The Brading Collection (A Miss Silver Mystery) [Paperback]

Patricia Wentworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1992

Lewis Brading loves only one thing – his collection of jewels. Not only are the gems extremely valuable but also every piece has a fascinating and bloody history attached to it. However Lewis is a frightened and difficult man who sees thieves around every corner. When he asks Miss Silver for help, she gives him some sound advice and turns him away. A few days later, she receives a letter from him, again asking for help. But it is too late. In the morning paper is the news of his murder. Lewis Brading loves only one thing – his collection of jewels. Not only are the gems extremely valuable but also every piece has a fascinating and bloody history attached to it. However Lewis is a frightened and difficult man who sees thieves around every corner. When he asks Miss Silver for help, she gives him some sound advice and turns him away. A few days later, she receives a letter from him, again asking for help. But it is too late. In the morning paper is the news of his murder.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060923377
• ISBN-13: 978-0060923372
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #973,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining English Country Club Mystery, May 27, 2004

By 

Sires "I enjoy mysteries, historical and proc... (Chesapeake, OH, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Brading Collection (Paperback)

Consulting Miss Silver seems to be tantamount to asking to be murdered. As in several of her other cases, Miss Silver is approached by a person who wishes her help. The next thing she knows the person's murder is headlined in the paper.

This is a not too shabby locked room mystery. The locked room is a windowless annex to a country club (once the murderee's private home). It has one door for which there are only two keys, one in the possession of the owner, the other in the hands of his secretary. The approach to the annex is along a glassed in corridor that is lighted at night so that any person using that route may be seen.

Yet one day Lewis Brading is found dead in the annex and it seems that only one man could have murdered him. However Miss Silver is there to make sure that the guilty and not the innocent suffer.

Nice collection of eccentrics, interesting post WWII milieu. Pretty good mystery.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jewels, sedatives - and murder, May 12, 2002

By 

Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Brading Collection (Hardcover)

In the Rejected Client Variation of the classical Silver format, Maud Silver's first interview with her prospective client opens the book without the usual preliminary skirmishes between the various suspects-to-be. Louis Brading believes that someone has been doping him to make him sleep heavily - possibly to get at his collection of historic jewels, most of which have some connection with crime. He isn't married, although he's courting someone, and his only heir is his cousin, Charles Forrest. Brading has a mean streak; for instance, his secretary, James Moberly, stays with him under threat of exposure of his involvement in jewel thefts long ago (he'd quit if Brading would release him). Frankly, doing time in prison rather than as Brading's secretary might have been easier; a prison sentence for theft is finite, and the worst has actually happened, rather than being kept hanging over one's head. Miss Silver refuses to take the job of spying on Moberly, since it isn't her line, and advises Brading to release Moberly.

Charles Forrest, for his part, isn't interested in the collection for itself, but did manage to mysteriously acquire enough cash to renovate his house. Only his adopted sister Lilias lives with him - he divorced Stacy Mainwaring for desertion a few years ago. Stacy, for her part, has avoided Charles and Ledshire for years, but on taking a lucrative job of painting a miniature of the formidable Myra Constantine, learns too late that Myra is staying in Louis Brading's old house-turned-country club - next door to Charles Forrest.

Louis Brading, of course, is the murder victim - he of the money and vengeful temperament. The question is, who killed him? Anybody who crossed him might well kill him in a kind of self-defense, although the law wouldn't see it that way. Lilias is a chronic liar and troublemaker - did she try to mess up Brading's engagement, as she might have sabotaged her brother's marriage? Was Charles hard up for money? Or did James Moberly finally snap?

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Miss Marple!!, June 5, 2011

By 

decency1st (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Brading Collection (Paperback)

I was turned on to some of these old "Miss Silver" Mysteries on the Cozy Mystery website. I was trying to find CLEAN Mysterys!
These fit the bill so far. I have read 3. Just finished Vanishing Point. My library system seems to have an abundance and as the author was very prolific I'm looking forward to being carried away to an old english village with Miss Silver for a long time.