Michael Harsch has been working on a secret project for the last five years. He has finally finished it and will be handing it over to the government in the morning.

On his way home he crosses paths with a man who looks like someone from his past, but he isn’t too sure. Harsch feels it is the man but doesn’t stop to speak to him.

Harsch enjoys evening walks in the village he lives in and also has a key to the church where he plays the organ at some point in his evening walks. The next morning he is found dead at the organ. A gun is nearby and the door is locked. Because Harsch lost his wife and daughter by the Nazis, and still misses them greatly, the verdict is suicide due to his sadness over the loss of family.

Sir George Pendel of the War Office feels different, since the results of Harsch’s work was to be turned over to the War Office that morning. An investigation is ordered. Major Garth Albany is sent to investigate. Albany has an aunt in the village, so it gives him a cover in hopes of getting information from the locals.

Albany finds a number of possible suspects among the village residents. Chief Detective Inspector Lamb and Detective Sergeant Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard are sent down for extra power. The two officers arrest one of the suspects and charge them with murder.

Village residents feel there is a mistake and call in Miss Silver to find the real killer. Being an unassuming, dowdy, older lady, people find her non-threatening and are not afraid to talk with her. What they don’t realize is there are years of experience of acute observation of different personalities. She is able to sort the red herrings out and get to the real truth of the case and the real murderer. She also has a close friendship with DS Frank Abbott.

The Miss Silver mystery series runs along the lines of Christie’s Miss Marple. An enjoyable read. ( )

'The Key' was a pleasant surprise. The writing was so much better than in 'The Case Is Closed' which is the only other Wentworth/Miss Silver book I've read. It seems that seven years at a novel a year made a great impact.

'The Key' has a fairly solid plot which manages, in a low-key very-easy-to-believe way to combine small village intrigue with a murder made to look like a suicide and a Nazi plot to prevent the British government from getting its hands on a new weapon that has been developed by a Jewish scientist who fled Germany after losing his family. There's a clever little murder mystery and quite s sweet romance, a cast of well-drawn village folk and lots of plausible suspects.

World War II has become a popular era for historical fiction, much of which seems to me to be romanticised. I found it very refreshing to read a book that was published in 1944 and which does a wonderful job of depicting life in a small country village at that time. As it's a contemporary account, there was no need to explain how rationing affected people's social lives or the presence of evacuee children from London's East End in a small English village. All that is taken for granted and all the more credible for it. I also liked the matter-of-fact way that the possible presence of German spies is treated. There's neither hysteria nor melodrama just the acceptance of one more possibility that needs to be taken into account.

I enjoyed Patricia Wentworth's talent for description. She is able to capture the spirit of a place or a person in very few words.

I loved the initial description of the street in a small country town in the first chapter:

"Of the two roads, one runs as straight as a ruled line, set with pompous examples of Victorian shop architecture. The other comes sidling in on a crooked curve and shows an odd medley of houses, shops, offices, with a church and a filling-station to break the line. Some of the houses were there when the Armada broke. Some of them have put on new pretentious fronts. Some of them are no better than they should be from a cheap builder’s estimate. Taken as a whole, Ramford Street has a certain charm and individuality which the High Street lacks."

I felt that I'd seen that street. There's one like in many English towns even today.

The village that most of the action takes place in is so authentic, I feel it could have been set in one of the Somerset villages near me: Newton St Loe or Farrington Gurney. It's more than a good description of the village of the kind Christie might give, which always seemed to me to be 'a map to help you solve the puzzle'. This gets the feel of living in a village for generations so that each location is overlaid with memories.

Although this is a Miss Silver Mystery, Miss Silver herself doesn't show up until halfway through the book. I thought this worked very well. It allowed us to see the village and the first death through the eyes of people who know the place and the man who was killed. By the time Miss Silver arrives, the reader is in the same position as the people who asked for her help: waiting for Miss Silver to make sense of the information and find the truth.

In a book filled with colourful characters, Miss Silver stands out only for her ability to blend into the background and to make people comfortable in telling her things. She strikes me a less judgemental and more independent than Jane Marple. She's built a pleasant life, self-contained life for herself. She's well regarded by the police. She has no agenda other than arriving at the truth of a matter. She's an easy person to underestimate.

The romance between two of the young people, one who was close to the man who was killed and one who has been asked to look into the death on behalf of the government was handled with a light touch that worked well, although I did find the man, Garth, to be very patronising.

My favourite character was Garth's aunt, Miss Sophie. She is a kind, easy-going person who nevertheless is still very aware of what is going on around her and quite intolerant of rudeness. I loved Miss Sophy's love slap down style. When Miss Doncaster is slagging off Mrs Motram we get this exchange, starting with Miss Sophy:

"And do you know, I like Mrs Mottram. She is always so pleasant."

Miss Doncaster snorted. "She hasn’t the brain of a hen!"

"Perhaps not – but there are such a lot of clever people, and so few pleasant ones."

Now that's a put-down to savour.

This was a gentle, entertaining read. I'll be back for more Miss Silver later in the year. ( )

Another Miss Silver novel following her familiar format. The one refreshing aspect of this book in comparison to other Miss Silver books is that you can actually watch her do some detecting. ( )

I figured out the culprit early on, which brought down my rating a bit. However the setting of this entry in the Miss Silver series involving the death of a refugee Austrian Jew scientist during WW2 was very good. ( )

Wentworth has a knack for taking her time introducing Miss Silver, the unassuming elderly English woman who solves the mysteries in this series that bears her name, and this entry was a spectacular example of that. The first mention of our sleuth comes on Page 102 of a 221-page edition, and the woman herself does not make actual contact with one of the other characters until Page 118. This would be annoying except that the espionage-ish mystery as it's presented in the Silver-free opening chapters is pretty interesting.

That late entry doesn't give her much time to work, but Miss Silver doesn't take long to inspire confidences from otherwise close-mouthed villagers and is soon well on her way to solving the crime, which ends up being multiple murders and a busted spy ring by the time all's done and dusted. Of course, it goes without saying that the man who has been arrested by the police (Miss Silver's old acquaintances Lamb and Abbott) isn't guilty of anything except being a rather large jackwagon. Fortunately for him and me, being universally unlikable is not a hanging offense, even in wartime England.

And of course there's a star-crossed couple who find their forever happiness forged in the crucible of double murder. Sigh. Ain't it romantic? ( )