strange and random happenstance

The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson
Published by: Poisoned Pen Press
Publication Date: November 7th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 320 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Mr. James Boynton Bennett has heard tales of his uncle, the great Sir Henry Merrivale. And on first meeting him he is surprised he meets his expectations exactly. The description was to a T. Bennett has arrived in London to escort a newspaper mogul, Lord Canifest and his daughter Louise Carewe, and stopped in to meet his uncle as he's a renowned sleuth and Bennett has a conundrum on his hands. The actress Marcia Tait is a huge Hollywood star who started her career in a flop in the West End. Tim Emery, her publicist, and Carl Rainger, her director, made her who she is and are aghast that she has broken her contract to once again tread the boards. She's set to star opposite Jervis Willard as a Restoration doxie in The Private Life of Charles the Second by Maurice Bohun, presented by Maurice's brother, John, who is in love with The Tait. Lord Canifest is backing the play and he and Bennett have been invited down to the Bohuns' place near Epsom, the White Priory, for Christmas. But for the last three weeks the situtation has been tense as Emery and Rainger try to get her to return to the studio while the Bohuns and Canifest are rooting for the play. Things took a turn though the day before when someone sent The Tait a poisoned box of chocolates, of which John Bohun suggested they ALL take a piece, because whomever refuses is obviously the culprit. Bohun, Emery, Willard, Rainer, and Bennett all took a piece, Emery collapsed two hours later with strychnine poisoning. And it's this toxic group of fellows who plan to decamp to Epson for the holidays, and Bennett is tagging along, but is curious what his uncle's take on the situation is. Could it escalate? Indeed it will, though they were powerless to stop it. The Bohuns have had the White Priory in their family since the time of Charles the Second when they built a "merry house." The "merry house" is called the Queen's Mirror and is off limits to tourists. The structure looks like an imitation temple on an ornamental sheet of water as it stands in the middle of an artificial lake. It was built in 1664 for Lady Castlemaine, perhaps Charles the Second's most notorious mistress. There's a scene in the play set in the pavilion and The Tait insisted on spending her nights at the White Priory in the Queen's Mirror. It was so like Marcia. And this decision would be her last. Because as Bennett arrives on the scene John Bohun has found Marcia dead. It had snowed overnight and there's only one set of prints that go towards the merry house, those of John's. It is a true mystery. A mystery that Bennett thinks only his uncle can solve.

One of the things I plan most assiduously for the holidays is my reading. I want just the right level of classic to modern murder mysteries. Because that is what the holidays are about, murder. Because you're trapped with your family and there's snow and by all that is holy, someone is going to die. So when Poisoned Pen Press reprinted Carter Dickson's 1934 Christmas mystery, The White Priory Murders, back in 2023 I knew it had to be on my holiday reading list. And then I learned it was the second Sir Henry Merrivale book. Which meant I couldn't just skip to the second volume, oh no, I had to first read The Plague Court Murders. But seeing as I learned this when it was still the Halloween season and the first book involves a séance, I felt like fate was throwing me a win. What was more interesting though is reading these two books back to back I couldn't help but wonder why he basically used the same locked-room contrivance. Now there are a million ways to do locked-room mysteries, I should know, I've read enough of them, but what's odd here is the similarities. In both books we have a freestanding structure, one is a stone hut, the other is a marble pavilion. Then we have the structure surrounded by a substance that would leave an impression if anyone had approached it, one is mud, the other is snow. Then we have the body found inside the structure, oh no! And it's not death, it's murder! How was this impossible crime committed!?! Now Carter Dickson was the king of the locked-room mystery, so while others might think this is sloppy to repeat yourself in such a way, I think it was a major flex. He created two entirely different books with basically the same setup. Like he wanted to give the reader another answer to his first book. Almost as if he was writing a Choose Your Own Adventure. Not satisfied with how Roger Darworth died? Try option two with Marcia Tait! It took balls, and I admire it. As for the Sir Henry Merrivale's detection skills? I have issues. Because Sir Henry has no fucks to give about the victims. He honestly doesn't care about them. They are nothing more than a riddle to be solved. And, if possible, solved without stepping outside his cloistered little bubble. I take umbrage that a person is nothing more than an object to him. The criminal and the howdunit are all that matters to him. The background of the victim? Why should that matter? It's like he doesn't believe the past informs how they died, which is ludicrous. It's not about timelines and who could have done what and when but why this person? Why did they have to die? And the answer isn't to provide Sir Henry with a diversion. But maybe that's me? Maybe I want depth, I want more, I don't want tab A going into slot B. That's too clinical a crime.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Carter Dickson, Charles II, Choose Your Own Adventure, Christmas, Locked Room, Marcia Tait, Murder Most Foul, Restoration, Sir Henry Merrivale, The Plague Court Murders, The White Priory Murders, West End

