Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Farrar & Rinehart (1946), Hardcover
Description
An isolated country house sets the scene for a wartime mystery from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author known as the American Agatha Christie. As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at twenty-four. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark--and there is a body in the closet. There is a killer on the grounds of the abandoned Spencer estate, and the police believe it is Carol. As war rages across the seas, Carol Spencer fights a private battle of her own--to prove her own innocence, and to save her mother's life. … (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Report: Poor Carol Spencer. She has a tiresome semi-invalid mama, a married older sister in love with her own comfort, a war hero brother who, despite being 10 years her elder acts like a schoolboy, and a dead body. Of her brother's previous unknown trollop. Oh, also
Who killed the trollop...errr, lady? Why? And importantly, why in the Spencer family summer home when no Spencers were there? Why did the killer then go on to kill the Spencers' housekeeper while that worthy was in the hospital with a broken leg? (And my haven't things changed since 1945 when this book was published...imagine being admitted to a hospital for a broken leg now, unless it required orthopedic surgery to reconstruct!)
Was it the brother, who understandably did not wish to remain married to a trollop since he's from the summer-home class and, not that much is made of this, engaged to a bombshell of a rich girl? Was it the sister, selfish chilly nasty piece of work that she is? Was it one of the elderly neighbors, for reasons unknown but probably having to do with their mysteriously absent grandson and sole living descendant? Or was it Carol's own missing, presumed dead, fiancé, the boy from the little house down the hill from her big, fancy one?
My Review: Very much a product of its time, this story has aged less well than some of Rinehart's earlier ones because the mere existence of a murder and the presence of a sleuth are considered to be enough to make the story work. The major, gaping holes (characters appear then vanish never to be heard of again, gods come out of more boxes than UPS ever saw, the sleuth learns things that we don't which is a major cheat) weren't really a big issue in mysteries of the day. They were part and parcel of Dame Agatha's bag of tricks, too.
The local cop is fat and shrewd, but not imaginative enough to outmatch the sleuth, and his deputy is an idiot who sleeps a lot. The local spinster busybody has a horse-face and a crush on the Spencer brother, so she elects to lie about something she saw. The Irish cook starts out with two maids, who suddenly vanish from mention, but still takes trays to Miss Carol and brings her endless cups of coffee. That woman ain't no cook, since the stove is an old coal range and speaking from experience, you turn your back on the fire in one of those babies and you ain't cookin' you's burnin'.
But I reserve my main snort of disgust for the romantic subplot that Rinehart, God bless her cotton socks, felt was crucial to a successful story. This has to be the most inept romance I've ever seen in all my days. The sleuth, a war hero recovering from his wounds sustained in about four battles if Rinehart's to be believed, is Major Dane, a well-born member of the pre-war FBI and now some sort of unspecified spook for the war effort. Carol sees him as trying to frame her brother one minute, trying to frame her sister the next, and then swoons into his arms with a "daaarrrling!" and a kiss. Dane, for his part, seems annoyed by her privileged cluelessness...yet he's supposed to be the grandson of a Senator and a scion himself. Which is it?
So why read this book, since there are so many flaws in it? Back in 1945, a series character wasn't strictly speaking necessary for a writer to get a mystery published, and Rinehart was America's Dame Agatha, so no hook there since this book has no repeat characters. I don't make any kind of a case for you to seek it out. But if one swims your way for some reason, and there's an afternoon you'd like to wile away with a complete read, this will not hurt you in the least. Won't fascinate you, and no one anywhere will make a case (unless I'm completely wrong about the subject) that the characters will haunt your dreams. Heck, they're already fuzzing out of my mental TV screen. But there is pleasure to be had in just relaxing with a perfectly okay book. No demands, no strings, won't change your life, just...nice.
Literary Afternoon Delight.
The Book Report: Poor Carol Spencer. She has a tiresome semi-invalid mama, a married older sister in love with her own comfort, a war hero brother who, despite being 10 years her elder acts like a schoolboy, and a dead body. Of her brother's previous unknown trollop. Oh, also
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wife. Plus she's a mother. (Not Carol, the dead trollop/wife.)Who killed the trollop...errr, lady? Why? And importantly, why in the Spencer family summer home when no Spencers were there? Why did the killer then go on to kill the Spencers' housekeeper while that worthy was in the hospital with a broken leg? (And my haven't things changed since 1945 when this book was published...imagine being admitted to a hospital for a broken leg now, unless it required orthopedic surgery to reconstruct!)
