The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

by Patricia Wentworth

Timid Renata Molloy is in mortal peril after overhearing details of a breathtaking conspiracy. But her courageous and near-identical cousin Jane Smith—homeless and just two-and-elevenpence away from the workhouse—is willing to take her place if it means a roof over her head and plenty to eat. So Jane, with the help of Captain Henry March of Scotland Yard, whose hand in marriage she once refused, finds herself incognito at stately Luttrell Marches, enmeshed in a mystery of secret formulae, political plots, and a maze of secret doors and secret passages …

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, British Literature, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Suspense

313 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Patricia Wentworth--born Dora Amy Elles--was a British crime fiction writer.

She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey. She married George Oliver Turnbull in 1920 and they had one daughter.

She wrote a series of 32 classic-style whodunnits featuring Miss Silver, the first of which was published in 1928, and the last in 1961, the year of her death.

Miss Silver, a retired governess-turned private detective, is sometimes compared to Jane Marple, the elderly detective created by Agatha Christie. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott and is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson.

Wentworth also wrote 34 books outside of that series.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Cracking pulp thriller with Mysterious Gang of anarchists/Bolshevists/look they're bad okay, mistaken identity, people back from the dead, secret passages, lethal formulas that do...you know...science only bad, and all sorts. A vastly enjoyable read with a good cast and some really tense sequences, also a really competent and likeable heroine. I'm loving these standalone Wentworth thrillers, far more fun than the Miss Silver books imo.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been enjoying Patricia Wentworth's early stories, but didn't think this was as good as some of the others. The plot is completely bonkers, involving fiendish anarchists, lookalike cousins and secret passages galore. Once again, it's more of an adventure than a mystery. (To be fair, the Dean Street Press title mentions both elements!)

I always like Wentworth's characters and way of writing, and enjoy her romantic elements. This was quite a fun read as usual, but I am starting to find some of these stories a bit too samey, so should probably give them a rest for a bit in order to really enjoy them again! Lastly, the kindly police chief nicknamed 'Piggy' who appeared in at least one of her other books plays a role here too.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

3* Grey Mask (Miss Silver, #1)
4* The Case Is Closed (Miss Silver, #2)
2* The Ivory Dagger (Miss Silver, #19)
4* Out of the Past (Miss Silver, #23)
3* The Benevent Treasure (Miss Silver, #26)
2* A Marriage Under the Terror
2* Beggar's Choice
4* The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery
TR Lonesome Road (Miss Silver, #3)
TR Danger Point (Miss Silver, #4)
TR The Chinese Shawl (Miss Silver, #5)
TR Miss Silver Deals With Death (Miss Silver, #6)
TR The Clock Strikes Twelve (Miss Silver, #7)
TR The Key (Miss Silver, #8)
TR She Came Back (Miss Silver, #9)
TR Pilgrim's Rest (Miss Silver, #10)
TR Latter End (Miss Silver, #11)
TR Wicked Uncle (Miss Silver, #12)
TR The Case of William Smith (Miss Silver, #13)
TR Eternity Ring (Miss Silver, #14)
TR Miss Silver Comes to Stay (Miss Silver, #15)
TR The Catherine Wheel (Miss Silver, #16)
TR The Brading Collection (Miss Silver, #17)
TR Poison in the Pen (Miss Silver, #29)
TR Devil's Wind
TR The Fire Within
TR The Black Cabinet
TR Danger Calling
TR Run!

[Andrea]

Wentworth started out writing historicals, and then switched to mysteries. Since this was the first of that run, and the last couple of Wentworths I read of this period were pretty drear, I wasn't expecting a great deal. But this was one of the best Wentworths of the adventure/espionage style. Plenty of onward action, and Jane is absolutely redoubtable and competent in a way that I wish I encountered more often.

Recommended for anyone who likes a bit of period adventure.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

1923
http://www.crimesegments.com/2019/08/...

booyah!!


The blurb:
"A girl, clad only in a night dress, is found walking in her sleep. Had she heard too much? Should she be "eliminated"? Jane Smith, an impecunious and intrepid heroine, finds herself in the wrong place at the right time, swept into an adventure which will include imposture, peril, romance and... murder."