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1941
Format: Paperback, 260 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Dona St. Columb has tired of court. What she did with Rockingham shames her. It wasn't an infidelity against her husband Harry, it was a stupid prank that scared an old lady. A prank that has made her rethink her life, fleeing with her two children to Cornwall and Navron. Perhaps reconnecting with nature and leaving the din of London behind will help her to find a new Dona, one she can like. She hasn't been back to her husband's estate of Navron since they were first married; aside from the painting of herself hanging in the master bedroom it is quite different. There's only one servant, the almost impudent but ultimately amusing William, who seems to have run the household according to his whims. Soon Dona starts to suspect William of having another master other than her husband. There are artifacts left in her room that hint at another occupant while she was roistering in London.

But that partying Dona is gone, replaced by one reveling in the trill of a bird call and the smell of a flower. Therefore the Cornish society trying to thrust themselves on her is very unwelcome. Lord Godolphin and his ilk whinging on about French pirates are of no interest to her. Especially when she has formed a bond with the very pirate they hunt. The Frenchman is William's true master and is the one who has been sleeping in Dona's bed while she was away. She stumbled upon his ship, La Mouette, hidden in a creek near Navron. She could have given them up, told the law the secret base of the pirates, instead she joins the crew. With William as her conspirator every moment she can spare is spent with the Frenchman. They fish, they talk, he draws birds and Dona. But soon he must take again to the high seas and Dona wants to accompany him. Will his latest heist bring the law down on him or will he and Dona sail off into the sunset?

Frenchman's Creek was one of a very few books by Daphne Du Maurier that was available stateside when I was growing up, and yet it never caught my interest. I think again it's down to the misapplied moniker of "Romance Author" that Du Maurier was forever burdened with. A problem that isn't just with Du Maurier's unwelcome title but with me. For years I've often dismissed a book because it was labelled a romance. At least by this time in my life I'm willing to not let a book's genre classification sway me. Yet of all Du Maurier's books I've read this is the most romantic, but it's romantic in a way similar to The Princess Bride. There's just so much more than the romance that to brand it as such does the book a disservice. Though, playing devil's advocate, in the Frenchman, Jean-Benoit Aubéry, Du Maurier has created perhaps the ideal romantic hero. He is a classic, a paragon of the romantic ideal. He has poetry in his soul and the desire to capture nature on paper. Who wouldn't want to run away with him?

Even if years ago I could have brought myself to look past the "romance" label of the book I think the period aspect of it would have tripped me up. Frenchman's Creek is set during The Restoration, a time in England where the return of the monarchy and Charles II to the throne spurred a cultural and artistic revolution; as well as a lot of debauchery and excess. I studied this in two different history classes in college, as well as reading a plethora of plays from this time period in my theatre classes, I did mention artistic revolution didn't I? This was heavily in the theatre arena. At this point I hadn't actually hit saturation, that was to come with Charles II: The Power and the Passion. I had REALLY been looking forward to this miniseries airing and at about hour three I was flagging... in fact at about three and a half hours I reached a point where my love of Rufus Sewell couldn't compete with my boredom. So this Restoration revulsion that took place in me made me avoid Frenchman's Creek for too long because it is so fresh and so entertaining that it goes beyond the period trappings to be a timeless tale.

If I were to describe this book to someone who had a slight grasp of Du Maurier's canon I'd say Frenchman's Creek is the opposite of Jamaica Inn. Jamaica Inn is all about a good girl thrown in amongst scoundrels who are evil and bad ship-wreckers, whereas Frenchman's Creek is about a bad girl thrown in amongst pirates who do a world of good for her and are really not that bad a group of fellows. The genius of Du Maurier is that she can write two completely opposite stories and yet make you fall completely in love with both of them. In Jamaica Inn you were praying for Mary to be saved by the kindly gentry, yet here, here the gentry are fools who are to be laughed at and mocked and you are with Dona all the way as she schemes to steal from them with her Frenchman. What's more is that if you think on Dona she's an interesting character. Over the course of the book she turns away from her husband and her children and yet you are rooting her on. You sympathize enough with her that you WANT her to become a pirate. You are complicit in her crimes and you love every dangerous heart-stopping moment. Leave the children behind, take to the high seas!

