Raven House Mysteries, 1981.
The third (and last) book in the series featuring (and
narrated by) solicitor Anne Marryatt and set in a (very) small town in the
midlands. I think this was the best of
this series [We Must Have a Trial (1980);
The Healthy Grave (1980)], and this
mini-series was the best of the three written by Woods (three books as Ann
Burton about Richard Trent, a London banker, and four as Marry Challis featuring Jeremy
Locke, a London solicitor). (That’s a total of 10 books, not about Antony
Maitland, all published in 1980 or 1981.)
[An aside. One can
never be sure about this sort of thing, but it seems at least possible that
these books were written earlier (there’s little, if anything, that ties them
to the 1980-81 period, except for a reference, in Voice of the Past to something that happened in 1979, a change that
would be easy to make). The primary
characteristic of the books that argues for their having been written in the
late 1970s is their attitude toward women in the workplace—it’s treated as an
ordinary occurrence.]
Reading this book (and the others not written as Sara Woods)
almost inevitably leads to a comparison to the Maitland books (of which there
are 48, published beginning in 1962, with the final book in 1987—essentially
two books a year—and four in 1980/1981).
One obvious difference is that Maitland was a barrister. A second (in the case of the “Leek” books) is
that the main character was a woman.)
Otherwise they have things in common.
In all three, the domestic life of the main characters is
prominent. In all three, the main
character goes beyond his or her primary task and acts as an investigator. If you have the interest, I think it’s fair to
say that the Maitland books are, in general, better. (They do have an interesting feature in that,
by the mid-1970s, Woods realized she had tied herself down a bit by referring
as often and as strongly as she did to Maitland’s World War II experience—including
a severe shoulder injury. So she set all
the remaining books in the mid-1970s, with relatively specific dates. I know of no other author of a long-running
series who has done that.)
Nonetheless all three (non-Maitland) series have their
points of interest, and in the case of Voice
of the Past and its companions, one of those is the small village setting;
the village is a stand-in, I think, for the larger family settings in the other
series.
In Voice of the Past,
a well-to-do, highly respected Baronet (and chairman of a local mortgage
lending institution), Sir Lancelot Walker is shot, with his own shotgun, in the
study of his home (with his wife Dorothy upstairs). Suspicion falls immediately on his son-in-law
(Arthur Kilburn), a commercial artist facing declining demand for (and
declining income from) his work and seeking a loan to tide him and his family
(wife Paula, two children) over as he re-orients his work. Anne Maryatt, a local solicitor (and the
narrator of these books) accepts Kilburn as a client, and begins a series of
interviews to see what, if anything, she can find that might exonerate
him. It seems like a fruitless task,
until her husband Stephen provides something from Walker’s past that might be
worth exploring.
It happens that Walker and Stephen’s father Mark worked
closely together in the immediate post-war years (Walker as a lender, Mark as a
property appraiser) as the nearby town of Brompton grew explosively. And now Walker is leaning on Stephen to
shade, or outright falsify, his appraisal of a property that Walker wants to
buy, and tells Stephen that he—Walker—and Stephen’s father committed fraud and
that he will reveal Mark Maryatt’s participation in the fraud, if Stephen does
not go along (as we learn quite quickly, Stephen ain’t gonna play). But it obviously opens up a possible
argument for the defense.
Unlike the other two books in the series, we basically see
the entire trial, and the courtroom scenes are handled very well, including the
climactic revelations. I’ll admit that I
picked out the killer quite early, albeit more by intuition than by any
evidence whatsoever. “Leek’s” handling
of the courtroom revelations and their aftermath are very well handled, and all
of the tensions (especially between Stephen and Anne) are resolved. While this is not a great book (or
mini-series), the courtroom scenes in particular worked well (barrister Benedict
Tennant, Q. C., could give Perry Mason a run for his money) and parts of the
denouement were suitably surprising.
Well worth the time if you can find a copy (they are available from used
book sellers).
One of my projects for 2018 will be to take a new look at
the Antony Maitland books.
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