A Case to Answer (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

This is the fourth or fifth book I've read by Yorke, who is an absolute master at creating suspenseful situations out of the most unlikely materials -- for example, out of the rather low-key, ex-schoolteacher widow Charlotte Frost, who lives in a rather low-key bedroom community an hour out of London. Yorke's genius is in imagining the inner life of her rather commonplace heroines, and when this is done very well the outwardly dull person becomes quite interesting indeed. And unlike certain of her peers, Yorke doesn't try to make her heroines 100% loveable. A recurring theme in her work, and one that is the basis for this story, is the unintended consequences that any banal human act (or failure to act) can bring about. Hardly a new idea, but one which Yorke succeeds in bringing home without any of the glamorous trappings that a lesser author might use to lure her readers in. For this reason, she's closer to Balzac than to Crichton and the attention-deficited reader may not get the point. But Yorke proves nonetheless that suspense doesn't require the imminent end of the world to be effective; in the right hands, the most mundane events can become the material for a real page-turner.

Margaret Yorke writes a specific sort of mystery; contemporary, multi-voiced and always English, her writing is clear and painstaking, giving real life and sympathy to all her characters, not merely heroic or evil ones. This books is typical Yorke, in that she presents a family in disarray, a feckless criminal, and older people whose lives are not used up, but are disregarded in the modern rush.

I find that Margaret Yorke is one of the outstanding prose stylists working today; she is the utter antithesis of poetic writers who have nothing to write about. Yorke's books are not mysteries, but novels of contemporary English life which offer much to the reader.

She ought to be better known and more widely read.

I have always liked Margaret Yorke's books, even though I haven't liked them all equally. When she's good, she's great; when she's not so good, she's about average. I would put this one in her "second tier," in that it's not one of her best, but it's also not one of her worst.

A CASE TO ANSWER is more "novel" than it is mystery, suspense, or thriller, and that's primarily because the plot is not intense. A young troubled woman comes to stay with her step-grandmother and meets up with a local teenager who's been on the wrong side of the law but is trying to clean up his act. As always, Yorke sets up the family dynamic well (yes, it seems that English families are just as dysfunctional as families everywhere else) and also chooses one or two characters to really explore. In this case, one of them is Charlotte Frost, who remarried after 20 years as a widow, only to find her husband dying after two years of marriage. Despite Charlotte's happy marriage and general aggreeableness, her late husband's children treat her as a burden and see her as standing in the way of their full inheritance.

There's a plot twist halfway through that won't surprise Yorke readers, as we know her tricks by now!

In a lot of ways, this book reminded me of P.D. James' INNOCENT BLOOD. It's an intense and absorbing read, but mostly "internal," without a lot of external action to drive the plot. So if you are looking for a crime novel set in the English countryside, with strong characters and strong, no-nonsense writing, I can recommend it. If you want a book with a stronger plot and more twists and turns, I'd try FALSE PRETENSES instead.

A word of warning: If you are new to Yorke, be sure to read up on some of the reviews on Amazon and other places to make sure you're getting one of her good ones. If you start with a less-good one (such as SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, which really is not good at all), you probably won't read more Yorke, and that would be a shame.