This isn't a Maud Silver novel, although it's set in the same universe - their common characters are in the realm of spy vs. spy (Colonel Garratt and his merry men) rather than ordinary crime. _Mr. Zero_ was first published in 1938, just after that long gap in the Silver series between _Grey Mask_ (1928, an unsatisfactory effort) and the 2nd Silver novel (1937). By this time, Wentworth's command of her craft had reached the standard that held through the rest of her life.

When they were at school together, Gay Hardwicke was always the one tapped to pull her cousin Sylvia out of a jam, and now that Sylvia is married to Sir Francis Colesborough, things haven't changed; Sylvia's sister Marcia still passes the buck to Gay, although Sylvia hasn't even written to Gay since her marriage, let alone offered any payback. However, Sylvia has never had brains (when she plays cards, the question isn't whether she lost, but how much) or character (she frankly married Sir Francis for his money, although she herself wouldn't put it so brutally), so nobody expects more of her than a pretty face and a pleasant manner.

This time it's serious; Sylvia lost 500 pounds at cards after her husband asked her to quit gambling, and she had neither the ability to pay nor the nerve to confess and ask him for help. Worse, she very, very stupidly answered an anonymous phone call, then stole some state papers in exchange for 200 pounds, to put it baldly. Now the mysterious Mr. Zero is coming back for more. (Sylvia is a double-dyed idiot, but a believable character; she's driven by a horror of returning to the genteel poverty in which she grew up.)

Gay, working on what to do without giving Sylvia away, tries to wangle hypothetical advice out of her escort, Algy Somers - and when one of *his* papers goes missing, he remembers being asked about blackmail. Joining forces, they begin attempting to peel back Mr. Zero's camouflage, but their efforts backfire spectacularly when a dead body turns up with Algy as a prime suspect. As with the theft, only Algy seems to have had an opportunity; my congratulations if you work out what happened.

Here we have one of the rare instances in which Maud Silver's favourite niece, Ethel Burkett, actually appears on stage; they're staying together at the seaside since Ethel has just recovered from a serious illness. Their hostess, Darsie Anning, has had a lot of trouble in her life, all of it stemming from getting involved with the wrong man: Alan Field. Not that he's the *right* man for anybody...

In keeping with the title, this book has a prologue set a couple of years before the main action begins in the first chapter. James Hardwick fell in love with Carmona Leigh at first sight on her 21st birthday, but through bad luck he couldn't wangle an introduction through her guardian that night before being posted to the Middle East. Her guardian, Colonel Trevor, disapproved of Alan Field, Carmona's would-be fiancee - good looks and the ability to charm women didn't cut any ice compared with Field having been kicked out of the Army. Nevertheless, when Hardwick returned, he learned that Carmona was to marry Field within a week - but she looked desperately unhappy.

But when the main action of the novel picks up at that point, we learn that Field literally jilted Carmona at the altar and left for South America (London was getting too hot to hold him anyway), so Carmona had married Hardwick on the rebound after a 3-month courtship. If you're thinking "AHA! Field was really murdered and somebody faked the trip!", well, join the club of People Conned by Wentworth. :)

In the present, Carmona's at her husband's place at Cliff Edge by the sea with Esther Field (Alan's soft-hearted stepmother who isn't soft-headed about him), Esther's old school friend, the formidable Lady Castleton; her own old friend, the party-girl Pippa Maybury; and the Trevors. James Hardwick is about to return from a business trip, so they're pretty well crammed to the rafters when an uninvited guest appears: Alan Field, who first has the nerve to try to stay with the Hardwicks, then in even worse taste goes to Darsie Anning, who has better reason than Carmona to resent him. Naturally, he's come to wangle some capital out of Esther for some get-rich-quick scheme, but he's done that once too often - and when she refuses, he tries his hand at blackmailing just about every member of the party. (Various confrontations with potential victims happen on-stage; Wentworth plays fair.) When he's found dead, the only surprises are that the murder weapon has disappeared, and that somebody didn't do it years ago.

All in all, good riddance; catching the killer is desirable mainly so that at least the innocent (well, innocent of this mess) don't suffer. Pippa Maybury, who was being blackmailed and panicked when she found the body, wants Maud Silver to clear it up quickly and quietly, rather than having a police investigation expose her particular guilty secret. One unusual feature of this case (given that it's a Silver investigation) are that the typical tangle of relationships between lovers and/or spouses are - or seem to be - much less emotionally charged on this occasion. But that might just be Wentworth's cunning, mightn't it? :)

An old house with a curse on it--people dying left and right--but what really stuck in my mind was the picture of the young woman left alone to care for her preschool niece, after the child's parents were killed in an air raid.

As usual in Miss Silver books, there are nice people and nasty ones, and the nice ones don't suddenly turn around and murder for gain--which I must say, is a bit more realistic than some other mystery writers' books. And Miss Silver knits busily, picking up the strands of the case with as much ease as the yarn on her needles. Amazing how soothing a murder can be.

Maud Silver is in this case from the beginning, rather than coming aboard after consultation with a client. Frank Abbott, one of her Scotland Yard admirers, has just returned from a holiday in Ledshire - and thanks to his legion of cousins scattered about the country, he *never* stays in a hotel. In the little town of Tilling Green, he stayed with a *very* distant widowed cousin, Joyce Rodney. Joyce's son David is a 'delicate' little boy, so rather than taking a regular job, she signed on as an underpaid live-in help to the Wayne sisters. Irene Wayne, the surviving sister, is a twittery spinster; it's never explained how Miss Renie survived the visit of a Man.

