The dancing druids [Hardcover]

Gladys Mitchell (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 239 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312182074
• ISBN-13: 978-0312182076
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,506,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Nancy Drew at 90., June 12, 2010

By 

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

This review is from: The dancing druids (Hardcover)

I've come to appreciate Gladys Mitchell's work quite a bit more than I did when I read her first work Speedy Death (Black Dagger Crime Series), but I still find that she relies over much on intriguing narrative, as she certainly does here, and a large cast of characters to disguise the lack of anything like a real murder mystery plot. There is no "puzzle" to the puzzle here.

As usual, the author's introductory material captured the imagination. It reminds me of the first few pages of Dracula. But as one gets more involved in the story, the readers finds there is almost no question about who committed the murder, but whether he would be caught with enough evidence to convict, a la Columbo. If The Dancing Druids had more of the cat and mouse interaction between the heroine and her quarry as a Columbo mystery does, the book might have worked better for me. As it was there was neither surprise nor battle of wits involved.

While the venue of a Sarsen Stone Circle like Stonehenge and a Druidic sacred number plot for possible crimes set the path for a great mystery, ultimately it led to a very improbable situation that made the actual criminals seem self-destructive when one actually took pause to consider it. In fact, that some of their actions were actually undertaken brings almost unbidden to mind the very unkind diagnosis, "Too Stuipid to Live"--I mean, give it some thought when you get to the part; it'll seem like a keystone cops routine, and only the horses seemed to know it! In the end I couldn't help but feel the author started out with a wonderful idea for a setting, or perhaps a title, began a good first chapter to get it going, threw in anything else she could think of to give the younger characters something to do, then tried to work out the bugs as best she could to make the whole thing hang together. In the end, I felt there was no real plot; the author just got tired of writing and simply stopped. If I had ever entertained the thought that a proper mystery could in fact be written in this way, I've certainly been properly disabused.

I also found that the central character of the series had become in this episode more of a background figure, as though the author had tired of her, perhaps having started her out too old to begin with, something like in her 50s or 60s. Unable to have an older person, in this book a 90 year old, actually doing all the leg work, new young characters, people in their late teens and early twenties, have been introduced, and it is to these individuals that the actual frenzied activity is delegated. From the point of creating a lot of distractions by way of exciting adventures and potential red herrings, this is probably an acceptable literary device. Conan Doyle used his Dr. Watson in just that way. But in the end all the activity makes it seem like a work written for younger readers; sort of Nancy Drew or Beverly Grey with a bit more bite. When the author did introduce her series character into the action, the old lady is depicted, improbably, as trotting around the countryside at night like her twenty something secretary. I've met some very spritely 90 year olds in my time, but not many would risk life and especially limb in quite this way, though they would probably be glad to go back to the time when they could!

It's a pity that the author could not have been more gracious with her character from the beginning. In an attempt to create someone unique and slightly outrageous, a la Carr The Crooked Hinge: A Dr. Fell Impossible Crime (Rue Morgue Vintage Mystery) or Dickson The Judas Window: A Sir Henry Merrivale Locked Room Mystery (A Rue Morgue Vintage Mystery), both of which characters seem ageless, she settled on one with which she might well have difficulties in future books. Since there are some 60 Mrs. Bradley mysteries, I can hardly wait to see how well she's still doing at something like 130! I can only assume very devoted followers kept Mrs. Bradley in business for as many years as she was, just as they did Agatha Christie's venerable Miss Marple.