I like a good mystery that is not what you expect. One that maybe turns the story, or the crime, or who you think is doing something they shouldn't in its head. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen with Celia Dale's A Spring of Love, which I just posted about recently. Just who is going to be the criminal? Who is doing misdeeds? I was thinking that Esther's recent acquaintance--a young man who is a traveling salesman was up to something. But now I am not so sure . . .
When Esther leaves for work each day, her Gran thinks--"I'm, on the loose"!
"She did not do very much with her freedom; she was too cautious and too old. She never wanted to get drunk or go up west or spend all her old age pension on cigarettes. But she was free in her mind, gleefully full of revolt; and even with her body she could revolt a little too, by wasting time or smoking too much or not doing the simple household jobs which Esther thought she did. She was off the leash, out of the eye of those blooming old Wilsons and could blooming well do what she liked till six o'clock and Esther's footsteps amd there she was again, a lonely old woman at the end of a lonely day, and Esther would get her supper."
"Gran's days were crammed will with idleness. She had not a moment to do anything but waste time. She read every line of the newspaper, even the sports pages, for she relished boxing (with those blooming great lovely men), was excited by the rivalry of football teams, and often put a shilling secretly on a horse with the newspaper-seller at the corner of the road. Only cricket failed to interest her; it was too slow and the men didn't show themselves off. Politics she never read at all."
Gran is quite something. Not the dainty little lady I thought she was on those first pages. I have not read any blurbs or reviews of this book, I want it all to unroll out in front of me. Now, maybe Gran is not going to like the idea of Esther possibly finding a significant other to take her away from her lovely idle days? Hmm.