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Review
'An entertaining read'
(Sunday Times )'A jewel in the traditional English detective mode... Ms. Morse has arrived' (Observer )
'Imogen Quy positively sparkles on the page as an amateur sleuth.' (Sunday Express )
'In Imogen Quy, the author has created an admirable detective heroine, as unabashed as she is unaffected.' (Times Literary Supplement )
'Paton Walsh plots deftly and writes intelligently . . . Sayers' many fans will be delighted.' (Andrew Taylor, Independent )
‘Jill Paton Walsh demonstrates that the traditional ingredients of the woman sleuth, the academic background and a clever puzzle are still capable of being arranged into an entertaining and stimulating crime novel.’ (Manchester Evening News ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
"* 'Imogen Quy positively sparkles on the page as an amateur sleuth.' - Sunday Express * 'In Imogen Quy, the author has created an admirable detective heroine, as unabashed as she is unaffected.' - Times Literary Supplement * 'Paton Walsh plots deftly and writes intelligently... Sayers' many fans will be delighted.' - Andrew Taylor, Independent * 'A jewel in the traditional English detective mode... Ms. Morse has arrived' - Observer * 'Jill Paton Walsh demonstrates that the traditional ingredients of the woman sleuth, the academic background and a clever puzzle are still capable of being arranged into an entertaining and stimulating crime novel.' - Manchester Evening News"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jill Paton Walsh has borne the onerous burden attempting in recent years to continue the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane story, picking up the threads that Dorothy L. Sayers had left behind in the form of an incomplete novel (Thrones, Dominations) and a series of Spectator articles detailing the Wimsey family's experience of the early months of World War II.
In Debts of Dishonour, Patron Walsh returns to the story of her own detective, Imogen Quy, about whom she published two earlier novels in the mid-1990s.
Imogen is a detective appropriate to modern times - a modern and independent woman (although, perhaps, somewhat conservative, as befits an e a nurse employed bya Cambridge college). Debts of Dishonour, like the earlier novels, is generally well constructed and has some passages of extremely good description and tension. It also deals with some very modern issues - such as the relations between medicine and finance and the moral limits of capitalism.
I feel that her time writing Wimsey/Vane novels has improved Ms Paton Walsh's handling of the detective novel as a genre. There is more of the Sayers touch in Debts of Dishonour, compared to The Wyndham Case or A Piece of Justice, particularly in dealing with the pace of the narrative and the building of dramatic tension. Imogen herself also seems to have picked up some characteristics of those earlier detectives.
My only criticism is that perhaps Ms Paton Walsh might have adopted a few more of Ms Sayers' precepts in relation to detective fiction. In particular, Imogen Quy approaches her detection with an overwhelming concern for motive. While juries and readers may like motive, the Wimsey maxim "When you know how, then you know who; and when you know who, then you know why" is as true now as in the 1930s and, in my view, makes for better detective fiction, especially when combined with the second aspect of my criticism.
The second aspect is that I feel that Ms Paton Walsh still has not wholeheartedly adopted Ms Sayers's approach of ensuring that the novelist plays fair with the reader. All the elements of the solution (which should allow for the How/Who/Why hierarchy)should be before the reader before the solution is revealed by the writer (even if their importance has not been made clear). The art in a detective novel is, by good plotting and creative narrative, to cause the reader to deceive themselves by giving inappropriate weight to facts that turn out not to be relevant to the solution.
But this criticism is not to say that you should not read Debts of Dishonour. It is a very good detective novel, indeed better than most modern detective fiction, and has a place in every detective fiction aficionado's library.
In Debts of Dishonour, Patron Walsh returns to the story of her own detective, Imogen Quy, about whom she published two earlier novels in the mid-1990s.
Imogen is a detective appropriate to modern times - a modern and independent woman (although, perhaps, somewhat conservative, as befits an e a nurse employed bya Cambridge college). Debts of Dishonour, like the earlier novels, is generally well constructed and has some passages of extremely good description and tension. It also deals with some very modern issues - such as the relations between medicine and finance and the moral limits of capitalism.
I feel that her time writing Wimsey/Vane novels has improved Ms Paton Walsh's handling of the detective novel as a genre. There is more of the Sayers touch in Debts of Dishonour, compared to The Wyndham Case or A Piece of Justice, particularly in dealing with the pace of the narrative and the building of dramatic tension. Imogen herself also seems to have picked up some characteristics of those earlier detectives.
My only criticism is that perhaps Ms Paton Walsh might have adopted a few more of Ms Sayers' precepts in relation to detective fiction. In particular, Imogen Quy approaches her detection with an overwhelming concern for motive. While juries and readers may like motive, the Wimsey maxim "When you know how, then you know who; and when you know who, then you know why" is as true now as in the 1930s and, in my view, makes for better detective fiction, especially when combined with the second aspect of my criticism.
The second aspect is that I feel that Ms Paton Walsh still has not wholeheartedly adopted Ms Sayers's approach of ensuring that the novelist plays fair with the reader. All the elements of the solution (which should allow for the How/Who/Why hierarchy)should be before the reader before the solution is revealed by the writer (even if their importance has not been made clear). The art in a detective novel is, by good plotting and creative narrative, to cause the reader to deceive themselves by giving inappropriate weight to facts that turn out not to be relevant to the solution.
But this criticism is not to say that you should not read Debts of Dishonour. It is a very good detective novel, indeed better than most modern detective fiction, and has a place in every detective fiction aficionado's library.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Imogen Quy
9 Feb 2009
Jill Paton Walsh has a educated style that I greatly appreciate. Her character Imogen Quy, is becoming one of my favourite detectives - a rather select club. Someone with whom I can empathize.
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