Puzzling

This was the cover of my latest read. If there was no blurb, which genre do you think this is? Children's fiction? - My friend Flicka perhaps? Or perhaps a romance? Something gentle like The horse whisperer. Or a handbook of equine knowledge - The complete horse care and management. I would be willing to bet that your initial thought would not be a crime novel. And in an odd sort of way this mirrored my thoughts about the novel too. It didn't really work, it doesn't quite fit. Ultimately I don't know what to make of crime writer, Barbara Cleverly. I admire her plotting, there are some great ideas, and some interesting characters, but for some reason it doesn't quite work for me.


I had completely forgotten that I had read some Cleverly a while ago (you can see the review for The tomb of Zeus here.) When I came across a novel by her in my local library, I thought that she was a novelist from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, so ideal for the Vintage Mystery challenge. As I soon realised however Barbara Cleverly is still alive and well (hoorah!) and is another one of the burgeoning number of crime novelists living in and around Cambridge. So although Enter Pale Death fails to qualify for the Vintage Mystery Challenge proper, it does make it into my additional Bronze category. And it's a very odd novel.


The unfortunately named Lady Truelove (she isn't!) meets an unfortunate end when she tries to befriend a Suffolk Punch, who rejoices in the name of Lucy (short for Lucifer). You know it's going to end badly, and it does. Truelove's husband is a parliamentary high-flyer, he also happens to be the boss and potential lover of Sandilands' own love interest. Sandiland begins to suspect that the death is not misadventure but something rather more sinister. And when he meets up with a local vet who reveals that Lady Truelove had received some incorrect information about horselore that had led to the horse being turned into an efficient murder weapon, his worst suspicions are confirmed. But who is responsible for the death? And is Sandilands' love being set up? Most importantly can any of this be proved?


Enter Pale Death has a likeable detective in Assistant Commissioner (of Scotland Yard no less) Joe Sandilands. Set in the late '20's / early '30's, there's a nice period feel to the novel; along with one of the most original murder methods that I've ever encountered. But overall I found the novel disappointing, it just didn't hold together.


I found the novel confusing - lovers in love, who apparently are not in love at all. Murderers who get away with murder (not fair as they are horrid people), murderers who do get away with murder (fair as they are nice people) - the moral conundrums that this raised made me gasp. Characters who seem to change character and relationships from page to page (horribly confusing). A murder method that had to be planned with malice aforethought, but turns out to have come about by chance. And (just in case I wasn't already reeling from confusion) X's love interest seems to have become Y's without missing a beat. The number of times that I flipped back in this novel, completely confused, wondering what I had missed or misunderstood earlier.


Enter Pale Death is such a frustrating read, there is so much that should be good about it, but it doesn't quite deliver. On the plus side, it does tick off one of the "How" categories in the Bronze section of the Vintage Mystery Challenge - At least 2 deaths by different means.