The Brightener

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to post about The Brightener. On one hand, this might be the wildest thing my pals A.M. and C.N. Williamson ever wrote. On the other, the fun will consist of recounting the plot in detail, and I usually try to avoid doing that. Still, I can’t not tell you about this book. One friend I told about it said, “I’ve been worrying about the plot of my book, but actually you can do anything.” Another said, “People really knew about PLOTS then.” My no-spoiler synopsis is: everything happens.

So, if you’d rather be surprised–repeatedly–stop here and go read the book. If you’re not worried about spoilers, sit down. Stay a while. I’m about to recap the first quarter of the book in absolutely bonkers detail.

First of all, there’s a princess. She was Elizabeth Courtenaye, but her grandmother married her off to an Italian prince who very promptly died. This is a favorite gambit of the Williamsons, who love a virgin with the rights of a widow. The grandma promptly dies, too, and Elizabeth is left with nothing but a title, a beautiful and historic estate in Devonshire, and her exceedingly good looks. Oh, and an enemy: a distant American cousin who used to be a cowboy and has red hair and black eyebrows.

On the advice of her lawyer’s wife, Elizabeth rents the estate to the cousin and becomes a “brightener”–a sort of professional society problem solver who can use her title and unimpeachably blue blood for the benefit of her clients–nouveaux riches trying to break into society, or American millionaires trying to marry members of it. Roger Fane is the latter, and he’s in love with Elizabeth’s friend Lady Shelagh Leigh. Her guardians don’t like him, so Elizabeth helps him organize a yacht trip that’s intended to soften them up.

Things take a turn for the weird almost immediately. An object floating in the sea near them turns out to be neither bird nor plane nor shark, but a coffin. They bring it on board, where it will hang out in Roger’s bathroom and make everyone super uncomfortable until they can hand it over to the authorities at the next port. The atmosphere is strained, and Elizabeth is pleased to be able to escape to her stateroom at the end of the day. That is, she would be pleased, if the room didn’t reek of brandy and there wasn’t a stranger in her bed.

On closer examination, Elizabeth recognizes the stranger as the German spy who tried to burn her house down a couple of years ago. I haven’t mentioned this incident because it’s not actually relevant. Linda the former German spy is here because she’s Roger’s wife who faked her death in a train crash years ago, and now that he’s a millionaire she’d like to come back to life and scotch his romance with Shelagh. So Elizabeth goes to find Roger, all, “Hey, awkward thing, your dead wife is in my cabin,” and then Linda the spy pops up behind her and says, “Not anymore, I’m not!” and Elizabeth throws up her hands and leaves them to it. After a while Roger shows up at Elizabeth’s door and he’s like, “So, super awkward thing: my dead wife is in my cabin and this time she’s actually dead.” Linda the spy has poisoned herself and framed Roger for her death.

Scandal and a murder charge seem inevitable, but then Elizabeth has a bright idea: why not put this inconvenient dead body in that very convenient coffin? Whoever’s in there can be thrown into the sea, and if they’re found, no one will think they have anything to do with Roger & Co., because they don’t. So Roger goes away to swap the corpses, but soon he’s back at Elizabeth’s door, because he needs to show her what was in the coffin. It’s not a corpse at all–it’s a pile of heirlooms that were stolen from Elizabeth’s estate. People suspected Elizabeth of stealing the things herself, for the insurance money, but having them show up in an unattended coffin enables her to instantly deduce who was really responsible.

Roger successfully disposes of his wife’s corpse and gets engaged to Shelagh, and as soon as the yacht trip is over, Elizabeth takes her heirlooms off to Devonshire to confront the thieves. This is, for various reasons, a bad idea, and Elizabeth lands herself in a scrape from which she has to be rescued by the cowboy cousin, who maybe isn’t so bad after all. Then she goes on to have several more adventures that strive to be as wild as this one, and almost manage it. I don’t know what else to say–or rather, if I try to say more I’ll end up recounting the rest of the plot. In sum: I recommend this book.

