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Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast where you’ll discover new mystery books and authors. I’m USA Today best selling mystery author, Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specializes in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies.
This episode is all about Poison at Pemberton Hall by Fran Smith. Poison at Pemberton Hall published in 2020 and is the first book in the Vita Carew series.

Blurb

Here’s the blurb.

1903. Bookish bespeckled Vita Carew longs to be left to her scientific studies. But to her chagrin, she cannot avoid the event of the season, a gala at Pemberton Hall. This glamorous concert and sumptuous dinner will mark the Pemberton Hall household’s return to side society after a run of misfortune. But disaster strikes as soon as the seafood is served. Vita can only offer first aid as elegant guests fall ill on all sides. When a death occurs, Vita must probe the dark secrets behind the country house’s elegant veneer to work out who is to blame.

Here’s the first line or first lines. The woman was in a hurry. Pausing at a corner to study a piece of paper, she turned into a side street before reaching a shadowy doorway.

Slightly ominous beginning there.

Setting and Characters

So for the setting, we are in England in 1903. We are near, some of the story takes place in Cambridge, but most of it takes place in this country home, near Cambridge called Pemberton Hall.

Quick side note on that. When I began, when I picked up this book, I thought perhaps it was a spin off, something related to Jane Austen because Pemberley and Pemberton are very similar, but it is not a spin off. It is completely its own story and not related to Jane Austen at all. Not that I was disappointed in that. I just was curious if there might be an allusion to that.

So Vita Carew, we’ve got our main character. She’s very smart. She’s, interested in science, and she is one of those characters that, I’m drawn to these women who are smart and interested in furthering whatever career that they’re interested in. And in 1903, she is interested in pursuing her studies and possibly pursuing something scientific. At this point, she doesn’t know yet what she wants to do, but, she is interested in learning and increasing her knowledge of scientific things.

So let’s talk about the characters. Now Vita Carew is our main character. She is very brainy. She’s, very interested in science, and she often follows along with her brother’s studies, That he’s older than her and he’s at Cambridge, and she often helps him with his studies, and I think that she’s actually smarter than he is. He’s kind of hanging on by his fingernails, and she actually knows a lot of the things that he is trying to learn. We also have, oh, and Vita has a very dry wit. She’s very funny. A lot of her asides and things that she comments on are very, very funny.

We also have aunt Louisa. She is, Vita is living with her right now in Cambridge. Aunt Louisa is an artist. She’s a widow, And she really has Vita’s best interest at heart. She wants to let her pursue the things that she’s interested in, but she also is providing sort of a guiding hand in helping her think about things that maybe Vita would not be interested in. For instance, her aunt advises her that she needs one really nice ball gown, And Vita’s, like, not interested at all, but her aunt kind of insists on this. So she’s helping her in these areas that Vita probably wouldn’t even think about if it weren’t for her aunt.

So when they go to Pemberton Hall, Vita interprets for a pair of German aunts who are there. They’re part of the party that came with an opera singer. And so we have the opera singer, the aunts, and a doctor who all came together. The doctor is also German. Doctor Zecker, he encourages Vita to pursue her interest in science. And then we have the son of the family there.

Themes and Tropes

So let’s talk about some of the themes in this. One of the themes is beauty, the value of beauty, and beauty versus brains. So Vida, she wears glasses, and she’s not really interested in being a beautiful woman or being admired by society, but she does see that if you are that way you have certain advantages, and so she spends some time thinking about beauty versus brains and what that means in her life and how she wants to behave in light of society’s view of beauty.

There’s also a theme of learning to believe in yourself, and Vita is very young, but she is coming into her own in this story and throughout this series.

And then there’s also the theme of education for women. And the difference between, it’s pointed out that the difference between England and Germany at this time, it was much more acceptable for women and more open for women to pursue degrees in education in Germany than it was in England. And Vita struggles to be able to achieve what she wants to. She has a much more difficult time than, say, her brother, even though she is more gifted in that area, naturally.

Some of the tropes for Poison at Pemberton Hall, We have the country house setting, which I always find interesting, and I’m always there for that. There’s an interesting range of suspects, after this poisoning happens, we have the musical son, the German opera singer, the invalid lord of the manor. We have the German aunt and the German doctor. We have the children who were there. Yeah. So this is the classic setup for A country house mystery when the death occurs there and you have this closed circle of suspects, everyone who’s there is a suspect.

And then we have Vita, who is trying to figure out what happened, and she is sort of the brainy girl sleuth, would be the trope I think associated most with her.

We also have the trope of the governess who is not really part of the family, not really part of the servant culture. She’s kind of a fish out of water and doesn’t really have a place that she belongs, so that’s explored a little bit in this book as well.

The Story Behind The Story

Some fun facts about this book is that the note at the end says the author based the book on Wimpole Hall, which is near where she lives.

Fran Smith, the author, her Amazon bio says that She lives in a quiet countryside in the quiet countryside near Cambridge, and she spends her time researching colorful colorful ways to murder Edwardians, which I totally understand that. Perfect pursuit for a mystery author.

In her author bio, she also mentions that she writes another series called Best Wishes Sister b, like the letter b, and she wrote it to entertain her husband as he recovered from a stroke. It started as a series of letters written on a crowded commuter train in the morning and posted home to encourage him to walk as far as far as the front doormat. So that’s the end of that quote about from her bio, and I just thought that was really sweet that, she began writing as a way to encourage her husband to keep moving after a stroke.

Recommendations

So some read-a-likes. If you enjoy female sleuths, be sure and check out A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons, and I talked about this, book this season. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. And then if you like and it also has a scientist, a woman pursuing, higher education in the 1920s. A little bit later time period than this book is set, but a lot of the challenges are still the same.

Then if you like Edwardian mysteries, I would suggest you look for Snobbery With Violence by MC Beaton. She is the same author who has written the, Hamish Macbeth series, as well as the Agatha Raisin series. But, the the series that begins with Snobbery with Violence, that is a historical set during Edwardian times.

If you want a, Colonial British mystery set, mystery set in the Edwardian times, but in one of the colonies, then I would recommend, Revenge in Rubies, which is set in Singapore, and I talked about that in season 2, episode 8, and I’ll have a link for that.

So my question is, do you have a favorite Edwardian Series or book that you like? You can let me know on Instagram. That is my profile there is just Sara Rosett. That’s no h on Sara and no e on Rosett, or you can leave a comment on the show notes for this episode, which will be at sararosett.com/pemberton. I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helps you discover a new author to try. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.