Mon 10 Aug 2020
A Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: MINETTE WALTERS – The Scold’s Bridle.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
MINETTE WALTERS – The Scold’s Bridle. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1994. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1994.; paperback, 1995. TV movie: BBC, 1998.
I feel sort of proprietary about Walters – I was among the earlier in this country to sound the “fine new author” alert when she debuted with The Ice House [reviewed here ]even if no one but me and a few friends heard it. Imagine my delight when one of those friends returned from London and presented me with a signed copy of this.
Mathilda Gillispie was an old woman, crippled by arthritis, and thoroughly disliked by almost everyone; very much including her daughter, and granddaughter. When she was found dead with her wrists cut, everyone was convinced it was suicide except for an aging policeman and two of the very few people who didn’t dislike her, her doctor and the doctor’s artist husband. She was found wearing one of her favorite possessions, a scold’s bridle – an iron framework that encloses the head and has a sharp metal bit to restrict the tongue. And therein lies a tale that spans four generations, and touches many lives still extant.
The strength of Walters’ novels is the set of characters she creates and brings to full life. She doesn’t try to establish an ambience in any sort of geographic or physical sense. Her pacing is outstanding, but that by nature is unobtrusive unless done poorly. Her prose is excellently suited to what she does, but is not memorable in the sense that passages or phrases will stick in your mind. Her characters will. For a long time.
The Scold’s Bridle won’t win an Edgar for obvious reasons, and given the vagaries of the awards process may not even be nominated, but hear me well: if this isn’t the best crime novel of the year, someone wrote a hell of a book between now and then.
August 10th, 2020 at 6:59 pm
This is the first of Barry’s reviews taken from his DAPA-Em fanzine that I’ve posted here since maybe November. That was when I was retyping them by hand from a three column layout he was using with a font size of six, and the cataracts in my eyes just weren’t up to it.
My new scanner is helping, too, but if the font size was any smaller, that wouldn’t be of much use, either.
August 11th, 2020 at 6:05 am
Minette Walters made a huge splash with her first few books – THE ICE HOUSE, THE SCULPTRESS, THE SCOLD’S BRIDLE – but though she is still writing, I can’t remember the last time I heard anything about one of her books, saw a review, or read her. There were made-for-television movies or mini-series of her early books too. Eventually, she just got too dark for my taste (not that her early books were light!) and I quit after a few more. But those first three were special.
August 11th, 2020 at 9:53 am
Yes, you’re right, Jeff. I haven’t read or noticed anything about her recent books, either, and without thinking about it, I assumed she had stopped writing. Here’s a list of all her crime fiction:
Series
Last Hours
1. The Last Hours (2017)
2. The Turn of Midnight (2018)
Novels
The Ice House (1992)
The Sculptress (1993)
The Scold’s Bridle (1994)
The Dark Room (1995)
The Echo (1997)
The Breaker (1998)
The Shape of Snakes (2000)
Acid Row (2000)
Fox Evil (2002)
Disordered Minds (2003)
The Devil’s Feather (2005)
The Chameleon’s Shadow (2007)
August 11th, 2020 at 7:05 pm
Fine writer, but as said above she took too dark a turn for me.