Jane Smith is no coward, and no timid rabbit. No hand wringing or simpering here. She is a young woman not averse to taking risks, and she has an amazing ability to think on her feet when necessary. These are handy skills to have in her rather precarious position, as she takes on the identity of the sleepwalking girl of the blurb and could at any moment be eliminated for what she may know. Let's just say that she's not about to just let it happen without doing something.

The novel is a combination of mystery and spy story, with some romance added in on top of the action. There are secret passages to be explored, lots of government and villainous intrigue, secret formulas, and strange people coming and going. I had absolutely no clue that this book was going to be as much fun as it was, truly what I'd call a rollicking adventure. As for the mystery (which for me came down to identifying a certain personage), well, as it turned out, I was patting myself on the back not too far into the story thinking "can it be any more obvious?" then feeling like a total dope when all was actually revealed. Let's just say that I was right, but I was wrong all at the same time, always a positive. Above all, it was great fun for a few hours, and I am eager to get hopping on all of the non-Miss Silver adventures I've missed.

Definitely recommended for those fans of Golden Age mystery fiction who are looking for something quite out of the norm. You'll definitely get that here.

[Larkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If read as a book of its time, this is a fun, frothy frolic that was a delightful surprise. Nearly every time, I would rather read an (even if slightly imperfect) authentic 1920s book than one written by a 21st century author aiming for authenticity, but unable to divest themselves of their miasma of modernity . . . which, in my experience, is inevitably what occurs.

Spies, a monogrammed handkerchief, secret passages, cat-drawing, bravery, and people who are not what they seem - highly recommended.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic thriller. A TON of fun to read.

[Italo Italophiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This early non-series book has the typical Wentworth unbelievable coincidences, underground passages, secret doors, and the large country manor house, this time by the sea. We have a very interesting adventure in the late 1920s for an intrepid young woman, battling the era's growing dogmatic, authoritarian and violent “isms”, and we even get a glimpse at a form of violent Feminism.

There are early incarnations of recurring sorts of characters that appear in many later Wentworth books, such as the narcissistic elder woman living in a pink fabric world (a model for the late romance novelist Barbara Cartland perhaps? LOL); the tall, dominant, gorgeous, young woman with a cold heart; and the man in love with a woman who refuses to recognize that she is in love with him.

It was actually quite entertaining, with bits of humor throughout. Wentworth uses her usual 3rd person omniscient narration, letting us into people's minds at will. The ending was abrupt; an epilog or one final chapter, would have been nice to wrap things up.

[Joann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this early thriller from Patricia Wentworth. It involved switching places with a look a like cousin, anarchists. old tunnels and lab beneath an old house. Loved the ending.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Smith is persuaded to change places with her cousin Renata Molloy,who is believed to be in danger because of something she overheard (Renata and Jane just happen to be identical in appearance). So Jane finds herself in the midst of a sinister plot of some kind, and unsure of who are the villains and who aren’t. And she has to pretend to be stupid like Renata, while she is in fact quite intelligent. This is an absurd and wildly improbable story, fairly entertaining if you can manage to completely suspend belief.

[LeahBethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Astonishing Adventures of Jane Smith was a really fun read. Jane reminded me so much of Nancy Drew - spunky, smart, fearless, able to find secret passages, read lips, overhear important conversations all while keeping a man (Henry March stands in for Ned Nickerson) dangling for years.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine spy-thriller with a smart, practical, and bold young heroine who seems quite contemporary for a book written in 1923. I would love to see a film version.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and exciting.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific thriller from a century ago.

Jane Smith is exactly the kind of determined, brave, sensible, intelligent young woman I particularly like to see as a protagonist. Several of her more foolish fellow characters dislike her, because she isn't attempting to conceal that she's not suffering them gladly, but I thought she was wonderful.

She's not a stoic, though, and in fact she's a very believable young woman not long out of school. She gets frightened, a lot, and cries on multiple occasions. But she has good reason for both reactions, and, crucially, she doesn't let how she feels stop her from doing what she thinks is right.

The biggest flaw of the book is that Jane keeps being coincidentally in the exact right place at the exact right time for the plot to progress. She overhears conversations, sees people enter secret passages, finds a letter that, if she hadn't found it, would have caused a lot of trouble, not least for her, and of course stumbles and accidentally finds the hidden switch that opens one of those secret passages, with which this novel's setting abounds.

