ISBN: 978-0-7123-5702-9
The story starts in 1887 when
Miriam Lea is alone in the world, living in a dingy boarding house in London and feeling very
much afraid that soon she will not be able to afford even that. Miriam was
dismissed from her post as a governess when it was discovered that she had
previously been on the stage and cannot find any alternative respectable
employment. In desperation, Miriam applies to be taken on by Mr Bazalgette's
detective agency and convinces them that an accomplished lady, able to speak
several foreign languages and to move in polite society is a desirable
commodity. '”I should have thought,” I remarked with emphasis, “a lady
would have been valuable from the first; I have understood that Scotland Yard
will pay any amount for ladies and gentlemen, they are so difficult to secure,
and still more difficult to keep!” I had not understood anything of the kind,
but it was a venture, and it told.'
Miriam's first assignment
is to discover the whereabouts of Jasper Vining, a fraudulent bank clerk.
Having identified her quarry, she pursues him through many European cities
because whenever she makes contact with him he moves on. Eventually she runs
him to earth in the diamond fields of South Africa. From the first Miriam
has desired to be successful in her mission and justify Mr Bazalgette's faith
in her, but as she spends more time with the fraudster, who is now calling
himself Jack Vane, she realises that she cares for him and must choose between
her honour and her love.
Mr Balzalgette's Agent is an extraordinary
book. It was published in 1888 and features the third-ever professional female
detective in crime fiction. The book never became widely popular and, some
years later, the author decided he disliked it and attempted to buy up all
copies of it and destroy them. Fortunately he failed and the British Library
published a reprint in 2013.
Miriam Lea is a charming,
lively and witty heroine and the whole book is written with a wry humour that
does not fully mask the desperation of a young Victorian woman without family,
friends or job to support her. Although ostensibly in a diary form, the voice
that comes through is that of Miriam Lea confiding directly to the reader.
I would recommend this as
a very enjoyable read and for any reader who is interested in the history of
crime fiction it is a delightful and intriguing slice of detective fiction, set
in the same year that the adventures of Sherlock Holmes first appeared.
------
Reviewer: Carol
Westron
Leonard Merrick was born as Leonard Miller in Belsize
Park,
After schooling at Brighton College, he studied to be a solicitor in Brighton and
studied law at Heidelberg. Subsequent to his father suffering a
financial loss he travelled to South Africa where he worked as an overseer in the Kimberley diamond mine, and in a solicitors office. After surviving a near-fatal case of
"camp fever, he returned to London
in the late 1880s and worked as an actor and actor-manager under the stage name
of Leonard Merrick. He legally changed his name to Leonard Merrick in 1892.
He later worked his experiences in South Africa and in the theater
into numerous works of fiction. Merrick's novels include Mr Bazalgette's
Agent (1888), a detective story; Violet Moses (1891), about a Jewish
financier and his troubled wife; The Worldlings (1900), a psychological
investigation of a crime; Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1903), the tale
of a disillusioned man who, at thirty- seven, sets out to pick up the romantic
threads of his younger life, it is "judged his most successful work"
George Orwell thought that this is because it is one of the few which is not
set against a background of poverty. Merrick died at the age of 75, in a
London nursing
home on 7 August 1939.
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