"The Puzzle of the Silver Persian"

There are a fair number of modern mystery series which have an animal as a central character. I regard these with mixed emotions: I tend to dislike books that rely on anthropomorphic animals or overall "cuteness" to replace traditional mystery elements in order to make the animals act as detectives.

There are, however, significant exceptions. And one of those must be made for the titular animal in "The Puzzle of the Silver Persian," by Stuart Palmer, one of his Hildegarde Withers mysteries , originally published in 1934. It is the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, which you may listen to here. It is also another of my entries in in the Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge at the My Readers Block blog.

Hildegarde Withers was Stuart Palmer's central character, a New York City schoolteacher. Hildy wound up doing a fair amount of traveling over the course of these novels, and "The Riddle of the Silver Persian" puts her on a ship to England, where one of the passengers disappears and another person dies quite suddenly - murder, says Hildy. She then moves on to England, where other people from the ship meet untimely ends until she finally helps unravel the mystery at a castle in Cornwall.

And the animal in question? That would be Tobermory, a silver Persian cat with a great deal of patience. Tobermory provides a critical clue that finally point Hildy in the right direction. It is no artificial, "cute" cat detective work, but the natural instinctive behavior of a cat that leads to the solution of a particularly nasty crime.

As with most of the series, there's a fair amount of humor in the book and some real suspense and fair play as well. Scotland Yard may initially be somewhat less appreciative of this meddlesome schoolmarm, Hildegarde Withers, than her old crony, New York City homicide detective Oscar Piper, but the British quickly learn that very little gets by Miss Withers - and that turns out to be a good thing indeed.

Comments

[Bev]

I'm a big Hildegardge Withers fan. I've read every one I could get my hands on (not nearly enough)...I haven't managed to read this one yet. I've seen it mentioned in several places and am interested to read about her adventures on her way to and in England.

[Bev]

Pardon the extra "g" in Hildegarde. It's been a long day....

[Les Blatt]

I think you'll enjoy this one, Bev. I'm particularly fond of Dicon, described as a deeply pessimistic robin...