David Roberts, Sweet Poison (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001)
David Roberts, Bones of the Buried (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001)
David Roberts, Hollow Crown (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002)
David Roberts, Dangerous Sea (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003)
David Roberts, The More Deceived (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004)
David Roberts, A Grave Man (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005)
David Roberts, The Quality of Mercy (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006)
David Roberts, Something Wicked (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007)
I first got wind of this wonderful Britain-between-the-wars murder mystery series when I saw one of the titles listed in a remaindered book catalog ($3.98 for a hard cover mystery-how sad!). We asked our favorite publicist at Da Capo (which for now holds the titles to the Carroll & Graf mysteries) to send us review copies of any she could find. She tracked down copies of four; we bought the other four from online sources. Some were easier than others to find.
The main characters across all the books are two, Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. As his title suggests, Lord Edward is a member of an aristocratic family, although as the youngest son he has inherited wealth and good breeding but not the family real estate or title -- those belong to his older brother Gerald, the Duke of Mersham. Another older brother, Franklyn, died on a battlefield in France in 1914. Early on, Roberts establishes some of the family's connections by mentioning that John Singer Sargent painted their father's portrait, James McNeill Whistler painted their American maternal grandmother's. Intelligent and educated but clearly sans profession, Edward is already in his early 30s when the series begins in August 1935. Over the course of the first few novels, Roberts establishes that Edward spent time in South America and Africa after completing his studies at Cambridge. Although Roberts doesn't provide a lot of detail about this period in Edward's life, his experiences and relationships from those years continue to influence his activities throughout the series.
Verity, who is in her early 20s when the series begins, is the only child of a well-known (and quite well-off) liberal lawyer, Donald Browne. Verity is making her living as a journalist when Edward first meets her at his brother's castle in the early chapters of Sweet Poison. Despite her very comfortable upbringing (or perhaps because of it), Verity is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party who writes for the Daily Worker (which her father conveniently bankrolls). She arrives at Mersham Castle under false pretences, claiming to be writing a piece on the old houses for one of those lifestyle magazines. In fact she is working on a critical series about the British aristocracy, a class that she expects to find inhabited by corrupt and venal individuals, fully deserving of the downfall that the Communist Party anticipates.
This somewhat unlikely couple begins collaborating after one of the Duke's guests (at a dinner party dedicated to conversation about maintaining peace in Europe) dies of cyanide poisoning while drinking his after-dinner glass of port. Neither Edward nor Verity has any training whatsoever in criminal investigation. In this they are not unlike many of the famous amateur sleuths who populate the genre (I think of Jane Marple and particularly of Lord Peter Wimsey). It's evident that Edward initially gets involved in this case out of boredom. He definitely needs structure in his life, as well as opportunities to engage his considerable intellect. (Later books in the series find him frustrated and depressed over his lack of regular employment.) Verity's manifest motive is her strong sense of social justice (so strong that it overrides her moral scruples about the murder victim, a retired military officer with a reputation for ruthlessness). Although she would never admit it, Verity also needs distraction from the rigid doctrines of Communism. She's too smart to be a true believer!
Individual books in the series represent "cases" that Edward and Verity confront and solve. Most of these include at least one murder. Although there's a break of about six months between Sweet Poison and Bones of the Buried, the rest of the books in the series take place in rapid sequential order, each one beginning within a month after the previous one ends. The final book in the series to date, Something Wicked, begins in June 1938, still over a year before Germany's invasion of Poland marked the start of World War II. Roberts is very explicit about these dates, and builds continuity into the series around the events leading up to the war as well as around the evolving relationship between Edward and Verity. They feel a strong attraction for each other, but Verity in particular resists this because of her principled abhorrence of the aristocracy and, I think, her fear of commitment. They both have numerous other sexual liaisons before at last giving in to their feelings for each other.
Several secondary characters travel across the series with Edward and Verity. These include Edward's brother Gerald, known as the Duke of Mersham, and Gerald's kind-hearted wife Connie, as well as Edward's rather prim valet, called by his last name, Fenton. Verity forms a friendship with Gerald and Connie's adolescent son Frank, a student at Eton who first appears in Bones of the Buried. Edward takes young Frank's best friend Charles Thayer under his wing when Charles's father becomes a murder victim. Scotland Yard is represented -- none too favorably -- by Chief Inspector Pride, a brusque fellow who actively resents Edward and Verity's intrusions into "his" cases. Canadian-born Joe Weaver is a wealthy and powerful newspaper magnate who hires Verity to work on his London-based publication, the New Gazette. Joe is also one of Edward's closest friends. The painter Adrian Hassel and his wife Charlotte (a childhood friend of Edward's) provide Verity with a place to live when she's in London between frequent overseas assignments. Lord Benyon is a well-known economist whom Edward first meets at a party at the Weavers'. Edward becomes his protector in Dangerous Sea.
