The Slave of Silence

While there's a lot of complicated business in this mystery, with plots and subplots, it's one of those annoying crime novels where everyone, from criminals to victims to police, behaves stupidly. At the outset, we have a young woman pushed into marrying a brutish man she despises, because he is rich, and her wastrel father insists. The marriage, he says, will save him from penury and prison. Five minutes after they say their I do's, the ceremony is stopped, uncompleted, when word comes that her father is dead. Is she free? She forces her unwanted groom to leave her alone, but everyone seems to consider that she's irretrievably wed to the scoundrel for life. The man she loves considers she's lost to him. An incomplete wedding, a coerced marriage, an unconsummated union ... it could surely have been annulled. Yet no one ever raises the concept. That just set the whole novel off on the wrong foot. Then throughout, the characters, good and bad, keep doing dumb and often quixotic things that get them in trouble. Nor is the title ever explained, and we don't get an explanation of why the "grey lady" dresses in grey and describes herself as the "Slave of Bond." I found it all very irritating.

Wow!
A great mystery with more twists and turns than a five-dollar roller-coaster ride. Some really great characters like the brave Barrington and the much-abused mysterious "Lady in Gray." The villian is one of a kind, and the plot is hard to follow at times, but when the end comes, the heroes win, the bad guys are destroyed and the handsome fellows win their lovely ladies. Some of the events are a little predictable, but I can't remember when I enjoyed a mystery story more. When it comes to writing a great story, Fred White makes A. C. Doyle look like a kid with building blocks. You'll love it!

Fred outdid himself with this one! All deception, all the time. The plot is very complex (I'm not going to say anything about it because it would spoil it), and it really kept me guessing and turning those pages. Try it, you'll like it.