The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh

[watervole]

I enjoy Dorothy Sayer's novels about Lord Peter Wimsey and was willing to try out a writer continuing the series, but this one didn't really work for me.

 

I was looking forward to the prequel of how the Attenbury emerald mystery was solved, but the writing style of the first half with it's first person recollection  of events in the past told by Wimsey and Bunter felt clumsy and not like a Sayers novel.  When events moved to the present and later events befalling the emeralds, the style felt more familiar, though I did notice that the characters tended to quote from books that would probably still be familiar to modern readers (eg. Pooh bear and Alice in Wonderland) rather than Sayers wider range.  (you may regard this as a good or bad thing depending on your preference)

 

The solution to the plot relied on a horrendous number of coincidences, which I guess I can't really complain about given that Sayers was almost as guilty in Clouds of Witness....

 

However,  I'm not currently inspired to try any more of Paton Walsh's Wimsey novels.

If anyone wants a free paperback copy, just ask.

Comments

[watersword]

Paton Walsh doing Wimsey is not a good time, imo. I hate the way she handles dialogue.

[watervole]

The dialogue in the first half felt really wrong. I could not believe in the first person story telling by Wimsey and Bunter. I didn't sound like them. Harriet was better, but not perfect.

[igenlode]

We have a copy of "Thrones, Dominations" (and would Sayers really have sent it to press with that clumsy title?) on the shelf, which I have always resisted reading despite a natural curiosity. From what I've heard about it, I should only regret it...

(Terry Pratchett's completed but -- by the look of it -- unedited posthumous novel, "The Shepherd's Crown", was a disappointment, very clumsily phrased in many places. The ideas were there but the finesse was not, with the result that it sounded almost like fan-fiction of itself.)

[watervole]

I enjoyed Sheperd's Crown. Not perfect, but better than some of the books done when he was writing two a year and having to churn them out too quickly.