This is my seventh read by Ferrars this year, yet somehow, I still have six left on my TBR pile! But at least that means I have some more to read next year. In my opinion Ferrars remains an underrated author and it is high time she got her slot at the Bodies from the Library conference!
Today’s read is the third novel in the Professor Andrew Basnett series and is unusually set in Australia, at Christmas time. Given the time of year, it is obvious why I picked this Ferrars book to read, but I was also curious about the title. How would it link to the story? In addition, the blurb intrigued me, as it hints at an unsolved murder from the past causing more violence in the present.
Synopsis
‘Christmas in Adelaide promises to be a pleasant vacation for Andrew Basnett, retired professor of botany and amateur sleuth. But the shadow of an unsolved murder hangs over the lives of his hosts, Tony and Jan Gardiner. The police still suspect Jan of her first husband’s murder – and then a second killing takes place under the same bizarre circumstances. What can a guest do in such a case but try to clear the name of his hostess and solve the crime?’
[Blurb is from the Murder Room edition]
Overall Thoughts
The story opens with Andrew Basnett anxiously preparing for his flight. We are told that as a child he:
‘[…] automatically memorised everything he read that had a strong rhythm, particularly if it was related to blood, treachery and terror, and all that he had read thus had remained indelibly printed on his brain for life. His interest in violence had been strange, because he had been fairly quiet child, not in the least addicted to quarrelling and fighting. But perhaps that had been the trouble. A more ferocious child might later have acquired as taste for more delicate lyrics and gentler fantasy.’
The verse of Walter Scott is part of this memory bank and almost against his will, Andrew’s brain recites it when he is worried. This might seem like a little random detail, thrown into the narrative to give the amateur sleuth some personality, but Ferrars does interestingly weave it into the later mystery plot.
If you are not a fan of aeroplane food, then you’ll probably not be surprised that Andrew isn’t either:
‘The breakfast that he found so abominable consisted of an omelet made unmistakeably of powdered egg, a sausage encased in a tough jacket of plastic, and a roll that had seen better days. During the war and the years of austerity that had followed it Andrew had often enough been grateful for omelets made of powdered egg, but it had not occurred to him for a long time now that he would ever have to face such a thing again. To be offered it on this flight, which after all was fairly expensive, struck him as positively an insult.’
When Andrew arrives in Australia, his host Tony Gardiner is quick to fill him in on Jan’s history, assuming others will gossip about it. Jan had only been married to her first husband, Luke Wilding, for six weeks, before he died. They lived on a sheep station in a rural area and Luke was a violent man, meaning Jan was already thinking of leaving him. Luke had been murdered in a quarry where he used to go to dig up crystals. It was one of these finds which killed him with a bash to the head. Luke’s death left Jan a rich woman, but she was not the only one to benefit from his demise.
Ferrars sets up her story well and is good at depicting the current strain Jan and Tony are under. They married quickly after the death of Luke, but there is still a lot of tension between them, which is not helped by the local police sergeant continuing to interrogate Jan, hoping she might crack. Does Tony fear Jan is a murderer?
It is on Christmas Day that murder strikes again and with the same murder method, another large crystal to the head, this time in the home of Jan’s sister. Once again, the circumstantial evidence leaves Jan without an alibi and suspicion rises when she is nowhere to be found.
This is a case largely solved through conversation, as Andrew mixes with different combinations of the witnesses and suspects. Plenty of new information trickles through the subsequent narrative. Plot delivered through dialogue is something Ferrars is adept at. The Christmas setting is a little minimal, but that is not unheard of in Christmas mysteries, although it was novel reading about a Christmas day where the afternoon is spent on the beach! I felt the final solution was a satisfying one, with some quite creative elements to it. The creativity in Ferrars’ solutions is something I do not think she gets as much credit for as she deserves. The clues that are included dovetail together nicely. However, I still think Andrew is a genius for figuring it all out. But overall, a well told tale.
Rating: 4.25/5