Customer Reviews

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I do not profess to know much about Sherlock Holmes, but the style is much the same as the Sherlock Holmes tales I have read, but with a feminist...and feminine...spin. The Baroness Orczy lays the stories out quickly and the stories don't drag on, as some mystery stories and novels do (although you may lament the shortness at times).

While some may find Lady Molly's feminine intuition somewhat unbelieveable, the stories are nonetheless delightful. Just as I was eager to find out whodunit in each story, so was I eager to learn of my lady's interesting history.

Highly entertaining!

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard is an enjoyable collection of stories in the Sherlock Holmes manner, although the accounts aren't quite as detailed. Is this where Carole Nelson Douglas got her inspiration for Irene Adler's expanded character, in addition to "A Scandal in Bohemia"? Both Lady Molly and Irene bear remarkable similarities.

The Lady Molly stories are fun, semi-feminist, Sherlock-Holmes-like tales. The attention to servants, clothing, and the ambiance of the era is delightful. The heroine is out to save her man and is both "ladylike" and a little feminist--although she gives up her job for love at the end of the book.

Baroness Orczy, inventor of the superhero genre ("The Scarlet Pimpernel") and all-round trailblazer, is not much read today beyond her most famous creation. That is a pity, because she also came up with a quite a few plucky heroines, including the hero of this novel, Lady Mary of Scotland Yard. If you love Victorian Mysteries and have run out of Sherlock Holmes, this little collection is definitely worth buying for your Kindle.

When baffled by an especially ingenious crime, who do the boys at Scotland Yard turn to? Why, Lady Molly: Paragon of society, humble public servant, and overall woman of mystery. With her sidekick Mary, she runs up and down England untangling the knottiest mysteries, alternately helped and hampered by the Chief at the Yard. Highlights of this collection include "A Bag of Sand" with its house of desperate women, "A Castle in Brittany", with its shady aristocrats and matriarchal cunning, and the final two-parter, "Sir Jeremiah's Will" and "The End", where Lady Molly plays the game for the greatest stakes of all. The BBC dramatized "The Woman in the Big Hat", for their series "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes", and while they took huge liberties with the plot (and even changed her Ladyship's age!) I can't help but think of Molly the way they portrayed her; a kind of Victorian Meryl Streep, tough, tender and whip smart.

Orczy has one villain tell Lady Molly with her dying breath to not "omit the fact that the accused took the law into her own hands." I like to think the Baroness looked around, didn't see enough strong women in literature, and so took the matter into her own hands. Definitely worth a day's read and rates a:

GRADE: B

This is a highly entertaining collection from the author of the Old Man in the Corner.
The Lady Molly stories throw an interesting light on the social mores of the time. Although women would indeed be working with Scotland Yard within a few years of the stories' publication, the reality of the female police officers' work was rather different.
Lady Molly is, to begin with, really a lady. Like many of her fictional counterparts she is only working to fulfill her own ends. She doesn't need the money, but she does want to free her unjustly accused husband from prison.
There is a good deal of stress laid on the fact that she is a "womanly woman". Her looks and wardrobe are described (gushingly) by her sidekick Mary. There is nothing of the suffragette about Lady Molly. She works on cases that need a "woman's mind". And often her adversary turns out to be another woman.
There is a good deal about hairpins and hats - both of which were major parts of a woman's wardrobe at the time.
"The Woman in the Big Hat" was filmed as one of the episodes for "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" back in the '70's.

As a lover of all mysteries cozy, especially ones that involve British aristocracy from a female perspective between 1800-1950, I was rather surprised that I had never heard of this volume of short stories. Lady Molly (British aristocracy!) works for Scotland Yard (England!) in 1910 (perfect time period!). She solves cases that Scotland Yard can not solve because of their lack of female perspective. Lady Molly herself can be called a female Sherlock Holmes. The stories themselves are reminiscent of the style in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote both in narration and the crafting of plots. This book was an immensely entertaining treat!

Baroness Orczy was fully capable of writing first-rate Fair-Play Puzzle Stories. Her 38 short stories centered around her peculiar amateur armchair detective, the Old Man in the Corner, are evidence of that. In LADY MOLLY OF SCOTLAND YARD (1910), however, her female detective relies mainly on intuition--feminine intuition that earns her the respect of her male colleagues throughout the entire British Isles--and we readers are usually not given enough clues to solve most of the eleven "mysteries" contained in this collection. Instead, as with most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, we are usually supposed to wander around in the dark with a Watson-Figure--the narrator here is named Mary Granard--and then feel pleasure and admiration at the ending of a story when Lady Molly pulls a surprising solution out of the air.

The eleven cases, which were published in magazines in 1909-1910, are (1) "The Ninescore Mystery" (the murder of a young woman and the disappearance of her sister); (2) "The Frewin Miniatures" (missing art objects); (3) "The Irish Tweed Coat" (thwarting the Mafia); (4) "The Fordwych Castle Mystery" (the murder of a servant woman); (5) "A Day's Folly" (apparent assault and forgery); (6) "A Castle in Brittany" (preventing the theft of a will); (7) "A Christmas Tragedy" (the murder of an old man); (8) "The Bag of Sand" (the murder of an old woman); (9) "The Man in the Inverness Cape" (the disappearance of a man); (10) "The Woman in the Big Hat" (the murder of a man in a crowded restaurant); and (11) "Sir Jeremiah's Will" + "The End" (a 2-chapter murder mystery that led to Lady Molly's quitting the police force).

In my view, the best three stories are the fourth, the fifth, and the tenth, which I'd give "B" grades to; the weakest two are the seventh and eleventh, which I'd give "D" grades to (both depend on far-fetched lucky coincidences for their solutions, and the eleventh contains sloppy mistakes about the time-line of events). The other six stories seem to deserve only "C" grades. Incidentally, four murderers in this collection commit suicide to avoid arrest and hanging; while many of Orczy's contemporary mystery writers also used this plot twist at the endings of their stories, I know of none who used it this often.

Granting that these stories have a strong, pioneering female protagonist who succeeds where "the sterner sex" repeatedly fails, the style of narration may occasionally annoy some readers. Be prepared for several dozen passages where Mary Granard gushingly refers to Lady Molly as "my dear lady" and raves about the beauty of Lady Molly's eyes and face and figure--and wardrobe.

Like many other authors--including Conan Doyle--Baroness Orczy occasionally recycled plot gimmicks that she had invented in earlier stories. Anyone who has read any of her other collections of short mysteries--THE CASE OF MISS ELLIOTT (1905), THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER (1909), UNRAVELLED KNOTS (1925), and SKIN O' MY TOOTH (1928)--will be far more likely to foresee the solutions to the eleven mysteries in this book than people who have not. For instance, the first story here resembles Orczy's "The Ayrsham Mystery" (1904); the second is a lot like "Who Stole the Black Diamonds?" (1901) and "The Mystery of the Ingres Masterpiece" (1925); the fourth and fifth respectively call to mind "The Tytherton Case" (1925) and "An Unparalleled Outrage" (1902); and the tenth is basically a sexual reversal of the plot of "The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway" (1904).

While not quite a female Sherlock Holmes, Lady Molly's stories are interesting and entertaining. Set in the pre-World War I years of the 20th century they have the feel of that age and are well written. When finished you wish for more but alas, these are the only stories available.

Lady Molly seems an interesting prototype for women detectives, and displays some early backbone against gender discrimination. She also seems one step ahead of the crook.
This book is actually a collection of short stories with the same title character.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

This ebook contains a collection of detective stories by Baroness Orczy.