The Monarchs Are Flying

This is one of those mysteries that really isn’t much of a mystery at all. The reader knows the outcome almost from the beginning, and sure enough, the story moves inexorably to exactly that finish.

This is also one of those rare mysteries in which it’s for the most part okay that the conclusion is evident from the start — the puzzle isn’t uppermost here, character and development are.

The Monarchs are Flying is an entertaining, if slightly thin, read. Beautiful young wife returns to small home town to get away from big (bad) city / (hotshot) husband. She is murdered in a much less than hotshot motel. Television small-town-made-it-big personality, who has returned to the same home town, is arrested for the murder mostly — entirely —because the two women had been lesbian lovers and the town is so rednecked that “lesbian” almost automatically equals “murderer.” A long courtroom drama ensues, bringing Perry Mason to mind, and leads into the predicted ending in which all live ever after in the way the reader knew they would.

This kind of plot is not easy to make work. Monarchs almost succeeds. A little more substance to the people, the psychology, and the situations, and it would have made it. But some parts are just too simplistic. The homophobia is real and murderous; the implied victory over it is too easy, too fast, and too complete. Too bad the world just isn’t like that. The real killer comes apart in court in true Perry Mason style, and in true Perry Mason style, the tension which breaks him just doesn’t convince. The defendant’s parents, on the other hand, are beautifully drawn, though the book would have benefitted greatly had her father’s change of heart occurred on centre stage. The defendant herself, her shock at the murder and arrest, her response to being in jail, her inability to comprehend or do anything about the situation she finds herself in, is heartbreakingly real. And the defending lawyer is somebody we could all fall a little in love with.

In some ways the entire novel is a love letter. Marion Foster (aka Shirley Shea) has obviously written this plea for understanding from the heart, from a lifetime of knowing that good and decent people who are different have a harder time than other people and sometimes live in danger simply because they are different; from a knowledge of what is beautiful; and from a deeply felt need to communicate that we all have a place in this world and have things to give and learn from each other.

When is a mystery both more and less than a mystery? When it is also a love story simply told, and more appealing to the heart than to the Sherlockian impulses.