Scotch Mist by Dorothy Lambert

If you read my last review, you will know how much I loved Dorothy Lambert’s All I Desire (1936). It was such an easy book to love. The epitome of a gentle read. When I picked up Scotch Mist (1936), I was hoping for more of the same. I’m happy to report, I found Scotch Mist to be even more delightful. Not only does it contain the same sharp, witty dialogue that can be found in All I Desire, it also has many beautiful descriptions of the Scottish Highlands. In my review of All I Desire I compared Lambert’s writing to Molly Clavering, and if anything Scotch Mist is an even closer match to Clavering’s books. I’m most eager to pick up my third Lambert. But first, let me tell you about my newest favourite title from Dean Street Press, Scotch Mist. 

Thirty-four year old Alison lives with her friend Jane in a London apartment. Jane is an architect and Alison is a designer/artist. Together, they run a reasonably successful interior design company. It’s not been easy work. The women used to do the practical side of the business themselves, the painting, wallpapering, etc., but more recently they have been able to focus their efforts on the management and design side of things. 

There are only two clouds in the sky—but they are dark ones—and that is Alison’s mother and sister, who keep showing up uninvited to the women’s apartment and sponging off of Alison. Lady Caroline and her daughter Pamela fancy themselves part of the leisured class without actually having the money to carry it off. So when Alison manages to get her mother and sister off her hands, Jane encourages her to take a holiday. She loads up the car with practical clothes, brushes, paint, and canvas, and heads off to the Scottish Highlands in search of artistic inspiration and adventure.

When the mist lifts, Alison is surrounded by stunningly beautiful views, a handsome laird, who will whisk her off her feet—if she lets him—and his timeworn ancestral home turned hotel, just waiting for the right decorator to bring it back to life. 

On her first night at Glenlochart House she happens to be the only guest. To make certain that both the prickly housekeeper, Mrs. McCaig, who doesn’t approve of single ladies staying in a bachelor establishment, and the laird, Neil McPherson, know she isn’t a single lady on the lookout, she dresses accordingly.

[S]he attired herself in the form of evening dress that she and Jane had adopted when, in their professional capacity, they stayed in the houses they were engaged in decorating, or when they attended dinners or “At Homes” in the course of their career, which they took very seriously. It was something of a pose and an excellent advertisement. (34)*

When she comes down to dinner, Neil is astute enough to understand the gesture Alison is making with her outfit of “well-cut black velvet dinnerjacket and pleated white silk shirt worn with a neat black tie and straight close-fitting skirt to her ankles” (35). But if Alison is trying to disguise her femininity with a more masculine outfit than an ordinary evening dress, the outfit is a failure.

[H]e realised that with all her suggestion of masculine severity she conveyed also a feminine hint of allure that was probably quite unconscious on her part, for her intention was quite obviously to submerge the fact of her sex in a display of independence and claim for sex-equality. (35)

Ultimately, Neil decides she is more striking in this outfit than she would be in an “ordinary evening frock, and the hint of feminine vanity was provocative and disturbing” (35-36).

Neil is impressed by Alison, and she is not blind to his attractions, as she notices him from their first meeting on the misty moors, but they both keep their distance on this first evening. So perhaps Alison’s outfit has the desired effect, after all. But there is an instant connection between the two, an unsaid appreciation that gives the reader hope the two will find love despite not acknowledging to themselves they desire it. There is an occurrence early on when the housekeeper refers to Alison as “yon spinster body”, which at first Alison laughs at, but when Neil, finding it funny, casually repeats the remark, Alison is quietly hurt (40). Spinster is a name she can revel in as long as she doesn’t feel she is the butt of a joke.

Early on in the novel, Neil and Alison go for a walk over the high moors behind the house. Alison admires the views, mapping out plans for which ones she will paint, which is the purpose of her trip, to make paintings Jane and her will sell to their interior design clients, and be able to afford to stay in “this paradise” (43). Her silence provides Neil with opportunity to observe her unnoticed. 

It was rough going, steep glens to scramble down and climb up, rocks to surmount, and finally the long slope down to the road again. Alison was a good walker. She had a swinging stride that crossed the moorland with ease. She was part of it all. Her tweed skirt was sensible, and she wore a gay Fair Isle jumper, for the wind was keen in spite of the sunshine. The sun glinted on her red-gold hair, ruffled by the wind, and she was flushed and eager-looking and feminine, and more attractive than Neil thought possible. (44)

I believe it is in this moment that Neil falls in love with Alison. She moves across the moors “with ease” and she is “part of it all”. She fits. With her sensible clothes and flushed face, she suits the place. I think the deeper meaning behind this passage is that Neil not only finds her attractive in this setting, but as we are first introduced to him on the moors “coming out of the mist so suddenly”, he is part of the landscape, too (29). They both fit. And if they both fit the landscape belonging to Neil’s ancestral home, it isn’t much of a stretch to see that the two will fit each other, too.

