Elizabeth Wilson, The Twilight Hour

The Twilight Hour

Elizabeth Wilson

Serpent's Tail, May 2007, $14.95

ISBN: 185242477X

In 1947, in a freezing, still-bombed-out London, Dinah Wentworth finds the corpse of surrealist painter Titus Mavor. Not wanting to reveal any reasons for being at the Mayor's apartment and heeding advice, she fails to inform the cops.

Not long afterward, the police arrest family friend and film-making business partner Colin Harris, who had a vitriolic public shouting match with the deceased over the immediate future of England. Dinah knows Colin is innocent, a victim of circumstantial evidence compounded by his being a Communist as the Cold War begins to heat up. Over the objection of her husband Alan, who tells her the film partnership was over before Harris' arrest so they owe him nothing; Dinah needs to prove the innocence of Colin as she believes someone is filling in the blanks to finish framing him for the murder.

The amateur sleuth tale is well-written, but takes a backseat to the period piece as London, still recovering from the bombings, suffers through a freezing winter as the Cold War begins. Dinah is a fascinating character as she wants the freedom men have, but besides her spouse and the males who dominate the fledgling English film industry keeping her down, her own limitations also hold her back as she accepts as gospel those limitations because she is a female. We've come a long way. Fans of historical tales with a mystery subplot will appreciate THE TWILIGHT HOUR moreso than pure whodunit buffs as the incredibly vivid look at the era (readers will shiver with the cold) supersedes the solid investigative subplot.

Harriet Klausner