And it's that desire to leave your life behind that clues you into the deeper meaning of Frenchman's Creek. Just below the surface of all Du Maurier's books you always see her. Even if she didn't openly acknowledge it she used her books as therapy. In Rebecca she dealt with the duality of a wife, who she was meant to be versus who she really was. Here it's the masculine versus the feminine self. She always viewed her creative impulses as masculine, and therefore Dona constantly referring to her adventurous side as masculine, as a cabin boy, makes sense in relation to Du Maurier. This desire to go out into the world, to please yourself, to seek adventure, to do, was in Du Maurier's mind a male impulse. Whereas the homemaker, the mother, that was the feminine self. In the atrocious TV Movie Daphne, you get the barest glimpse into her acting on her male instincts with Gertrude Lawrence. But, like Dona in the end, Du Maurier chose hearth and home, going back to her family. She may have tapped into her male side from time to time, but it was the female side that won out. But more importantly, it's the way she has dramatized this and her other struggles that have left us with such an impressive body of work. Here's to the writer with issues!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles II, Cornwall, Daphne, Daphne Du Maurier, Dona St. Columb, Du Maurier December Deux, Frenchman's Creek, Jamaica Inn, Mary Yellan, Navron, Pirates, Rebecca, Restoration, Rufus Sewell, Therapy

Frenchman's Creek
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Tara Fitzgerald, Tim Dutton, James Fleet, Mika Simmons, Anna Popplewell, Jack Snell, Yorick van Wageningen, Danny Webb, Rupert Vansittart, Michelle Wesson, Michael Jenn, and Anthony Delon
Release Date: April 25th, 1999
Rating: ★★
To Buy

London isn't the safest or the sanest place to be and Lady Dona St. Columb sees this. Her husband has always been a gambler and he backed the wrong horse in supporting the current King. James II is on his way out; it's a foregone conclusion that his son-in-law William of Orange will soon be King of England. Therefore Dona decamps back home to Cornwall and Navron. She thought the country would be safer, but the Cornish Coast is rife with soldiers and apparently riddled with spies. Loyalties and religious beliefs are questioned by all. Soon Dona is in the center of this conflict owing to her servant William and his true master, the spy Jean Aubrey. William and Aubrey have been using Navron as a safe house while the nearby creek is perfect for housing Aubrey's boat, La Mouette. Dona is caught between a rock and a hard place, she doesn't want to look like a traitor, but who should she be swearing fealty to anyway?

The more she learns about Aubrey the more she realizes how similar they are. Dona certainly has more in common with this spy then with her fellow aristocrats. Soon she is no longer just sheltering fugitives but actively participating in their schemes. It's high adventure to stick it to the insufferable boors like Lord Godolphin and Rashleigh. As she sees it wasting three hours of her time is equal to them losing a prize ship. But at the end of this grand adventure she must return home and she is surprised by the arrival of her husband and his lecherous friend Lord Rockingham. The arrival of these two, with a full compliment of guards indicates that Aubrey's freedom is in great peril. He is now all Dona thinks about. In such an unsettled time danger is around every corner and a word spoken by even the most innocent could spell doom. Can Dona secure Aubrey's freedom? If she is successful will she sail with him into the sunset or take up the mantle of her previous life? Only time will tell.

This adaptation gives the distinct impression that one day someone was watching The Last of the Mohicans and went, "YES! That's what we want! Guys with long hair jumping off things and two forces at war and a love story!" Then someone else went "Well, how about adapting Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek? It's set almost a hundred years earlier but we can make it work!" Conveniently forgetting everything that Frenchman's Creek stands for and making it the swashbuckling adventure they fantasized it to be. Gone is the journey of one woman's discovery of herself, a period piece that is relatable to this day, and in it's place is a rather silly movie that probably has more in common with the oft maligned Cutthroat Island than with it's source material. I mean, the title "Frenchman's Creek" doesn't even make sense anymore! Because in the book the creek is the Frenchman's hideout, here it's the house he is using and the ship is just moored wherever.