But as Shakespeare so aptly wrote, “the course of true love never did run smooth”, and there are a number of misunderstandings and distractions to keep the two apart. This book is full of characters that are intended to make you laugh and to highlight how much of a catch both Alison and Neil are. 

On Alison’s second day at Glenlochart House, a father and son arrive for the fishing, as the clientele at this hotel generally do. Andrew Tosh and his son Roddy are so abysmal that when they showed up I knew Alison’s mother and sister were bound to descend on Glenlochart House eventually, too. In a letter to Jane, Alison describes the Toshes as such:

‘Two simply dreadful people arrived this afternoon, father and son. I’ve hardly spoken to the old man, but he offered me champagne, unless I could suggest something better. By that time, however, I had had more than enough of Roddy (the son), a terrible young man who tells one about all his wealth and what he does with it.’ (71) 

They sound like the perfect pair for Lady Caroline and Pamela. Pamela’s cruise has fallen through when she is forced to quarantine because one of her party contracts measles and she winds up destitute at Jane and Alison’s apartment. Lo and behold, Pamela winds up reading the letter Alison has written to Jane. The Highlands sound like the perfect place to quarantine, not that Pamela has any other option, but to follow Alison to Scotland, when Jane throws her out. I won’t go into how Lady Caroline winds up on the doorstep of Glenlochart House too, as the circumstances are much too crazy to be explained succinctly. Besides, experiencing the whole insane situation first hand as it plays out is much more fun. Lambert’s flair for situational humour is just one of the aspects of her writing that make this book a delight from start to finish.

To close, I want to share what is my favourite passage from the book. More than the descriptions of nature, the witty banter, the funny situations, I love this part because it captures something I have felt myself. 

The wonder of the hours on the loch would be the most beautiful memory of her life, so beautiful to be almost a pain. That was how she always felt about beauty. The possibility of happiness she had never considered. (208)

Thank you to Dean Street Press for kindly sending me a copy of Scotch Mist for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

My review of Dorothy Lampert’s Staying Put (1941), will be posted in a couple of days. Hope to see you then! In the meantime, it’s not too late to preorder your copy of Scotch Mist. Scotch Mist, All I Desire, Staying Put, and Harvest Home are being republished under Dean Street Press's Furrowed Middlebrow imprint on 1 July 2026.

*All page numbers are from the ebook and may not correspond to the paperback edition.

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All I Desire by Dorothy Lambert

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that was as easy to enjoy as Dorothy Lambert’s All I Desire (1936). Hermia Carlisle retreats to a small village in southern England with the mistaken belief she will be able to lead a quiet life where she can get on with her writing career. But how could she have known that there she would come across not one, but two, people from her past. With the help of her daughter Jeremy—yes, you read that correctly—Hermia has a successful writing career, but one thing after another seems to distract her from her writing. In amongst the chaos, she still manages to get swept away by the current “situation” she is working out in her head. Hermia’s writing is inspired by these “situations”. It’s no wonder. Her life seems to always have been full of the most unbelievable situations, which lend well to her stories.

This book was light and frothy, without being annoyingly so. The little world of Holm Street was such a delightful and idyllic place to spend time. It was such fun to get swept up in all the drama that seems to arise out of almost nothing. Although, it did make me wonder why anyone would think a small little community would be the right place to go looking for peace and quiet! In Holm Street, there is always something going on. Between teas, the cricket, meetings of the women’s institute, village fêtes, plays, and neighbours stopping by at any odd hour, not to mention people from one’s past dropping in—as if out of the sky—to stir things up, it’s a wonder Hermia manages to get any writing done.

Not that she writes the books herself, exactly. We find out early on that Jeremy, who acts as her mother’s secretary/personal assistant/housekeeper cleans her mother’s books up, rewriting them to help them land with a more modern readership. Jeremy just drops that truth bomb into a conversation with her mother, and Hermia is shocked. She believed Jeremy was simply typing her novels up for her. Meanwhile, Jeremy has been rewriting Hermia’s books without her knowledge! Hermia isn’t entirely pleased to hear that she essentially writes situations which her daughter reworks, but she must admit, book sales have risen significantly since Jeremy started working with her.

