Skip to main content

Top mysteries challenge review: Penny Black by Susan Moody

I finally found the book (under the driver's seat of my car), so here is the review.

Year of publication: 1984
Series and no.: Penny Wanawake, no. 1.
Genre: Mystery
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Amateur (photographer)
Setting & time: Washington D.C., USA; 1980s.

Story:
Photographer Penny Wanawake is shocked to discover that a friend of hers has been stabbed to death in a restroom at Los Angeles airport. Her search for the killer takes her to Washington D.C., into the company of the city’s diplomatic and political elite, made easy by her connections: her father is a diplomat and her mother an English Lady. Once in Washington, she delves into the world of orchid breeders where a fierce competition is taking place to be the first to breed a "black" orchid. She also uncovers some seedy secrets that someone may just be willing to kill to keep under cover.

Review:
Penny Wanawake was, when the first book was published, quite an unusual and exotic detective: a six-foot tall photographer of African and English descent with connections among the world’s diplomatic set and aristocracy, educated at the best private schools and keeping company with thieves. She is polished, erudite, funny and sexy, but unfortunately, with her frequent sarcastic quips, Penny also comes across as somewhat bitter at times. While it may sound like a cliché, I kept seeing her as resembling Grace Jones in my mind’s eye while reading the book, only not quite as fierce (although I don’t remember if Jones ever wore her hair in beaded cornrows).

One thing I really liked about the story was that as a first-time Penny is believable. She is genuinely shocked and saddened by the murders, she makes mistakes and advances theories without having anything to go on other than dislike for the suspects. But she also shows a keen talent for reasoning and eliminating suspects once she is able to look past personal likes and dislikes. In that way she is more realistic than many of the first-time amateur sleuths I’ve read about.

The story is sleek and chic and full enough of twists to delight any mystery lover, and for an author’s first book it is very good, but it has a lead character who is amoral in certain respects and so is not for people who believe that detectives should be completely honest people.

Rating: An interesting and exotic mystery. 3+ stars.

Books left in challenge: 97

Awards and nominations: None that I know of.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more