IN BRIEF: A Silver Spade - Louisa Revell

Julia Tyler is reluctant to accept the job as teacher of Latin at Camp Pirate Island in Maine. She’s been approached by the camp’s founder and owner, Mrs. Turner, to fill in for the previous Latin teacher who’s unexpectedly up and quit. Was it the exceptionally intelligent girl, one with an IQ of 140, that scared away the teacher? No, it was the rash of strange anonymous letters with hints of violence that sent her packing. Anonymous letters? Julia asks for more details and once she has been filled in she can’t pack quickly enough and find the first plane from Virginia to Maine. Retirement can wait. Her inner detective smells a mystery that needs to be solved. A Silver Spade (1950) is Julia's third adventure and perhaps the most satisfying of the entire series.

The title takes as its inspiration a song lyric. In the setting of the summer camp Revell indulges us with frequent scenes in which the girls let loose in a rousing chorus of a campfire song. One of these songs is adapted from a blues tune with a variety of lyric alterations. Julia Tyler hears the words “You can dig my grave with a silver spade/Cause I ain’t gonna be here no longer” and is chilled to the bone. The melody is quite pretty but the macabre lyrics and sentiment leave a lot to be desired and will foreshadow the deadly events to come. Digging has indeed been going on in secret at night

Accusations of Nazi sympathies, covert nighttime activities that suggest espionage, a member of the staff who was a member of the French resistance -- all play a part in the exciting plot. No one is spared scrutiny, no one is ever considered off limits. At one point a group of girls are considered as having committed murder. This is the kind of mystery novel I truly enjoy and the kind that is all too rare.

As I chronologically work my way through the Julia Tyler detective novels by Louisa Revell I find that each book improves upon the previous one. By the time I got to this third title I found the one that I will heartily recommend if you are interested in reading this writer. Everything about it surpasses the previous two. From the highly unusual setting of an academic summer camp for girls to the exciting finale reminiscent of a Christianna Brand novel. As in most of Brand's mysteries, and sometimes Ellery Queen, several suspects are accused of being the culprit until someone who played an exceedingly minor role in the book reveals all in a solution that makes such perfect sense it should have been obvious from the start to any astute reader.