Customer Reviews

Miss Seeton Paints the Town

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The second one by Hamilton Crane. This one features the race to the 'Best Kept Village Competition.' Miss Seeton is keeping very busy, doing a bit of substitute teaching and drawing some pictures for the village to go along with the improvements. But what has police concerned is that she seems to be drawing buildings in flames. And there's an arsonist about. What is Miss Seeton trying to tell them? And will they figure it out before her own house goes up in flames?

So much fun! Really recommended. Lots of laughs.

I gave up reading the Miss Seeton mysteries, Witch Miss Seeton ,because I felt the new author had taken the series along a less joyful path and a more cynical one. The almost manic activity around the character, her naiveté in the midst of disaster, and her disconnected behavior had been wonderful and endearing. The collateral characters were equally funny and delightful, and I sometimes laughed my way through what almost reminded me of a Jerry Lewis movie with a less obnoxious protagonist. Under Charles Hampton's pen, she seemed to have become vaguer and less a part of her own narrow escapes. Furthermore, the villagers, especially "the Nuts," were portrayed less sympathetically. Their characters became more spiteful and less funny and eccentric.

Having set the series aside for some time now, I decided recently that I would give the series another go, and decided to start with this one, apparently the second of those under the authorship of Hamilton Crane, who seems to have captured something more of the original series. I knew it had taken me a little getting used to the Nero Wolfe mysteries under a new author, though I had ultimately found some of these rewarding, so I hoped having distanced myself from my natural expectations of the Seeton series, I would do likewise with them.

While I felt "Miss Seeton Paints the Town" enjoyed a little more of the Carvic-style characters and situation, I also waited in vain for anything really interesting to happen. Miss Seeton's talent continues to provide almost psychic information about the crime, but she herself seems to be less a part of her own life. While things continue to happen unnoticed around her as before, little happens to her at all. The manic finale when it came, while it arose because of Miss Seeton left her untouched and out of it all. There was much less of the Jerry Lewis style physicality here. Even Miss Seeton's experience in the briars was less a funny event, than it was a sad commentary on her age. Prehaps the entire loss of physical humor is because of the author's awareness of her actual age and his attempt to portray her as she might really be at that age. This is certainly the original author's fault for having started her out as elderly as he did, but it is by no means a necessary eventuality. In fact a fictional character can remain whatever age is necessary and can remain as active as the author decides at any age--though I have to admit this latter didn't work as well for the Mrs. Bradley series, Hangman's Curfew (Mrs Bradley Collectors' Series), of Gladys Mitchell.

While there seemed a grand build up to something, whatever it was never quite got off the ground, and the book came to an abrupt close without apparent dénouement. One through which the central character slept. I certainly understood why. The actual murder mystery had to be explained to us in the end, not by the sleuths but by the culprit himself, and not even by him to the sleuths. The reader was simply privy to the character's thoughts at the end of the story as they had not been previous to it.

In short, the plot was very poorly designed. Though the idea was a good one, the author does not appear to have navigated it well and ended up having to manipulate it to bring about an end. Even this might have been forgivable, but his method was heavy handed. I felt that he'd come to the end of his patience and just said, "Oh to heck with it, this is who did it." The characters at least were more up to their earlier standard, especially the Colveden family who are my favorites anyway and whose pleasant interactions are thoroughly delightful and endearing.

Back to the drawing board.