Mysterioso

The top book on my pile of mystery and science fiction books purchased at the last Literacy Austin book sale called out and asked to be read. So what else could I do? I whizzed on through Evidence of Things Seen by Elizabeth Daly (1943).

This is a nice little mystery about a high-society woman who is renting an isolated summer house with her husband and another couple during the war. She and her maid get there early and begin to settle in, but are disturbed by the regular appearance of a strange woman in a sunbonnet at odd times when no such woman should be around. They find out that the sister of their landlady died in the house under potentially suspicious circumstances (said landlady came into a bunch of money thanks to her sister's death). The neighbors suspect the landlady of poisoning her sister, and a bit into the book the landlady also dies under mysterious circumstances. Did the ghost do it?

This is a nice little mystery, with enough twists that I didn't guess who had really dunnit until the solution was revealed. It does have some rather dated ideas about men and women and about class differences, but nothing too cringey. Since the book is billed as a Henry Gamadge Mystery, I can only suspect that he shows up in some other Daly books. I really liked his wife better than him, though, so if I read another one, I hope she comes along for the ride.

It's funny that I started reading this last week, just after we watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is also about woman and her maid living in an isolated house that is haunted by the ghost of the former house-owner who died under mysterious circumstances. A lot less murder in the movie, though.

And if you like that sort of thing check out the back cover here.