Each book's title is a brief quote from a play by William Shakespeare. A more complete quote with its play identified (but without act or scene noted) appears on a page before the main text begins. In most instances, these titles and quotes connect directly to the plot. The title of Bones of the Buried, for example, comes from Love's Labors Lost, a play that one of the characters in the novel (the Director of the British Council in Madrid) is organizing as a way of showing the Spanish what British culture is like.
Speaking of culture, Roberts does a noteworthy job of making appropriate cultural references, such as Fenton's making Edward a "cold collation" for lunch one day -- I had to look that one up! Edward is inordinately proud of the Lagonda (a classy low-slung sports car) he drives at great speed around the countryside. In serious violation of her own principles, Verity shops at Harrods and wears a Schiaparelli dress to dinner when she wants to impress people. There's a marvelous and very dramatic scene in Bones of the Buried that takes place at Eton during the Fourth of June, an annual fete that features cricket matches, boat races, and fireworks. In Dangerous Sea, Edward and Verity travel to New York on board the Queen Mary.
As the series progresses, Roberts makes increasingly skilled use of actual historical events and persons in his plots. Much of the action in Bones of the Buried takes place in Madrid, where Verity holes up with a writer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ernest Hemingway as they both wait around for the onset of the Spanish Civil War. In Hollow Crown, Joe Weaver commissions Edward to help him recover some letters stolen from Wallis Simpson, the notorious lover and eventual wife of Edward VIII, the King who abdicated the throne in 1936, the same year he was crowned. Major scenes in this novel take place at the Cable Street Riot (at which the police not very successfully quelled a violent conflict between British Fascists and a loose coalition of left-wing groups) and on the Jarrow March (a demonstration protesting unemployment and poverty in a region of northeast England). In later novels, including The More Deceived, A Grave Man, and The Quality of Mercy, Dickie Mountbatten, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill are included as regular characters.
Roberts also doesn't shy away from some of the social issues that entered more significantly into public awareness in Britain after World War I. One of the characters in Sweet Poison is a heroin addict (the book's title is a direct reference to this). The aforementioned Director of the British Council in Bones of the Buried is a homosexual; in fact, homosexuality is one of the prominent sub-themes of this book, as is pedophilia. Alcoholism, marital infidelity and domestic violence are common recurring themes across the series.
Throughout the series, the narrative is conventional third person, mostly told from Edward's point of view, less often from Verity's. There's a nice mix of dialogue and exposition throughout. The reader doesn't receive any hints about the crime(s) that aren't also available to the main characters, so the outcomes aren't anticlimactic. Within each novel, Roberts follows chronological order, occasionally offering background information that predates the action. Some books in the series feature a prologue taking place some time in the past that provides clues to the mystery in the present. As the series progresses, he makes brief occasional reference to incidents that took place in the earlier installments, so conceivably a reader could pick up the series somewhere in the middle and not get totally lost. The chapters are short enough to make it possible to read the books in brief periods of time, and the typical book runs just under 300 pages long.
I would say that character development and historical setting are stronger aspects of these novels than the mysteries themselves, which begin to sound alike after a while -- way too many are deaths caused by poisoning! As I read them, I thought often of the Lanny Budd series that Upton Sinclair wrote late in his life (I haven't reviewed them, but provide some information about them in my review of two Upton Sinclair biographies and nearly as often of Olivia Manning's works about British ex-patriates during World War II, The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy. Not surprisingly, these series are both straight historical fiction, not mysteries at all.
All the books in the series (in both the U.S. and UK editions) feature cover art and overall design elements that make it very clear they are connected. The artist is London-based Ken Leeder, whose colorful illustrations depict key themes from each of the books. Whenever possible, I recommend the hard cover over the paperback editions. The type is slightly larger and laid out with more white space on the page, and the bindings are of a much higher quality. Two of the books I have are paperback, and I fear that the glue in the spine will crack before I've finished reading them.
Author David Roberts spent the first part of his career in the publishing industry, working in high-level editorial positions for such distinguished old houses as Chatto and Windus and later at Weidenfeld & Nicolson. According to his newsletter, he very explicitly intended to use this series to explore some of the profound moral ambiguities that members of the British intelligentsia confronted during the years between the wars. He plans to write just two more books in the series, No More Dying and Such Sweet Sorrow, to end in September 1939. His Web site also hints that Columbia Pictures has an option on the series. Now there's a set of films I'd love to see!
