Vacationing with her nephew and his wife Mrs. Bradley is impelled to investigate a series of mysterious deaths and anonymous letters in the neighborhood. Somewhat complex and hard to follow plot. May not be one of her best.

Atmospheric and Mrs. Bradley is always good company. But the solving of the mystery isn't really there, and the denouement drags on long beyond its being interesting. ( )

Gladys Mitchell was one of the most prolific female authors of whodunnits in the middle decades of the 20th century. In the 30s she was brigaded with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, and once described by Philip Larkin as "The Great Gladys", but she is now almost forgotten. To be honest, after initial enthusiasm, I rather struggled to finish this novel and to me it is clear that she is no Agatha Christie. The sleuth in this and almost all her others is Mrs Beatrice Bradley, but she lacks the impact and distinct personality of Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. The plot was rather intricate but seemed to me to lack the satisfactory resolution of a Christie novel, and I found the characters rather two dimensional and indistinguishable. I rather doubt I will try any of her other novels. ( )

‘There’s something horribly eerie about snow in the country. I’d never realized it before. It’s so silent. I’d rather have rain, and hear the sound of it.’
‘I miss the newspapers,’ said Jonathan. ‘The wireless is all right in its way, but—’
‘What did it say about the weather?’
‘Snow on high ground, spreading eastwards and south.’
‘Oh, dear! We may be cut off for days!’

There is much to like about Murder in the Snow (originally published as Groaning Spinney), most of all I loved the scene setting: Mrs Bradley visits her nephew and his new wife for the Christmas holidays in the Cotswolds and just as they settle in, the snow begins to fall. And keeps on falling, cutting off the village community from the outside world. As the snowfall stops and roads begin to clear, a body is discovered.

But this is not the only disturbance: a woman goes missing, and some poison letters make their rounds through the village. Yeah, it had a lot of similarities with Christie's The Moving Finger (published nearly ten years earlier):

‘Oh, Lord!’ said Jonathan. ‘I do hope this isn’t going to begin. Have you got one?’
‘One what?’ asked Deborah, opening some retarded Christmas cards.
‘An anonymous contribution to your knowledge of my morals and conceits. I’ve got a beauty about you!’

I loved Mrs Bradley and her family, but didn't manage to maintain an interest in the mystery. For all Mrs Bradley straight-laced attitude and witty snark, the story was a typical Mitchell construction - it lost momentum after the first third and only perked up occasionally from there on until the end.

But what an end! Mrs Bradley and her nephew literally try and hunt down the villain - on a fox hunt. Yes, it is dated. Very dated in parts, but some of the dialogue still makes me smile, even tho I have no idea how it progresses the plot. And let's face it, that plot needed progressing. Badly.

‘But what I think isn’t evidence.’
‘It probably will be,’ said the Chief Constable, who, beneath a curmudgeonly manner, cherished an affection for Mrs Bradley’s gifts and was rather put out of countenance at what seemed to be her negative results in this particular case.
‘Smack it about, my dear, and let’s get action. The papers are beginning to be shrill.’
‘If that that bears all things bears thee,’ quoted Mrs Bradley in solemn and sonorous Greek, ‘bear thou and be borne.’
‘That’s all very well. But fair words butter no parsnips.’
‘Do you like parsnips?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Would you agree that it does not matter to you, therefore, whether parsnips are buttered or not?’
‘Oh, but look here—!’ ( )

How nice to find a Mrs Bradley book that I enjoyed, and a Christmas one too.

My first two experiences of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley books were not positive. I read a fairly poor all cast production of her first book, "Speedy Death" and tried again with the third book in the series "The Longer Bodies" which, while it worked as a curiosity that showed how early crime fiction flopped about like a recently landed fish on a dock before the modern genre emerged, wasn't a satisfying read.

I decided to try one last time, with a much later book, the twenty-third in the series, originally published as "Groaning Spinney" but cleverly re-titled as "Murder In The Snow - a Cotswold Christmas Mystery", which points it firmly at the Christmas cosy mystery market.

I had fun with this book. Published in 1950, it nicely captures a sense of an England in transition, where the role of the gentry is changing and men of all classes have returned from the war with different expectations of themselves and each other. Mrs Bradley goes to stay with her nephew, who has just bought a portion of a country estate sold off by a Peer of the Realm. He owns the manor house and a few farms and woods. The rest is owned by the State and is being used a (new at the time) Teacher Training College. I was fascinated by the wealth and privilege that Mrs Bradley's nephew took for granted, while at the same time trying to get the locals NOT to refer to him as "Your Lordship" - a title he doesn't hold.

In the beginning, the book does a splendid job of giving a Landlord's view of life in a small Cotswold village at Christmas time. The local characters are clearly drawn, from the carter through the farmer to the land agent. The principle of the Teacher Training college is also shown to advantage although she and her staff and students are seen as earnest, enthusiastic curiosities.

The murder and the plot that spins from it was quite interesting, with lots of unexpected but plausible connections that held my interest while making it impossible for me to solve the whodunnit riddle.

Mrs Bradley is presented as an energetic, almost manic woman, with preternatural powers of observation, an appetite for the hunt and deep insight into people without the impediment of empathy.

There were points where I found the exposition a little clumsy and a little over-worked. There was a sequence of "Mrs Bradley Explains It All" scenes which were differentiated only by Mrs Bradley picking a new person to expound to. OF course, Mrs Bradley plays her cards too close to her chest to explain it all. She teases the reader by using her audience as sounding boards without telling them why she is testing her point of view.

But this was minor. The plot was interesting and the pace was adequate. There was a substantial amount of local colour, from archaeology through to joining the local hunt, and enough action to keep my attention.

This was a solid, Christmas cosy mystery and a big improvement on my previous encounters with Mrs Bradley. I shall be back for more from this period.

I listened to the audiobook version, which was released in March this year and was narrated with brio by Patience Tomlinson (shame about the cover).

Click on the Soundcloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/ulverscroft/murder-in-the-snow-by-gladys-mitchell ( )