Mother and daughter cause quite the stir amongst their fellow villagers. When Jeremy shows up to watch the village cricket match, she is snubbed by one of the other young women for not wearing a hat or stockings and looking “so common, just like a beachcomber”.

It was cricket that Jeremy came to watch, and the spectators did not interest her in the slightest degree. Being an astute young person she was perfectly aware of the interest she had created. Mrs. Fenwick’s disapproval made her chuckle. Mrs. Marsh’s share of curiosity, Alberta’s indifference, Chrissie’s deliberate rudeness and Daphne Fenwick’s hostility were all noted and dismissed. “Washed out!” Jeremy’s shoulder twitched in a faint shrug, and she turned her back on Holm Street society. (39)*

This village community which is inhabited by an eclectic array of characters is described with a wonderful sense of humour. Dorothy Lambert’s writing reminded me a lot of another Furrowed Middlebrow author I love, Molly Clavering. If you enjoy Clavering’s writing, I feel sure you will appreciate Lambert’s. I think Clavering’s writing is a bit more descriptive in terms of scene setting, while Lambert’s prose has such ease that it feels deceptively simple. I have no doubt it takes a lot of effort and skill to write a book that flows as well as this one does.

That isn’t to say that Lambert doesn’t write beautiful descriptions, as well as sharp dialogue. The following passage provides a positively delicious description of the landscape when Ian, a mechanic at the local garage, drops Jeremy’s car off.

Later that evening lan cleaned and polished the baby car and drove it to the Manor. The rain had ceased and the mass of storm clouds was dispersing in feathery trails over a clear greeny-blue sky, while the evening sunshine was pale and watery. The road was covered with wide pools of water here and there, and Ian drove carefully to avoid getting the nicely- cleaned car mud-splashed. The gate was open and he drove straight in and up the drive, which was still weed-grown and untidy. The old red-brick house had climbing roses hanging on its walls, and a straggling mass of yellow honeysuckle grew round the hall door, scenting the air with its lovely fragrance. The big trees on the lawn dripped heavily from their rain-soaked foliage, and the grass was sodden. The long shadows lay across the green grass, and Ian, who was susceptible to atmosphere, felt oddly thrilled at the beauty of the quiet scene—almost, he thought, one of enchantment, the tall trees so dark against the clear, pale sky, the grass in the deserted garden so vividly green with the fingers of yellow sunlight slanting across the masses of untidy rambler-roses and making them uncannily bright and colourful.” (69)

Isn’t that lovely?! Lambert beautifully sets the scene for a meaningful moment between Ian and Jeremy. 

But as I said, Lambert is great at writing sharp, witty dialogue, too. There is a particularly funny interaction between the judgmental Mrs. Marsh and the vicar, which looks as though it could last indefinitely, as Mrs. Marsh is too interested in talking about Holm Street’s newest inhabitants to pick up on social cues. Thank goodness, Mr. Bunyard, the local carpenter, comes to the vicar’s rescue.

“There!” said Mr. Bunyard suddenly, pointing. “Over there in that car, ma’am—that’s her.” [meaning Hermia]

A car was travelling slowly along the road across the Green, and Mrs. Marsh turned and scuttled away to the corner in order to see the occupant as it passed.

“Oh,” remarked the Vicar, “so that really is the person who is causing so much excitement.” Mr. Bunyard made a gesture of indifference.

“Bless you, sir, I don’t know who it is, but it seemed a good way to escape. Mrs. Marsh, she’s a bit of a sticker.”

“Oh, good egg!” exclaimed the Vicar delightedly. “You’re a man of resource, Bunyard, a man of resource!” (23)

There are too many funny interactions in this book to count. It was a joy to be immersed in all of the little tiffs and squabbles between these characters.

I always enjoy learning more about the authors Dean Street Press republishes through reading the introductions they publish alongside. Elizabeth Crawford provides this insight into Lambert,

We know nothing of Dorothy’s life with her parents, sister, one surviving brother and three servants in the ‘big house’ of Roskeen, nor anything of her education. However, from her Irish novels one might deduce that she relished an outdoor life, felt comfortable with neighbours from all levels of society, and had a hearty appetite for life’s possibilities. (8)

The other tidbit I gleaned from Crawford’s introduction is that Lambert, whose life spanned the years 1884 to 1967, published her first book, Redfern M.F.H. (1929), when she was forty-five years old. I always find it encouraging when I hear about a writer publishing their first book in the second half of their life. (It means there is still hope for the rest of us who desire to see their stories in print, but haven’t yet accomplished the feat!) Lambert went on to publish twenty-seven books over twenty-four years. 

