The Ivory Dagger was my first Patricia Wentworth book so it was also my first Miss Silver Mystery as well.

This was number 18 in the series and it didn’t matter that I had not read the previous 17 books. I was able to catch on with the characters and their backgrounds very quickly. Wentworth was a British Mystery writer who published books between the 1920s and the 1960s. The Ivory Dagger was written in 1953.

 I liked Maud Silver, the elderly woman called in to help solve the crime, immediately. I also liked Detective Inspector Frank Abbott immediately.

It was made clear, without too much supposition on past cases, that these two had worked together before and had a very teasing and affectionate relationship because of that.

I absolutely loved their interactions.

Let’s go back and grab a description of the book from online, though:

Bill Waring, collecting his wits in hospital after a train crash, receives only one letter from Lila Dryden, his fiancée. When he discovers Lady Dryden, Lila’s guardian, has pressured her into an engagement with Herbert Whitall, he is furious.
Herbert Whitall is aggressive, with a cold-hearted possessiveness that expands past the bounds of his ivory collection he can’t bear to lose. His employees hate him, Lila is terrified of him and it appears he has a hold on Lady Dryden.
When a dagger in Whitall’s collection becomes the instrument of his own death there are many suspects. Maud Silver must see that justice is done, not merely to punish the guilty, but to protect the innocent.

One thing left out of this particular description, but is in others, is that Lila becomes the prime suspect because she is found standing over his body, holding an ivory dagger that belonged to him.

She has a history of sleep walking, though, and this seems to be another one of those incidents. Could she have killed Herbert in her sleep? Even she is worried about that.

I won’t lie – I wasn’t a big fan of Lila through parts of this book. She was pretty weak and cruel to Bill and others at times, but, then, she was also very young and inexperienced at life.

It’s Lady Dryden who calls in Miss Silver because she has heard about the previous cases Miss Silver has solved.

Miss Silver doesn’t know when she comes to the mansion, that Frank Abbott has been assigned the case but she is pleasantly surprised. Frank is pleasantly surprised with her appearance as well.

“Frank Abbott took the hand and reciprocated the smile. Adrian Gray having mentioned that there was a Miss Silver staying in the house, he was by no means unprepared for the appearance of the lady who he had been known in moments of expansion to address as Revered Preceptress. They were, all jesting apart, on a footing of deep attachment, and, upon Frank’s side, of a most unfeigned respect.”

Miss Silver knows that the focus is on Lila but there is a list of people who didn’t like Whitall, so she must look at them all. She doesn’t think Lila is guilty. Neither does Frank so they will need to join their efforts to find out who really is guilty.

Miss Silver reminds me of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and has similar hobbies and mannerisms. Miss Silver also has similar great comebacks or lines as Miss Marple.

They both appear to be innocent old ladies just sitting and knitting away while they are actually listening in to solve the crime. In this one, Miss Silver is knitting a vest for a great niece or relative, I can’t remember which. Wentworth likes to remind us she’s just simply knitting along with such lines as, “The crocket hook went in and out, making a delicate shell pattern about the neck of little Josephine’s vest.”

One difference between Miss Silver and Miss Marple is that Miss Silver is an actual private investigator and Miss Marple is simply a spinster living in a small town who becomes involved in solving crimes.

If you’re curious  which one came first, it was Miss Marple by a year. Her first story was published as a short story in 1927. The first Miss Silver book came out in 1928.

If you would like to know more about the similarities and differences, I recommend this great blog post from the blog Promoting Crime. https://promotingcrime.blogspot.com/2014/10/miss-marple-and-miss-silvera-comparison.html

What I like about Wentworth’s writing is that she is light on description of characters, scenery, and other aspects of the story, but still heavier than Christie. She provides more literary imagery to draw from to create an image in the readers mind of the main characters and the surroundings than Christie does. This doesn’t mean that one is better than the other. Christie was a brilliant stripped back storyteller and Wentworth is also a wonderful storyteller who simply adds a bit more personality and description to her characters.

Wentworth’s writing reminded me more of Margery Allingham, another Golden Age mystery writer, than Agatha’s. Both Wentworth and Allingham were great at creating engaging and well-written sentences or paragraphs that left you wanting to read it again, highlight it, or write it down.

“They sat facing one another. Feature and expression were hidden by the darkness, yet each knew the other so well that his darkness was only a black screen upon which memory could throw its pictures. Bill holding doggedly to what he had said and saying it all over again, as if battering repetition was an argument in itself. Ray on the defensive – quick thrust and parry to met his bludgeon blows, eyes wide and the colour in her cheeks like flame.”

Though this wasn’t the first book in the series, it was a good introduction for me and I am looking forward to reading more.

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Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

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