Saturday, January 13, 2024

2024 book 7

 Patricia Wentworth's The Key

Well, this was certainly interesting, from a historical perspective. Published in 1944, it starts by introducing us to an Austrian-Jewish refugee who’s working on some sort of explosive for the war effort, and we find out his wife and daughter have died under the Nazis (his daughter explicitly in a concentration camp). I was psyched that it seemed like the main character would be a Jewish refugee, except then he gets murdered, and the main character turns out to be a guy with local ties sent to investigate by the War Office. And of course he needs the help of Miss Silver! No one is better at handling the personages of a small British town. I don’t really have strong feelings about the mystery here, it was fine. I do love Wentworth's characters, though. A-/B+.

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