Not to be Taken by Anthony Berkeley

I stayed up until the wee hours of Monday morning finishing Not to be Taken. It was so good that I just could not go to bed without having finished it. Then I made the mistake of picking up another book before starting work on this review. Never a good practice for someone like me who struggles with switching between tasks. I really did think I would just dip into the British Library Women Writers book, The Spring Begins, read a couple of chapters in the morning and then work on my review of Not to be Taken that evening. Needless to say, I got completely swept away by Katherine Dunning’s writing. But more on that captivating book in a future post. We’re here to talk about Anthony Berkeley’s 1938 novel, Not to be Taken.

Not to be Taken is a deceptively simple village mystery on the surface, but do not let the bucolic setting and the first-person narration of a self-deprecating gentleman fruit-tree farmer lull you into complacency, like it did me. Anthony Berkeley is at his finest in this seemingly straightforward mystery. 

John Waterhouse has died of some type of gastric illness. He had been having some trouble with his stomach off and on for a while, but nothing to raise any alarm bells. Even his doctor was not too concerned about the complaint. Still, he died a few days later, leaving behind an ineffectual wife, and a brother who suspects foul play. The body is exhumed and lo and behold it turns out to be death by arsenic poisoning. Soon the Dorset village of Anneypenny is the centre of a media and gossip frenzy. Everyone is a suspect, and each seems as unlikely a murderer as the last.

The novel was first published in serial form under the title Poison—Not to be Taken in the highly popular John o’ London’s Weekly from November 1937 to March 1938, as a competition by the magazine. Readers were invited to act as detectives in the case, and anyone who was able to fully answer the three questions provided at the end of the second to last chapter was eligible for the first prize of £200. The British Library thoughtfully inserted the questions at this point in the novel, giving modern readers the opportunity to play along, as it were. Although, I was eager to read the last chapter, I found this invention too fun to pass up. While I will admit I did not come close to getting any of the answers correct, it was a thought-provoking activity that greatly added to my enjoyment of the last chapter. Every revelation in the conclusion added a new dimension to how obviously wrong I had been in my assumptions, and while it was undeniably humbling, it was also great fun!

Now, I loved where this book went. But I have to admit that while I never considered putting this book down, the first half felt incredibly tame. Yes, someone had just died in suspicious circumstances in this sleepy village, but the reader gets everything through the perspective of a gentleman farmer, who, while not a bumbling fool, does just sort of wait around for things to happen. If I am reading a book I plan to review, I normally try to make note of interesting passages as I read. I think it is telling that I do not have any passages marked in the first half of this book. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the first half, but the narration provided by Douglas Sewell lulled me into a similar feeling of complacency that seems to arrest Sewell himself. I do believe this is a device the author uses to pull one over on the reader. Well done, Berkeley! I let the plot spin out while paying little attention to the clues, trusting that all would be revealed eventually, and not worrying myself over it. I’m slightly exaggerating to make my point, as I did in fact read the first half of this book in two sittings, so I couldn’t have been all that complacent about the result.

I hesitate to share too many quotations from this book because I think to highlight too much from the second half might draw attention to one suspect over another and I want readers of this review to have the same experience I did with trying to solve the crime before reading the last chapter. Instead, I will just share a couple of fun scenes that don’t directly relate to the mystery.

Eventually Scotland Yard are called in to investigate, and our narrator, Douglas Sewell, is taken aback by the bland and polite Detective Chief Inspector and Detective Sergeant that show up at his door, a stark contrast to the “bullying, hectoring, loud-mouthed, exceedingly unpleasant detective” to be found in the American detective fiction he had been reading lately (166).

Quite five minutes were wasted in their apologies for troubling me and my protestations that it was no trouble. Would they like to see my wife? Well, if it really wouldn’t be too much inconvenience, they would be grateful for the opportunity. Would they like to see her alone, or with me? That was just as I, and she, preferred. Would they have a glass of sherry? Why, that was exceedingly kind, almost too kind of me, but they found it better not to drink on duty. But I was just going to have a glass of sherry myself, and it was awkward to drink alone. Oh, well, in that case, they would come to the rescue but only just a drain in the bottom of the glass, really. Ha, ha. Yes, yes. Dear, dear. (165-66)

I think I would be a little surprised if these two came to my door under the guise of police detectives. They seem like very polite guests, indeed!

