Sun 14 Jun 2015
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: STUART PALMER – The Puzzle of the Silver Persian.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
William F. Deeck
STUART PALMER – The Puzzle of the Silver Persian. Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover, 1934. Dell #18, paperback, mapback edition, 1943. Bantam, paperback, 1986. Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2010.
Miss Hildegarde Withers is spending the reward money from the last investigation she was involved in on a trip to Europe.
Unfortunately, she is seasick the first few days of the voyage and misses out on the activities that presumably drive a young lady to suicide by leaping off the ship six hundred miles from shore.
Or was the young lady pushed or pulled off the ship? The bar steward is accused of murdering her and takes cyanide in full view of the police. This clears up the case, in the minds of some.
Later on, however, the ship’s passengers who dined at the table with the no-longer-presumed suicide start getting black-bordered warnings. Then one of her tablemates dies, seemingly by accident. Another comes near death by poisoned cigarettes, obviously not a fortuitous circumstance.
Miss Withers investigates — and mucks it up, as far as I’m concerned. She also, at least in this novel, is a creature without personality. Stuart Palmer, it would seem, assumes either that his readers will know Miss Withers well and he doesn’t have to expend energy establishing her reality or that it really doesn’t matter if she’s not a distinct individual.
Also not believable is the pharmacopeia aboard the ship. It contains potassium of cyanide and, apparently, sodium of cyanide. What fearsome distempers these are intended to cure is left to the imagination.
There is, in addition, a chief inspector of Scotland Yard who tastes the contents of the jar in which the potassium of cyanide is supposed to be. A trifle foolhardy, one would think.
For puzzle lovers — and those who like novels in which cats figure prominently — only.
June 14th, 2015 at 6:58 pm
Not my favorite Palmer of Hildy, but I liked it better than this.
Granted he is relying on us knowing her, and may stretches the ships pharmacy, though I’m not sure about the drugs. Cyanide in both forms has industrial usage and might well be kept in the pharmacy under lock and key though it doesn’t sound as if this was that thought out.
I can’t say I read Hildy exactly as a fair play detective story any more than I did Rice or the North’s. These weren’t books I looked for the Detective Club rules in. Some writers I just went along for the ride and Palmer was one.
June 14th, 2015 at 7:02 pm
I haven’t read this book, so wondering where the cat comes in, I checked out the Rue Morgue page for the book, and came up with the following:
“She [Hildegarde] accepts an invitation to visit the Cornwall home of a fellow passenger, the Honorable Emily Pendavid, who lives in the oldest inhabited castle in England along with her nephew and a handsome silver Persian cat, and it’s there that the pieces finally fall into place for Hildy.”
And that’s all I know.
June 15th, 2015 at 7:30 am
I’ve read and enjoyed several Stuart Palmer books but this was the only one I didn’t like. I couldn’t even finish the book.
June 15th, 2015 at 1:18 pm
I hadn’t realized it until I went looking, but quite a while back (almost six years ago) I posted a review of one of Palmer’s other Hildegarde Withers’ mysteries, THE PUZZLE OF THE RED STALLION:
“This is a good but far from great example of the 1930s concept of the comic crime novel, and no, you should not expect anything resembling good professional procedure on the part of the police and medical experts who are called in. In fact, quite oppositely, both are fairly inept at what they are supposed to do.
“But what can you expect when the police allow an old maid, a spinster, if you will, to follow the head of homicide around on his cases, picking up and stashing away clues at her own discretion, running interference for him when he’s about to go off in wrong directions, and generally being in charge of the case, albeit of course strictly unofficially?
“Comedy is a matter of taste, and in this case, it worked only intermittently for me. The was the sixth novel Hildegarde Withers was in, and by this time I think Stuart Palmer simply fired up the plot and let things cruise along on automatic.”
For the full review:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1350
June 19th, 2015 at 10:31 am
I think Hildegarde Withers mysteries are an acquired taste. Stuart Palmer’s sense of humor may not be every reader’s cup of tea.
June 19th, 2015 at 10:51 am
That seems to be the consensus, George.