Lestrade and the Magpie (The Lestrade Mystery Series) - Hardcover

Trow, M. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0895262894 ISBN 13: 9780895262899

Publisher: Gateway Editions, 2000

Synopsis

England in 1920 is a land fit for heroes. So why is one of those heroes found dead in a dingy London hotel? And why does his war record show that he has been missing, presumed killed in action, for three years?
The deceased is none other than the fiance of Superintendent Lestrade's daughter. When her tears are dry, she sets out on a quest to find his murderer.
With Sholto Lestrade, one murder has a habit of leading to another, and this time is no exception: a second body turns up, linked to the first. How can a woman killed in an air raid in 1917 be found with a bullet through her head three years later?
Lestrade and his daughter go undercover in Britain's War Office, in the Foreign Office, at a film studio, and at Scotland Yard itself. When a succession of foreigners is murdered with the same tell-tale weapon, it begs the question, has World War II begun already? Is this the work of the Germans? The Communists? The Black and Tans?
Despite the international intrigue that surrounds these murders, however, the case takes on a decidedly British cast when Lestrade's daughter is kidnapped and signs point to the nation's own internal security service, MI5.

About this title

Review:

Penzler Pick, July 2000: Not all Sherlock Holmes pastiches are created equal. Some directly plunder the canon for their plots, re-imagining famous cases as Holmes and Watson didn't experience them. Others discover slight allusions to create adventures "that might have been." Some go for humor, others aim at dash. Most ape the original transmitter of the stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in tone and temper, style and setting, as well as they can. All the good ones honor the sublime originals. If they didn't, I certainly would not write about them.

M.J. Trow is an Englishman who has won a growing following for his novels that make sideways use, as it were, of the Sherlock Holmes roster of immortal characters. Taking the unusual name "Sholto" (from a character in the second Holmes adventure, The Sign of Four), Trow combines it with the figure of the bumbling Scotland Yard inspector, Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes's frequent bête noire, to give modern readers a cockeyed re-envisioning of the early 20th-century mystery of manors. And manners, too.

Think Monty Python, with all the wickedly witty erudition that implies, and then try to imagine that troupe in charge of a season of Mystery! Trow makes his Lestrade uxorious (he has a devoted wife, Fanny) and a doting father, to boot. In Lestrade and the Magpie, the now retired Superintendent Lestrade finds himself faced with a case in which his daughter's missing-in-action fiancé (WWI is over and the year is 1920) has turned up murdered in a London hotel room. But where had he been during those intervening three years, since the war office sent its official telegram?

Bernard Shaw, the Irish nationalist hero Michael Collins, Lawrence of Arabia, the sexologist Havelock Ellis, the Russian pretender Anastasia, and the very late Marie Antoinette all have some part in the action. For Sholto Lestrade, who narrowly missed sailing on the Titanic and who is surely bound to wind up in Queen Mary's bedroom after taking a wrong turn in Buckingham Palace, history is what serves as the backdrop to his life. Near-ceaseless wordplay, continual lashings of highbrow whimsy, and a steady stream of literary in-jokes keep Trow's readers on their toes. If the plots are twisty (and they are), even more delightfully convoluted is the author's mind. Let's just be glad there are no quizzes afterwards. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

M J Trow is a crime writer, historian and biographer who for many years doubled as a history teacher. Now retired, he is the author of three successful crime fiction series – Lestrade, Maxwell and Kit Marlowe, the latest written in collaboration with his wife. He lives in the Isle of Wight and, as well as writing, lectures on cruise ships, and has appeared many times on television in historical and crime documentaries.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gateway Editions
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0895262894
• ISBN 13: 9780895262899
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224