Death of a Godmother

An important aspect of the Golden Age detective story was the puzzle.  The reader was expected to match wits with the detective and try to solve the puzzle before the detective.  Thus, a number of big names from the 1920s and 1930s will never be accused of writing exciting books, but these authors could construct a good puzzle.

John Rhode was one of these unexciting but good puzzlers.  His writing is a bit stiff and his characters are cardboard, but you can usually count on getting a good puzzle.  His detective was Dr. Gideon Priestley, a scientist who enjoyed solving puzzles in his study on Saturday nights with an intimate circle of good friends, who included a couple of police detectives and a physician.

Death of a Godmother is one of his later (1955) stories.  Almost all of the detection is done by one of the above-mentioned detectives, Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn of Scotland Yard, and Jimmy also solves the puzzle.  Dr. Priestley just weighs in on a couple of Saturdays in the study.  Unfortunately there's not many clues here and in retrospect I don't think there's anyway a reader could solve the mystery ahead of Jimmy.  Nonetheless I really enjoyed the story.  It feels like it is set in the Twenties (but it is the Fifties, with mentions of the Korean War) with a remote village, little forensic work, and a sad romantic backstory.  Rhode does work some humor in with the garrulous widow Mrs. Hopton who keeps getting a chance to feed Jimmy humongous meals.

For the VMRC, this mystery fills the Wicked Women category because of the godmother in the title.