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NO CLUE AT THE INN
by Kate Kingsbury
Berkley Prime Crime, November 2003
309 pages
$13.00
ISBN: 0425191885


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

This is the 12th in Kate Kingsbury's series set in pre-First World War England; previous books were Edwardian but this volume moves into 1912. There is a problem for both writer and reader when a book is the continuation of a series. Should the writer risk boring her usual readers by repeating details of characters and background or should she launch straight in and assume that the new reader will catch up and not hurl the book away?

Patricia Wentworth dealt with the issue in her Miss Silver novels by inserting in each book a virtually identical two-page sequence describing Miss Silver's home, person and job as a private detective. I always feel that such a section should be described as a purple passage (as Stella Gibbons did with florid descriptive passages in her satire COLD COMFORT FARM) and marked by asterisks so the habitual reader can ignore it.

In NO CLUE AT THE INN it is extremely difficult for the new reader to appreciate the number of character here who reappear from past volumes. The aficionado of the Pennyfoot mysteries would know immediately who these people are and understand the venue of heroine and amateur sleuth Cecily Sinclair -- an exclusive hotel (converted in this book into a club) on the South East coast of England.

It is perhaps the author's desire to spare her usual readers the boredom of reading details about old and well-loved characters that makes her present them very sketchily so that they become cardboard cutouts of the Cockney maid, the highly-strung French chef and so on. The characters new in this book are clearly described for the reader.

The story involves Cecily suspecting that various deaths were not accidents. Unfortunately her husband's disbelief in her views manifests itself in an attitude of insufferable masculine superiority. After successful elucidations in the previous 11 volumes it seems rather churlish to pooh-pooh her suspicions here. A bombshell event affects the future of Cecily and her husband. Cecily takes this very casually, I feel -- her sangfroid seems rather excessive; perhaps she has been so engrossed in her detecting that everything else seems unimportant.

Some of the earlier books in the series are still in print while others are available secondhand -- I think a reader new to this series would be better advised to start reading from the beginning of the series. The first two books are ROOM WITH A CLUE and DO NOT DISTURB. The author also writes a series set in England in the Second World War -- the first in this series is A BICYCLE BUILT FOR MURDER.

Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, December 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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