Customer Reviews

Curious Incident at Claridge's: An Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne Investigation (An Antonia Darcy and Major Payne Mystery)

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One sure thing I can always count on with a book written by R. T. Raichev is that one seemingly small incident will turn into one big case of murder. In this instance Major Hugh Payne only has a short time to observe the beautiful young woman having coffee with a much older man in Claridge's Hotel. Major Payne is there attending a regimental reunion luncheon, not really enjoying himself very much, finishing sentences for many of the older members and providing quotations on demand. When he leaves the room to get some fresh air he finds Captain "Beau" Jesty, who has deserted his comrades, lurking behind a potted palm watching the man and woman. Jesty has quite a reputation as a ladies man and he tells Payne he intends to meet this one even if he has to use a little blackmail concerning something he just witnessed her do. From there the story moves on to investigating a poisoning which doesn't seem to have ever happened.

I always enjoy these novels, for one reason because Raichev includes little bits of tittle-tattle about the famous people of Britain. You can make your own choice as to whether these are things he has actually heard or if they are all complete fiction. Just wondering about it can be fun for me. This particular novel features Payne more than Antonia because these are his friends and he was present when Jesty became involved with the beautiful lady. Antonia does make her investigations into the mystery later, but in the first part of this novel she is busy finishing up her novel. I often wonder if the process I watch Antonia go through as an author is a mirror of what Raichev goes through in writing about her. At one point Antonia remarks that she begins to panic at about chapter ten in her novels and, yes, you will be reading chapter ten in this novel at that time.

There were quite a few different characters involved in this novel and I didn't feel that I "saw" most of them with the clarity that I usually experience in novels in this series. Some of the eccentricity seemed a little forced and the circumstance of two of the characters meeting and becoming lovers was really quite a stretch. Even with those things in mind I still enjoyed the novel and greatly appreciate knowing I can open a novel written by R. T. Raichev and expect to find unusual characters and settings. This one did not disappoint.

I've really been enjoying this series... until this book. It's really more of a mystery for her husband, not Antonia. I'm so peeved that Antonia comes across as a priggish stick in the mud in this one -- not at all the feisty, curious character we first met. And the mystery is just too far fetched to be believed. Puh-leeze. I won't ruin it, but I will say I easily figured it all out and I had to force myself to keep reading this book. I'm afraid I was so disappointed I will not keep reading this series. The author obviously has tired of these characters as much as I have.

Three of the jacket blurbs invoke Agatha Christie's name, and "plotting skills," which they claim Raichev surpasses. He does, in spades, into the outer limits of improbability and silliness.

The protagonist, Penolope, 33, a former Harpers model, charming and beautiful, "bagged" the enormously wealthy Sir Seymour, 69, who is found dead in his bath. After much toing and froing and many false leads - poison pill swapping nonsense; a son who covets his father's title; an elderly albino (and his young albino lover) who had been blackmailed by Seymour's father to hand over a ring given him by Wallace, The Duchess of Windsor, mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, as a memento of their affair; Seymour's whacky twin sister, who also covets the ring; and more - Major Payne determines the death was not natural or accidental, but caused by someone holding the old man's head under the water. And the unlikely killer was Captain Jesty, a well know cad and acquaintance of the Major, who upon first sight of Pen, was smitten beyond all sensibility, and while attempting to blackmail her into an affair, was enlisted by her to do the dirty deed.

And Pen had just flung her own mother, Mrs Mobray, Seymour's housekeeper, over a third floor parapet. In the event, early on Mobray had produced a dozen or more issue as a financial venture, selling them off for 30,000 pounds sterling, per child. Pen was raised by adoptive parents but knew Mobray was mums, and they bonded and got along just fine, thank you, to a point. Pen was happily involved with a half brother, Vic, raised in Canada and in the dark as to the familial relationships, and mums began pressing Pen for cash or she would talk. As Pen wasn't ready to give up Vic, mums is given the shove but couldn't learn fast enough how to fly.

After the Major sorts out all the serial nonsense he decides there is not sufficient evidence to level charges and the tale fizzles out. Justy and Pen have gotten away with murder. But wait, no, there is one more page, a brief addendum - we are informed Pen has taken flying lessons and she and Justy are killed in the crash of the light weight two seater, and "Justice is served."

Ahem. The reader however has not been treated justly. There are many, many better plotted and better written "mysteries" out there, and no reason to waste your limited free time on this sort of dreck. If mysteries are your wont take a look at Sayers, Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter, Sharon Kay Penman, Frank Tallis, or revisit the old lady herself, there seem to be a number of freshly reissued copies of Christie's stories available.

At one point in The Curious Incident at Claridge's: An Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne Investigation Major Hugh Payne thinks, "I am in the presence of an eccentric." Hugh, old boy, that's an understatement. For, if the Antonia/Hugh series can be accurately described with one word, "eccentric" will do the trick.

