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Author: |
Nicholas
Blake (pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis - Poet Laureate and Professor of Poetry at
Cambridge and later Oxford) |
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Title: |
A Question of Proof |
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Published: |
1935 |
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Genre/Sub-Genre: |
Golden Age
‘puzzle’ mystery |
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Plot
summary: |
In an
English preparatory school
in 1935, a schoolboy - the headmaster’s orphaned nephew - is murdered and the
police are flummoxed. Then Nigel Strangeways, nephew to the Assistant
Commissioner at Scotland Yard, is called in to help by his friend Michael
Evans, a Master at the school who is having an affair with the headmaster’s
wife, Hero. Suspicion falls on Evans and Hero but Nigel is not convinced.
Then the Headmaster is also murdered, in plain daylight. Can Nigel solve the
mystery before the police charge Evans and Hero? |
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Overall: |
I quite
enjoyed this Golden Age mystery, complete with a closed community, numerous
suspects, red herrings, a perceptive amateur detective and a somewhat rigid policeman
with little insight into the dynamics of the school. |
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Plotting: |
I thought
it was well done - plenty of intrigue and false trails to lead us astray. In
the end it stretched credibility but was just strong enough to be convincing.
It reflected a bridge between the hypocritical values of Victorian England and
the more open values of the post-Great War electrical age. |
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Characterisation: |
Excellent
evocation of the people who inhabit this closed, privileged world, with its
rules and rituals, its exclusionary boyhood culture, its ambivalent attitude
towards the police and other outsiders and their condescendence towards their
social ‘inferiors’. |
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Dialogue: |
Uses just
enough special vocabulary to be convincing: - among the
Masters: ‘fullahs’ not ‘fellers’;
‘Here, I say, hang it, old man’; - among the
boys: ‘you poor simp’; ‘squit’. He also
catches the local working-class dialect - ‘Tur’ble business, this, sur’. |
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Setting and
Description: |
Cecil Day
Lewis must have known this type of environment
from firsthand experience and he calls it up skilfully. |
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Readability: |
It’s easy
to read although somewhat old fashioned in its style. Lewis doesn’t hesitate
to act as a Universal Narrator peeking into everyone’s head and telling us
what’s going on - to the point where author intrusion takes over at times.
Still, one can accept that as part of its era. |
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Sub-plots: |
These were
essential to the plot and skilfully woven in. |
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Read
another by same author? |
Probably |
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Rating |
8/10 |