strange and random happenstance: Strangers on a Train

Even if you've never watched it all Anglophiles are aware of Death in Paradise, the Caribbean based murder mystery with a revolving door of leads. In fact, the series created by Robert Thorogood is so popular that he has written four books and co-created two spinoffs, Beyond Paradise and Return to Paradise, AKA The Paraverse, and no, I didn't make that up. One of which I will never watch due to my hatred of a certain actor. Which might also be why I've never watched the original show despite Danny John-Jules being in it. When it was announced back in 2020 that Robert Thorogood was writing a new book series it was inevitably going to be a television series. There literally was no doubt. Proven even more by the fact that before season one had even aired a second season had been commissioned. I really wanted to like this show, I mean Samantha Bond was in my favorite adaptation of Mansfield Park and most recently was on Downton Abbey, and Jo Martin is the Fugitive Doctor! I mean, right there, two classy ladies. The problem is this show felt more like it belonged on BritBox or Acorn, not PBS. Now this isn't to slam these two wonderful streaming services, or to point out that most of Robert Thorogood's shows now are through BritBox, this was just a gut feeling I had when watching the show. To be worthy of being on Masterpiece Mystery!, or as I still call it, Mystery!, you kind of have to be a classic. This is the home of Holmes and Rumpole, Morse and Campion, Lynley and Foyle, Lewis and Wallander, Miss Scarlet and Atticus Pünd, and I'm sorry, Judith Potts isn't worthy. Not even going into the fact that she's completely unlikable, because you can connect to cantankerous and churlish detectives, she's just flat. Her character feels like a non-character. She's ostensibly the lead and she just falls short. When her life is in danger I actually wanted her to die. I knew she wouldn't because of the aforementioned renewal, but she and her swimming about in the Thames could have come to a messy end and I wouldn't have cared. And I don't know if it's how she's written, but it felt like Samantha Bond was phoning it in. Like she would just show up and kind of woodenly deliver her performance and call it a day. But it's obvious this show really doesn't care what you think about the characters, because there are several people in Marlow who need to be culled over the coming seasons. Starting with DS Perry. Though really, so much of this could have been overlooked if it was tightly plotted and believable. When the ending is revealed it's so ludicrously bad that I almost couldn't believe it. For awhile I thought that Judith Potts's evil ex was going to make an appearance, but they're apparently saving him for later, instead this was even stupider than what I thought possible. It was Strangers on a Train but with three killers and they all knew each other from school but hadn't seen each other in years. Despite living in the same town. Which has a population of 14,000 people. FFS. They deserved to be caught even if Judith Potts and Co. didn't deserve to catch them.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Acorn, And the Emmy Goes To, BritBox, Cara Horgan, Danny John-Jules, Downton Abbey, Jo Martin, Mansfield Park, Marlow, Mystery!, Robert Thorogood, Samantha Bond, Strangers on a Train, Thames, The Marlow Murder Club, The Paraverse

Murder on the Flying Scotsman (Daisy Dalrymple Book 4) by Carola Dunn
Published by: Kensington Books
Publication Date: 1996
Format: Paperback, 256 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Daisy has indulged herself with a first class ticket to Edinburgh on the Flying Scotsman to write her next article for Town and Country magazine. Little does she know as she debates to face towards or away from the engine in the stifling train compartment that the daughter of the object of her affection, Belinda Fletcher, has run away from home and decided to follow Daisy on her journey. Belinda has stowed away on the train and is frantically searching for Daisy. Soon Belinda finds Daisy, but someone else has also found her... Daisy's old classmate Anne Bretton, nee Smythe-Pike, is also aboard the train. Anne doesn't just have a precocious five year old and a baby in tow, oh no, she has her entire family. Four generations totalling fifteen relatives, not to mention servants and the stray heir.

The entire McGowan family tree is rushing towards Dunston Castle as fast as the Flying Scotsman will take them. Called there by the head of the family, Alistair, who thinks his time has finally come. Alistair, whose will is draconian and who has clung fiercely to his money like the miser he is. The will states that he is planning on leaving everything to his brother Albert, and after that his nephew if Albert should die before him, believing that money should be inherited along the male lines. Only now Anne has a son, who she believes should inherit, being Alistair's great-grandson.

Yet there is one thing the family all agrees on, Alistair's brother Albert should under no means inherit. Albert plans to leave his money to an Indian doctor! Doctor Jagai is not only unrelated, but not one of them, in the most racist sense. If Alistair where to die before Albert, then all the family's fortune would end up in the hands of Doctor Jagai. This is unacceptable, which Daisy has to listen to from the endless parade of McGowan's that come through her compartment. Therefore it is not shocking when Albert turns up dead. Every single member of his family had means and motive being trapped on the train together. Daisy just has to figure out who, all while taking care of Belinda. If she could just finagle Belinda's father Alec to be assigned to the case then perhaps things will start looking up.

There is something about trains that so eloquently lends itself to mysteries of the Golden Age of Detection. Whether it's just the bygone means of transport and all the elegance it bestows on the traveler or just the fact that you are locked in a box hurtling through space with someone who might be a killer. Trains bring a frisson of excitement to mysteries. Far more likely then any other reason it is probably because of Agatha Christie and the fact that Murder on the Orient Express is one of, if not the most famous of the books she has ever written. Because of this trains have become staples in mysteries, from Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, to Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, to the most recent adaptation of The Lady Vanishes, trains lend themselves to murder and mayhem. Murder on the Flying Scotsman taps into this most delicious of tropes and gives us a mystery that you will be speeding through, much as the train hurtles towards Edinburgh.

Where Carola Dunn's writing excels is in her characterization. Besides Daisy and Belinda, she juggles fifteen relatives, a doctor, a lawyer, and several functionaries from porters to police without ever confusing the reader. Christie was only juggling thirteen characters in her famous murder mystery on a locomotive, and here Carola ups it by a considerable number. Not only does she keep each character concise and clear, they are all very distinct people. Sure you could remember them by their broad strokes, anger issues and gout (Anne's father) or bright young thing (Anne's sister Judith) or shell-shock victim (Judith's cousin and true love Raymond), but these traits aren't the sum total of who they are. Carola delves into Judith and shows that despite her more superficial aspects, she could just as easily be a farmer's wife, just so long as that farmer is Raymond. While Raymond, even though he is a prime suspect, you feel so deeply for him with his attacks that come on from loud noises, that if he does turn out to be the killer, well, you know in your heart that you would forgive him. Then there is Doctor Jagai. Can he just be my friend please? Not only is he sweet and philosophical about the whole situation, he is caring and compassionate, looking after Belinda and also trying to help Raymond, someone who should be his rival because of the inheritance, but whose suffering he wants to help remediate.

Though the character that deserves the highest of praises is young Belinda Fletcher. It is so rare to get children right in books. Either they are too precocious or too vicious. The Roald Dahl syndrome if you will. Kids are either too too good or rotten to the core. As a reader, there is no swifter way to alienate me then to have unrealistic children. When Belinda found Daisy, the first thing I could think of was, oh dear, now we enter the overly doting Daisy and the soppy Belinda. My how I was relieved. Belinda was nicely refreshing. She was complex and was able to be sweet and childlike, but not cloying. Polite but not an ingratiating ass. Accepting of others and their differences. Able to keep things together when faced with a dead body. Yet, she was still a child. She did not have that feeling of being written as an adult in miniature. If more authors could get this right I think that the old axiom that applies to actors which can apply to books too "never work with children or animals" could soon become obsolete.