Death at the Opera

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In any gathering of crime fiction enthusiasts, mention of Gladys Mitchell (1901-1983) will produce an instant reaction. ‘Ah, Mrs Croc!’ will be purred in delight, or in rarer cases gasped in exasperation, on recall of her central serial character. She is a writer one devours with an exuberance responsive to her own, or who has one marvelling at the lengths to which imagination can be stretched within the whodunnit’s recognized limits. Her roller-coaster storylines touch peaks of creative genius and depths where one wonders how she dare demand of her readers such suspension of disbelief.

Death at the Opera, published in 1934, is a teasing title seeming to promise the brilliance of Covent Garden or the Scala, Milan. It concerns instead a young woman teacher found dead during her school’s pre-Christmas production of The Mikado. To an on-stage cast of suspects, delicately caricatured and readily recognizable from real life, the Headmaster, suspecting murder but fearful of further scandals, introduces as private sleuth Mrs (later, Dame) Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, Home Office Psychiatrist, formidable, eagle-eyed and a monstrosity of healthy extroversion.

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