Wed 10 Jan 2024
A 1001 Midnights Review: DOROTHY DUNNETT – Dolly and the Bird of Paradise.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[3] Comments
by Julie Smith
DOROTHY DUNNETT – Dolly and the Bird of Paradise. Johnson Johnson #6. Michael Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1983. A. A. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1984.
Dorothy Dunnett’s “Dolly” series is about spy Johnson Johnson, skipper of the yacht Dolly. Each novel is titled for the “bird” (British slang for woman) who narrates it. The “bird” in this case is Rita Geddes, a punked-out young makeup artist with blue and orange hair who is hired to travel with a client, TV personality Natalie Sheridan. In Madeira, however, Rita is severely beaten and then her friend, Kim-Jim Curtis, another makeup artist, is killed. The nefarious doings seem to involve drugs, but in fact, much, much more is going on.
As must all Dunnett’ s “birds,” Rita becomes professionally involved with Johnson Johnson, who, in addition to being a yachtsman and sort of spy, is a famous portrait painter.
Johnson enlists Rita’s aid in running to ground the drug smugglers, but she really wants to avenge Kim-Jim, for reasons that she withholds from the reader. Though Rita is the narrator, Dunnell (a pseudonym of Dorothy Halliday) skillfully sees to it that she withholds any number of pertinent details-including the fact that she has a serious disability. The real mystery, locked within Rita herself unfolds satisfyingly and amid plenty of action, including piracy on the high seas and a rip-roaring hurricane.
Dunnett, also a noted author of historical fiction, is a very deft, very literate writer; Johnson is a sardonic, quasi-hero who grows on the reader as he grows on the birds on whom he tends to make poor-to-awful first impressions. Other titles in this series include Dolly and the Singing Bird (1982; original 1968 title, The Photogenic Soprano); Dolly and the Cookie Bird (1982; original 1970 title, Murder in the Round); Dolly and the Starry Bird (1982, original 1973 title, Murder in Focus); and Dolly and the Nanny Bird (1982).
———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Bibliographic Update: Omitted from the list above of other books in the series are Dolly and the Doctor Bird (1971) and Moroccan Traffic (1991).
January 12th, 2024 at 12:28 pm
I tried reading Dorothy Dunnett’s historical novels…twice. I gave up after 50 pages each time. I’ve not tried Dunnett’s “Dolly” series but this review tempts me.
January 12th, 2024 at 6:47 pm
I think having the word “Dolly” in the titles made it very difficult for the books to make any market headway in the US, and I don’t think they did. A few of the earlier ones came out here in paperback, but “real he-men” wouldn’t buy them, and I don’t think they were “cozy” enough for women. (I haven’t read any of them, so I could be wrong about that second statement.)
January 12th, 2024 at 9:56 pm
The current e-book release of the series do not have the Dolly titles for the most part, so I’m not sure if Dolly was Dunnett’s idea or her American publishers.
I enjoyed these as smart literate light reading, usually opening with a disparaging remark about men in bifocal lenses. Her heroines tend to be smart, more or less believable, and not the swooning moonstruck types the Dolly title might suggest. Though her style is different, the writer she reminds me of most is Mary Stewart.
Her Francis of Lymond and Niccolo historical novels are in the Dumas tradition (down to being of considerable length) and among the best of their kind. Unlike some women in the field she is as interested in swashbuckling and adventure as romance and details of everyday life and decor, which explains why she had as many male as female readers for the historicals.