1952 thriller. Punch, Phyllida, Peter and Mab are on a European
trekking holiday, before they have to go back to school or work. They
meet a pleasant old man on the train, but later find him murderously
attacked. And then things start to get odd.
Among fans of Ellis Peters's writing, this is often regarded as a
minor, early work. The villains are obvious; the pace is slow; nothing
too terrible is going to happen to anyone. But I regard it as
something rather special.
Yes, the villains are obvious. This is a thriller, not a detective
story. Yes, the pace is slow; this is a book from 1952, when foreign
travel was regarded as exciting and exotic and worth paying attention
to, so there's travelogue to go along with the thriller, describing
the details of forcing oneself aboard a crowded train, and the
slightly grotty but trying hard hotel in a small mountain village, and
endlessly the wonders of Venice (doing a rather better job of the
atmosphere than Donna Leon ever managed in the ten books of
Commissario Brunetti that I read). Yes, none of the principals is
going to die… but they don't know that, and one of them in particular
will be in grave danger for an extended period.
There is one major plot hole: after Mab has become separated from the
rest of the group she somehow knows the specifics of something that
hadn't yet happened to them when she last saw them. (Or she intuits a
lot from one brief glance, and never questions that intuition.) Much
of the latter half of the book deals with Mab's pursuit of, and then
pursuit by, the villains, and it's set largely inside her head and
dealing with her own mental state. She isn't primed to be a hero;
she's just a normal person who's found herself in this situation, and
has to dig deep for strength to carry on.
Each of these characters has some growing up to do, but they're all
individuals, even if sometimes lightly sketched – and I'd have liked
to read more about them, though of course the odds are that they
wouldn't ever have stumbled into another adventure.
A splendid book for those with the patience to enjoy it.
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