Was it the brother, who understandably did not wish to remain married to a trollop since he's from the summer-home class and, not that much is made of this, engaged to a bombshell of a rich girl? Was it the sister, selfish chilly nasty piece of work that she is? Was it one of the elderly neighbors, for reasons unknown but probably having to do with their mysteriously absent grandson and sole living descendant? Or was it Carol's own missing, presumed dead, fiancé, the boy from the little house down the hill from her big, fancy one?
My Review: Very much a product of its time, this story has aged less well than some of Rinehart's earlier ones because the mere existence of a murder and the presence of a sleuth are considered to be enough to make the story work. The major, gaping holes (characters appear then vanish never to be heard of again, gods come out of more boxes than UPS ever saw, the sleuth learns things that we don't which is a major cheat) weren't really a big issue in mysteries of the day. They were part and parcel of Dame Agatha's bag of tricks, too.
The local cop is fat and shrewd, but not imaginative enough to outmatch the sleuth, and his deputy is an idiot who sleeps a lot. The local spinster busybody has a horse-face and a crush on the Spencer brother, so she elects to lie about something she saw. The Irish cook starts out with two maids, who suddenly vanish from mention, but still takes trays to Miss Carol and brings her endless cups of coffee. That woman ain't no cook, since the stove is an old coal range and speaking from experience, you turn your back on the fire in one of those babies and you ain't cookin' you's burnin'.
But I reserve my main snort of disgust for the romantic subplot that Rinehart, God bless her cotton socks, felt was crucial to a successful story. This has to be the most inept romance I've ever seen in all my days. The sleuth, a war hero recovering from his wounds sustained in about four battles if Rinehart's to be believed, is Major Dane, a well-born member of the pre-war FBI and now some sort of unspecified spook for the war effort. Carol sees him as trying to frame her brother one minute, trying to frame her sister the next, and then swoons into his arms with a "daaarrrling!" and a kiss. Dane, for his part, seems annoyed by her privileged cluelessness...yet he's supposed to be the grandson of a Senator and a scion himself. Which is it?
So why read this book, since there are so many flaws in it? Back in 1945, a series character wasn't strictly speaking necessary for a writer to get a mystery published, and Rinehart was America's Dame Agatha, so no hook there since this book has no repeat characters. I don't make any kind of a case for you to seek it out. But if one swims your way for some reason, and there's an afternoon you'd like to wile away with a complete read, this will not hurt you in the least. Won't fascinate you, and no one anywhere will make a case (unless I'm completely wrong about the subject) that the characters will haunt your dreams. Heck, they're already fuzzing out of my mental TV screen. But there is pleasure to be had in just relaxing with a perfectly okay book. No demands, no strings, won't change your life, just...nice.
Literary Afternoon Delight.
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LibraryThing member booksandscones
Carol Spencer is ordered by her autocratic mother to open the family summer home in Maine for a vacation retreat for Carol's brother Greg, a war hero who has been recalled to Washington for a brief leave to receive the Medal of Honour from the President. Carol is certain Greg will prefer their New
The partially burned body of an unknown young woman is discovered in an upstairs linen closet. A somewhat mysterious man, Jerry Dane, wounded in the war and recovering at a neighbour's vacant house, interests himself in the case, leading Carol to wonder exactly what his profession was prior to the entry of the US into the war.
There is some interesting detail about life at home during wartime: the shortage of men to do any work around the once-grand but now crumbling summer houses, no gas for the cars because of rationing, even the telephones taken out of private houses in case they are needed in some wartime office. I enjoyed these descriptions of life circa 1944 as much as the mystery. Once again, Mary Roberts Rinehart does not disappoint.
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York apartment or their sister Elinor's place in Newport, but Mrs. Spencer, a peevish, spoiled woman who fakes illness every time she doesn't get her own way, is adamant. Carol arrives in Maine exhausted, with her disapproving cook Maggie and two young women who are to be the household help. Even a family beggared by the Depression and constrained by wartime rationing tries to maintain their standards set in bygone years, hence the servants.The partially burned body of an unknown young woman is discovered in an upstairs linen closet. A somewhat mysterious man, Jerry Dane, wounded in the war and recovering at a neighbour's vacant house, interests himself in the case, leading Carol to wonder exactly what his profession was prior to the entry of the US into the war.
There is some interesting detail about life at home during wartime: the shortage of men to do any work around the once-grand but now crumbling summer houses, no gas for the cars because of rationing, even the telephones taken out of private houses in case they are needed in some wartime office. I enjoyed these descriptions of life circa 1944 as much as the mystery. Once again, Mary Roberts Rinehart does not disappoint.
