St. Peter's Finger [Hardcover]

Gladys Mitchell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When the death of a young heiress at an English convent school is labeled suicide, Mitchell's redoubtable Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is asked to investigate. Quiet, biddable Ursula Doyle died of gas poisoning and was discovered submerged in the bathtub of the convent guest house, an area off-limits to students. But, knowing suicide to be a grievous sin, why would such a child kill herself? The nuns hope to blame a faulty water heater, yet as Mrs. Bradley, "a hag-like pterodactyl," stumps around the convent asking questions, she's more inclined to believe that someonea games mistress with a shady past, the child's shrill auntmurdered Ursula. Her cousins stand to gain a fortune, but Mary seems too feckless for the task, and Ulrica has a burning desire to become a nun. With sharp, pungent wit and the aid of a rough-and-tumble orphan, Mrs. Bradley moves inexorably toward the solution. While all questions are not satisfactorily answered and a number of clues are deliberately misleading, this enjoyable, quintessentially English chase by a veteran author picks up a steady and stately momentum.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 351 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (December 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312001924
• ISBN-13: 978-0312001926
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,744,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smile Sweetly, Gentle Sisters ... and Kill!, June 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: St. Peter's Finger (Hardcover)

The story is set in a convent, dealing, once more, with death by drowning in a bathroom - though not with the same denouement as "Speedy Death" or "Death at the Opera." The victim is the child heiress to an Irish-American millionaire, whose two other heiresses are also at the convent-school. Despite the fact that the school is a convent, the children are not annoying, though there is a trifle overdose of sentimentality, but the incidents and the story are interesting and well-told, with the search on the cliff especially well-done. There is a good grasp of psychology, with one of G.M.'s best-depicted psychological portraits. Not a cosy, despite the fact that all of the characters (with the exception of Mrs. Bradley (the eldritch detective)'s son, her chauffeur, and a priest) are women. In short, good atmosphere, good detection, but a bit too much sentimentality for my taste.

4.0 out of 5 stars Death by Drowning Again, June 9, 2010

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: St. Peter's Finger (Hardcover)

After reading the author's mystery Speedy Death (Black Dagger Crime Series), I wasn't sure I even wanted to follow up on her other books. Speedy Death, however, was one of the earliest if not the earliest of the works by Gladys Mitchell (dated to 1929), so I decided to read St Peter's Finger, written almost ten years later, to see if her style had matured. What a difference a decade makes!

While the murder is rather straight forward and most of the book is red herrings, the characters are much more individually defined and interesting than in Speedy Death. I especially enjoyed Sister Bridget and her little mouse. Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, although still described in very disparaging terms, has become more like the witty and provocative Mrs. Adela Bradley of the TV series The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries - Series 1 (Speedy Death / The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries) I enjoy so much, and therefore a more sympathetic character. Unlike the previous book, this one includes the chauffer George and his frequent observations which make the dynamic duo of the film series so piquent.

The dialogues are in keeping with the various personalities, and while some of it seems a little stilted, it's probably no more so than it would be with a real person of the same kind in real time, and no more postured than some of the comedic characters of Noel Coward's plays Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, Private Lives: Three Plays which can be very entertaining. Sometimes people just are affected; they attempt a persona, and their speech reflects it.

The setting is much more particularly described and renders it vividly in the reader's imagination in this volume; there was none of the "stage set" feel as in Speedy Death. I was amazed by the author's very detailed depiction of the convent, its guests and inmates. I felt she was describing a setting and individuals that she actually knew, which is how novels should be. Good ones, anyway.

I was still not quite as satisfied with the mystery itself. It seemed that the author had gotten a better handle on her story telling but still hadn't quite got a grip on the ins and outs of a well designed murder. She is definitely not an Agatha Christie; the latter came up with so many different ways of murdering people, I got to wondering if she'd ever run out of them! This is the second death by drowning, and I wonder if drowning was the author's personal bugaboo. Ms Mitchell does, however, seem to have approached Carter Dickson, The Arabian Nights Murder/a Dr. Gideon Fell Mystery, also known as John Dickenson Carr,The Judas Window: A Sir Henry Merrivale Locked Room Mystery (A Rue Morgue Vintage Mystery) for the locked door---or in her case, the unlocked door---mysteries.

Definite improvement. I look forward to reading others in the series.