The interview lasted half an hour and was conducted in the same charming spirit throughout. Frances joined us in ten minutes or so, and the proceedings were more in the nature of an informal chat than a police interrogation. In point of fact, Frances and I did chat, quite garrulously. A question from one or other of our visitors would produce not merely an answer, but a confirmation, an allusion, an anecdote, all manner of divergencies. I think that secretly Frances and I felt that the two men, so far from being frightening, were so pleasant, and so much at sea, and so rather helpless, that we became doubly talkative in a kind of subconscious effort to help them out. (166)

All I could think while reading this passage is alternately, “oh, no!” and “you idiots!”. Although, now that I think about it, I would likely want to help out these nice men as much as I could too. Of course, the detectives are not quite as ineffectual as they seem. This should come as no surprise to the reader, as the chapter is humorously entitled, “Scotland Yard Is Not So Dumb”.

The novel starts on 3 September with the narrator observing “there is always something slightly sinister about the third of September”, it is always “one of those decadent days, half dying summer and half autumn, with the worst features of both” (15). Martin Edwards points out in his introduction that it was on 3 September 1939 that the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. A spooky coincidence as this book was published in 1938. From the introduction, I learned that Berkeley had a propensity to use material from his own life in his fiction, so that date may have held some special significance for him. What Berkeley does make clear in this book is his disdain for the Nazis. The  tension with Germany reaches this sleepy village in Dorset with the person referred to in the chapter “Disappearance of a Nazi” not being the only Nazi in the book. This adds a timely dash of the spy thriller to this mystery, while not actually crossing over into tense thriller territory.

Overall, I enjoyed this one much more than I expected to from the quiet start. It actually took me my surprise to be honest. As I said, it is a quiet, unassuming mystery that does not rely on cheap thrills or a twisty plot to carry itself. Berkeley’s very good writing and fair play mystery holds its own among the British Library Crime Classics. And while it is not going to take the top spot, which I believe belongs to Christianna Brand’s London Particular, it is definitely up there among the ones I would gladly reread in the future. If you are looking for a crime novel that is not at all gruesome and won’t make your stomach churn with anxiety, while still keeping you reading late into the night, then Not to be Taken is the book for you.

I had such a great time swapping theories about the suspects with my friend Sabine (find Sabine's fabulous Instagram account here). I think that if you can find someone to read this one with it will greatly improve your enjoyment. It would be a great choice for a book club. You could meet before reading the last chapter, go over your theories together, and then read the last chapter as a group! You could even arrange your own contest but perhaps the prizes would need to be slightly more modest than the one run in John o’ London’s Weekly!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Not to be Taken for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

Yoked with a Lamb by Molly Clavering

It has been a while since I reviewed a book that wasn’t a mystery. I realise that probably makes it appear that mysteries are the only things I read, which could not be further from the truth. Generally, they only make up a third of the books I read. The rest is mainly vintage children’s books, historical fiction, classics, and middlebrow fiction from the first half of the twentieth century, mainly from the interwar period. Originally published in 1938, Molly Clavering’s Yoked with a Lamb falls under the last category. 

After having now read four of Molly Clavering’s books, Touch Not the Nettle, Susan Settles Down, and Dear Hugo, I have spotted a few things they have in common. Evocative descriptions of the Scottish countryside, a dependable woman who has the makings of a fine spinster, an unfriendly or rough man who makes a bad first impression with said woman, (conversely she might make a bad first impression with him,) small community dynamics where the gossips mill never stops, and a scandal or two to keep things interesting. All that said, these books might be starting to sound a bit formulaic. Read one and you’ve read them all. Perhaps you would not be too far wrong if it was not for Molly Clavering’s impeccable writing. Her characters never diminish into caricatures. While we do tend to have a spinster-ish woman at the forefront of these books, I have never felt like I was reading the same character again and again in her books.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about Yoked with a Lamb…

Andrew and Lucy Lockhart and their children are returning to the town of Haystoun after leaving in a blaze of scandal several years ago when Andrew ran off with another woman. Andrew’s cousin, Kate Heron, has been enlisted to get the house in order in advance of the family returning and generally smooth things over between the couple. But as Andrew and Lucy haven’t seen each other since Andrew left, Kate certainly has her work cut out for her. Between drunken painters, locking people in closets, and unexpected—and very much unwanted—guests popping in, Kate seems to have a talent for getting into the funniest of scrapes. This book is full of misunderstandings, gossip, and the promise of romance, just like the other Clavering books I have read.

