Today I’m delighted to bring you my review of the latest historical cosy mystery from Fiona Veitch Smith, set in 1929. Published by Embla Books on 19 August 2023, The Picture House Murders is book 1 in the Miss Clara Vale Mysteries. It’s available now and highly recommended.
AUTHOR BIO
Fiona Veitch Smith is a lover of Golden Age mysteries and historical fiction and has been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger. She has worked as a journalist, a university lecturer and a communications manager, and mentors new novelists. She grew up in Northumberland, then spent her teens and twenties in South Africa. She now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Do visit her Miss Clara Vale website here. There’s additional background info there for readers. http://www.claravalemysteries.com/
MY REVIEW
I’m a great fan of Fiona’s previous series of cozy murder mysteries, with Poppy Denby as her heroine. Again, the period is the 1920s, and the central character is a woman ahead of her times.
I loved The Picture House Murders.  Pacy, page-turning, consistently interesting and engaging it is a worthy successor to the author’s Poppy Denby murder mystery series.
Set in 1929, most of the action takes place in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the story is full of knowledgeable detail and insight into that major moment of transition in cinema history when the industry moved from the silent films to talkies. The author opens up for us the implications of that for small cinema owners.
Miss Clara Vale herself is a main protagonist we can empathise with, every step of the way: enlightened, independent, smart, rebellious: I loved her. I also applaud the author’s depiction of the huge challenges faced by an intelligent, talented, academically accomplished woman in those times, when faced with the misogyny that stems directly from the patriarchal system.
Misogyny of course is still with us, but Fiona Veitch Smith skilfully conveys the particular attitude many people would have had in 1929. Things were changing. Lawmakers were becoming aware of how unacceptable it was to treat women as second class citizens. But those shifts in society’s leaders had not yet filtered down to all members of society. As we know, major shifts in attitude take several generations to work themselves out within a society. So in this story we still have older family members, many themselves female, trying to compel a younger intelligent woman to lower her expectations in life, and focus only on marriage and babies as her sole purpose.
We also have men unwilling to concede that women may in fact inherit in their own names; they may open a bank account in their own names; and that firstborn males should no longer take precedence by default, in questions of inheritance. I notice too that the professionals in the story, solicitors and bankers, have started to feel slightly uncomfortable and ashamed about the belief that women are inferior. BUT in their hearts they still believe it.
The plot is exciting and fast-moving; Clara had never intended to take over a detective agency, but her uncle had believed in her sufficiently to name her in her will as the major beneficiary of his business, his money and his estate.
Inevitably there are snares on the path, strong and powerful adversaries, and some very cunning and malicious forces ready to deprive her of her rights, and to defeat and betray her. Clara is not quite sure throughout most of the story whether she is able or willing to take this on this detective agency. Yet her excellent scientific training and special knowledge carry her through an ingenious series of twists and turns.
I did wonder though, how tolerant and understanding people would have been of homosexuality at this time and in this society, when it was still illegal. I found myself thinking, “Would they have been so enlightened and so accepting at that time?” But such is the author’s impeccable research I can trust her for this.
A brilliant read and I look forward to Clara Vale’s next case!
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