This is the first Dorothy Lambert book I have read and it won’t be my last. Thankfully, it is among four of this author’s books which are being republished on 1 July 2026 by Dean Street Press under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. The other titles are Scotch Mist (1936), Staying Put (1941), and Harvest Home (1950), all of which I will be reviewing in upcoming posts. Back in 2020 Dean Street Press republished another of Lambert’s novels, Much Dithering (1938), which I have yet to get my hands on, but I will no doubt want to read if her other books are anything like All I Desire.

Thank you to Dean Street Press for kindly sending me a copy of All I Desire for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

My review of Dorothy Lambert’s Scotch Mist will be posted tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

*All page numbers are from the ebook and may not correspond to the paperback edition.

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The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White

As she listened to the gush of words behind her, Iris was again perplexed by the discrepancy between Miss Froy's personality and her appearance. It was as though a dryad were imprisoned within the tree-trunk of a withered spinster. (78)

Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, The Wheel Spins, attracted Alfred Hitchcock’s attention and in 1938 it was made into the film The Lady Vanishes. Before I had read the book, I thought the film had the better title. But now, I believe the film just has the more obvious title, and while that perhaps makes it more suited to cinema, The Wheel Spins is the superior choice for this novel. 

The Wheel Spins opens with Iris Carr on holiday in the mountains somewhere in Europe. Her friends and herself have made general nuisances of themselves during their stay, and destroyed the tranquil setting that no doubt would have attracted the other guests to the location. Iris, who, by the end of the trip, has grown tired of her friends, happily waves them off at the train station. Glad to see the back of them, she is looking forward to some quiet time in the remaining days of her holiday.

Her solitude becomes a bit too real when she gets lost in the mountains without food, water, map, or the means of asking directions. Because as well as not knowing the language, she is unable to tell the one person she comes across the name of the village where she is staying. So when it comes time for her to return home she is starting yearn for company, though she is barely able to acknowledge this herself. When one of her fellow guests, a vicar’s wife, extends an olive branch, Iris snaps it in two, making it perfectly clear she is not interested in making nice.  

Iris was awakened that night, as usual, by the express screaming through the darkness. Jumping out of bed, she reached the window in time to see it outline the curve of the lake with a fiery wire. As it rattled below the hotel, the golden streak expanded to a string of lighted windows, which, when it passed, snapped together again like the links of a bracelet.

After it had disappeared around the gorge, she followed its course by its pall of quivering red smoke. 

[…]

Once again she was flooded with home-hunger, even though her future address were an hotel. Mixed with it was a gust of foreboding—which was a legacy from the mountains.

“Suppose—something—happened, and I never came back.” 

At that moment she felt that any evil could block the way to her return. A railway crash, illness, or crime were possibilities, which were actually scheduled in other lives. They were happening all around her and at any time a line might give way in the protective square in her palm. (45)

Previously, she had been told that the lines on the palm of her hand formed a protective square, which Iris has been willing to believe keeps her from harm. Her experience in the mountains is the first time Iris has felt the weakness in her belief. Iris is coming to feel how vulnerable she is as a woman travelling in a foreign country without friends and not speaking the language.

While waiting at the station for the train that will start her on her journey home, she collapses and we begin to wonder if Iris’s feeling of foreboding wasn’t warranted. She wakes up not knowing how much time has passed. Overcome with panic that she has missed her train, she struggles to get up. But she is forced to rest and drink something. Still feeling ill and disoriented, she is bundled onto the train, a porter aids her in squeezing into a packed compartment as the train pulls away from the platform. She gets a cold feeling from people in the compartment, as though they don’t like her. But that doesn’t make any sense. They don’t even know her. It’s not like they could have talked to anyone from her hotel. Thankfully, a woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy, befriends Iris and noticing she doesn’t look well, takes her under her wing. Feeling better after a cup of tea, Iris drifts off to sleep.

When Iris awakes Miss Froy is no longer across from her. At first Iris assumes the woman has just stepped out of the compartment for a bit—a trip to the lavatory or the dining car would explain her absence—but as time goes on, Iris’s worry builds. The train is full to the brim, so she couldn’t have simply changed compartments. When Iris finally gets to the point of questioning her fellow passengers about the missing woman, they all say they don’t know who she is talking about. The suggestion is made that she has dreamt the woman up, and Iris herself admits that she was suffering from heatstroke. Could she have hit her head when she collapsed? Iris even begins to doubt herself, at first. But the more she thinks of all the details that chatty Miss Froy shared with her, Iris knows Miss Froy is not simply a figment of her imagination. She was too unexpected. Too unlike the person she appeared. She may have looked middle-aged and dowdy, but she was almost girlish in her behaviour and vocabulary. 