Molly Clavering has just the loveliest sense of humour, which she passes on to her leading female and male characters. They aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves or at a situation. 

Kate, after making a rather unsuccessful attempt to remove the grime of her journey, groaned and sprang out on to the almost empty platform. ‘It’s a great pity, she thought ruefully, ‘that I am such an untidy traveller. In books there’s always a tiresome heroine whose most salient feature is her band-box smartness even after a trip across the Sahara. I wonder how those fragile young women do it? I know what I'd look like if I had crossed even a small desert. A dilapidated sand-bag!’ (24)

I am with you Kate! 

There is plenty of situational humour to be found in this book too. On one occasion, Kate takes Andrew’s son, Henry, and his dog, Virginia, to the cattle show, which the characters simply refer to as “the Show”. Virginia, being an excitable puppy runs off, to wreak havoc with the ladies outside of the refreshment tent doing the washing up. She snatches a dishcloth “so well-used that Kate felt faintly sick at the sight of it”.

She gave her treasure a last regretful shake before dropping it, and toddled back with a careworn expression to her master.

“Naughty girl,” said Henry in loving tones. “Isn’t she sweet, Kate?” But Kate’s horrified gaze was riveted on the fat woman, who, without an instant’s hesitation, had seized the dish-cloth from the grass where Virginia had left it, and begun to dry glasses with it at top speed.

“Henry,” said Kate faintly, “do let’s have lunch quickly, before they start using the washed-up plates and things. With luck we may get ones that haven’t seen those tubs and towels.”

“I expect,” said Henry, hastening his steps obligingly.

“That they’re every bit as dirty in hotels and restaurants.”

“Very likely,” retorted Kate. “But at least I don’t see them doing it there!” (113-14)

This book is full of funny moments like this one, accompanied by clever dialogue. But Yoked with a Lamb is more than just a humorous bit of fluff. Molly Clavering tackles the subject of how a marriage can survive infidelity and shows that it takes more than simply loyalty to one’s partner to make a marriage work. A happy ending is a given in Molly Clavering’s books, but it’s the ever entertaining journey that will keep me coming back to these books again and again. This book makes for cosy, safe, feel-good reading. And while it is not a book that is going to stretch your brain too much, it is smart, fast, and terrifically well written. Who wants their brain stretched, anyway? It sounds most painful.

I have been reading this book along with my friend Gina House, who blogs over at babsbelovedbooks.blogspot.com. We’ve read a couple of Molly Clavering’s books together and we always have such a lovely time discussing them. I inevitably share my favourite description of nature and Gina always focuses on the domestic scenes. It’s great fun!

I have to give a word of appreciation to Elizabeth Crawford’s insightful introduction. It is always a treat to read get to know the author of a book that I have just enjoyed. It gave me a little tickle to discover that Molly Clavering was born on the same day as me, 23 October, be it 82 years earlier. 

You might be able to tell from some of the photos that my copy of Yoked with a Lamb has a little white sticker on the bottom left corner of the cover. That is because it is a library book. I am lucky enough to have a library close by that allows each patron five book requests per month. Five per month! That is 60 books per year! I get to request books for them to buy and if it has been published in the last three years and is available from one of the distributors they use, they buy it. Just like that. It’s a bit nuts. I am ever so grateful for all of the Dean Street Press books they have added to their shelves at my request. All forty books, and counting! I would love to one day own all of the Furrowed Middlebrow books. I am working on it! But in the meantime, it is beyond wonderful to have a library willing to supplement my supply.

As a couple of issues of The Scribbler are shown in my photos, I want to say how sad I was to hear that the March 2025 edition is to be their last. I was late to the party on this fabulous magazine that reviews vintage books, but I can tell you my wishlist has grown exponentially since acquiring my first issue. The editor, Shirley Neilson, is also behind the independent publisher Greyladies, who republish out of print books mainly by authors who are better known as writers for children. You can still order back issues of The Scribbler from their website. Wishing Shirley and her husband all the best in the days ahead. 

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!