
As Moira mentioned in her first post over at Clothes in Books, some of us have decided to divide our detectives up into categories--including yours truly. I've had quite a month and haven't been able to devote quite the attention to the task that I would have liked. In fact, I managed to miss last week's meeting altogether. So, this week I'm going to squeeze in a quick look at last week's focus: Scholarly Sleuths.

Adam Ludlow is my favorite type of academic sleuth. He is scholarly and erudite without being pompous. He is full of apt quotations and specialized knowledge that help to solve the mystery, but his knowledge isn't anything that would be outside the grasp of someone with a well-rounded education. He is also human enough to make mistakes and encourage the reader to think that they might have every bit as good a chance of solving the mystery as Ludlow. The other strong feature in his favor is that his final outing (Unhallowed Murder) serves up a mystery that is just as strong as the previous stories. Nash (aka Raymond Chapman, Emeritus Professor of English at London University and an Anglican priest) provides consistently intriguing plots for Ludlow to unravel and interesting characters for him to interact with. I have not yet read the fourth in the series, but I have every reason to believe that Adam Ludlow will provide an entertaining academic sleuthing adventure equal to his others.
Palmer's scholarly sleuth, Hildegarde Withers is what Miss Marple might have been if she had been born in America and taken up teaching as an occupation. Like Miss Marple who uses her knowledge of personality and character types from village life to inform her observations in questions of murder, Miss Withers uses her experience as teacher to aid her efforts at investigation. After all, “[She's] taught school long enough to know when anybody is telling the truth or not.” Her sharp eyes and inquisitive intellect are often a help to Inspector Oscar Piper. And, like her pupils, she holds Piper to a higher standard--not allowing him to settle for the easiest, most convenient, or most politic answer when it's obvious it's not the correct one.
Miss Wither's mysteries are a little more action-oriented than Miss Marple's (or even Adam Ludlow's) and they are filled with Palmer's characteristic humor. Her stubborn commonsense approach very often comes into humorous opposition to the gruff police detective Piper. But they play well off of one another and Piper calls her "God's horse gift to all dumb cops."
I intended to to a round of Dynamic Duos--featuring Colonel Primrose/Grace Lathem [Leslie Ford]; Jeff & Haila Troy [Kelley Roos]; and Lord Peter Wimsey & Bunter [Dorothy L Sayers]. After all, I did tell my fellow Tuesday Night Bloggers that I would cage fight them for Lord Peter--but, alas, April has proved to be a cruel month for blogging (I am SO behind on my reviews!) and I'm just not going to be able to do justice to the last group. Perhaps a future post on these detective twosomes may materialize....
1 comment:
Sheer joy! Like you, I love a scholarly sleuth. I'd forgotten about Simon Nash and must get back to him.
Post a Comment