The Pantomime Murders

 by Fiona Veitch Smith

It’s December 1929. The fairy godmother from the pantomime vanishes into the night after her last performance in York, still wearing her sparkly dress and carrying her sparkly wand. When the show picks up a week later in Newcasttle, she’s been replaced and it turns out she resigned by telegram. Nobody has seen her and the request to send her effects from her theatrical boarding house also came by telegram. A concerned cast-mate hires Clara, a determined distance swimmer and private inquiry agent to find the missing actress.

Two books ago, Clara inherited the detective agency belonging to her late Uncle Bob, and is still learning the ropes. Her mother, Lady Vanessa, hates that she's running the detective agency instead of getting married to someone suitable (read noble), and that she also inherited a Georgian townhouse (complete with a forensic laboratory and a file collection of her uncle’s most bizarre cases). She's functionally independent and in no rush to give up her financial freedom. With plenty to prove to the various police inspectors and potential clients she encounters, Clara works long hours and tackles her new challenges with verve and ingenuity. A side plot about a shoplifting ring brings her a useful new assistant.

This complicated case is embedded in the now-vanished world of constantly touring theatrical companies, their rivalries and alliances, their succession of temporary boarding houses. The quotes from an extant 1929 play script of Cinderella are sure to please theatre historians. There are plenty of tourist touchstones around historical Newcastle as well as a few day trips to York by train. The mystery is a curious one, the science and detection tools are approximately appropriate to the state of knowledge at the time.

The Pantomime Murders has all the elements of an enjoyable 1920s Christmas crime albeit with fewer flappers and less gin, with a strong undercurrent early feminism. However, the first half is weighed down by Clara's repetitive thinking through her next steps, then discussing the same next steps, then doing one or two next steps, then thinking through them again in between every step. Once you get past that, the mystery clips along believably with some nice touches of menacing atmosphere and a nice twist at the end.

Overall this is a satisfying historical Christmas crime novel, well rooted in the social, cultural, and financial history of 1929.

 

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