4.5*

One of the best Miss Silver mysteries! The plot has several twists and though convoluted is never confused. My only complaint is that Miss Silver herself is in it so little. ( )

One of the best Miss Silver mysteries! The plot has several twists and though convoluted is never confused. My only complaint is that Miss Silver herself is in it so little. ( )

The man everyone calls William Smith knows nothing about his life before he woke up in a German hospital in 1942, with a British army ID tag in that name around his neck. His memory of everything that came before has vanished. When he's released from a POW camp at the end of the war he returns to England and travels to the village that was home to the real William Smith, only to have everyone there tell him he's not their William. He winds up in London making whimsical wooden animals for a toy shop. It's there that he meets and falls in love at first sight with Katharine Eversley, who is likewise smitten. The only thing marring their happiness in each other is William's inability to remember his real identity, and the vexing fact that someone keeps trying to kill him. Are those two things related, and will William and Katharine figure out the truth before the killer succeeds in his quest?

Wentworth did the whole "missing person turns up alive after the fog of war" bit in an earlier book, but it's rendered much more plausibly here, with a solution whose entirety is not nearly as obvious as it was in the previous tale. The characters are for the most part eminently likable, and the villains suitably villainous.

Oh! And Miss Silver is here, too, and a good thing since this is a billed as "A Miss Silver Mystery". As usual, Wentworth takes her time introducing her mousy little governess-turned-detective, but once she's on the case the solution isn't far away. More prominent is Detective Inspector Frank Abbott, who we've met in previous cases. His role here is the one thing that strained credulity just a bit. Still, it's nothing that brisk mental shake and a cuppa couldn't dislodge, so no real quibbles from me. ( )

William Smith has amnesia. He knows that before the war he had a different name but he was in a POW camp in Germany and when he was released they gave him papers saying he was William Smith. He returns to England and goes to the village where William Smith came from and the villagers tell him that he's not there William Smith. He was in a camp with another Brit who didn't survive it and goes to see his father, who has a toy shop but has fallen on hard times but he offers William a job and a room above the toy shop that the man owns. William is artistic and starts carving wooding toys and painting them and before long the business is picking up. He suggests going to see the manufacturers of toys but they tell William they're not interested. Later that night the toy shop owner is attacked in the street. When he's released from the hospital he goes to his sister's house and William visits him there and the owner tells him to hire someone to help in the shop. When leaving the house William is assaulted and pushed into the traffic where a man grabs him and saves him. A cop on the street sees this and goes running after the attacker but loses him in the rain and fog. He goes back to William and recognizes him and calls him Bill. He doesn't remember his last name because they had met before the war at a party and William was with a pretty girl wearing a gold dress. He didn't remember her name. It goes on . . . more attacks, a girl enters the shop, William starts having dreams about a house that he thinks is from his past.. ( )

A pleasant, most cozy mystery. I wouldn't call it the most gripping mystery ever, but comforting to read. I enjoyed following the main characters and what happens to them.

This is the first Miss Silver mystery I've read. Miss Silver is a Miss Marple copy and not as memorable, so in that aspect, I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps she has a more distinct character or presence in the other books. ( )