Review: The real mystery is the identity of Clara Benson
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
This is a classic English "country house" mystery and a pretty good one.  The narrator is likable, although not the sharpest knife in the drawer. (Think Poirot's sidekick Hastings.) Some of the suspects and bystanders are stock characters, but Angela Marchmont is an intriguing woman - intelligent, mature, and witty. At least two good clues are provided and I figured out who-done-it about half way through the book, but then there was a shocker thrown in.  I thought that the ending was a bit contrived and knocked off a star for that.  Overall, an entertaining, readable book.But who was (or is) Clara Benson?  The story that is being given out is that she was born in 1890 and wrote these books as a young woman (in the 1920's) but put them aside with no attempt to publish them.  They were (supposedly) found by the family after her death in 1965, but not published until now.  Not a very believable story, in my opinion.  Why, in the era when women mystery writers (Christie, Sayers, Tey, Mitchell, etc) were cranking out books that sold like hotcakes, would this author NOT have been published?And yet, I agree with other reviewers that it has the authentic ring of a book written in the period.  The only anachronism that I detected is Angela's closing speech, which hints at moral relativism.  I don't think that was a common attitude among the upper class in this time period.  I think Hercule Poirot's indignant, "I disapprove of murder!" was more in keeping.  So I'm on the fence here, but I enjoyed this book and have bought the rest of the series.  After I read them, maybe I'll be convinced that the hidden-in-the-attic-all-this-time story is genuine.  Or maybe I'll decide that Stephen King is pranking us.