I’ve actually named this post for the author of the series because it feels too complicated to do anything else. Today I’m talking about Nancy Spain’s post-WW2 detective (well sort of) novels that feature Natasha DuVivien and Miriam Birdseye – particularly the four that have been republished by Virago in the last couple of years.
Written in the late 1940s and early 1950s the books follow a madcap theatrical duo who stumble across murders in the course of their (more or less) glamorous lives. Miriam is an actress and Natasha is a dancer and as I said in my BotW post about Death Goes on Skis it’s more about the satire and the black humour than it is about solving the actual mysteries. Depending on your reading tastes there’s a lot that she’s satirising here – school stories, mysteries set in theatres, etc. But there’s also a lot of hiding in plain sight queer representation that Nancy Spain snuck in there.
I think they’re going to divide opinion – I enjoyed them, but mum gave up on them I think because they were too much of a mishmash of mystery and also Evelyn Waugh-y satire. And your reaction to that sentence may determine whether these are going to work for you at all!
Virago have done reissues of but there are others in secondhand/collectible only that I haven’t read. You should be able to get hold of the Viragos in bookshops with a reasonable sized fiction section.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 