#11 Josephine Tey Mysteries
352 pages
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publishing date: November 2, 2023
Blurb
I will never understand why murder is
considered such a lowbrow speciality in Hollywood.
September,
1939, and the worries of war follow Josephine Tey to Hollywood, where a
different sort of battle is raging on the set of Hitchcock's Rebecca.
Then a shocking act of violence reawakens the shadows of the past, with
consequences on both sides of the Atlantic, and Josephine and DCI Archie
Penrose find themselves on a trail leading back to the house that inspired a
young Daphne du Maurier - a trail that echoes Rebecca's timeless
themes of obsession, jealousy and murder.
Review
“The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on
the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of
blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.”
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
While
I have to admit that I may have missed a title or two, I can honestly say that
I have loved Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey mysteries since I first read An
Expert in Murder thirteen years (13!) ago. Right from the start I’ve loved
Upson’s attention to detail, gentle voice, vivid descriptions, clever
introduction of real historical figures, and perfectly plotted mysteries and Shot
With Crimson was filled with all those qualities.
This
isn’t the first Josephine Tey mystery featuring Alfred and Alma Hitchcock and
fortunately, the first one, Fear
in the Sunlight, is among the previous titles I have read (click the title
for my thoughts on that book). The quote below, taken from that older review
could have been written today for Shot With Crimson.
In fact, there were times when I had to remind myself
that I was reading a work of fiction featuring real historical figures. There
is such detail in the descriptions in this story that it is quite possible to
believe that all of it really happened.
Shot
With Crimson starts with a prologue set in an English country house during WWI.
The house is used as a hospital for wounded soldiers, and we are witness to a
six-year-old Daphne du Maurier undertaking but not completing a task set by
James, a medical orderly there.
Fast
forward to the start of WWII and James is now a special effects artist working on
Rebecca for Alfred Hitchcock. He is back at the estate where he worked two
decades ago and discoveries about what happened then lead to him lashing out in
the worst possible way.
When
we meet James again, he is on his way back to America on the same boat as Josephine
Tey who is on her way to visit her lover Martha in Hollywood. He is obviously
distressed, and Josephine reaches out in the hope of calming him.
Meanwhile,
back in England Josephine’s friend DCI Archie Penrose is sent to the country
house to investigate the murder of a woman there.
Finding
themselves on different sides of the Atlantic, Archie and Josephine are unaware
that they are both dealing with the same case and, as they both dig deeper, the
issue only becomes more complicated until it leads to its final, rather sad,
conclusion.
For
a long time, I thought this was the kind of story where the writer might have revealed
too much information at the start of the book. Since I had read books by Nicola
Upson before, I should have known better. Layer upon layer of secrets still
waited to be exposed and absolutely nothing was quite as it seemed at first. In
other words, this is a very cleverly plotted mystery.
Apart
from Alfred Hitchcock, his wife Alma, and his daughter Pat, quite a few other
famous people feature in this story: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, producer
David O. Selznick, and du Maurier herself also make brief appearances. For film
buffs, there was also quite a bit of detailed information about the making of a
film in Hollywood in the late 1930s.
I
loved the parallels between Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and the mystery. They
added to the sense of realism and were all too plausible. As I said before, I
had to remind myself occasionally that what I was reading was fiction.
Overall,
I loved this book. The plot fascinated me, the writing was smooth, the
conversations flowed naturally, and the mystery was intriguing, leaving me
truly baffled before providing a very satisfying, be it devasting solution.
My
final thought is less related to the book than the times we live in. Given how
long it takes to write a book, edit it, and get it published, there is no way
Nicola Upson could have known how shockingly appropriate the quote below would
be for the times and events we live through right now.
We think we’ve learnt our lessons from the past, but we
never really get beyond an eye for an eye.