Thirteen Guests
J. Jefferson Farjeon
Poisoned Pen/British Library Crime
Classics, Sep 1 2015, $12.95
ISBN 9781464204890
Two passengers leave the 3:28 train at the Flensham Station. When one of them John Foss twists his ankle
stepping onto the platform, the other thirtyish widow Nadine Leveridge comes to
his aid. After a quick stop at a doctor,
with help from servants she takes him to the nearby estate of Conservative
politician Lord Aveling and his wife where she attends a weekend country party
along with eleven other invitees and with Foss making it unlucky Thirteen
Guests.
The gala turns ugly when someone angrily smudges
a painting of the Honourable Anne Aveling whose artist Pratt is at the
event. This is followed by the discovery
of an unknown person’s corpse, a botched stag hunt, the killing of a family dog
and the murder of a guest. Police Detective
Inspector Kendall leads the investigation.
He finds no one grieves in the slightest over the human homicides, but
the host family mourns deeply the loss of their canine. The DI is taken aback when some of the guests
snidely respond to his questions with sarcasm.
This reprint of a 1936 leisurely-paced British
Country House police procedural contains an engaging mystery due to a
fascinating scandalous cast whose interplay makes for a droll insightful cozy. J.
Jefferson Farjeon wrote an intriguing still relevant period piece as the acceptance of de facto racism and social caste strata
remain timely with the need for the Gay Rights and Black Lives Matter
movements, and the 1% control of the economic-political complex.
Harriet Klausner
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