Forgotten Book: Postscript to Penelope

Susan Gilruth's Death in Ambush was a highly successful British Library Crime Classic reprint last year. I enjoyed the book a great deal, and so, it is clear, did many readers. As a result, her Sweet Revenge will be published in the series later this year; it was her first novel, and it's another good one. I can't claim the credit for 'discovering' Gilruth - that goes, as far as I know, to Jonny Davidson, formerly of the British Library - but I have been keen to read more of her work, and I've been encouraged in this endeavour by the enthusiasm for Gilruth of both Barry Pike and Jamie Sturgeon, two great fans of classic mystery.

This brought me to Postscript to Penelope, her third novel. It dates from 1954, and was the last to be published by Robert Hale before she moved to Hodder, a more prestigious imprint. This is another story to feature Liane Crauford as narrator, again in company with her golf-loving and amiable if uninspiring husband Bill and the good-looking Hugh Gordon of Scotland Yard, whose fondness for Liane is all too evident, notwithstanding the banter between the three of them in the course of this story. 

The book opens with a useful cast of characters, and we learn that the Craufords are renting a mews house in London, in an upmarket area near Bayswater. They are renting the house from a model called Penelope, who has gone off on a long working trip to Rio. (Incidentally I was intrigued to find that Heathrow is referred to as Heath Row in the novel; this seems to be a Gilruth mannerism, as I've seen maps from the 1930s giving the spelling we're familiar with, i.e. as a single word). Liane is even more of a gossip and nosey parker in this story than in the earlier Gilruths, but she'd outdone in both respects by some of her neighbours, some of whom are, it must be said, rather irritating people whom I'd hate to have living next door to me.

The structure and plotting of this novel is unusual, and some key information only comes to the reader's attention at a relatively late stage of proceedings. There is a fairly obvious murder suspect, but what has actually been going on in the mews is far from easy to figure out. There's also some cluelessness on the part of Bill and Liane with regard to a weapon that I found as hard to swallow as Hugh's willingness to confide in them so extensively. There's a clever idea at the heart of the story, but I don't want to say too much more about the storyline for fear of giving too much away, but the greatest strength of the novel lies in Gilruth's lively, mischievous style of writing.