Sweet Poison

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 198
Rating:

Synopsis:

Sweet Poison takes its title from a line in King John: "Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth". It refers not only to the fact that the central character dies of poison, thought to be self-administered, but also to the fact that this character is a man obsessed with the past.

Augustus Gale was a man in love - in love with a woman of genius who had been dead for over a century. This macabre devotion poisoned both his own life and the lives of those around him: his son and daughter, his beautiful second wife, and even his devoted mother. Yet it was a strictly confined obsession, and when a party of archaeologists sought permission to excavate a Roman mosaic pavement on Augustus's land, they were met with blunt and contemptuous refusal. It might be said that Augustus Gale was a man who deserved to die, but if so, whose was the hand that killed him and with what motive?

I’ve been eager to read more of Mary Fitt’s work for a while, after really enjoying The Banquet Ceases, so I was glad to see a bunch on Kobo Plus. Sweet Poison appealed because it’s set on an archaeological dig, and the archaeological conundrum (a mosaic which passes below a boundary wall and into a private estate) offers one potential motive for the murder that follows.

I must admit, so far The Banquet Ceases has been my favourite; in both Strong Poison and Clues to Christabel, the female characters were almost universally offputting — in retrospect, there’s a similar problem in The Banquet Ceases, except that the main character’s wife is alright, and I hadn’t read enough of Fitt’s work to see a pattern yet. It’s not that the male characters are perfectly likeable either, but there’s something unhinged about most of her female characters in a way that’s starting to feel a bit samey to me — and though Dulcibella is level-headed and cares deeply about her children, and could be an interesting character given room to shine, her main object is escape and once that’s attained, she quickly discards Roger and exits the story. We see more of Cornelia, and, well…

Fitt did a pretty great job of setting up an atmosphere, in part because of that growing unease about the sanity of one of the female characters, and the way it all worked made sense and hung together well… but, yeah, I’m starting to wonder if Fitt liked women. Which is kind of a funny thing to say about a lesbian writer!

I’m still enjoying her books, and the mix of settings and set-ups for the mysteries, but… yeah. I’m hoping to see her do some more interesting things with her female characters.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

Clues to Christabel

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 289
Rating:

Synopsis:

When successful novelist Christabel Strange dies suddenly aged 32, the bequests are hard to fathom. She leaves one wing of the ancestral home to good friend Marcia Wentworth for her ongoing use; the rest of the house remains in the hands of her mother, grandmother and siblings. Christabel made it known that Marcia would write her biography, but leaves her sixteen volumes of meticulous diaries to wily eccentric Grandmother Strange, who loathes Marcia and refuses to allow her to see them. Dr George Caradew, Christabel's childhood friend, finds himself between opposing and increasingly hostile camps, and begins to wonder why Christabel behaved in such a peculiar way, and whether her death was really due to a fever. The possibility of foul play becomes a certainty when another murder occurs and a volume of the diaries is stolen. Gradually, Caradew pieces together the clues to Christabel's hidden life.

Clues to Christabel was the second Mary Fitt book I’ve read, and again, I really liked it. It’s more a psychological bent than some of her peers, and less focused on dogged police work but more on the people on the outside of that (even if they’re also trying to solve what happened). It really dragged me in, trying to figure out who was sincere, who was a bit of a vampire, and whether scheming meant someone was guilty or merely serving some other end.

The end of the story surprisingly made me turn against Christabel, rather — there’s a certain manipulativeness throughout, a too-good-to-be-true-ness, which left me ambivalent about her, but by the end I had my eyebrows fully raised. I won’t explain why, though: that’s definitely for you to find out by digging through the story. That didn’t change my enjoyment, to be clear: you don’t need to like Christabel, since she’s dead already right from the start.

In the end, I worked out the whodunnit part less by clues and more by certain aspects of the narrative structure, but it was fun to play guessing games all the same.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

The Banquet Ceases

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 247
Rating:

Synopsis:

It is 1947 and a sumptuous banquet at Fairfield Manor is underway to celebrate Bernard Smith-William's recovery from a serious illness. Among the guests are Bernard's childhood friend Rupert Lavering and his wife Louise. A war veteran and recipient of the Victoria Cross, Rupert has had trouble adjusting to peacetime, and was given a loan by Bernard to get started as a stockbroker six months previously. The wealthy Bernard is obsessed with Louise and uses the evening to separate the couple, threatening to ruin Lavering's new business unless she agrees to divorce Rupert and marry him. Louise refuses and Bernard takes action, but the next morning he is found poisoned in his study. Circumstances initially point to Rupert, but it turns out several of the guests at Fairfield Manor have grievances against Bernard Smith-Williams, and that anyone in the house could have accessed the atropine that killed him.

I’d never heard of Mary Fitt, a queer mystery writer (and scholar) who grew up and lived in Wales (though she was born in Birmingham). It seems kinda weird, having read The Banquet Ceases, that the British Library Crime Classics haven’t republished anything of hers, because it seems right in line with their usual stuff — but fortunately Moonstone Press have, which gave me a chance to try this out.

It’s very Golden/Silver Age in setup, but I felt it had slightly more interest in the psychology of the characters than some. I felt like I got to know Rupert and Louise, and the victim’s mother, in a way I hadn’t expected to — and it was very much from their point of view, not the detectives. I believe the police officer Mallett is Fitt’s recurring detective, but we get very little from his point of view.

The way it works out is a bit odd/atypical, too; we don’t get a real final answer to the crime until after the mystery has wrapped up with the suicide of the suspect, which looks like an admission of guilt.

Overall I found it an engaging mystery, and interesting as someone who’s studied crime fiction as well. I’ll definitely look for more of Fitt’s work; several of them are (like The Banquet Ceases) on Kobo Plus, so there’s plenty of scope for me to explore!

Rating: 4/5