Violet Hill – Henrietta McKervey
There are two detective stories in Henrietta McKervey’s Violet Hill , both in and around the same locations but set 100 years apart. The obvious question you will be looking an answers to – aside from the solving of both mysteries – is what do the two stories have in common and what is the purpose in bringing them together; is it just to contrast police investigation methods and what the respective cases tell us about the society they are set in or is there some other purpose? There’s also a little bit of a supernatural element brought into proceedings in Violet Hill and some connections that seem a little forced, but it’s not so much to suggest that there are some mystical forces at work as much as add a layer of historical perspective onto proceedings that we wouldn’t normally consider. One of the investigations, which you might think is at least the main case in terms of precedence (and title, of course), takes place in late 1918 and early 1919 in London. Rather unusually for this ...