Customer Reviews

Darkness at Pemberley

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This is really two stories in one. The first part is an intellectual murder mystery set at a university very like Cambridge (White's own school) - an example of that school of English who-done-its whose solution depends on timelines and knowing where the furniture is placed about the room. (Dorothy Sayers would wholly approve.) The detective, Buller, is refreshingly clever: he figures out in 100pgs what would take most fictional detectives the whole novel to puzzle out, but the real fun of the first part of the novel is T.H. White's wonderfully dry wit. His send-up of college professors and Scotland Yard mini-celebrities made me laugh aloud more than once.

Then the story takes an abrupt turn, becoming a sort of cat-and-mouse adventure thriller in which Buller and the other members of the Pemberley estate are stalked by a mad murderer. Confess I didn't find this part nearly as entertaining, though think the fault has to do with time and changing tastes rather than any deficiency on the part of the writer. These days television and movies have accustomed us to spectacular chase scenes; in contrast, White's version - probably considered riveting and dramatic in its day - seems a little plodding and improbable. However, White's lovely prose and wit were enough to sustain me through the less-than-riveting bits, and the ending, when it comes, is satisfying.

I understand this is one of White's earlier works and I think it shows. There are elements of imagination here, but feel like the author let himself be constrained by the genre in which he was writing. Had he undertaken this later in his career, believe White probably could/would have shaped this material into something more unique, more cohesive, and more enduring. The fact remains, however, that even a relatively bad book by White outshines the best efforts of hundreds of other who-done-it authors who have come since!