Spotlight

A man brings together a motley house party at his country estate, the members of which turn out to have just one thing in common: They all have reason to wish he was dead. When they get their collective wish, it's down to Miss Silver, along with her assistants, Chief Inspector Lamb and his Scotland Yard sidekick Frank Abbott, to get to the bottom of the deep well of suspects. Once again, the coincidental nature of how Miss Silver gets involved in the case strains credulity, but that's just how this series works so no need to dwell on it. (And it's nice to see Miss Silver branching out into pretty colored yarn for her incessant knitting now that World War II is over!) The book also features one of the most infuriatingly spoiled children show more in the annals of fiction, who deserved to be thrown out of a car on more than one occasion. Thankfully his role is even smaller than the arch-villain's heart, or there might have been two murders for Miss Silver & Co. to solve. show less

This book is a reprint of a book published in 1947. I picked it up along with another Miss Silver mystery, Latter End, which I preferred. A bit of a spoiler: Ms. Wentworth seems to be a very moral and kind woman: she doesn't want the innocent to suffer and so her murderers, at least in these two books, are guilty of previous capital crimes. I did not guess whodunit this time, even with a convenient map in the middle of the book, but I also didn't care that much about most of the characters. Miss Silver, who is much smarter and wiser than she appears at first, apparently works frequently with two Scotland Yard detectives. And if she hadn't been shopping at the same time as the book's young heroine, who knows what dastardly deeds may have show more gone unsolved and unpunished. Oh, and there is a truly bratty young boy who throws a beloved brooch out of a car window after jabbing the owner in her leg. show less

Taking the position of personal secretary to Mrs. Linnet Oakley in Surrey, Dorinda Brown finds herself on a strange path where past and present connections collide. An uncle who disappeared with her aunt's money some years back, false shoplifting charges levied against her, secrets, blackmail and murder; these items are conncected and explained with the help of Miss Silver.

Miss Maud Silver is of the Miss Marple school of detection. Quiet and unassuming, innocuous in appearance and demeanour, but ever so sharp in solving life's mysteries.