[LISTENED TO: August 22, 2015] The Case of the Missing Moonstone
I was immediately attracted to this book because of the title of the series. What an intriguing idea. When we started listening to it, I was even more excited because of how Stratford has taken reality and tinkered with it to make this intriguing mystery.
The preface explains exactly what Stratford is up to:
This is a made-up story about two very real girls: Ada Byron, who has been called the world’s first computer programmer, and Mary Shelley, the world’s first science-fiction author. Ada and Mary didn’t really know one another, nor did they have a detective agency together. Mary and Ada were eighteen years apart in age, not three, as they are in the world of Wollstonecraft.
Setting that aside, the characters themselves are as true to history as we are able to tell. At the end of the book, there are notes that reveal more about what happened to each of them in real life, so that you can enjoy the history as much as I hope you’ll enjoy the story. Because the history bit is brilliant.
The plot is a mystery, of course, but it takes a long time to actually get to the mystery (long into the second of three audio discs). Because the beginning of the book does an excellent job of establishing character and setting. It even feels like it may have been written in the time period in which it is set–the prose is kind of leisurely and very British (or at least that is how it is read by Nicola Barber, whose voice is simply perfect for this story). So even though there was no actual mystery I really enjoyed these opening chapters.
As the story opens we meet young Ada. She is obviously brilliant–reading books at a young age, creating fascinating science experiments (she is trying to imagine how fast a sock would have to fly for it to hurt someone and imagines inventing a sock cannon) and hanging out in the gondola of a hot-air balloon (which is tethered to her house). But she has no real connection to the world and doesn’t even know the names of her maids and servants (thinking the woman who just left to get married was called Miss Coverlet). In fact there are some hilarious malaprops later in the book. Her father (Lord Byron) is long gone and her mother is away. So her mother has hired a tutor to look after Ada.
The tutor is Percy Bysshe Sh, uh Snagsby. Ada refuses him immediately and wants nothing to do with him. But he will not go away. As soon as she sees his monogram, she starts calling him “peebs” (and hearing Barber say that is very funny). Ada ignores Peebs as best she can and ultimately tries to imagine a Peebs cannon.
After several chapters, we meet Mary. Unlike Ada, Mary is not gentry, she is just a girl. And she has been sent to Ada’s house to be tutored by Peebs. Mary is excited to learn because if she is removed from the house she will be sent away. Mary is quite normal, and knows all of the ways of society (what girls can and shouldn’t do). Her mother is Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote Vindication on the Rights of Women (and hence gives name to their detective agency), so young Mary is aware of what young women could accomplish if they were allowed.
The girls become friends (Ada doesn’t really have any friends) and Mary learns to interpret Ada’s peculiar behavior. And then one day Peebs gives Ada a newspaper. She was unaware of them, having gained all of her knowledge from books. She is fascinated by the premise of a daily piece of information. And then she begins reading about criminals. She figures that the not clever criminals are the ones in the paper, whereas the really clever ones are not ever caught. So she would like to catch them. Hence, the detective agency.
Of course two girls can’t start s detective agency–they can’t even put an ad in the paper by themselves. That’s where Mary’s acquaintance Charles comes in. Charles is a boy who works at a boot polish factory. He gets free rides to and from work because he teaches the carriage driver how to read (and he pretends he isn’t there). It is a funny moment when Mary meets him for the first time and he says he isn’t there–but it becomes a good recurring joke. Charles is well read and game for anything. And he is happy to help out a friend in need.
And soon enough they have a mystery. Rebecca is a woman who has just turned 16. She is to be engaged. And for her 16th birthday her father gave her a golden acorn. The story of the acorn is that her father and his friend were in Turkey and they came home with this valuable article. But on the night Rebecca was to receive it, it was stolen–right from her room.
Rebecca’s maid confessed, but Rebecca doesn’t believe for a second that she stole it. But who else could it be? That’s when Ada and Mary (on a school project–a hilarious anachronism since the two don’t even go to school), conduct an investigation. And they have come down to a few suspects. Rebecca herself, Rebecca’s mother, who is a bit of a cold fish (although Ada doesn’t notice that), Rebecca’s fiance (who would stand to inherit it anyway), Mr Abernathy, (a very rich man), or perhaps it has something to do with the three men in red fezzes who are following them around.
Ada uses her dispassionate brain to figure things out and Mary uses her awareness of people and her appreciation of society to nudge Ada in the right direction. And of course, Peebs comes around eventually to help as well. For it turns out that Peebs has a secret of his own (and not just that his name isn’t Snagsby).
Ada and Mary go to prison (in a humorous scene), they take a crazy omnibus unchaperoned, and they fly a hot air balloon. It’s quite exciting (even if the end section in the hot air balloon feels a little tacked on, like, oh no I forgot to do something with that hot air balloon, but the mystery has been solved already). But the mystery is clever (and involves mesmerism) and the action is quite exciting. But I think most fun of all was all of the little details that were thrown in for adults (or kids) who know things about Mary and Ada and even Charles (the little dickens).
I really enjoyed this audio book a lot. I know a lot of my enjoyment came from Barber’s reading (her saying CLAN-des-tiine) was excellent, But everything about the writing was fantastic–the humor, the retorts, the malaprops. It was a package of fun. I’m really looking forward to the next book.
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