Piquant character portraits from Gladys Mitchell

[cimorene]

• "[a] graceful, sad-eyed youth wearing a distressing pin-striped suit of navy-blue and a fancy hat like a fringed lampshade"



• "a dumpling of a woman with intelligent eyes, a fighter’s nose and a good humoured mouth which, however, could betray rat-trap determination when occasion called for it"



• "a florid man of fifty-five with the fleshy, petulant face of an eighteenth-century landowner and somewhat shifty grey eyes"



• "a rangy, long-legged woman with a sheep’s face, sleepy eyes, a voice with a down-dropping cadence, and large, cricketer’s hands. She wore ancient tweeds with a woollen jumper, and her preoccupation was essentially with her own troubles."



• "of medium height, a thin, long-nosed, thirteenth-century caricature, with humour, intolerance, weakness and pride inextricably woven into the fabric, as it were, of her face. She had reddish hair almost gone grey, an athletic body, and the short, thick fingers and obstinate thumbs of the artist."

Comments

[fairestcat]

Those are all remarkably delightful. I can visualize every one.

[viggorlijah]

Those are excellent portrait sketches like serious wodehouse

[cimorene]

There is a slight reminiscence of Wodehouse! Gladys Mitchell is more occasionally and quirkily amusing, like the occasional little bar or two of melody, and not the exquisitely-timed symphony of hilarity in Wodehouse. But she was a big Wodehouse fan and there are lots of explicit references and tributes.