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Fear Stalks the Village by Ethel Lina White, first published in 1932
The Brits love a good detective fiction story, which sparked the genre's huge vogue in the first half of the 20th century. Often set in a quaint village or country house, and usually centering on a murder(s), the juxtaposition of a charming setting and homicide provides the book's frisson.
Author Ethel Lina White makes that juxtaposition the center of her murder mystery tale in Fear Stalks the Village. She first sets up the "perfect" village, almost farcically so, as no village was ever this lovely, and then slowly destroys its equanimity through a series of poison pen letters.
From the town's titular head, the Squire, to its de facto social leader, a stern but kind wealthy widow, to the trusted doctor with his big brood, to the young companions hired by wealthy widows, to the quirky novelists and finally to its pleasant rector, all is good, at first, in the village.
With Tudor cottages, flower gardens, cobblestone streets, and bicycles or walking the main means of transportation, even in the 1930s, the town had a throwback charm. Its quaintness is further protected by not being on a branch line of Britain's extensive rail network.
Then "the letters" start arriving. First the village's avatar of morality receives one, which she destroys, but as news of its existence leaks out – there's always a servant or two who is less discreet than one might hope – the village is a bit disturbed.
The real trouble starts, though, when the novelist receives a letter and is later found dead, putatively of an accidental overdose of a sleeping potion...but could it have been suicide or even murder? After all, she left her estate to the doctor who prescribed the potion.
More letters arrive and, well, fear stalks the once pleasant village. Not that an outsider would notice as all appears normal, but the social life – the garden parties, the tea gatherings, even the informal get-togethers – slows or stops as trust erodes and suspicion spreads.
Things get so uncomfortable that the rector calls in his friend – another literary trope of the era – a wealthy amateur detective with a quirky personality but a whip-smart mind for seeing seemingly small but telling details and connecting, what to most people are, random dots.
The novel from here is all murder mystery investigation as the poison pen letters keep coming and more tragedy strikes, while the intrepid detective keeps probing in his affable but relentless fashion.
The "fun" is in watching the village spasm further as trust erodes and reputations falter. The fun is also watching the detective slowly work toward a solution as feints and obstacles are thrown in his path.
If you're at all familiar with the murder mystery/detective fiction genre from that era, all of this, including the resolution, are to be expected. What White does a bit differently is spend much of her time on atmosphere, which includes creating caricatures more than characters.
White's "perfect" village is an exaggeration of the quaint village of so many murder mysteries. It's all charm with stock characters – a kindly rector, a moral patron, a trusted doctor and an honest solicitor, among others – that one assumes she isn't trying to write them as real people.
Even when their secrets are exposed through the poison pen letters and the happy facades of their lives are shattered, they feel more like examples of stock characters being knocked about than real individuals responding in a real way.
When you step back, nothing really bad was brought down on the village other than a bunch of letters vaguely threatening exposure of embarrassing secrets in people's pasts, but the body count – mainly from suicides – pile up.
So what is White saying? In that era, in England, your reputation, your personal integrity, your "public" face meant almost everything. It's hard to appreciate in our "let all your hangups, problems and emotions out" modern times, how important your perceived rectitude was back then.
Most of the embarrassments – a decades-old nervous breakdown, an early in life divorce, a bit of a drinking problem, etc. – exposed in the poison pen letters seem like nothing, truly nothing, to us today. But in England of that era, they meant a lot to almost everyone.
White appears ahead of her times. She shows that most people have these embarrassments in their past, which begs the question, does it matter? Should we all be living in fear of exposure? Can we not be more forgiving of everyone's lapses and shortcomings?
White does this through contrivance, as no village was ever this perfect; no village was ever populated with such stock characters; and few plots were ever so obviously constructed. You are, clearly, not meant to take it seriously. It is not farce, but exaggeration for a purpose.
White, most famous for her novel The Wheel Spins, which was turned into the noted Alfred Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes, writes in an easy-to-read style that keeps you turning pages quickly.
In Fear Stalks the Village, she gives the public of the 1930s what it wants – a page-turner murder mystery in a quaint village – while subversively she asks that same 1930s public if it isn't too focused on appearances and too unforgiving of human failings?
