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white_hartDeath in the Spotlight, the seventh of Robin Stevens's Wells and Wong mysteries, nods to yet another Golden Age great - in this case, Ngaio Marsh's theatrical mysteries, as Daisy and Hazel, returned from Hong Kong and staying with Daisy's uncle in London, are given minor roles in a production of Romeo and Juliet as a way of keeping them out of trouble. This tactic backfires spectacularly when, following an escalating series of threats, the leading lady is found dead, and it's up to the Detective Society to see that justice is done.
Like the earlier books in the series, this is an entertaining, plotty pastiche of 1930s detective fiction which also uses a very 2010s social conscience to hold up a lens to the less comfortable aspects of the period, in relation to race, gender, and, in this book, particularly sexuality, with Stevens's afterword calling out both the criminalisation of sex between men in Dasiy and Hazel's day, and the way that Section 28 meant that in her own 1990s childhood it wouldn't have been possible for a major character in a children's book to be gay. I had been spoilered for the fact that, in this book, we do find out that one of the major characters is gay, though given that I had been fairly sure that was where the series was heading since about book 2 that didn't detract from my enjoyment at all, and I was also pleasantly surprised by how many other gay characters appeared. I pretty much read the book in a single day, and continue to be charmed and delighted by the series.
After I'd finished Death in the Spotlight, I also read The Case of the Missing Treasure, a novella- or short story-length instalment of the series which I had thought came after Death in the Spotlight but which it became clear from references in Death in the Spotlight actually comes first. It's fun but very slight; I found that I missed Hazel's thoughtful voice (like the other short stories in the series, this is narrated by one of the other characters, in this case Daisy), and it also felt rather as though it was aimed at a slightly younger audience than the full-length novels in the series.
Like the earlier books in the series, this is an entertaining, plotty pastiche of 1930s detective fiction which also uses a very 2010s social conscience to hold up a lens to the less comfortable aspects of the period, in relation to race, gender, and, in this book, particularly sexuality, with Stevens's afterword calling out both the criminalisation of sex between men in Dasiy and Hazel's day, and the way that Section 28 meant that in her own 1990s childhood it wouldn't have been possible for a major character in a children's book to be gay. I had been spoilered for the fact that, in this book, we do find out that one of the major characters is gay, though given that I had been fairly sure that was where the series was heading since about book 2 that didn't detract from my enjoyment at all, and I was also pleasantly surprised by how many other gay characters appeared. I pretty much read the book in a single day, and continue to be charmed and delighted by the series.
After I'd finished Death in the Spotlight, I also read The Case of the Missing Treasure, a novella- or short story-length instalment of the series which I had thought came after Death in the Spotlight but which it became clear from references in Death in the Spotlight actually comes first. It's fun but very slight; I found that I missed Hazel's thoughtful voice (like the other short stories in the series, this is narrated by one of the other characters, in this case Daisy), and it also felt rather as though it was aimed at a slightly younger audience than the full-length novels in the series.
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Date: 2019-07-08 06:58 pm (UTC)