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LibraryThing member Romonko
So many people have told me to read Mary Roberts Rinhart since I'm a Golden Age mystery fan. I just never seemed to get around to it, but I finally took the time. This book was published in 1945. Ms. Rinehart is an American author and she writes about American places. In this case the mystery is
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set in WWII Maine. So many of the Golden Age moments are in this book. The femme fatale, the hard-nosed blonde, the young ingenue, the dashing officer,the bumbling policeman, and a few old men and women and local characters too. There are lots of red herrings and tons of suspects when a partially burned body of a young female is found in a closed closet in a house in Maine that has been shut up for awhile. I liked the setting and of course the era. It was interesting to see that wartime imposed some hardships and restrictions on people at home just as it did in Europe. The mystery is tricky and a bit convoluted, but I did enjoy the book - so much so that I plan to read Ms. Rinehart's enite backlist in the coming months. I thought I'd plumbed the depths of the Golden Age authors, so it was refreshing to see that there are more still out there. Show Less
LibraryThing member victorianrose869
March 14, 1999
The Yellow Room
Mary Roberts Rinehart
It MRR would just lose the overly done detective angle of her stories, they would be perfect.
In this one, the premise is fabulous: Carol Spencer, a young woman with an overbearing mother (as in most of MRR’s stories, I’ve found – hmmmm) goes
MRR is too dark and violent to be considered “cozy”, I guess, but they’re still great stories.
The Yellow Room
Mary Roberts Rinehart
It MRR would just lose the overly done detective angle of her stories, they would be perfect.
In this one, the premise is fabulous: Carol Spencer, a young woman with an overbearing mother (as in most of MRR’s stories, I’ve found – hmmmm) goes
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to open up their house in Maine for the summer, and finds the burned body of another young woman in a linen closet. Who is she? Why was she in the Spencer house? Why had someone wanted to kill her and burn her?MRR is too dark and violent to be considered “cozy”, I guess, but they’re still great stories.
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LibraryThing member annbury
Wikipedia calls Mary Roberts Rinehart the inventor of the "Had I But Known" school of mystery fiction, and this is a classic exemplar. Written rather late in Ms. Rinehart's career (1945), it has all the classic ingredients -- a shuttered mansion, a beautiful girl, and an atmosphere of overriding
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DOOM. These novels are definitely of their period (or periods: her first novel came out in 1908 and her last in 1953), which is enjoyable and interesting in some ways -- but disturbing in others, given strong class prejudices. But the stories are engrossing. For those who like their damsels in distress, Ms. Rinehart is a prime source. Show Less
LibraryThing member JalenV
I haven't read The Yellow Room in years and wasn't sure I'd read it before until the finding of the body in the Spencers' linen closet at their summer home. The setting is World War II. Details of life for Americans back then are interesting. Sometimes one runs across old spellings, such as Tia
Carol Spencer is our heroine. She's still wearing her engagement ring even though her Don's plane was shot down over a year ago. Her mother is a demanding, selfish widow who refuses to economize. She's the one who demands that Crestview, that summer home in Bayside, Maine, be opened. She wants someplace cool for her son, Captain Gregory Spencer, to stay while he's on leave to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor -- not to mention get married to a beautiful redhead named Virginia. Carol knows her big brother would rather be in New York City or Newport, but Mrs. Spencer's mind is made up.
Carol's beautiful older sister, Elinor, married a filthy rich, though pompous, man named Howard Hilliard. Elinor is just as selfish as her mother. She's two years younger than Greg, the only person in the world she cares about besides herself. (Carol, eight years younger than Elinor, has always been the family afterthought.)
Aside from those rich persons who are members of Bayside's 'summer colony,' the Spencers aren't exactly liked. Greg is a boozer. Elinor is hoity toity. Only Carol is 'just folks'. (If Carol is such a good person, why hasn't she enlisted in the Wacs [Women's Army Corps], or the Waves [U.S. Army Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve)], or become a Nurse's Aide, or do some other volunteer work for the war effort? Her family won't let her. Back then, a well-bred young lady of good family rarely defied her family.
Luckily for Carol, she's managed to ditch her mother at the Hilliard mansion in Newport. Unluckily, one of the two new servant girls accompanying Carol and Maggie, the Spencers' faithful cook, finds that body in the linen closet. All of the phones in the house are missing, so Carol goes to the Chief of Police on foot. (Gasoline was rationed during WWII and the Spencers' cars at Crestview ran out of gas before they left last summer.)
