The Crystal Crypt (Poppy Denby Investigates)
Oxford, 1925: a young woman scientist is found dead, apparently electrocuted, in a university laboratory. In the sixth of Fiona Veitch Smith’s Poppy Denby mysteries, the eponymous heroine agrees reluctantly to investigate, despite the official line that the death was an accident. Characters familiar to readers of this book’s predecessors reappear—including the dastardly Lionel Saunders and Poppy’s tough and resourceful boss, Rollo Rolandson—but the book is a satisfying standalone whodunnit, while at the same time resolving outstanding issues from earlier in the heroine’s journalistic career.
The author captures the era convincingly; this reads less like a book set in the 1920s so much as one that was written in the 1920s, though some Americanisms occasionally intrude— ‘bills’ for banknotes, ‘snuck’ and ‘mugging’, the latter not appearing in mainstream English until the 1970s.
The barriers facing women in their careers, the casually unrepentant racism of those times, and the theme of academic plagiarism are consistent themes. The Oxford setting, carefully researched (because some buildings have changed their purpose since) and the clever plotting, complete with red herrings, reminded this reader of Gaudy Night; the author acknowledges her admiration of its author, Dorothy L. Sayers. The contemporary map of Oxford with the main locations marked was an added boon.
Two pages of dramatis personae at the start of the book caused me misgivings initially as so often these lists presage lazy characterisation, but there was none of that here, for shrewd newspapermen, donnish eccentrics, a drink-sozzled pathologist, corrupt policemen, suborned college servants, and Poppy’s protective fiancé all come alive on the page.
