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Last week, I reviewed The Forsytes, the latest television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga. Tina brought us Should Have Told You Sooner by Jane Ward with an enticing description of the plot (I added it to my TBR!). Jane read and watched stories set in the British Isles, ahead of her hoped-for trip to Scotland.

Book: The Picture House Murders by Fiona Veitch Smith
Genre: Mystery novel
Publisher: Embla Books
Publication date: 2023

Source: E-book borrowed from the library

Summary: Clara Vale receives notice of an inheritance from an uncle that she liked, but never knew very well. She is delighted to leave London and her boring job and problematic family, even if just for a few days. Her uncle lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

When she arrives at the solicitor’s office, she finds out that her uncle’s business was an investigative agency and she has inherited it. She could sell it, of course, but her uncle leaves a letter encouraging her to take over the business herself.

Lady detectives weren’t completely unheard of in 1929, but they weren’t very common either. Clara Vale will need to take a few days to decide if a move and a new career makes sense for her.

Thoughts: I don’t always like descriptions in books when they disrupt the flow of the plot or conflict with the picture that I’ve already formed in my head. But I really loved the way that Fiona Veitch Smith established setting of time and place through Clara’s observations. Here is Clara’s first walk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne:

[S]he headed along Neville Street, past a memorial to George Stephenson — of the steam engine fame — then along Collingwood Street, with something called the Literary and Philosophical Society on her right. She was surprised that a city like Newcastle, famed for its industry and working-class image, would have something like a ‘literary and philosophical society’. But a lot was already surprising her about the city. Yes, there was a grim layer of coal dust over everything, but that was no worse (and perhaps a lot better) than the foul sulphuic smog that would settle over London from time to time. And the buildings, in beautiful honey-coloured Georgian stone, were as lovely as any in the capital.

She turned left into Grey Street and took a steep climb up a cobbled, curved street, hemmed on both sides by more Georgian architecture. It was a Tuesday morning, and the pavements were awash with gentlemen in dark suits, carrying newspapers under their arms and with bowler hats on their heads, marching to work in offices. Women, neatly but not poshly dressed in summer frocks, were out and about to do their shopping. Or perhaps, Clara though, the younger ones, wearing Chanel-inspired two-pieces, might be going to work in the shops. The shops were a mixture of more well-to-do storefronts with mannequins in the windows and pavement stalls with striped awnings, where Geordie men in flat caps called out to passers-by….

That’s a description that made me feel like I was visiting Newcastle myself, right from my armchair. We also visit the coast a few times, including an outing to Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, an important site in the early history of Christianity in the British Isles.

I guessed some aspects of the mystery, something I frequently fail to do, but that just made me feel smart and didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the characters or the setting.

Appeal: The Picture House Murders will appeal to lovers of historical fiction set in England — I know that’s a lot of us! Four other mysteries have been written in the Clara Vale series. I plan to read the next one, The Pantomime Murders, closer to Christmas.