Dear Laura by Jean Stubbs: Book review

Time for another book review, time for another classic mystery. Though actually I’m not sure that merely reissuing a detective novel, in this case from the 1970s, necessarily makes it a classic and to be honest some of the oldies have lasted better than others.

Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on Dear Laura by Jean Stubbs, because it does have a lot to commend it. It’s a historical mystery set in late Victorian times. Wealthy but emotionally cold businessman Theodore Crozier is dead and his death wasn’t the result of natural causes — but was the overdose of morphine in his system accident or murder? Theodore’s relationship with his wife, Laura, is cold, distant and unemotional, and her relationship with his wayward younger brother, Titus, is anything but. The servants are divided and Inspector Lintott of Scotland Yard is there to unravel the mystery.

As I say, there’s a lot going for this book. It’s well-written and the characters are cleverly-drawn. The author paints a terrific picture of a society whose conventions force those of all classes to accept what is expected of them and illustrates that the rich can be as miserable as the poor. The plot is clever, with plenty of twists and turns, although for me it had a less than satisfactory conclusion, and I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, which can make a book a hard read.

Where it fell down for me is in the solving of the mystery. The book is the first in a series featuring Inspector Lintott but apart from whisking across the narrative very fleetingly early on, the detective doesn’t make an appearance until almost half way through. The rest of the book is scene-setting which, while necessary up to a point, seemed rather out of balance. And the investigation itself consisted of Lintott talking to everyone involved and coming to a conclusion — no spoilers but…

Perhaps it’s down to the expectation we have detective fiction but, for me, if the investigating officer is the main protagonist (and he or she has his name on the cover) then he or she needs to be at the heart of the book from the beginning. I thought there was too much back story and not enough detecting and, as a result, I couldn’t really engage with Inspector Lintott in the way I feel I was meant to.

Thanks to Sapere Books and Netgalley for a copy of this book, in return for an honest review.