Narrated by Nicholas Boulton
The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is one of those books that defies categorisation. Part sci-fi/fantasy, part paranormal, part mystery, it’s what might have resulted had Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got drunk one night in company with Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett – slightly bonkers, devastatingly witty and wholly entertaining – and I was utterly captivated by all ten-and-a-half hours of it. Alexis Hall is a supremely talented wordsmith, and if I were to give examples of all the turns of phrase that had me grinning like an idiot – hand-curated whelks, anyone? – laughing out loud or simply marvelling at the elegance of the prose or the precision of the well-aimed barbs, I’d be here all day. So to spare you that, I’ll do my best to encapsulate this wonderfully weird story in a thousand words or thereabouts. (I can hear my esteemed editor now – “only a thousand? That’ll be the day!”)
The book is a queered homage to Sherlock Holmes in which our consulting detective is a pansexual sorceress who is every bit as mercurial, self-absorbed, obnoxiously confident and fiercely intelligent as the original, and our chronicler and Watson stand-in is a trans gay man from an ultra-conservative (one might say puritanical) society whose buttoned-up nature provides a stark contrast to his far more outrageous companion. When the story begins, Captain John Wyndham, recently demobbed after fighting in a war in another universe, has got a job as an alchemist at the hospital in the city of Khelathra-Ven and needs somewhere to live. He answers an advertisement:
Co-tenant required. Rent reasonable to the point of suspicion. Tolerance for blasphemies against nature an advantage. No laundry service. Apply S. Haas, 221b Martyrs Walk.
– and ends up as the house-mate of the audacious, drug-addled and brilliant sorceress, Ms. Shaharazad Haas.
Wyndham has been living at 221b for only a few weeks when Miss Eirene Viola, a former lover of Ms. Hass’, pays a call and asks for her help. The pair obviously had a tempestuous relationship and Miss Viola is a woman with a colourful past (to say the least!), which is being used to blackmail her into ending her engagement with Miss Cora Beck, a warden of the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers (to whom Shararazad usually refers dismissively as “the fishmonger”). With the appearance of the eponymous Mysterious Letter begins a rollicking adventure that sees our intrepid duo encountering sky-pirates, vampires, witches and shape-shifters as they search for the blackmailer, travelling through time and to far off lands, such the underwater city of Ven, the People’s Republic of Carcosa and the picturesque city of Vedunia, to name but a few.
This inventive romp is narrated by the very prim-and-proper Wyndham, whose dry asides and comments to his editor provide much of the humour in the novel as he struggles to relate a tale full of swearing, sexual situations and inappropriate behaviour without actually using any naughty words or putting to paper anything that may shock the tender sensibilities of his audience. He’s reserved, unfailingly polite and utterly endearing; frequently bewildered and sometimes a little out of his depth, he’s always completely up for whatever is thrown at him, proving himself to be braver and more resourceful than he ever thought he could be. And even though he’s completely taken aback by Shaharazad’s lifestyle, her larger-than-life personality and her lack of conventional morality, these two opposites forge a strong friendship that is going to last for over two decades.
The novel is episodic in nature as our two protagonists track down the five people on Ms. Haas’ list of potential blackmailers, each of them located in a different land or city. This necessitates a lot of worldbuilding, which could have perhaps come across as rather dry, but it works thanks to Wyndham’s wide-eyed, innocent attitude; he’s the listeners’ way in to these weird and whacky places and we accept what’s going on because he accepts it. And while there’s a lot of humour in the book – and eagle-eared listeners will note riffs on several other well-known fictional characters and stories, from Snow White to Cinderella to Dracula (Bram Stoker’s version) and Agatha Christie – there’s one particular episode late on that is distinctly unnerving and sent shivers down my spine.
I have only a couple of criticisms of the story. One is that it did get a little bit repetitive in places, and the other is that while I really loved the characters, they were sort of ‘static’ in that they don’t really change much over the course of the novel. That may be the case in Conan Doyle’s stories – and it’s problematic for me there, too – so may have been the author’s intention, but even so, I’d like have liked there to have been a little more emotional depth overall.
It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Nicholas Boulton, so The Affair of the Mysterious Letter was a wonderful reminder of how stupendously good a performer he is. The star turn is, of course, his portrayal of Wyndham, in which he captures every facet of the character perfectly through the adoption of a posh accent and the sort of clipped delivery favoured by those stiff-upper-lip types so often found in British films of the 1930s and 40s. There are quite a few secondary characters in the story, but each of them is voiced distinctly and appropriately, from the gruff but exasperated Second Augur Lawson – the myrmidon officer who arrests Wyndham a few times (and who, I suspect, may be a little bit sweet on him!) – to the brilliant (and hilarious) characterisation of the pompous literary critic Mr. Percy Lutrel, for which I am sure Mr. Boulton was channelling the late Brian Sewell, the well-known British art-critic. I’ve read reviews of the book in which readers have said that they found Wyndham’s frequent, “and here they said things modesty forbids me to relate” or word substitutions to be irritating or repetitive, but fortunately, the audio scores over print in that respect, because in Mr. Boulton’s extremely capable hands, Wyndham’s already engaging personality comes through even more strongly, making those pronouncements more bashful than overly prudish.
To sum up – The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is a unique listening experience and one I recommend highly. The narration is flawless, the writing is funny, vibrant and imaginative, and the whole thing is, quite simply, a rollicking good yarn.
Caz
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