[issybird]

I found this... unsettling.

I had read it a long time ago but had little memory of it except that it was an impostor plot. The wonderful prose, with its descriptions of the landscape, spot-on dialogue and lively characterizations, had me sailing through the reread with great pleasure. However, ultimately there was much I thought distasteful about it.

As bfisher said, when you think about it, there are significant plot holes. I didn't mind blowing the dentist and his pertinent records to smithereens in the Blitz so much, as there had to be some explanation for not checking the dental records* and the Blitz was handy, but how to account for the travel between Britain and France and France and the USA during the war?

But ok, it's not watertight, that's not my major issue. In fact, I have two. One is the essential morality of it. Brat gets a pass because Simon's a rotter? Suppose Simon had been a good guy? Or even suppose a not-so-good guy, but still not a murderer? It shocked me that the family was so ready to abandon the memory of Simon and embrace Brat, who had set out to cheat them. Bee was even glad Simon was dead! So much for compassion for the child who had gone wrong. It's not as if Simon would have been hanged, given his age, and the family chose not to pursue it anyway. More on that.

As troubling was the rampant classism. I know it's a factor in Golden Age mysteries, but this seemed over the top. The essential smugness of the haves, attributing to the lesser classes contentment with their lot because their lives were seen to be sufficiently fulfilling. Only the Scottish reporter questions the social contract and he's dismissed by Brat, who takes to being gentry like a duck to water. Worse is the explicit attitude to the working class. It's offensive to refer to a hard-working waitress as a slattern; I don't care how Golden Age** it is.

As for the police taking orders from the landed gentry, it cost the Ashbys a pretty penny to save face. If Simon had been established as having killed Patrick, he wouldn't have inherited, as you can't profit from a crime in that manner (as I remember from Dorothy L. Sayers). So the estate would have gone from Patrick to Eleanor, saving one set of death duties. Oh, well!

*It would be flatly impossible to write an impostor story these days, I suppose, without going AU or setting it in the past.

**And calling this Golden Age is doing it a favor it doesn't deserve. This wasn't written in the 20s or 30s; it's post-war, there's a Labour government, and class issues were at the forefront of discussion. Ultimately this read like nostalgia for a by-gone age and while there's nothing really wrong with that, it should still have striven to be more honest in regard to the lesser privileged.

Were others bothered by these issues?