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Miss Silver Comes to Stay by Particia Wentworth

Genre: Mystery (cosy)
Year of publication: 1951
No. in series: 15
Series detective: Miss Maud Silver
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Private detective
Setting & time: England, just after WWII

Miss Silver arrives in a small village to visit a friend and a few days later is asked to discover the truth in a murder case. A man who has just returned to the village after an absence of 20 years has been found murdered, and right at the top of the suspect list are his former fiancé who broke off their engagement 20 years earlier, and her nephew, but there are also at least two others who could have done it. The former fiancé happens to be the love interest of the Chief Constable of the district who is an old friend of Miss Silver’s, a fact that guarantees that she is given full access to all evidence and testimonies, enabling her to unearth evidence that the police has overlooked, solve the case and unite two sets of lovers.

SPOILERS ahead

This is an unusually good and well plotted Miss Silver book, with a complicated puzzle plot and interesting characters, but it gets pulled down near the end by one of the endings that I loathe, which in this instance is sillier than most. 3+ stars.
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Comments

Dorte H said…
Once in a while I read a book where I think "if only someone would rewrite the ending". It is so disappointing when promising stories fall to pieces or peter out.
September 05, 2010 4:25 pm
Bibliophile said…
I know what you mean. An improbable ending or one where someone suddenly acts completely out of character can completely ruin a book. So can deus ex machina endings and endings that go out "not with a bang but a whimper".
September 05, 2010 5:54 pm
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