Goodbye, Ms. Chips

I always love Dorothy Cannell's books. It had the right ingredients for a mystery book. It also had some suprises. The characters were believeable, you felt that you had sometime in your life run into someone that resembled at least one or two of the characters. It was good.

Dorothy Cannell was born in England, and moved to the United States where she currently lives in Maine. The first Ellie Haskell book, The Thin Woman, was published in 1984. This is the twelfth in the series. Interior designer Ellie lives in a charming small English village, in a large house, with three adorable children and a wonderful husband, Ben, who is a chef and a writer of cookbooks. Her life is complicated by her wacky older housekeeper, Mrs. Malloy. The two of them have a reputation for solving the odd mystery. Old school chum Dorcas is sent to convince Ellie to return to her school, St. Roberta's, to solve the mystery of the silver lacrosse cup that goes missing before it has to be displayed at the big competition, where it will likely be given up to a better team. Ellie does not have many good memories of school, where she broke the games mistress's nose with a lacrosse ball. Ellie was horrible at sports. Ms. Chips, of the broken nose, is now retired and living nearby. She has inherited a lot of money and paid for a new gymnasium. When Ellie returns she finds several old school "chums" ensconced in the retreat cottage for Old Girls (alumni). Everyone suspects the students, primarily matron's nervy great niece Gillian, but Ellie enlists the help of her cousin's precocious daughter Ariel, and uncovers a malicious nasty reason of the rumors. When Ms. Chips is found dead at the bottom of some slippery rock steps, at first it is assumed it is an accident, but Ellie is not so sure. Is it one of the staff? One of the visiting Old Girls? And what or who is the "Grey Nun" that everyone keeps spying at night flitting around the ruins of the old rectory? Goodbye, Ms. Chips will enchant you with its re-creation of the small private girls' school atmosphere, and the occasionally poisonous relations of students and staff. Armchair Interviews says: A charming cozy mystery.

A word of warning: if you're looking for a cunning mystery novel full of plot twists and turns that keep you guessing till the very end, this isn't really the book for you. "Goodbye, Ms Chips" is an enjoyable, engrossing funny book -- but it really isn't the mystery read of the year. Ellie Haskell's good friend, Dorcas Critchley, wants Ellie to turn her detecting skills towards discovering who has stolen the sports cup from the trophy case in the assembly hall of Ellie's old school, St. Roberta's. The trouble is that Ellie would much rather not to return to the very place where she really blotted her copy book by committing an act of great cowardice. But Dorcas (and he headmistress, Mrs. Battle) are afraid that news of the theft will tarnish the school's reputation, and rather hope that Ellie will take on the case and discover who stole the cup before news of the cups becomes public knowledge. Unable to resist Dorcas' entreaties, Ellie soon finds herself back at St. Roberta's, going undercover and emersing herself in boarding school life, sifting through the rumours, trying to figure out of the theft is a case of a prank gone wrong or if something more dire is underfoot... Reading "Goodbye, Ms Chips" reminded me of all those English boarding school books I used to be addicted to as a child, Dorothy Haskell did a wonderful job of making this Ellie Haskell installment an entertaining and enjoyable salute to the genre. It is true that the "mystery" bit of this book took a while to get going, but the book was such a humorous and witty read that I didn't find that this was too much of a detraction. If I had any criticism of "Goodbye, Ms Chips" it was that it was not very well edited (and this is more a criticism of Ms Cannell's publishers than anything else), and that the ending was a little too rushed for my taste. "Goodbye, Ms Chips" may not be the mystery read of the year, but it certainly was a delightfully sharp and pleasurable read.