“Oh, isn’t all of this fun?”

Her pleasure was so spontaneous and genuine that Iris could not condemn it as gush. She stared doubtfully at the faded old gold plush window-curtains, the smutty tablecloth, the glass dish of cherry jam and then she glanced at her companion.

She received a vague impression of a little puckered face; but there was a sparkle in the faded blue eyes, and an eager note in the voice, which suggested a girl.

Afterwards, when she was trying to collect evidence of what she believed must be an extraordinary conspiracy, it was this discrepancy between a youthful voice and a middle-aged spinster, which made her doubt her own senses. In any case, her recollection was far from clear, for she did not remember looking consciously at her companion again.

The sun was blazing in through the window, so that she shaded her eyes with one hand most of the time she was having tea. But as she listened to the flow of excited chatter, she had the feeling that she was being entertained by some one much younger than herself. (73)

I just loved this book. Everything is against Iris, not least of all herself. For a person who is bored and doesn’t do much of anything, it is easy to imagine that she has never gone out of her way for anyone in her life. Frankly, as privileged young woman, she has never had to. Ethel Lina White does a fabulous job of laying the groundwork for Iris’s character, so by the time Iris gets on that train, we have a good idea of what she is like and what she would do in most circumstances. 

One of her fellow passengers, a young man offers to help, but he is as sceptical as everyone else about Iris’s claim that Miss Froy has disappeared.

“Have I got it right?” he asked. “Is this Miss Froy a complete stranger to you?”

“Of course.”

“Yet you’re nearly going crackers over her. You must be the most unselfish person alive. Really, it’s almost unnatural.”

“But I’m not,” admitted Iris truthfully. “It’s rather the other way round. That’s the amusing part. I can’t understand myself a bit.’

“Well, how did it start?”

“In the usual way. She was very kind to me—helpful, and all that, so that at first, I missed her because she wasn't at the back of me any more. And then, when every one declared I dreamed her, it all turned to a horrible nightmare. It was like trying to explain that every one was out of step but myself.”

“Hopeless. But why had you to prove that she was there?”

“Oh, can’t you understand? If I didn’t, I could never feel that anything, or any one, was real again?” (123)

If Iris had been travelling with even one other friend she would not have worried herself about Miss Froy. She likely wouldn’t have treated her disappearance with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders between pulls on her cigarette. And this begins to explain why I think The Wheel Spins is such a fantastic title. It is only by chance that a selfish person like Iris takes any interest in Miss Froy’s disappearance. As more and more of her fellow passengers plead ignorance or claim the woman didn’t exist, Iris realises that if the situation were reversed and something were to happen to her on that train, no one would do anything about it, except for Miss Froy. She feels sure Miss Froy would have caused a commotion and searched until she was found, because Miss Froy showed her a kindness when she needed it most, and Iris is sure Miss Froy is that sort of person. With each spin of the wheel, the fate of Miss Froy is put into question. Will the wheel of fortune spin in favour of Miss Froy, or not?

The wheel is part of “the great machine” which is capable of catching people up in one of its revolutions (183). This great machine might be the wheels of the train that can bring a person safely home, or not, which we can see from Iris’s feeling of foreboding in contrast to other characters in this book who also view this train from their windows and interpret the image with hope and anticipation. This intertwining of the unpredictability of Fortune’s Wheel with the wheels of the train conflates the idea that on this train ride fates will be decided and all of the passengers take a turn at spinning the wheel that decides the fate of Miss Froy, and Iris’s fate, too. 

The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy. (180)

Wheel imagery continues to appear in unexpected places throughout this book. At one point even “the drone of masculine voices” make a drumming sound “like the hum of a spinning wheel” as they decide a woman’s fate (225).

This is a beautifully written book, full of atmosphere, tension, and—a rare thing to find in a mystery thriller—hope. If you pick up one British Library Crime Classic this year, I highly recommend choosing this one.

Oh, and here’s a small spoiler, but I anticipate it will offer comfort to some, so I have decided to share it. This is a mystery with only the passing mention of a murder, but no actual murder on the page. The Wheel Spins is a very rare book, indeed.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Wheel Spins for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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