But she is at least looking for the switch when that happens, and, despite all of this helpful-to-the-plot coincidence, she does protagonize, and nothing falls into her lap; she has to be very brave and clever to thwart the evil conspiracy.

That conspiracy is a vaguely defined anarchist/socialist/communist/bolshevist thing, something to do with organized labour, but super radical, in that everyone who's not part of it is to be eliminated all around the world, using some mysterious (presumably chemical-warfare-related) formula which has been stolen from a government lab. My grandfather and great-grandfather were Red Federationalists at around this same time, but I'm reasonably confident that they didn't plot the overthrow of civilization and the deaths of millions. This seems to have been a middle-class bogeyman at the time, along with the "Yellow Peril," and about as real.

Still, I can set that aside for the sake of the story, which is gripping, and delivered in excellent prose that, however, doesn't draw attention to itself. Unusually, the point of view is omniscient - sometimes switching between different characters' perceptions in the same scene - and the narrator even says "I suppose that..." at one point. It isn't obtrusive, as omniscient narration can easily be, and is mostly indistinguishable from the more usual third-person limited.

There are scenes in which the characters struggle, and look as if they'll succeed, but are thwarted, and then have to try something else, and this goes back and forth a few times, which is great for sustained tension. Jane rescues the Scotland Yard man who's in love with her at one point. We get a long thread in which someone seems one way and we eventually discover otherwise. The main villain is creepy and obsessive and believable. All the main characters have depth and dimension; they're not just their archetype and their plot role and one or two minor tags to distinguish them, they have a complex inner life, things they're striving for and that they fear, a push and pull of wanting something and also not wanting it, abilities that aren't just there for the plot.

It's a fine piece of work, apart from the coincidences and the bogeyman, and sits comfortably in the Gold tier of my annual recommendation list. I'll be looking for more from this author.

[ValeReads Kyriosity · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this quite a bit. There were some suspenseful parts where I needed to pause for a while, but nothing too overwhelming. And it turns out that a little bit of suspense is just right for sewing in crochet ends — the story was gripping enough to make the sewing less tedious, and the sewing was steadying enough to get me through the suspense.

(Kelly G. — did you recommend Wentworth to me? If so, thanks! 😁)

A female narrator would have been better, but I wasn't going to listen to the available American lady when a very good British gent was an option.

[Aarathi Burki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not read beyond 25% in this book, it was not at all captivating, found it too filmy and most of the characters were just presented without any introduction or background.

[CLM · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 half stars for Wentworth's first mystery!

https://perfectretort.blogspot.com/20...

[Austen to Zafón · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed this rather silly caper while crocheting. I'd say it's a bit like Nancy Drew crashing the plot of a James Bond movie.

Published in 1923, it involves an international group of villains conspiring to destroy the world, except for themselves of course.

Trying to defeat them is a brave, penniless young woman, Jane, who agrees to take the place of her look-alike cousin, who is the daughter of one of the villains and is being kept under lock and key while the villains try to figure out if she heard anything damaging as she sleep-walked into one of their super-secret midnight meetings. Sound confusing? It is at first. But the number of characters narrows down eventually, and it primarily focuses on Jane and her adventure in an isolated manor house absolutely riddled with secret passages.

I did get tired of Jane's rather one-dimensional plucky character and the ridiculousness of the villains. Also, while the reader was adequate (although his voice for Piggy was annoying), it would have been better to have a female reader, given that the author, Jane, and another central character were women.

As a side note, it's clear that the author felt that thin=virtuous/heroic and fat=stupid/silly. Lady Raymond Heritage is thin, statuesque, and has a "thrilling" low voice, sort of like an Ayn Rand ideal. OTOH, a side character is a "fat lump." Nothing has really changed, I guess, but writers are a bit less blunt about it these days.


Overall, I am unlikely to read the author's many other books.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spy thriller set shortly after WW1. A lot of the usual characteristics for a novel like this...evil anarchist group with a secret formula that will enable them takeover the world and create a utopia, according to their definition. But instead of the superhero or counterspy infiltrating the group and unraveling the mystery, a ordinary young woman is thrust into that role when destitute Jane agrees to take her near-identical cousin's place rather than go to the workhouse, which enables her cousin to elope with her true love. A solid example of a 1920s adventure story.