Of course this all made sense to me when I saw that the writer just happened to be the executive producer of the TV show Homeland. A show that specializes in overwrought drama that forces every aspect of life to revolve around politics and religion. I think that the rule of thumb for a happy family gathering during the holidays of not talking about politics and religion should apply to adaptations where the source material doesn't support the addition. You don't randomly throw politics and religion into a story making a time-shift needed!!! Which makes it so obvious to me that this was adapted by a man. Because the politics and the religion justify Aubrey's actions and give him morals. In the book he's a freakin' pirate, but by making him a spy, oh, everything he does is just fine. How many times do I have to yell it that this is the story of a woman! It's not Aubrey's story, it's Dona's!

To change everything to make the male more important? Just no. Du Maurier would be furious. I'm furious! She wrote strong female characters and Dona is basically made into a prop for Aubrey. She's just there to faun over him not as a means to finding out her purpose in life. This all starts early in the movie by changing WHY Dona leaves court. This creates a seismic shift in her character. In the book she leaves court out of disgust at herself and the courtly antics of those hanging around Charles II, the King BEFORE James II. To make her flee even for an ounce of danger!?! Um, how does that work with the life she then takes on? How can she be a spy if she can't handle a few disgusting suitors? All the changes just don't make sense to me. I keep asking myself "why" over and over again. Because if the people behind this thought that no one would watch a faithful adaptation of a book with great characters but little plot I'm totally confused because that's basically what Downton Abbey was and that was like the biggest hit ever.

But what really effected me the most was that this adaptation was chock-a-block with violence. Which had two results. One, I hated it, and two, it was another way in which Dona was downgraded. I'm really not one of those people harping on and on about there being too much senseless violence. I don't think video games make people kill. I'm just wanting to make it clear I'm not one of those people before I say, WTF!?! I lost count at how many people died. In the capture of Lord Godolphin and Rashleigh's ship the spies are blowing up and running through people like there's no tomorrow. If Mr. "Homeland" had wanted to show the morals of Aubrey how about keep it like the book? Aubrey doesn't kill ONE SINGLE PERSON in the book. What this does is place a spotlight on Dona killing Rockingham. In the book this single death packs a massive wallop whereas being just one death among so many it completely loses it's significance. Throw in that mass murder at the end and Dona's children beating Satan out of a dog, and Dona once again doesn't matter much.

And once again I have to point out that this isn't the fault of the actors. Yes, it was fairly obvious there was a strata among the acting abilities in the cast, Aubrey was laughably bad, but the good still shown through the muck. Actors going about, trying to do the best with what they were given, so that sometimes you see what it could have been and you become sad that this is what you have. Yet I did try to latch onto what was good, what worked. Tara Fitzgerald and Danny Webb brought their A game. You could actually see something of the book Dona and William that made them sparkle a little like Dona's ruby earrings when they were onscreen. When I read the book I was utterly unconvinced that Tara Fitzgerald could not pull off Dona, despite being such a fan of hers. This adaptation of Frenchman's Creek showed that she was 100% the right choice. Now if they had just stuck to book Dona this would probably be a glowing review! But my heart belonged with James Fleet as Dona's husband. He has this awesome James Fleetness that makes you just always love him. I don't know if it's because of Vicar of Dibley, but I truly think there's something great in his soul that makes this likability always shine through even when an ass. Of course Dona went back to her husband! There really wasn't a choice to jilt James! He made the boorish role of Harry his own and in doing so made this his movie.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cornwall, Danny Webb, Daphne Du Maurier, Dona St. Columb, Du Maurier December Deux, England, Frenchman's Creek, James Fleet, Murder, Restoration, Spies, Tara Fitzgerald, The Last of the Mochicans, Vicar of Dibley

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1941
Format: Paperback, 260 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Dona St. Columb has tired of court. What she did with Rockingham shames her. It wasn't an infidelity against her husband Harry, it was a stupid prank that scared an old lady. A prank that has made her rethink her life, fleeing with her two children to Cornwall and Navron. Perhaps reconnecting with nature and leaving the din of London behind will help her to find a new Dona, one she can like. She hasn't been back to her husband's estate of Navron since they were first married; aside from the painting of herself hanging in the master bedroom it is quite different. There's only one servant, the almost impudent but ultimately amusing William, who seems to have run the household according to his whims. Soon Dona starts to suspect William of having another master other than her husband. There are artifacts left in her room that hint at another occupant while she was roistering in London.

