novel proper.
I think the only PD books I have read with fewer reservations are King and Joker and Skeleton in Waiting. Which I intend to re-read.
I have a strange love-hate relationship with PD’s novels. I am fascinated by his ideas, his style and his characters but almost invariably I get weary as I read on. But I tend to want to go back and re-read PD’s novels as a I have the notion I may have ‘missed something’
The Last House Party has all the ingredients which I like in a detective story — set in the 1930s (alternating with the 1980s), a castle in the English countryside, an unusual cast of characters (including an eccentric Earl, a Ruritanian Countess, an Arab prince and at least two paedophiles), controversial ideas (yes or no to appeasement with Nazi Germany — Jews or Arabs — should one try to understand, if not show sympathy for, men who reluctantly lust after little girls?) and a shocking crime (rape of a little girl) which, as it happens, is only revealed in the last 1/3 of the novel.
The ‘prolix’ writing (defined thus by a critic of one of PD’s children’s books) is a bore. The political issues under discussion (including ideas of unorthodox sex) ultimately become wearisome too. One simply loses sight of the plot and that’s really what matters if you believe you have picked up a critically acclaimed mystery story (which The Last House Party is). There are too many unnecessary details to do with mechanics, roses and politics. Too much pontificating. Too many conversations that could easily have been dispensed with as they are simply Not Very Interesting. Ultimately the author falls between two stools in his efforts to write a mystery which is also a novel proper.
I think the only PD books I have read with fewer reservations are King and Joker and Skeleton in Waiting. Which I intend to re-read.
November 20, 2019
Don't imagine that just because this is a British author that this a a cozy little mystery. This is an ugly story. Pedophilia is ugly. And when you get to the end and you figure out who the guilty pedophile really is (because there is more than one pedophile), you also are convinced that at least one murder has been committed, probably two, maybe even three, though one might be accidental. Neither pedophilia nor murder is what one wants to believe...but... So it is ugly because you want to like these people, to admire their various talents, and to be assured that the future will be safe. And you can't have any of those things.
It was also a story that was a little hard to follow. The timeline is murky. And the reader is always having to ask what is really going on here, what is the subtext we are supposed to be following. I had to go back and put notes in the margin: this is April 1980, here's when Vince and Charles Archer have an illuminating conversation, here is another significant conversation. In the end, a hard read and not a happy ending.
It was also a story that was a little hard to follow. The timeline is murky. And the reader is always having to ask what is really going on here, what is the subtext we are supposed to be following. I had to go back and put notes in the margin: this is April 1980, here's when Vince and Charles Archer have an illuminating conversation, here is another significant conversation. In the end, a hard read and not a happy ending.
June 12, 2021
This one is a difficult one to rate. This isn't a murder mystery, and there is a big build up to the secret but once it is revealed, the details are not gone into so it isn't graphic but it is still disturbing. There was a revealing statement by one character that I didn't like, but I'm not sure, even now, if that was a reflection of the time and attitudes held by some or if it was truly a reflection of that character. If it was written today, there would be no doubt I would say it was a reflection of the character. Overall, a bit disturbing.
September 30, 2017
I Book-$1.99-Early Bird Books. 3 1/2 stars An ok read but not enough Harry and Vince and too much time spent on the clock and roses
Read
June 9, 2019Re-read: I think I was still a bit too jet-lagged for the subtle layers of intricate intrigue and indirection going on here.
April 10, 2020
Maybe 3.51 stars. Fun, some cliches, but an engaging and quick read. That's all i got.
May 30, 2020
Long-winded conversations, little action, little mystery - no interest whatever. a truly tedious and pointless book.
June 29, 2021
Well written but ultimately very unsatisfying. Time shifts are also confusing and has a surprisingly casual attitude toward sexual assault on children.
September 10, 2021
Slog in the beginning. Got interesting in the end. Story pretty much wrapped up (I think). Otoh, if so, I don't get motive.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2014
An original and interesting book, but not satisfying. The two cousins are given very vivid personalities but they aren't allowed enough scenes to help us understand what really happened at that last house party.
Read
January 30, 2015Really hard to get into this one, but I am trying!
March 20, 2015
As wonderful as the last. I wish everything he wrote would be republished. Definitely Downton Abbey readalike, but more serious and dark.
September 4, 2016
Not an easy book to read and follow the plot.
November 29, 2016
An interesting read. Not the sort of mystery I was expecting.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews