One of the real pleasures I get from reading for this blog and podcast is the pleasure of suddenly meeting an author who is new to me, giving me the opportunity to share my find with my readers. Sometimes, the authors were quite prolific during their lifetimes. Sometimes they were less prolific (at least for turning out mysteries) but every bit as enjoyable. That's true of the Irish author Eilίs Dillon, who wrote just three mysteries (two in one series, plus a stand-alone). I enjoyed them all. Here's the script for my original podcast review of that stand-alone, a delightfully funny book called Sent to His Account. As always, slight edits have been made.
- 0 -
Talk about dreams coming true: an impoverished bookkeeper suddenly – and surprisingly – inherits a beautiful estate in an Irish village, along with a fair amount of money. He is enchanted and finds that he really likes most of the people he finds there. Most of the people. But there is one man who manages to antagonize almost the entire town. And when that man is murdered, our accountant finds there are far too many suspects for comfort. That’s the situation in Sent to His Account, an Irish mystery by Eilίs Dillon.
Eilís Dillon was a very popular Irish writer who turned out a great many books during her lifetime, both non-fiction and fiction in many different genres. Among them – quite early in her career – were three mysteries. The first and last of those featured series characters, but the middle novel, which appeared in 1954, was a thoroughly charming and very individual mystery called Sent to His Account. In some ways, I think, it may be the best of the three. It is set mostly in an Irish village, and it is populated with well-developed and generally believable characters. And while it is a mystery – and a good one – I think a great deal of its charm comes from the setting and the characters.
At the outset of Sent to His Account, we meet Miles de Cogan, an accountant who is barely able to scrape out a living doing the bookkeeping work for a number of very small businesses in Dublin. De Cogan is very poor indeed; for three years he has been saving up his money for what he hopes will eventually be a vacation in Paris – but, so far, he has accumulated only 31 pounds.
Without warning, his life changes: he receives a call from a lawyer telling him that his cousin, whom he barely knew, has died at his estate in the village of Dangan – and has left that estate to Miles, together with more than sufficient cash to keep the estate running. Very suddenly, Miles finds that his life has changed completely. He leaves Dublin to take up the life of a country gentleman in Dangan.
As Miles meets some of the people of the village – his village, really, as he finds he owns many of the houses and employs a lot of the people in various capacities – he finds himself very much enjoying their company. He finds himself wanting to make some changes that could help his neighbors. For example, he begins toying with the idea of taking the local mill – which he owns – and turning it into a cooperative business, for the benefit of the workers there.
But before he can move ahead, there is a murder. Tom Reid, who is Miles’s neighbor, is also a rich man – but he wants to use his money and his position to make life miserable for the rest of the town. When he is poisoned, there is no shortage of possible suspects.
Into this unpleasant situation comes Pat Henley, an inspector in the Guards, the Irish police. Pat turns out to be the son of one of Miles’s few Dublin friends. And Pat and Miles set out together to solve the murder. In doing so, of course, they will uncover a number of village and family secrets, some of them fairly painful.
Dillon is a fine writer, and the book has some marvelously funny writing. Early on, while Miles is still in Dublin, getting ready to tell his very surly landlady, a Mrs. Doran, that he is leaving, he looks out the window. Dillon writes, “He laid the little book down and went across to look out of the window at Mrs. Doran’s cat on the garden wall. Strange how it had a sort of family resemblance to Mrs. Doran. Must be the mange.” That’s an unexpected and witty description.
The characters are well-defined and enjoyable; you get the feeling that it would be pleasant to have a Guinness with many of them down at the pub. The hotel-keeper, the village doctor, the hotel barman, the owner of the flour mill are all introduced, along with some less pleasant characters – the housekeeper at Miles’s new estate, Tom Reid, the unpleasant neighbor, and another neighbor, a remarkably greedy old man who is making life hellish for his daughter. You will end the book feeling that you know them all.
This is a mystery, of course, and Dillon manages to keep the suspense and the whodunit aspects going nicely throughout the book. I don’t think it’s all that much of a puzzle – there aren’t a lot of clues scattered throughout – but it is still quite fairly presented and the overall experience is thoroughly enjoyable.
- 0 -
Since this review was first posted, Sent to His Account has become harder to find. It is available as an e-book from Amazon (and, presumably, others), and there seem to be a number of used print copies living out in the wild, so your favorite mystery bookseller can probably help you locate a copy.
You can listen to the complete original audio review by clicking here.
Next: Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, by Robert Van Gulik
Comments