Review: The missing secret plans AREN'T under the globe?  Rats!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 16, 2014
This one owes so much to Arthur Conan-Doyle I was expecting Holmes and Watson to show up any minute.  The setting is an ancient castle in Scotland so sturdy that gunshots can't be heard in the next room. It's the home of an Earl who's a mover-and-shaker in the British government and the frequent host of high-level secret meetings.  So where better for the Foreign Secretary (and his beautiful, nervous wife) and the American ambassador (and his glamorous, blonde wife) and a high-ranking civil servant known to be in "intelligence" (and who's intelligent enough to leave HIS wife at home) to meet with a mysterious scientist who is bringing his SECRET PLANS to show them?It's 1928 and this scientist has solved the puzzle of how to make atoms react and create a super weapon.  Obviously, the possession of this super bomb will completely eliminate future wars and save both the British and U.S. governments lots of money because they will no longer need to maintain armies.  [That worked out well, didn't it?]To disguise the purpose of the meeting (did these men EVER go to their offices?) a large house party is gathered.  There's a madcap heiress (obligatory in 1920's novels) and a wide-awake, slangy reporter and a scatty old-maid governess-turned-companion to provide comic relief.  It's Hogmanay (Scotland's New Year) so there's a huge feast and a dance for the villagers and the two young sons are home from their boarding schools to complicate matters. THEN a blizzard cuts them off and knocks out the telephone service!This is my second Clara Benson and I'm getting quite fond of her.  She isn't above giving a whopper of a clue in the middle of the book and she has a nice way with red herrings.  Angela Marchmont is a stunner of an amateur detective.  She's intelligent, witty, and kindhearted like Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley and she treats men with outward deference and inward  condescension like Christie's Miss Marple.  She's still mysterious, although we do learn that she has a brother, served in British Intelligence in WWI, and that she has had at least one husband.  She's also wealthy enough to afford a personal maid, a Bentley and a driver, a must for crime-solving among the aristocracy.I'm STILL trying to make up my mind about the odd story put forth to explain the sudden appearance of five mysteries written in the 1920's and not published until now.  Would this very traditional Earl and Countess really have sent their daughters to boarding school because their governess couldn't control them?  And would even the feminist Angela have been enthusiastic about Lady Clemmie going to university at a time when educated women were called "BlueStockings" and roundly denounced? As for the idea that the Countess was reconciled to her daughter being educated as long as she became a nurse, it's preposterous. Nurses in that era were very much looked down on and considered little better than prostitutes by many.On the other hand, the long-winded (skip over it!) explanation of the danger posed by communist Russia really does sound authentic to the period.  The murders of the Russian royal family (both Czar and Czarina cousins to the King of England) weighed heavily on the English aristocracy and outshone their fears of German rearmament.  Even a dopey Limousine-Leftist like St. John can't be safely ignored.So I'm still on the fence, but I'm quite  happy to read the other three books in this very entertaining series before I make my final pronouncement.  And if Clara's family finds any more gems in the attic, I'll read those, too.  Maybe they could search Jane Austin's last home and see what they turn up.  We could do with another PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, right?