The Book
Miss Rachel Innes rents a country house for the 1907 (most likely) summer holidays. Her young niece and nephew, Gertrude and Halsey are spending what might be their last summer at home, and Miss Innes feels like this will be her last chance to be a parent two her orphaned relations.
But, she doesn't even get settled in before she has to deal with a ghost and her personal maid nearly quits on the spot. A day or two and a couple more servants later, and the young people arrive, with their friend Jack Bailey in tow. Miss Innes tries to be the gracious host, but just as she retires for the night and lets the young people play some billiards, she is awakened by a mighty commotion. When the smoke clears, a man is dead at the bottom of the staircase, Gertrude is jumpy, and Halsey and his friend Jack have disappeared. Miss Innes takes charge of things and cops arrive early the next morning. The body is quickly identified as Arnold Armstrong, the son of the man who owns the house. The police suspect Halsey's missing friend, Jack Bailey, as the two had a long running dispute. Miss Innes is pressed to divulge where her nephew has gone, but she doesn't know.
Soon, the bodies start piling up, Gertrude turns out to be engaged to Jack Bailey, Halsey is engaged to Arnold's step-sister Louise. She in turn is going to marry to local doctor, a man named Walker. Meanwhile, the bank that Mr. Armstrong owns and Jack Bailey works at has a run on it and fails. The police search for Bailey, but he turns himself in, only to escape from jail. In the end, between the detective and Miss Innes, the truth comes out, and Miss Innes may wish she had never tried to get her own house renovated.
My Thoughts
Thanks to YouTube’s algorithm’s unrelenting optimism sending watchers down a rabbit hole, I saw
this video which lectured on the United States’ entry into World War I. In these particular lectures, Dr. Michael Neiberg tells the stories of two journalists, Walter Hines Page and Mary Roberts Rinehart. Fascinatingly, he said that Mrs. Rinehart was once called the “American Agatha Christie” and dared us to read her work. Unlike Mr. Page, I had never heard of her.
I chose to become a mystery novelist after I made my way through The Great Courses, The Great Course, Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction by David Schmid, PhD and realized I had either read or seen an adaptation of every single author covered in the course, with just one exception—The Harlem Detective Series by Chester Himes. (I guess we know what I'm doing next summer.)
I was maybe not surprised, since she wasn’t covered in the course, to hear him say he didn’t find her work compelling. But after I looked her up on my library’s computer system, I realized that she fits into a particular moment in the mystery genre because almost all of her novels predate Agatha Christie’s arrival, and her revolutionary approach to the form.
There are things about this story which a modern audience would find a little trying. First and foremost, Rinehart does not conform to most of the conventions of modern mystery novels. It is set in one of the most overtly racist times in America, that of the early aughts, as they have been called, or between 1900 and 1908, the year it was published. There are racist depictions of the diction and manners of the black men of the story. Certainly all of them seem a bit one dimensional, but they are there. It's a moment for me to reflect the difference 120 years makes.
Miss Innes tells the story herself, and deploys what could be a grating technique of "If I only knew then..." And while a series cannot be sustained on that line of reasoning, a single book can. I read in the copy I have, which is A Dover Mystery Classic edition, the foreword by the editor which says that before Agatha Christie hit the scene, Rinehart was the best selling mystery writer of her age. And in this particular book, she is poking gentle fun at the conventions of the mystery novel, as they existed to date.
What I know is that with my more modern eye, I spent the entire novel wondering just how reliable of a narrator Miss Rachel Innes was. I would like to say that I think that is unfair, but it does seem as if that was the point of the book. It also highlights the difficulty of having a first person narrator who is not the detective. In later developments, the cynical Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe will string the reader along. But though we know they know the outcome of the case, we also know that these narrators are telling us an honest version of the story, as they experienced it.
Here, Miss Innes is most likely trying to keep her nephew from being arrested, making her reliability questionable at best, at least the first time through. And yet, the book, for all of it's flaws is a compelling, quick read.
How Much My Library Card Saved Me
This is a book that my library does not own. I had to wait for it to be shipped from Lake Forest Public Library. The stamp in the book says that it entered their collection in August of 2021. I know that the first time I looked up this book, which was several years ago now, there were none in circulation in my consortium at that time. I would put that some time in 2020 at the latest. Here is where libraries are invaluable, this book, written over a century ago can be read by anyone in several counties because a librarian in my area probably decided to use Covid money to expand the collection into something a little bit more rare. If I needed to buy the book, given the disparaging review by Dr. Neiberg, I might not have thought it worth the money. But as it is, I decided for myself about this book, and I am the better for it.
Nonetheless, if this book has ever been read by anyone, it is with gentle hands as it is in pristine condition. It is 178 pages long, and it seems to me that the typeface is some sort of Times New Roman, or possibly Courier. I found the typeface a bit harder to read than several of the more "modern" fonts. Certainly it took a couple of days for my brain to get used to it. Still, we see a pattern here that the farther back in time we go, the shorter the book that tends to be to be called a novel. If we use the standard 250 words per page, then the book is a little more than 45,000 words. If only NaNoWriMo were that easy. The cover of the book says it cost $6.95 and the receipt agrees.
This Book $6.95
Items Reviewed This Year $943.33
Still Here?
Do me a huge favor and subscribe to the blog. To get it in your inbox,
subscribe here. Thanks, it means the world to me!
Here is the link to the YouTube Video again.
The Book 
Comments