The Bronze Hand

Look, I’d love to be reading more. I feel like I should be reading more. But my brain mostly wants to a) cudgel itself into doing some work, and b) play increasingly arcane games of solitaire. Sometimes, though, what it wants to do most is: not sleep. One night last week I gave up on sleep around 3 a.m. and looked around for a book. What I found was a very battered copy of The Bronze Hand, by Carolyn Wells.

Gladiola Murphy

Gladiola Murphy is an interesting book. The things it does, it does well, but some of them would be better not done at all. The author is Ruth Sawyer, who also wrote the Newbery Medal-winning Roller Skates. This is about a child too, in the early parts, but it’s not for children.

Support

Well, I continue to be extremely me: I really wish Margaret Ashmun had spent more of Support on the business venture Constance Moffat embarks on at least two thirds of the way into the book. Other than that, it’s a good divorce novel, it kept me guessing, and the ending is satisfying.

The Snowshoe Trail

I do love a good survival book, but The Snowshoe Trail, by Edison Marshall, isn’t one. It is, however, a) racist as fuck, b) action-packed, and c) substantially too long.

Bill Bronson is a fur trapper in, I think, present-day British Columbia. He’s hoping to someday find his father’s gold mine, and also take revenge on the man who killed his father and made off with the loose gold.

Virginia Tremont is a young woman from an unspecified US city. She and her guardian, Kenly Lounsbury, hire Bill to help them look for Harold Lounsbury, Kenly’s nephew and Virginia’s fiance. He disappeared after coming to this part of the world six years ago, so there’s not much hope, but Virginia hasn’t given up. Kenly Lounsbury’s motives are less clear. He’s financing the expedition, but it’s hard to imagine him caring about anything but his own consequence and comfort.

Bill falls in love with Virginia at first sight, but keeps it to himself. It’s pretty obvious that he approves of her sense and spirit, though, especially when the only others with them are the whiny Lounsbury, and the shifty cook, Vosper. Virginia appreciates Bill, too, and her steadfastness and appreciation of nature create a friendly bond between them.

Winter seems to be arriving in the mountains a little bit early, but they’re doing okay. And then disaster strikes–well, the first disaster, anyway. Bill and Virginia (brave, trying to do things) get swept into a river, while Lounsbury and Vosper (cowardly, lazy) hang back and watch. Bill (superhumanly, and not for the last time) manages to get himself and Virginia to the opposite shore, somewhere downstream. The other two pack up as soon as is seemly, leaving behind everything they don’t feel like carrying, and head back to civilization.

Bill and Virginia have ended up near one of the cabins that Bill maintains, and it’s well-stocked with supplies. The two of them have similar tastes, and with food, shelter, a stove and a phonograph, they get along pretty well. Bill teaches Virginia to shoot and snowshoe, she spontaneously learns to cook, and they wait for the river to freeze over.

And then–yes. Bill finds Harold Lounsbury. He’s fine. He didn’t go home because he didn’t care to. He’s an alcoholic, and he’s living with a native woman who seems to be largely without agency. The depiction of the First Nations people in this book is really, really bad, folks. Worth steering clear of the book for. The only part of Harold’s living arrangements that Edison Marshall doesn’t seem to disapprove of is the power imbalance.

Bill promised to bring Harold to Virginia, so he does, but none of the three are all that happy with the arrangement. Then: a food shortage. A bear attack. Bill goes blind. Harold hatches a plot with his native pals. Virginia gets shot. It’s exhausting. I kept thinking the book was over, and it wasn’t.

We do finally get an ending, and it’s fine, but by that time I didn’t care anymore. I think there are reasons you might want to read this book, but I can no longer remember them.

Cordelia the Magnificent

Do you love blackmail? If you do, I have just the story for you. But I don’t, particularly.

Rope

Do you ever read a book and wish the author just cared a little bit more about the things you cared about? Rope, by Holworthy Hall, sounded perfect for me, and it could have been, with a slightly different emphasis. As it is, it’s pretty great.

