L. C. and his Elsie

It's always good to come across a new mystery - usually a cozy - that adheres to at least some of the traditions of earlier crime stories. That's one of the reasons why I enjoyed the Malice Domestic conference a couple of months back. I've just had the chance to finish reading one of the new books I picked up at the conference - "Ten Little Herrings," by L. C. Tyler, which manages to combine cozy and traditional elements with a very funny parody of British crime fiction.

When it comes to detection, L. C. has his Elsie - Elsie Thirkettle, a literary agent and remarkably amateur detective. Her primary client is Ethelred Tressider, a not-very-good-or-productive mystery writer. It would be fair to say that there is a fair amount of distrust between Elsie and Ethelred, and it is often very difficult to tell whether they are working with or against each other, as they attempt to solve a double murder in a run-down French hotel. Sometimes Elsie and Ethelred are more concerned with scoring points off each other than with solving the crime - which, by the way, is being quite competently investigated by the local police.

Ethelred and Elsie take turns as narrator, and both narratives are a great deal of fun. Here's one of Elsie's observations, for example:

It was a pensive group of guests who gathered for tea in the echoing, baronial dining room. Though the hotel had gone to town in providing appealing sandwiches and yummy gateaux, few of us seemed to have much appetite. Possibly it was the weather, or possibly it was that two guests had recently been poisoned, one fatally. People picked at their food, pausing after each mouthful to see what would happen. Nobody was competing to be the first to try the nice cakes. We all checked what the others were eating and then watched them with more than casual interest.

As that suggests, the setting is very much the traditional small-group-in-a-fixed-setting typical of English country house mysteries (even though it is a French hotel), and Tyler has a lot of fun knocking down some of the stereotypes. That's one of the reasons for the title - an obvious play off Christie's "Ten Little Indians," but also a reference to the variety of suspects (some of whom are murdered as we go along). The mystery ultimately concludes with one of those scenes in which the detective - Elsie in this case - convenes all the suspects and lays out what she believes is the solution to the case. That her conclusions are wildly off-the-mark is almost irrelevant...

"Ten Little Herrings" is the second in a series of Ethelred and Elsie mysteries, and there is more than a touch of the surreal (perhaps reminiscent of Michael Innes or Gladys Mitchell), particularly in the very ending of the book. I won't spoil the fun - and it is fun. I'm going to have to go back and read the first book in the series - and await the next one.

Comments

[Yvette]

It does sound like fun, Les. I'm adding it to my TBR list -
my towering, in danger of toppling, TBR list.

[L C Tyler]

Thanks for the kind remarks about Ten Little Herrings. I do hope you also enjoy The Herring Seller's Apprentice. I too had a great time at Malice Domestic, by the way, and hope to run into you at a future conference - in the US or here in the UK.

Len

(L C Tyler)

[Les Blatt]

Thanks, Len. I'm getting The Herring Seller's Apprentice from Amazon - and I look forward to the new one when it appears.