At the Villa Rose

Written by A .E. W. Mason

Narrated by Geoffrey Giuliano and The Orb

Harry Wethermill, the brilliant young scientist, a graduate of Oxford and Munich, has made a fortune from his inventions, and is taking a vacation at Aix-les-Bains. There he meets, and immediately falls in love with, the young and beautiful Celia Harland, who serves as companion to the aging but warm-hearted Madam Dauvray of Paris. All this is observed by Julius Ricardo, a retired financier from the City of London, who spends every August at Aix, expecting there to find a pleasant and peaceful life. Imagine his consternation when he learns that Mme. Dauvray has been brutally murdered, and imagine Harry Wethermill's consternation when he learns that every finger of suspicion is pointed at the now vanished Celia Harland.

Implored to do so by Wethermill, Ricardo asks his friend Inspector Hanaud, the great detective of the Paris Sûreté (who is also vacationing in Aix) to involve himself in the case so that the truth may come out. Hanaud agrees to do so (with the permission of the Aix police, of course), and goes to work. Will he be up to the job? And will Harry Wethermill ultimately be glad that he called in the great man? We can only wait to find out. But surely Hanaud will exercise his powerful little grey cells – one of several characteristics he shares with a famous Belgian detective of later decades, and indeed some scholars of mystery stories suggest that Agatha Christie, in her invention of Hercule Poirot, owes a debt to Mason and his invention of Inspector Hanaud. And indeed Julius Ricardo has than a passing resemblance to Arthur Hastings, Poirot's sidekick, who is invariably a few confused steps behind the detective

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Audio Arts
• Release date: Dec 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887676289

A .E. W. Mason

A.E.W. Mason (1865-1948) was an English novelist, short story writer and politician. He was born in England and studied at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Oxford. As a young man he participated in many extracurricular activities including sports, acting and writing. He published his first novel, A Romance of Wastdale, in 1895 followed by better known works The Four Feathers (1902) and At The Villa Rose (1910). During his career, Mason published more than 20 books as well as plays, short stories and articles.

Reviews for At the Villa Rose

[philsyphe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After a rambling first chapter, I went on to really enjoy this novel, which proved engaging from Chapter 2 onwards. The plot is expertly devised and the characters all believable. The only bad thing is the author's overuse of "then" - arguably the laziest word in any writer's vocabulary - but the story itself makes up for this poor element of style.A book I would read again,this one.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable old-fashioned mystery, set in a French town near the Swiss border, is well-written and engaging, though overlong. First we see the crime through the eyes of a character who thinks he knows more than he does as he observes a famous French detective investigate a murder. Things are looking very bad for the girlfriend of a rich inventor. When this thread finishes, about three-quarters of the way through the book, we get to see the story from a whole different perspective that explains much of what was confusing the first time around. And the detective does some explaining as well. This is the first in the series, and I would definitely read more to see if they all use the same formula. The setting is very well done and there are some good scenes.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An old novel that hasn't aged particularly well. Rather a simplistic murder story sustained principally by the patina of glamour imparted by its venue (the casino and hotel of Aix les baines. Still, I certainly enjoyed revisiting this novel which I had frst read about 35 years ago.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At the Villa Rose is a mildly entertaining mystery that predates the Golden Age of detective fiction. It shows. The detective, Inspector Hanaud of the Paris Sûreté, solves the case just over halfway through the book. The last half of the book is an explanation of the crime. The mystery peaked too early and the explanation went on too long. While the mystery suffers in comparison with those of the next generation of detective novels, I still found its setting in Aix-les-Bains intriguing and its characters interesting. I'll read more in this series since I'm interested in the development of the genre, but it probably won't suit readers with a more contemporary taste.