But that partying Dona is gone, replaced by one reveling in the trill of a bird call and the smell of a flower. Therefore the Cornish society trying to thrust themselves on her is very unwelcome. Lord Godolphin and his ilk whinging on about French pirates are of no interest to her. Especially when she has formed a bond with the very pirate they hunt. The Frenchman is William's true master and is the one who has been sleeping in Dona's bed while she was away. She stumbled upon his ship, La Mouette, hidden in a creek near Navron. She could have given them up, told the law the secret base of the pirates, instead she joins the crew. With William as her conspirator every moment she can spare is spent with the Frenchman. They fish, they talk, he draws birds and Dona. But soon he must take again to the high seas and Dona wants to accompany him. Will his latest heist bring the law down on him or will he and Dona sail off into the sunset?

Frenchman's Creek was one of a very few books by Daphne Du Maurier that was available stateside when I was growing up, and yet it never caught my interest. I think again it's down to the misapplied moniker of "Romance Author" that Du Maurier was forever burdened with. A problem that isn't just with Du Maurier's unwelcome title but with me. For years I've often dismissed a book because it was labelled a romance. At least by this time in my life I'm willing to not let a book's genre classification sway me. Yet of all Du Maurier's books I've read this is the most romantic, but it's romantic in a way similar to The Princess Bride. There's just so much more than the romance that to brand it as such does the book a disservice. Though, playing devil's advocate, in the Frenchman, Jean-Benoit Aubéry, Du Maurier has created perhaps the ideal romantic hero. He is a classic, a paragon of the romantic ideal. He has poetry in his soul and the desire to capture nature on paper. Who wouldn't want to run away with him?

Even if years ago I could have brought myself to look past the "romance" label of the book I think the period aspect of it would have tripped me up. Frenchman's Creek is set during The Restoration, a time in England where the return of the monarchy and Charles II to the throne spurred a cultural and artistic revolution; as well as a lot of debauchery and excess. I studied this in two different history classes in college, as well as reading a plethora of plays from this time period in my theatre classes, I did mention artistic revolution didn't I? This was heavily in the theatre arena. At this point I hadn't actually hit saturation, that was to come with Charles II: The Power and the Passion. I had REALLY been looking forward to this miniseries airing and at about hour three I was flagging... in fact at about three and a half hours I reached a point where my love of Rufus Sewell couldn't compete with my boredom. So this Restoration revulsion that took place in me made me avoid Frenchman's Creek for too long because it is so fresh and so entertaining that it goes beyond the period trappings to be a timeless tale.

If I were to describe this book to someone who had a slight grasp of Du Maurier's canon I'd say Frenchman's Creek is the opposite of Jamaica Inn. Jamaica Inn is all about a good girl thrown in amongst scoundrels who are evil and bad ship-wreckers, whereas Frenchman's Creek is about a bad girl thrown in amongst pirates who do a world of good for her and are really not that bad a group of fellows. The genius of Du Maurier is that she can write two completely opposite stories and yet make you fall completely in love with both of them. In Jamaica Inn you were praying for Mary to be saved by the kindly gentry, yet here, here the gentry are fools who are to be laughed at and mocked and you are with Dona all the way as she schemes to steal from them with her Frenchman. What's more is that if you think on Dona she's an interesting character. Over the course of the book she turns away from her husband and her children and yet you are rooting her on. You sympathize enough with her that you WANT her to become a pirate. You are complicit in her crimes and you love every dangerous heart-stopping moment. Leave the children behind, take to the high seas!

And it's that desire to leave your life behind that clues you into the deeper meaning of Frenchman's Creek. Just below the surface of all Du Maurier's books you always see her. Even if she didn't openly acknowledge it she used her books as therapy. In Rebecca she dealt with the duality of a wife, who she was meant to be versus who she really was. Here it's the masculine versus the feminine self. She always viewed her creative impulses as masculine, and therefore Dona constantly referring to her adventurous side as masculine, as a cabin boy, makes sense in relation to Du Maurier. This desire to go out into the world, to please yourself, to seek adventure, to do, was in Du Maurier's mind a male impulse. Whereas the homemaker, the mother, that was the feminine self. In the atrocious TV Movie Daphne, you get the barest glimpse into her acting on her male instincts with Gertrude Lawrence. But, like Dona in the end, Du Maurier chose hearth and home, going back to her family. She may have tapped into her male side from time to time, but it was the female side that won out. But more importantly, it's the way she has dramatized this and her other struggles that have left us with such an impressive body of work. Here's to the writer with issues!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles II, Cornwall, Daphne, Daphne Du Maurier, Dona St. Columb, Du Maurier December Deux, Frenchman's Creek, Jamaica Inn, Mary Yellan, Navron, Pirates, Rebecca, Restoration, Rufus Sewell, Therapy