Can't remember it very well. Want to re-read soon!

Miss Silver at her most Mary Stewart-est, even though she came first.

A strong contender for a solid country house murder of a woman many others despise. By this time in the series, Wentworth has really improved her writing style. The story has more action and less recap; Miss Silver is established as well as Inspector Randal March (and the two work together very well in this book); and the mystery itself is much tighter with a lot of suspects for the reader to consider, as well as some good red herrings.

On her twenty-first birthday Laura Fane comes into her inheritance, a manor house which her relative who is renting wants to buy. Despite her better sense she allows herself to be convinced to visit for the weekend with other new friends. It is past and current relationships that complicate her visit to an aunt she's never met, and things grow more tangled when one of the guests is murdered.

Laura is a typical Wentworth heroine: a lovely young girl who blushes at the drop of a hat. She's quickly paired with a RAF lover with a very fast courtship. By the end of the story we are left hanging on some things:

Spoiler

Will she sell the house to her aunt? Probably yes. Will boyfriend get his eyesight back? Because of True Love, probably yes.

Personally I would have preferred the boyfriend loudly proclaim at

Spoiler

dinner that he and Tanis were never engaged and after she declined his offer of marriage, he sought love elsewhere.

A bold move would have scotched all the bro-ha-ha about him and Laura but no one in a Wentworth book does anything logical.

World War 2 has started and the war is addressed in the story with a light touch (it is not the main thrust of the story).

NOTE: Some of the books with this title have the wrong description. Be sure you are looking at this edition with this cover for an accurate description.

This has to be one of my favorite of the Miss Silver series. I was caught up within the first few pages.

The Chinese Shawl is the story of Laura Fane, who is just coming of age and into her inheritance. There is an old house, some spinster cousins, and an alluring cousin, Tanis Lyle, waiting for her at the end of that road. Tanis is irresistible to men, but casts them off without anthough when she tires of them. During a weekend house party, Tanis is murdered, and Laura is a main suspect. Fortunately Miss Silver is there to sort it all out.

The atmosphere in this novel is overwhelming. There is a real creepiness and claustrophobia to the house and to its inmates. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, and there were more than a few occasions where I felt a palpable fear and nervousness.

I always enjoy Miss Silver mysteries. She is the next best after Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Miss Silver is an ex-governess turned private detective, with a penchant for quoting Tennyson, knitting, coughs that speak volumes, and a strong understanding of human nature. She’s a pleasure to read about, because she’s just quietly brilliant.

There were parts of this novel that were predictable for me, but that doesn’t take away from it in the slightest. It will still engaging, still frightening, and a perfect book to curl up with and have a cup of tea. It’s what cozy mysteries should be.

Was reading another book, but after a few personal events this week, found the family drama of that book too intense, so picked up this.

There is family drama here, too - but family drama of the English countryside circa World War II, and not anything that comes close to my own reality. So it reads quite light and airy.

Playgirl and wanna be film star Tanis Lyle is found dead, and a chinese shawl owned by her cousin Laura Fane is missing. Does the missing shawl implicate Laura in Tanis' murder? Will Laura sell the Priory to her cousin, Agnes Fane, after all the old drama of Agnes' broken engagement with Laura's father Oliver, who ran off with Lillian, after which Agnes rode her horse into a ravine and emerged paralyzed? Is one of Tanis' many male admirers to blame for her death?

Miss Silver is already on the scene, having been invited by her old school friend Lucy Adams (Agnes' poor cousin and companion), and hired by Agnes to investigate some petty theft in the household.

As always, order is restored at the end, after two deaths and nearly a third ...