Customer Reviews

Death of a Unicorn

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Peter Dickinson is an astoundingly prolific writer of British mysteries and young adult fiction most active from the 1960's through the 1990's. He is best known for his mastery of the British mystery and for that he still deserves a wide readership as his books are as good and in many cases better than many current offerings. His time period is generally the first half of the twentieth century and his milieu is the upper class or the dying English colonies. As this is the case, he spends a great deal of time in that halcyon period between the wars.

Peter Dickinson returns to the English aristocracy and the traps of memory and self-deception in Death of a Unicorn. It is the 1980's and successful historical novelist Margaret Millet is reviewing her life and her choices, but still she shies away from reviewing the biggest choice which may have been made for her, because it is also the 1950's and Margaret is a rebellious debutante who wants to be more. To achieve this, she quits her job as a decorative decorator's assistant and begins writing a racy column for a mid-level newspaper. She also takes a lover who is older, ugly, of indeterminate colonial racial extraction and nouveau riche. It is hard to decide which item on that list would horrify her mother and class most. But no matter, her lover ends up dead and Margaret ends up both fulfilling her obligations and her self. She doesn't sell out. Or did she already, all of those years ago by ignoring what was in front of her face through willful naivete? That is the central question and action of the book and it is very good action indeed.

Margaret is both likable and flawed and while most of us haven't ben heiresses with a duty to fulfill and a life to live we understand her motivations. Well-written, well-plotted and poignant. Evokes both the true innocence of youth, when we are convinced we are anything but and the regret that hard-earned wisdom brings. All this wrapped in a story that contains a priceless emerald necklace, a manor house and corruption, skullduggery and murder.

Again, this book and further exploration of Peter Dickinson's work is recommended to anglophiles and fans of the English mystery.