No, I’ve deduced that you didn’t do it, Yank. You didn’t do nuthin’.
Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop (2021) is a competent murder mystery involving an orphan heiress, Miss Willoughby, living in a pile who is occasionally called upon to solve mysteries. This particular mystery involves a possible supernatural link, and …
… It’s all bloody boring.
I enjoy murder mysteries, but, truth be told, they swarm the bookshelves like locusts. Why? Because they’re not that hard to write, presumably. A good murder mystery really needs something unusual: a neglected theme, a plot twist, something that intrigues the imagination. Agatha Christie mocked the British upper classes, bringing the ethereal creatures of society down to the same level as the barkeep who drunkenly married the wrong woman. Christie was so good at it that, if you weren’t British, you didn’t even realize it unless some college prof told you, or you lived to advanced years and thought about it.
Laurel Hamilton’s Anita Blake series centers around a detective dealing with murderous supernatural creatures with whom she has the occasional sexual attraction. Supernatural adds an interesting twist to the investigations, and the sexual attractions keep the readers coming back.
But Miss Willoughby just doesn’t bring any intriguing twists out to consider. Sure, there’s the supernatural possibilities, but they’re not really well-explored. The sniffing at the upper classes has already been done to death, so to speak. Picking out obscure clues? Mr Holmes has been there. Hey, why has this butler hung around? Oh, we’re not exploring that avenue, eh? Too bad, the lessons implicit could have been useful for informing the story.
In the end, it’s just dull and I fear the acting, as competent as it was, was not that enthralling. Perhaps for younger views – say, those less than forty – this would be a fine and even memorable movie. But it didn’t work for me.
