By Laura LaVelle, Wonder Shuffle Culture Editor:

Gladys Mitchell isn't as well known her contemporaries Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh, who have collectively been given the grand title of the "Queens of Crime." She's very much worth reading, though, and if you have a taste for Golden Age mystery fiction, one lovely thing about her is that she was extremely prolific, with 66 novels in her series about Mrs. Bradley, dating from 1929 through 1984 (that last one published the year after her death).

Anyway, there's plenty here that's familiar from her very first novel, Speedy Death: a brilliant older woman as the detective, Bright Young Things having arch conversations, ridiculous relatives, men of means with expensive collections and obsessions with archaeology, country house parties that go on for weeks on end, young people in love, and of course, mysterious incidents, including the finding of a dead body in a bathtub.

But there's also plenty here that's unique--and one of the reasons I enjoy Gladys Mitchell so is that her books are so utterly weird. Mrs. Bradley isn't cute, sweet, and underestimated. She's loud, bossy, and extremely alarming looking. (Mitchell invented the Jedi Mind Trick long before Star Wars--people have a tendency to do whatever Mrs. Bradley tells them to.) Mrs. Bradley is also a medical doctor and a psychoanalyst, and independently wealthy, taking on cases purely out of personal interest. She terrifies plenty of people and annoys policemen tremendously, but animals, children, and young lovers in trouble tend to adore her. She has an element of the uncanny--she's reputed to have a witch as an ancestor and may well be one herself, as she never seems to be wrong. Having no allegiance to any god or government, she follows her own moral code--which does not stop her from getting along famously with religious men and women, who seem to recognize that she's on a unique parallel path.

Nothing surprises her--she's seen it all, and regards most of humanity's foibles with benign tolerance.

Here's a description from Speedy Death:

"Mrs. Bradley was dry without being shrivelled, and bird-like without being pretty. She reminded Alastair Bing, who was afraid of her, of the reconstruction of a pterodactyl he had once seen in a German museum. There was the same inhuman malignity in her expression as in that of the defunct bird, and, like it, she had a cynical smirk about her mouth even when her face was in repose. She possessed nasty, dry, claw-like hands, and her arms, yellow and curiously repulsive, suggested the plucked wings of a fowl…"

Besides the wholly unique and original character of Mrs. Bradley, the plot elements in this series of novels are often extremely unusual: we find transgenderism, extensive travel, recreations of Greek mythology, Satanic rituals, a sea monster, paganism, black magic, athletics, caves, convents, folklore, nudism, all manner of grotesqueries, and eccentrics absolutely everywhere. There's nothing cozy to be found in this series.

This may not be for you--Gladys Mitchell is certainly not to all tastes. I enjoy the books much more for the characters and the atmosphere than the mystery plots. I'm not alone in my admiration for these stories, though. Philip Larkin, the poet, was a fan and called her "the Great Gladys." Christopher Fowler devoted a chapter to her in The Book of Forgotten Authors. If you are also an an admirer of strange brilliance, you may want to give these books a try.

NOVEL: Speedy Death

AUTHOR: Gladys Mitchell

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1929

IMAGE: book cover, Thomas & Mercer

About Me

Laura LaVelle is Wonder Shuffle's Culture Editor. A fan of the great indoors, you can find her in her native NYC, her home in Connecticut, or at a concert, play, library, bookstore, or museum just about anywhere in the world.