The Party at No. 5

by Shelley Smith

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 189
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:

Sharing your home with an unwanted guest can be murder.

Elderly Mrs. Rampage lives alone in a large London house full of the antiques and heirlooms she’s collected over the years. But she’s struggling to cope, and as her only daughter lives thousands of miles away, she is persuaded to advertise for a housekeeper and companion. Reluctantly, she accepts the courteous and capable Mrs. Roach into No 5 to help her.

With few possessions of her own, Mrs. Roach is in desperate need of a place to stay, but she soon has her own ideas about how things should be run in the house. And as Mrs. Rampage grows increasingly protective of her knick-knacks, and pushes at the boundaries of her new companion’s personal privacy, the pair’s initially amicable relationship soon turns sour. Before long, both women are thoroughly miserable, but stuck in unhappy coexistence with nowhere else to go. When Mrs. Roach digs in and makes it her duty to stay, the lives of both women become entangled in catastrophic circumstances.

Oof, this one’s a bit tough to rate and review. The Party at No. 5 is the first book I’ve read by Shelley Smith, I think, and I can see that it’s well done: well structured, well planned, with characters that are psychologically realistic (if sometimes a bit exaggerated).

It’s also very difficult to enjoy for me personally, since I just don’t enjoy the Payment Deferred style “someone commits a crime and then tries to conceal it” shenanigans, and I don’t particularly enjoy reading about unpleasant people either. There is a certain satisfaction in watching Mrs Rampage and Mrs Roach unravel, especially the latter, revealing her self-serving thoughts and plans.

It’s also unfortunate that what’s clearly a lesbian relationship between Eleanor and Norah is treated as rather grotesque, and Eleanor’s devotion to Norah is treated as being strange. It isn’t used to justify what happens, at least, but there’s a sense that it’s part of the slow revelation of what Mrs Roach is really like to the reader, and I found it unpleasant.

I ended the book feeling vaguely begrimed and anxious, honestly; I think overall I’m going to have to go with rating based on how much I liked it, as usual, which is “not at all”. That said, for someone more interested in reading for the craft of it, it is well done in its way.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)