The Queen of Farrandale

I’ve got a couple of fun reads lined up, and the first one is The Queen of Farrandale, by Clara Louise Burnham. Sometimes browsing the “Older women — Fiction” category on Project Gutenberg pays off.

The Strange Countess

What is there to say about an Edgar Wallace thriller, really? They’re all good in the way his books are good and bad in the way his books are bad.

The Strange Countess focuses on Lois Margaritta Reddle, who is about to leave the lawyer’s office where she works to become secretary to the Countess of Moron. She also has a young man who follows her around–she assumes he’s angling for an introduction–and a mother in prison, although she doesn’t know that until a few chapters in. Someone keeps making attempts on Lois’ life, and the countess and her friend Chauncey Praye are definitely up to no good. The young man turns out to be a detective, who’s interest in Lois isn’t romantic–at first. Then there’s the countess’ son Selwyn, who isn’t as stupid as people think, and Lois’ roommate Lizzy Smith. They remind me a bit of Dolph and Hannah in Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion.

What else do you need to know? Someone shoots a couple of dogs, but offstage, so to speak.

The Billiard Room Mystery

Hi there. My New Year’s resolution is to update regularly again. We’ll see how it goes.

Maybe starting with a bad book will make things easier? The Billiard Room, by Brian Flynn, is very bad. It feels like it was written by an alien whose only knowledge of human society was gleaned from other second rate country house mystery novels. Apparently it’s the first of a long series. I wonder if Flynn got any better, but I’m not curious enough to try to find out.

The Seven Conundrums

I’ve been reading a lot of E. Phillips Oppenheim lately. This is a thing that happens to me sometimes. It’s kind of like getting a cold.

I’m afraid of running out of Oppenheim short stories at some point, so I’ve mostly been reading ones I’ve already read. One of those is The Seven Conundrums, a series of seven stories–and an intro–about three young entertainers working for a mysterious epicure.

Polly and Eleanor

So, I don’t know if the whole Polly and Eleanor series is going to happen for me, this time around. It’s partly that I’ve been reading too slowly and I’ve lost momentum, and partly that my attention is on other things. But also Polly and Eleanor is, you know, not very good–and in frustrating ways.

12th Blogiversary/Polly of Pebbly Pit

I read the first five books in Lillian Elizabeth Roy’s Polly Brewster series in 2007, right around when I started this blog. I had to stop there, because the sixth book wasn’t out of copyright yet, but since then, when I’ve thought about the public domain expanding in 2019, I’ve thought, “Oh, then I’ll be able to read the next Polly and Eleanor book.” 2019 felt really far away in 2007, but it’s finally here, so it feels appropriate to celebrate this blogiversary by revisiting this series.

This is making it sound like these books are really great, and if I recall correctly, they’re not. Polly of Pebbly Pit certainly isn’t, but it’s not bad, either–it’s just a decent girls’ series book for people who like girls’ series books, with an emphasis on sensible parenting and some mean-spirited comic relief.

Empty Hands

Robert Endicott, early in Arthur Stringer’s Empty Hands, compares his employee Shomer Grimshaw to a Diesel engine, efficient and emotionless, and wonders who would win out if Grimshaw had to deal with Endicott’s modern, spoiled daughter Claire. As a reader, you know what this signals: they will meet, and probably fall in love, and we’ll find out just how human Grimshaw can be. And I guess we do, but — and I suspect Stringer didn’t intend this — the answer is “not very.”

Fashion Magazines – 1904, 1916, 1922

This past week I’ve been a) mainlining Grace S. Richmond books I’ve already read and b) burying myself in early 20th century fashion magazines via Google Books. I thought some of you guys might enjoy the results of b).

My Twitter threads with lots of clipped illustrations, quotes, and a smidgen of commentary:

• Harper’s Bazar, July 1904
• Harper’s Bazar, August 1904
• Harper’s Bazar, January 1916
• Harper’s Bazar, February 1916
• Vogue, April 1 1922
• Vogue, April 15 1922

Take a look and tell me which dresses you’re picturing on which fictional characters.