Marriage Can Be Murder (2014) by Emma Jameson
GoodReads meta-data is pages, rated 4.04 by 2028 litizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: Slow and sure.
It is October 1939 and the war is on. Handsome young London doctor Ben Bones has been assigned to Midsomer in anticipation of casualties from bombing nearby Plymouth. Off he goes with his gorgeous wife Penny who is angry about this move, and blames him for it. It seems she grew up in these environs and has no wish to return. Having escaped Midsomer alive, who would want to return? No one. Indeed she blames him for almost everything including the war and they are talking about separation and divorce through gritted teeth, when they speak, which is seldom.
As these Bickersons arrive at the village of Midsomer Birdswing darkness has fallen and the blackout combine to make it inky. Mindful, too, of petrol rationing they park the car and walk to find their accommodation.
Wham!
‘Wham’ is all Dr BB remembers when he regains consciousness again. A truck ran them down and disappeared into the gloaming. Exeunt stage right feet first bad Penny very dead. BB has two broken legs and assorted bruises. One break is compound and he is at a low ebb, bunking upstairs at a pub. There were no witnesses and his memory is little.
Penny, so conspicuous at the start, disappears. How and where she is buried passes in silence. If she had surviving family, this reader missed it. Yet her history at Birdswing influences much of what follows.
The more so when BB begins to suspect (thanks to anonymous note – where would writers be without anonymous notes?) the rundown was murder, not accident. This suspicion is far beyond the imagination of the local part-time plod who is officious, pompous, and incompetent. (Definitely professorial material.)
As BB slowly recovers he is integrated into the village, its ways, its gossip, its history, its hostility to Penny, its local gentry, and its characters. He is swept up by the uncompromising amazon Lady Juliet who brooks no excuses and drives him to doctoring, first in a wheel chair, and then on crutches. His London training and quick thinking saves a school girl from a deadly spider bite and puts him in good with the locals.
The horsey Lady Juliet and the crippled Doctor Bones begin to investigate the death of Bad Penny, though with no great vigour. Bones is distracted by the wiles of the school teacher who flatters no end. However his attention is brought back to the death … by an apparition.
This title is the first in a series and I will certainly read more. Lady Juliet’s inner doubts combined with her bold as brass exterior is most engaging, while Dr Bones grits his teeth exercising his mending bones.
There are some nits that need picking. Did a 1939 English village (Pop. 200) have a traffic light? This one does. For details about village life I thought of Margery Allingham’s Oaken Heart (1941), discussed elsewhere on this blog. Get clicking.
Was John Wayne a cultural token in rural England by October 1939, considering that his first major role in Stagecoach premiered in Los Angeles in March of that year, and screened in a few theatre in London in June 1939? He is cited as such in these pages, but it strikes a dissonant cord with this reader.
Considering that Arcata, California, population 18,000, has but one traffic light in 2019, it seems implausible that Midsomer would have any need for one. And, anyway, how do they black out this Luftwaffe beacon?