R.T. Raichev has, thus far, specialized in presenting puzzles, mysteries, and conundrums about a host of dotty upper-class British people, many of whom are, to put it mildly, mad (as in insane, nutty, crazy...). Each time Hugh and Antonia exercise their investigative skills, they freely theorize the most "perfectly damning" and "far-fetched" stuff, only to discover, with the help of ingenious, previously overlooked evidence, that they've hit on what is probably the truth. I say "probably" because Raichev's alleged perpetrators don't generally go in for tear-streaked Perry Mason trial confession moments. And even if they aren't so eel-slippery that they deny their dastardly deeds altogether, they are usually arrogantly confident that any admissions they make to this "amateur" pair of sleuths won't land them behind bars for life. Often, they are right, but that doesn't stop mystery writer Antonia and her loving, ex-military husband, Hugh, from probing more incessantly than the police and unraveling the hates, perversions, obsessions, and jealousies that result in suffering and murder.

This, the fifth of the series, commences with Hugh attending a regimental dinner with his former comrades-in-arms at, yes, Claridge's. These boozy "military philosophers" are indulging in some uncensored heckling of the British royals. Well, not really heckling, since the royal family isn't there, but you get the idea. Anyway, Major Payne leaves the private room to get some air and comes upon Captain Beau Jesty (pun definitely intended -- word play is a peppy constant in these mysteries) hiding behind a bit of potted shrubbery. The captain is spying on a beautiful woman sitting with an older man. He excitedly tells Payne that he thinks he's seen her do something suspicious. The woman catches sight of them then and Payne thinks he sees a guilty look flash across her face. Jesty thinks Lady Penelope Tradescant (as she is soon identified) intends her nearly-seventy-year-old husband, Sir Seymour, ill. Payne is skeptical, but he does share all with Antonia, and they decide to follow up.

And so begins a case that presents, among other things, blackmail, a manic plot of old, a frightfully expensive ring, the gentleman's home where orange cowls are worn, a sister's revenge, eavesdroppers, more about the royal family, and, of course, lust and violence. What Jesty and Payne witnessed at Claridge's turns into "The Dying Game."

Raichev, tongue firmly in cheek, delights in exaggeratedly skewering many of the conceits of his adopted British society. He lampoons learnedly. He neglects neither manners nor fashions nor habits nor conventions. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT AT CLARIDGE'S is campy, frothy mystery that reminds me, in aspects, of Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest or Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). With Wilde's it shares a nonsensical edge and with Shakespeare's some satire about the quirky relations between men and women.

He pokes fun at himself as a writer too, through Antonia. For example: " 'I keep changing my mind about things I have written. I hate a great deal of what I have written and want to make changes. I know my copy editor will detest me.' " She adds later in connection with her technique, " 'I begin to panic at around Chapter 10. As you know, I try to delay the murder for as long as I possibly can.' " The alert reader recognizes how Antonia and Raichev have the same writing brain.

As I read this hardback, it occurred to me that perhaps it cast its net a mite too wide: there were so many characters and so many stories that breadth tended to overshadow depth. And this series, although each book relates a very different plot, also tends to envision characters who are from a similar compulsive, "mad," mold. So, the appeal can be to a somewhat select but greatly appreciative readership. For fans of Raichev's unique style, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT AT CLARIDGE'S upholds the tradition of quality and imaginative craziness. Not to mention that it is always a grand pleasure to drop in on Antonia and Hugh!

It all begins innocently enough at that elegant bastion of London hotels, Claridge's. Major Hugh Payne (don't you love that!) takes dinner with a group of former colleagues. An incident in the lobby puzzles the Major and from thence Hugh and his wife, the lovely and highly intelligent crime novelist Antonia Darcy, slide into the strange world of seemingly respectable people who take dreadful risks. And what a cast of characters those people are. The plot is typical of Raichev: a maze of circumstantial evidence, red herrings and a surprise ending. Raichev is the master of stream of consciousness. He gets right into the inner workings of the criminal mind. The humor is as dry as the Sahara and simply marvelous. For those who love the golden era of British crime writing, Raichev is a winning day at the races. For my money he can't write them quickly enough.

Here comes the fifth novel in R T Raichev's acclaimed series featuring mystery writer Antonia Darcy, in later books joined by her husband Major Hugh Payne. In this book, in fact, there's so much Hugh Payne that one doesn't get quite enough of our beloved Antonia, though she gets a long section to herself as she impersonates, in brilliant form, a jewelry saleswoman.

The case involves Payne at Claridge's, watching with a fellow officer a peculiar site, elderly Sir Seymour evidently being poisoned by his much younger supermodel wife Penelope Tree--sorry, Tradescant. The two men can barely believe their eyes, but Penelope's audacity knows no bounds, and before long Beau Jesty is convinced that he misconstrued what he saw. Meanwhile Payne visits an eccentric British hotel for rich gentlemen in which Sir Seymour has been living under the spiritual direction of a "Master." There he sees a battered armchair, "which might have served as a prop in a Lucien Freud painting." This allows Raichev to make wisecracks at the expense of a rival, Gilbert Adair, the creator of the ludicrous Evadne Mount (without sullying his pen by actually naming either name): Payne "found himself thinking of the particularly silly denouement of a locked-room mystery he'd read not long ago, in which the killer conceals himself inside an armchair."

Meow! Meanwhile the more Hugh and Antonia dig, the murkier and funnier the case becomes. This is the best of the Raichev books so far, and perhaps the most supremely witty. And there are some human moments too, among them a rather touching portrait of the late fashion doyenne Isabella Blow, disguised as Sir Seymour's twin sister, the inspired but utterly pathetic Bettina.