[Katla Lárusdóttir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of Patricia Wentworth before stumbling upon her first crime novel in a used book shop at Boulevard Saint Michel. I was truthfully not expecting a great deal and set out to read with the thought in mind that the book was published a 100 years ago but I genuinely like it, I like the characters along with all the secret passageways and Wentworth's text is smooth and nice to read, she even manages a surprise twist at the very end.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Patricia Wentworth's mysteries. This one is clever, with likeable characters and interesting political history, published in 1923. If you like her, you are in luck because she wrote many books! Her sleuth Miss (Maud) Silver is most well known. Her long career as an author ended with her death in 1961, the same year as her last published book.

[Deena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great fun. Definitely more adventure than mystery or romance, but one bit of mystery lasts until near the end, and there's an off-screen romance as well as the central one that matters as well. I'm so glad that some of these older titles are being made available; they were almost impossible to come by in paper, so it's lovely to have digital versions.

[Holly Mcclain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Astonishing, not so much
Adventure, maybe...but not until the last chapter of the book.
If I had known this was NOT a mystery (other than will Tony reconcile with his love?) but a rather long, tediously drawn out, soupy sort of romance, I NEVER would've wasted a Hoopla spot on it.
The Rather Surprising Encounter Of A Bunch of Dramatic 20-Somethings.

[Verity W · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so, so good. It's a thriller-mystery, not a murder mystery and there's a distinct air of the 39 steps about it. Once I actually sat down to it and gave it a proper go, I raced through it. Now I need to read more from Patricia Wentworth...

[Carôle Ceres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her first book. Really well written I love how the women (except 1), were all strong and focused. The men are stronger versions of P G Wodehouse‘s male characters- Hahahahaha!

Truly good characters, and a not bad story.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read many of the Miss Silver stories, I decided to try a stand-alone by the author. Disclaimer that I started and stopped a few times, so it was a bit harder for me to follow the story. However, overall I found it required suspension of disbelief to get through, mostly though not entirely that first cousins can be identical "twins" (yes, I recall the Patty Duke show from childhood); there was more as well on the thriller front. I dunno ... not much happens, until it does at the end where all is wrapped up neatly. Book was useful in terms of something to pass time, audio narration here well done. Moreover, Jane makes an appearance in another story, so the reader would have background on that.

Recommend with limited enthusiasm

[Sep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1923, TAAofJS is a charming period piece. It gives a vivid picture of unprotected middle class girls. Jane, untrained, hungry and homeless, agrees to take on a very dangerous job. The bad guys reflect the fears of the time: anarchists, Communists (The Russian Revolution took place less than four years before the time of this story.) World War I is very recent. Mrs. Wentworth lost two of the three stepsons she raised from childhood on the fields of France. All of the young men had war experience and the loss of loved ones is fresh. The dialogue, for the most part can be quite witty.

[Doug Lewars · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** Possible Spoilers ***

When I selected this book I wasn't aware it was published sometime in the 1920s. As a result, it was a first rate thriller for its time. It's not bad now; however, based on the title I thought it was probably a comedy and a take-off on certain early pulp mystery items. Therefore I was a little disappointed; however, as a thriller it's not bad although could use a little work. I think I can recommend it; however, don't expect too much. The villains are pretty villainous throughout most of the book but they become a trifle unbelievable near the end.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the front of the book it says this was the book that launched Patricia Wentworth's career as a mystery writer, and I can absolutely see why. I loved this book. I don't want to say too much because to critique it might be to give something away, and I don't want to do that. All I can say is, if you are a fan of the Dame Agatha, Sayers, etc. set, this is the book for you! I highly recommend this exciting book as well as the others Wentworth wrote. Most excellent!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loads of fun. Reminds me of the thrill of reading as a child just for the fun of it. Secret passageways, exchanged identities, a plucky heroine, villainous bad guys.

What I need in 2025 is books that distract me and aren't too challenging. I decided to explore the "golden age of detective writing" to fill that bill. Patricia Wentworth's are cozy mysteries, light fare, and just right to take one's mind off of .... all this.