It should be fairly obvious this book is a murder mystery. The title is not a ruse. It is an old-fashioned book, written and set in the 1930s. At times it reminds me of my mother's mother, and the way she wrote to me about the necking and malt shops of her youth. Also there is a general tidiness to the sentences that I associate with my grandmother's tidy house. The tidiness is key. It is one of the chief delights of the book. Along with the tidiness comes the other chief delight, that of the reliable narrator. There is a lot of talk in the world about unreliable narrators. I know that was one of the lessons I learned most begrudgingly in school. It is not always easy to come out of childhood. But while the other characters in this mystery book are quite often lying about events or masking their feelings, the narrator, a woman named Grace with grown-up children, is sensible, practical, reliable, and a good means of looking at the astonishing mixed-up events. I guess I make a lot out of being in solid company.
Leslie Ford is the pseudonym of
Zenith Jones Brown, the wife of a St. John's tutor, whose dog Lorelei my mother used to walk. Or so I have heard. The rumor that she had written a book set on the St. John's campus is what set me off to hunt down her books. I look for them in every used bookstore. It's pleasure enough to find any of her books, but I still think I might find the St. John's one someday.
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