Category Archives: Taylor, Elizabeth

Throwback Thursday: 7.10.25

I thought it would be fun to start using a theme or key word to select books for my Throwback Thursday posts. This week, the theme is the miss and mrs. of it all!

I’ve read a lot of books with Miss or Mrs. in the title, and I’ve already reviewed several of them. But here are a few that I hadn’t yet reviewed:

Miss PinkertonMiss Pinkerton
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Rating: ★★★½
Series: Hilda Adams #1
Publication Date: May 1, 1932
Genre: crime, mystery
Pages: 264
ReRead?: No
Project: American mystery classics, throwback thursday

Miss Adams is a nurse, not a detective—at least, not technically speaking. But while working as a nurse, one does have the opportunity to see things police can’t see and an observant set of eyes can be quite an asset when crimes happen behind closed doors. Sometimes Detective Inspector Patton rings Miss Adams when he needs an agent on the inside. And when he does, he calls her “Miss Pinkerton” after the famous detective agency.

Everyone involved seems to agree that mild-mannered Herbert Wynne wasn’t the type to commit suicide but, after he is found shot dead, with the only other possible killer being his ailing, bedridden aunt, no other explanation makes sense. Now the elderly woman is left without a caretaker and Patton sees the perfect opportunity to employ Miss Pinkerton’s abilities. But when she arrives at the isolated country mansion to ply her trade, she soon finds more intrigue than anyone outside could have imagined and—when she realizes a killer is on the loose—more terror as well.


I read Miss Pinkerton back in 2022, when I checked a few of the American Mystery Classics out of my public library. Miss Pinkerton is the first installment in a short series of books using the same character, Hilda Adams, who is a nurse with a penchant for a bit of light detecting on the side.

I liked this book fine, but many of the details are lost to the sands of time. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the Rinehart mystery I just finished, The Wall.

Mrs. Palfrey at the ClaremontMrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
by Elizabeth Taylor
Publication Date: January 1, 1931
Genre: fiction
Pages: 232
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of women

On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs. Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies—boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs. Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship with Ludo, a handsome young writer, and learns that even the old can fall in love.


I read this one in March, 2020, and I loved it. It’s my favorite Elizabeth Taylor so far – I’ve read three others: A Game of Hide and Seek, A View of the Harbour, and Sleeping Beauty. It’s a poignant and melancholy book about aging and about being forgotten by your family and society in general.

Elizabeth Taylor is an interesting author, because all of her books seem to share a rather flinty outlook on humanity, but it’s wrapped in clear and beautiful writing. She’s one of those authors who can be read and reread endlessly, because she excavates humanity with an unerring and perceptive eye.

Mrs. McGinty's DeadMrs. McGinty's Dead
by Agatha Christie
Series: Hercule Poirot #32
Publication Date: February 1, 1952
Genre: mystery: silver age (1950-1979)
Pages: 261
ReRead?: Yes
Project: 2024 read my hoard

In Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, one of Agatha Christie’s most ingenious mysteries, the intrepid Hercule Poirot must look into the case of a brutally murdered landlady.

Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn’t seem like a murderer.

Could the answer lie in an article clipped from a newspaper two days before the death? With a desperate killer still free, Hercule Poirot will have to stay alive long enough to find out. . .


Agatha Christie wrote 66 full length mystery novels, 33 of them featuring her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Mrs. McGinty is towards the end of the list, and it is hilariously clear from the book, and from her stand-in character, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, that Agatha has grown rather tired of him.

“How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic manerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something—and people seem to like it—and then you go on—and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony, gangling, vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.”

The first time I read this mystery, I confess that I didn’t think much of it and was rather bored. It improved in rereads and while it’s never going to be a favorite, I find it very amusing.

In addition to these three, I’ve read & reviewed several other books with “Miss” or “Mrs.” in the title:

The Sleeping Beauty by Elizabeth Taylor

The Sleeping BeautyThe Sleeping Beauty
by Elizabeth Taylor
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1953
Genre: fiction
Pages: 226
ReRead?: No
Project: 2025 read my hoard, a century of women

A subtle love story by one of the most accomplished writers of the 20th century

Vinny Tumulty is a quiet, sensible man. When he goes to stay at a seaside town, his task is to comfort a bereaved friend. Vinny is prepared for a solemn few days of tears and consolation. But on the evening of his arrival, he looks out of the window at the sunset and catches sight of a mysterious, romantic figure: a beautiful woman walking by the seashore. Before the week is over Vinny has fallen in love, completely and utterly, for the first time in his middle-aged life. Emily, though, is a sleeping beauty, her secluded life hiding bitter secrets from the past.


This was my third book by Elizabeth Taylor (the mid-century British author, not the movie star) – I’ve previously read Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (March, 2020) and A Game of Hide and Seek (January, 2019). Elizabeth Taylor makes me think of a slightly more acerbic version of Barbara Pym. There is definitely some acid there, but it is carefully masked.

In August, 2020, I noticed that Virago had issued kindle versions of Taylor’s novels, and that they were very reasonably priced. I thought it was probably a sale price, so I bought 7 of them: The Sleeping Beauty, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (I already owned the paperback, but what the heck, the kindle version was less than a cup of coffee), Blaming, A Wreath of Roses, At Mrs. Lippencotes, In a Summer Season and the Collected Short Stories. The prices don’t seem to have gone up since then, but I’m not sorry I grabbed them, and intend to read them all.

I have liked all three of the novels that I have read so far, and would really struggle to rank them. Elizabeth Taylor excels at characterization, and I always feel as if I really know her characters by the time I close the book. I’m rooting for all of them – even the ones that I didn’t really like (well, hello there Isabella), the ones who do stupid shit (good morning, Vinny), but especially the ones who really seem to deserve to find some happiness (Emily, Laurence, how are you?).

Like Barbara Pym, she seems to write very quiet plots, without much in the way of action. In spite of that, though, her books move forward in a compelling way. No one would call an Elizabeth Taylor novel propulsive, but, honestly, that’s one of the things I like most about mid-century women’s fiction. There is some tension in this book, but it’s a quiet sort of tension – no murder, no mayhem, no car chases. Still, the stakes are high, and, by the end, I was fully committed to these characters.