The ever-cynical Frank, whose formidable defences include an irreverent sense of humor, is worried about Joyce; she's been receiving anonymous letters - poison-pen letters. "She is one of those pleasant girls - nice to look at without being a beauty, intelligent without being a brain. In fact there are no extremes - nothing to rouse up the sort of enmity which the letters suggest."

His professional description of Tilling Green for 'Maudie' focuses on the Manor. Colonel Roger Repton inherited the land but not the money. His great folly was in marrying the decorative Scilla - it's generally thought that she didn't realize that his ward Valentine, not Roger himself, has the money, which he'll lose when Valentine marries. Joyce says that Valentine's heart isn't in marrying Gilbert Earle; she loved the vicar's nephew, but Jason went off into the blue without a word. Repton's spinster sister runs the Manor, since Scilla won't lift a finger.

Frank's armor cracks, however, when news of an inquest at Tilling Green hits the papers; he'd met Doris Pell in the Wayne house, and rather liked the young dressmaker. The inquest brings in a verdict of suicide after receiving a poison pen letter, although the allegations of immorality appear to have been false (and were too vague for an all-is-discovered suicide anyhow). Maud takes the case, worming her way into the Wayne household as a paying guest so as not to telegraph her true profession to her quarry. (Abbott doesn't receive further play in this story, save at its conclusion; since it's a Ledshire case, Maud's favorite former pupil, Chief Constable Randall March, is involved.)

Superficially, this case has several similarities with _The Watersplash_, but they fall into perspective on closer examination. The first death in each case involves someone drowned in very shallow water - but the 2nd and 3rd deaths in _The Watersplash_ are also drownings, while those in this book are due to poison, and here the possibility of suicide in each death is taken more seriously than in _The Watersplash_. In both stories, the male love interest left town with no explanation a few years ago, only to return abruptly just lately without public explanation but privately with sterling reasons (but in _The Watersplash_ the girl was too young to be taken seriously, whereas here they'd had an understanding since childhood). However, in _The Watersplash_, the male love interest is a suspect, while here neither is. Finally, in both cases, Maud Silver has a climactic confrontation with the murderer, who tries to kill her, but with a somewhat different spin in each case.

Despite the star-crossed lovers who appear in most Silver mysteries, whose problems are usually resolved by Maud Silver's hard work, Wentworth actually represents a rather fuller range of relationships than she may be given credit for. Maud's niece Gladys, of course, is a perennial trial to the family, who sympathize greatly with her long-suffering husband but hope devoutly that he won't dump her back on *them*. Roger Repton's disastrous marriage has a superficial relationship to that of the Harrisons in _The Gazebo_, but Repton's personality is *much* more forceful than Jack Harrison's - he's all for throwing Scilla out of the house on the spot when he finds out about her adultery. At the other end of the social scale, the father of the Stokes family is a househusband; he uses his health as a socially respectable excuse for staying home and indulging his excellent cooking skills for his large, cheerful family. The mysterious Mr. Barton - the woman-hating recluse with 7 cats - has a *very* unusual background when you get to know him.

Published 13 years after Christie's _The Moving Finger_, Marple's only similar case, this is a stronger book - Wentworth's characterization is far better than that of most of her more celebrated contemporaries. However, it fails to engage the reader as much as usual, since no one party is ever the focus of Maud's interest. Joyce Rodney and her son are under-utilized. Neither Valentine nor Jason is ever threatened with arrest.

All in all, enjoyable and worth reading, but not memorable.

Fiction writer Dora Amy Elles Dillon Turnbull (Patricia Wentworth, 1876-1961) first tried her hand at creating an elderly spinster sleuth in 1929. Her creation is Miss Maud Silver, a retired governess, who is constantly knitting, whose favourite reading is the Bible and Tennyson, who coughs discretely, and who never permits herself an exclamation more extravagant than "Dear me!". She reappeared again in 1937, and featured in all Miss Wentworth's books thereafter.

Patricia Wentworth usually set her mystery novels in English villages, contriving somehow to introduce Miss Silver to the location, having her accompany or stay with suitable inhabitants, and forwarding the work of detection, usually in co-operation with a former pupil who is now head of the country constabulary.

With Miss Maud Silver, Patricia Wentworth is very successful, delineating her character with affection and amusement. Another strength is the author's avoidance of the endless interviews and interrogations that often provide so much dead weight in detective fiction. She also has a great love for old things, antiquities, and bric-a-brac, and perfumes her prose with them. Otherwise there is not much to recommend. You will find a great deal of "old fashioned romance", characters, dialogue and writing that are tediously commonplace and humourless, and little ingenuity or novelty in plot construction.

Miss Wentworth's books have attracted little interest from film or TV adaptors, and are only recently being added to the audio book range. Having read twenty or so of her Miss Silver novels at one time or another, I reckon this to be typical of them although not the best.

Miss Silver is called to the village of Tilling Green to solve a mystery of hateful letters. One woman has already committed suicide because of them, or so it seems. The characters include a British gentleman,Colonel Repton, Scilla, his unloving young wife, Valentine, his wealthy young ward, and Mr. Barton, an antisocial bachelor with seven cats. Miss Silver, in her skillful and friendly way,investigates the village residents. Wentworth has a talent for making an ordinary English village a setting for evil deeds. Even a cup of cocoa can have sinister implications. There is a romance as in all the Miss Silver books. Valentine finds her true love,while Colonel Repton seeks a divorce. This won't keep you awake at night, but it is an enjoyable tradtional mystery.

The residents of Craddock House, now turned into apartments, are nearly all related to each other, but do not all like one another. The murder victim was least liked and there are several suspects, but the hero and heroine are cleared by the discovery of the most unlikely murderer.