Imogen Quy Thinks There's Something Mysterious About "The Wyndham Case"
Written: Feb 02 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Introduction to Imogen; well-rendered settings; good plot twists
Cons: Main mystery wraps up a bit quickly, but additional layers make it more complex
The Bottom Line: Imogen Quy's first mystery has some good twists that armchair sleuths will enjoy.
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| befus's Full Review: Jill Paton Walsh - The Wyndham Case |
Imogen Quy (whose name rhymes with "why") has a quiet but fulfilling life. She likes her job as nurse at St. Agatha's College at Cambridge University. She's single but enjoys befriending the tenants that come and go in her rental flats. She even occasionally goes out on a pleasant date with Roger Rumbold, the college librarian.
It's the library where the problems start. Not the main library, where Roger is in charge, but the special Wyndham collection with its famous case of books left to the college hundreds of years ago by an eccentric and paranoid benefactor. The rules surrounding the old, scholarly books in the Wyndham case are strict -- and a bit ridiculous, most people agree. But its special librarian, Crispin Mountnessing, takes them very seriously, especially since one never knows when someone will pop up to conduct their once-a- century audit of the collection as per the instructions in the late benefactor's will.
When a student named Philip Skellow is found dead on the floor of the Wyndham library, his head bashed in and one of the scholarly books from the famous case flung open a few feet away from him, the college community is baffled and confused. Could the death have been accidental? How did Philip get into the library, when the collection is always locked and the special key (designed and cut in the 1600s) kept by the librarian? Could Philip have been stealing a book in the hopes of selling it? According to Philip's roommate, Jack Taverham, Philip had recently come into some money but wasn't telling anybody how or why. And is there any connection between the death in the Wyndham library and the disappearance of another old, scholarly text from the flat of Professor Wylie, one of Imogen's tenants?
Imogen finds herself drawn into the details of The Wyndham Case in spite of herself. Her position as college nurse means she's called in by the anxious dean as soon as the body is found. Her casual dating relationship with Roger Rumbold, the librarian, gives her an earful of vindictive, academic gossip. Her role as Professor Wylie's landlady explains her concern over the old man's stress when his valuable book turns up missing. And her friendship with local policeman Mike Parsons gives her a special perspective on the investigative proceedings, especially when Mike needs to enlist her help, in a very low-level, under-the-radar way, to try to get information from some uncooperative students who were at a party with Philip and Jack the night before the body was found. What are these students afraid of, and what are they trying to hide?
Thus an amateur sleuth is born. The Wyndham Case was the first of Jill Paton Walsh's Imogen Quy mysteries, though it's the second one I've read. I recommend starting here if you can: reading this one first would have given me better grounding in Imogen's character and in her academic community as well as deeper understanding regarding her initial involvement in "detecting."
For me, that's one of the marks of a good cozy mystery series. Amateur sleuths abound, and in many series, the very fact that an ordinary person would get involved in murder investigations on a regular basis stretches credulity to the breaking point from the start. Of course anyone who reads often in the genre gets used to allowing some poetic license...thankfully it's not often that small communities of any sort (whether towns, villages, or colleges) turn into places where murders happen with the patterned frequency they do in mystery series. I don't mind winking a few times, but I do like having a believable reason, or set of reasons, for why the amateur sleuth continues to get involved and/or becomes adept at investigations. With Imogen, Paton Walsh has given us the believable reasons. She has also created a likable, interesting character whose work as a nurse and natural personality traits help us understand what could make her a good detective. Imogen has real sympathy for fellow human beings in trouble and an eye for noting details (much like symptoms of illness) and seeing how they add up.
Walsh's writing style is also a pleasure to read. Believable dialogue, well-paced scenes and interesting personalities people these pages. She's good at creating scenes and settings that stick with you and not above finding humor in the stuffy, academic atmosphere of a small, closed community. Silly but solemn rituals instituted by benefactors hundreds of years ago come in for good natured ribbing in this book.
What made me try another Imogen Quy mystery, however, and what will keep me looking them up, is the way Walsh layers her stories so there's an unexpected "punch" or surprise near the end. Both books I've read in this series have contained that element: just when you think the mystery is solved, just when things seem to be falling neatly into place, there's some added element that deepens the investigation or gives it a complex twist you hadn't thought of before.
If you're a fan of cozy mysteries, and/or a fan of stories set in academic England, I highly recommend that you give Walsh's Imogen Quy mysteries a try. And The Wyndham Case, Quy's first case as an amateur sleuth, is the natural place to start.
~befus, 2009
The Wyndham Case
by Jill Paton Walsh
St. Martins Press, 1993
ISBN 0312094205
The second Imogen Quy mystery: A Piece of Justice
Thank you to pestyside for adding this book to the database for me.
Recommended:
Yes
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befus
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