Review: Angela in a speak-easy with a Chinaman and a black trumpet  player!?!  Where's my smelling salts!?!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 30, 2014
This is my last Clara Benson  (I read them out of order)  and my favorite.  There's a grand estate with a  regal old lady owner and her weakling son and his hearty horsewoman  finance.  But  (Thank God!)  we get to go to London and see a bit of the seedy underbelly of English life.  It's not Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but it's a welcome break from the tea-and-sherry brigade.When the story opens Angela's driver (the hunky William) is steering the Bentley toward the isolated cottage of a couple with whom Angela has reluctantly agreed to spend the weekend.  Typically, she's been bullied into coming although she risks being cornered by England's most obnoxious female reporter, who's determined to scoop an interview with the elusive lady detective. The English countryside is notorious for its lack of road signs and the GPS is far in the future. A damned good thing, too, or William might not have gotten lost and run into the herd of sheep and slid into the ditch and the body of the murdered woman would NEVER have been discovered and there would be no book.Inspector Jameson is called in and the trail leads to an infamous London nightclub run by an elderly Chinese woman and her son. It's a favorite hangout of mad-cap heiresses and their hapless, well-bred escorts and the music is supplied by an American band of black musicians whose leader is an old friend of William.  Clara seems to have been amazingly progressive for her time. Her non-white characters are human beings, not stereotypes and she pulls no punches about the racism which muddies the waters for our detectives - professional and amateur.Angela's relationship with Inspector Jameson reminds me of Mary Roberts Rinehart's Miss Pinkerton and her Inspector Patton.  They are colleagues with a hint of flirtation that could develop into a romance.  Too bad Clara stopped writing before we found out.  I am so sorry to see the end of this very good series.  Benson may have been an amateur writer, but she had a gift for creating memorable characters and lively dialogue.