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THE REEK OF RED HERRINGS
by Catriona McPherson
Minotaur, December 2016
293 pages
$26.99
ISBN: 1250090989


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In this ninth in the Dandy Gilver series, Dandy and her trusty partner in crime investigation, Alec Osborne, find themselves in an isolated Scottish fishing village that time has pretty much forgot. The weather is vile, the accommodations worse, and the food unspeakable. They are there at the behest of a fish wholesaler named Mr Birchfield, who has found human remains in several barrels of herring and wants to know how they got there without alerting the world to their existence, thus driving himself out of business.

It may be Christmas, but Dandy is delighted to get away from the dullness of a family houseparty, even if it means getting utterly soaked and even dressing up in peculiar clothes to act as a decoy for bad luck at a wedding. She and Alec declare themselves philologists (not particularly convincingly) and set to work in Gardentown (aka Gamrie) ostensibly collecting the local idiom and the customs and superstitions connected with it. What they find is a community that presents a fascinating mixture of traditional behaviours and sturdy independence, especially among the young women who work very hard cleaning and packing herring. They also find a pair of eccentric brothers who run a "museum" filled with their taxidermy and a couple of artists who might have been better advised to have chosen the Cornish coast for their studio.

As publishers like to do, the cover of RED HERRINGS suggests that the book will appeal to "fans of Phyrne Fisher and Maisie Dodds." It may very well, but on its own merits, not because it is cast in exactly the same mould as these two independent heroines loose in the interwar period. What distinguishes Dandy from these and others like them is that she is not consciously rebellious. She desires a degree of personal independence and a holiday from the boredom of domestic routine, but she has no intention of overthrowing society even if she could manage it. McPherson is fully aware of the limitations that Dandy's class imposes on her and uses them to comic effect as she brings the upper middle-class mistress of an estate together with the herring-packing "quines" of Gardentown to their mutual confusion.

It is the combination of this sort of historical realism with a great deal of painstaking research that marks the Dandy Gilver series out as something special. The social history of the aberrant village of Gardentown, the examples of the fishers' idiom, now one presumes long since disappeared, and the detailed catalogue of their marriage customs (not at all what you might imagine) are fascinating. And, of course, having Dandy along as a guide to it all, however uncomprehending she may be at times, is priceless.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, January 2017

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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