SHOT WITH CRIMSON

As war clouds gather over England, mystery writer Josephine Tey heads out to Hollywood. It’s not far enough to keep the shadows of crimes old and new from darkening her view.

Though she knows that her lover, screenwriter Marta Fox, is working with Alfred Hitchcock on Rebecca, his first American film, Josephine is surprised to meet Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife and collaborator, aboard the Queen Mary. Surprised and not altogether pleased, since the experience of having Hitchcock film her novel A Shilling for Candles under the title Young and Innocent has left memories nearly as painful as Daphne du Maurier’s consternation at what Hitchcock did to Jamaica Inn. Her journey done, Josephine settles in with Marta just as her friend DCI Archie Penrose of London’s Metropolitan Police is handed a delicate case: the fatal shooting of Evelyn Young, the housekeeper at Milton Hall, the stately manse du Maurier used as the model for Manderley. Archie’s days are more closely linked to Josephine’s than either one initially recognizes, for James Bartholomew, a member of the special effects team on Hitchcock’s film, fled England after smothering Marion Plummer, a vengeful mother who’d just told him she’d driven his love, her son, Matthew, to suicide back in 1917 during du Maurier’s childhood visit to Milton Hall. Yes, there’s more, much more. Upson does her best to juggle different crimes, scandals, time periods, subplots, crime writers, and incidental episodes from walk-on roles for Bob Hope and Clark Gable to a serious case of poison ivy, but in the end her edifice, unlike the doomed Manderley, collapses under its own weight.

Too much of a good thing. Less, please.