Exclusive interview with author Tessa Arlen and a review of her second novel in the Countess of Montfort mysteries
Rating: 3 Stars
Review by Gabrielle Pantera
“Churchill was in love with the idea of flight and its possibilities in wartime,” says Death Sits Down to Dinner author Tessa Arlen. “He was so enthralled by his first experience of taking the controls of the Farman biplane that he was being taught to fly, that he invited his young instructor to his birthday party. The novel starts with my fictitious version of this celebration. And, I include Captain Gilbert Vernon Wildman-Lushington, such a wonderful name, as a guest.”
Death Sits Down to Dinner is a great escape, to slip back into the glitter and glamour of a lost era. Arlen’s series features a female aristocrat who solves mysteries, a theme that’s trending in mystery novels. Rhys Bowen with her Royal Spyness series and Carola Dunn with her Daisy Dalrymple series are two examples. Arlen’s writing is immersive, dropping you into the time she’s writing about. This is a cozy mystery. You can easily picture what Arlen is writing about and her descriptions help move the story forward.
It’s England before WWI. During a lavish dinner party at the home of Hermione Kingsley, in honor of Winston Churchill’s 39th birthday, Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, long time friend of the hostess, is found dead in the dinning room. Clementine Talbot, the Countess of Montfort, with the help of Edith Jackson, the housekeeper at the family’s country estate, starts looking into the background of the people at the party. The pair may be able to find out details no professional detective can.
“I decided to write a mystery because I have always enjoyed the style of the Golden Age,” says Arlen. “Penning a group of eccentrics up in a country house. Stirring things up with a murder and when all hell breaks loose…everyone reverts to type. I have always loved that tiny window of time called the Edwardian era. A complete contrast to the Victorian era of stuffy morality and the self-congratulatory days of great Empire. Life for the privileged few in the 1900s was still idyllic thanks to their servants, their money and the rigidity of the class system, whereas the have-nots had a much grimmer time of it.”
For research, Arlen read Vita Sackville-West’s The Edwardians which describes aristocratic life in England’s colossal country houses as populated with a most astonishing array of eccentrics and snobs. A wonderful book written by a working butler, Eric Horne’s What the Butler Winked At she found immensely useful for understanding the hierarchical life of servants below stairs. Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower for the political and social climate in Britain before the Great War. She also read fiction of the time.
“I hugely enjoyed the novelist Elinor’s Glyn’s Three Weeks,” says Arlen. “Elinor Glyn was married to a landowner who was a complete spendthrift and a chronic gambler. She wrote romance novels to keep them out of debt and was the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller. Three Weeks caused quite a stir when it first published. It is the story of an exotic but aging Balkan queen who seduces a young English aristocrat in Switzerland, of all places, and was apparently inspired by Glyn’s affair with the young Lord Alistair Innes Ker, sixteen years her junior.”
“The racy parts of the book scandalized Edwardian society as the seduction took place on a tiger skin, probably representing the wildly passionate and daring nature of the book’s protagonist,” says Arlen. “It was considered to be really improper reading at the time, but today just comes off as hilariously daft and the passionate bits are of course quite innocent.”
Arlen’s Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. The winner will be announced on April 30 at the Malice Domestic Convention in Washington D.C.
Book three in the Lady Montfort series, Death by Any Other Name. have Clementine and Mrs. Jackson investigate a murder among a group of amateur rose breeders. Arlen’s also completed the first draft of a standalone historical fiction based on the life of a 1911 socialite who during her debutante year was one of the most beautiful and controversial ladies of the age.
Arlen lives with her family on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, Washington.
Death Sits Down to Dinner: A Mystery by Tessa Arlen. Hardcover, 320 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (March 29, 2016), Language: English. ISBN: 9781250052506, $25.99
