"Miss Withers Regrets"

I have a great deal of respect for Miss Hildegarde Withers, that "meddlesome old battleaxe" of a schoolteacher created by Stuart Palmer. I'd better. Education has changed a lot since Miss Withers was teaching, but the experience of controlling class after class of unruly schoolchildren hasn't changed, and I've rarely met a teacher who couldn't pretty well control a classrom with The Look or similar techniques. A lot of them, like Miss Withers, can apply that commanding personality to the rest of the world as well.

All of which is by way of saying that Miss Withers is a formidable character. Requests by her friend and sometime colleague, Inspector Oscar Piper, to butt out of his cases are not always honored. And that proves to be a good thing in "Miss Withers Regrets," our book reviewed this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review here. This time, despite not-so-polite requests from Inspector Piper to mind her own business, Miss Withers gets involved in the case of a young man accused of murdering his former sweetheart's obnoxious new husband. Miss Withers wants to believe the police - she even turns the young man over to the authorities. But when she discovers that she has made a mistake, she regrets it - and that turns out to be a very lucky thing for the young man and a very unlucky thing for the real killer.

Stuart Palmer's books about Miss Withers were generally a great deal of fun. This one dates from 1947, when Miss Withers and Inspector Piper were well-established and familiar characters. If you want to see why they were so popular, "Miss Withers Regrets" is a good place to start.