Book Review - Clifford Witting's Catt Out of the Bag
Published by: Galileo Publishing
Publication Date: 1939
Format: Kindle, 280 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
John Rutherford and his wife Molly aren't spending the holidays as he had hoped. Instead of being happily ensconced at their home they are the house guests of the de Fraynes. Because one doesn't turn down an invitation from Mrs. de Frayne as many times as they have without paying penance. And their penance is the holiday season as Mrs. de Frayne's puppets. They are to do what she wants when she wants it. Caroling, shopping, entertaining small children while dressed as Santa Claus, all these enforced activities fill John and Molly's time. But it's the caroling that will have a lasting impact. Mrs. de Frayne has their route through town mapped out to the minute. The group will sing at appointed locations while two of their number, Mr. Vavasour and Miss Gordon, each take a side of the street going door to door asking for donations to the cottage hospital. As the cuckolded Charles de Frayne says to John, he would gladly give whatever they would make on their rounds to stay out of the cold, but that would not be acceptable to his wife. At least he's in the dog house and is to stay home from the regimented event. As the night drags on Mr. Vavasour mysteriously disappears. At first the carolers make nothing of it. He must have gotten held up and will meet them either further along their route or back at the house. Neither happens. They assume he's gone home until his wife who was taken poorly and stayed home calls up asking if he was with them still. The next day John is still perplexed by Vavasour's disappearance and a newly arrived house guest suggests that they play detective. Going around to the Vavasour's house Mrs. Vavasour is nervous and makes up an elaborate story that her husband left town on business late last night and that they should just drop their inquiries. This only intrigues John more, and as luck would have it Molly's uncle is the famous Inspector Harry Charlton. Maybe Harry'd be able to get to the bottom of the Vavasour case? With John as his inside man of course.
As I enter December and the holiday season I always have my eyes peeled for a classic Christmas murder mystery. Catt Out of the Bag literally fell into my lab because one of my Goodreads friends had read it and gushed about it so much that I realized that if it was half as good as what they said it would be perfect for reading under the Christmas tree with the Netflix fire crackling away on my TV. I prefer the birchwood edition if you need to know. I finished the book on Christmas with a sigh of contentment. And here's the wonderful thing, the story is interesting with enough humorous characters and bizarre reveals about the life of the murder victim that figuring out the killer in advance doesn't detract from the story. Because I did figure out the killer in advance of the reveal. In fact I figured out who the killer was before they even killed. I'm not saying that to brag or anything, I just went, oh, that's the killer and then almost three-hundred pages later my hunch paid off. While I haven't read any other books in Clifford Witting's Inspector Harry Charlton series, seeing as I hadn't even heard of Clifford Witting before I picked up this book, I like that he obviously has fun in playing with the conventional murder mystery tropes. And he's not beyond a good joke. Seriously, when you get the meaning behind the title you will laugh. I also like that while this is in the Inspector Harry Charlton series we get a different POV with his nephew-in-law, John Rutherford, playing Watson to Charlton's Holmes, and doing a damn good job at aping Conan Doyle's style with a wink and a nod I might add. This is like a Christmassy The Hounds of the Baskervilles if you just looked to how the narrative is structured for the reader, because there are no evil fake botanists running around moors here. There is instead a bigamist. And I have to say, a very active bigamist. Really, I don't get bigamy. It seems like so much work to keep one household afloat and to have to do it at least twice? That man needed a nap and the killer obliged with a rather long one.
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