The Yellow Room is in Crestview. There are signs it was occupied. It wouldn't have been Lucy Norton, the caretaker's wife. She was staying in the servants' wing while getting the house ready. There are good reasons why neither Lucy nor George Smith, last of the Spencers' gardners, are available when Carol got to the house. Carol has no idea who the corpse was, but can the same be true for the other Spencers?
Someone or someones has been going to considerable trouble to try to prevent the corpse from being identified. Pity for that someone that Major Jerry Dane and his man, Alex, are staying in Bayside while Jerry recovers from a war wound.
There are plenty of red herrings. I didn't remember them and got misled again. Was the wrong man arrested for murder? Some ugly secrets come out, but there are heroic and unselfish acts, too. All in all, this is a good classic cozy.
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Juana for Tijuana (assuming that's not a typo). As is usual for a Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery, the main characters are from the well-to-do set, even if the Spencers are what young Carol's friends call 'the new poor'.Carol Spencer is our heroine. She's still wearing her engagement ring even though her Don's plane was shot down over a year ago. Her mother is a demanding, selfish widow who refuses to economize. She's the one who demands that Crestview, that summer home in Bayside, Maine, be opened. She wants someplace cool for her son, Captain Gregory Spencer, to stay while he's on leave to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor -- not to mention get married to a beautiful redhead named Virginia. Carol knows her big brother would rather be in New York City or Newport, but Mrs. Spencer's mind is made up.
Carol's beautiful older sister, Elinor, married a filthy rich, though pompous, man named Howard Hilliard. Elinor is just as selfish as her mother. She's two years younger than Greg, the only person in the world she cares about besides herself. (Carol, eight years younger than Elinor, has always been the family afterthought.)
Aside from those rich persons who are members of Bayside's 'summer colony,' the Spencers aren't exactly liked. Greg is a boozer. Elinor is hoity toity. Only Carol is 'just folks'. (If Carol is such a good person, why hasn't she enlisted in the Wacs [Women's Army Corps], or the Waves [U.S. Army Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve)], or become a Nurse's Aide, or do some other volunteer work for the war effort? Her family won't let her. Back then, a well-bred young lady of good family rarely defied her family.
Luckily for Carol, she's managed to ditch her mother at the Hilliard mansion in Newport. Unluckily, one of the two new servant girls accompanying Carol and Maggie, the Spencers' faithful cook, finds that body in the linen closet. All of the phones in the house are missing, so Carol goes to the Chief of Police on foot. (Gasoline was rationed during WWII and the Spencers' cars at Crestview ran out of gas before they left last summer.)
The Yellow Room is in Crestview. There are signs it was occupied. It wouldn't have been Lucy Norton, the caretaker's wife. She was staying in the servants' wing while getting the house ready. There are good reasons why neither Lucy nor George Smith, last of the Spencers' gardners, are available when Carol got to the house. Carol has no idea who the corpse was, but can the same be true for the other Spencers?
Someone or someones has been going to considerable trouble to try to prevent the corpse from being identified. Pity for that someone that Major Jerry Dane and his man, Alex, are staying in Bayside while Jerry recovers from a war wound.
There are plenty of red herrings. I didn't remember them and got misled again. Was the wrong man arrested for murder? Some ugly secrets come out, but there are heroic and unselfish acts, too. All in all, this is a good classic cozy.
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LibraryThing member BookConcierge
Carol Spencer has just arrived at the family’s summer estate with two servants in tow. They are to open the house for the arrival of Carol’s brother Greg, a war hero who is on leave to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Of course rationing means that gasoline, sugar, electricity and
I’d never heard of this author before, but came across this novel and thought I’d give it a try. This really started off with a bang. I was engaged and interested in the murder and found most of the characters intriguing. But about half-way through I began to feel that Rinehart had made this unnecessarily complicated. There are so many suspects, so many secrets, so many crimes committed that it stretches credulity too far. The final explanation is far-fetched and unrealistic.
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phones are all in short supply, but their mother insists Greg would want to spend time at the Maine retreat. But before they can unpack they make a gristly discovery – the charred corpse of a young woman is found in the linen closet. I’d never heard of this author before, but came across this novel and thought I’d give it a try. This really started off with a bang. I was engaged and interested in the murder and found most of the characters intriguing. But about half-way through I began to feel that Rinehart had made this unnecessarily complicated. There are so many suspects, so many secrets, so many crimes committed that it stretches credulity too far. The final explanation is far-fetched and unrealistic.
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Language
Original publication date
1945
DDC/MDS
| Fic Mystery Rinehart |