Resumen
Resumen de La máscara de porcelana
Para quién es
Readers who enjoy a country house mystery with red herrings, a clever amateur sleuth, bumbling officials, and the sights of New York in the Prohibition years. Fans of puzzles solved by small physical clues will feel at home.
De qué trata este libro
The Porcelain Mask is a detective novel by John Jay Chichester, set on a grand estate beside the Hudson River in the years after the First World War. It follows one summer week at Greenacres, the home of the novelist Kirklan Gilmore, where a sudden marriage, a smudged letter and an unexpected guest pull a quiet household toward a murder.
The book gives you a classic puzzle with a lively cast. There is a loyal butler who reads detective stories, a country constable who loves speeding fines, a stepsister with a secret, and a newspaper reporter whose ears wiggle when he thinks. Small objects matter here, and the author lays them out in plain sight as the story moves from a quiet drive up a tree-lined driveway to a crowded coroner's hearing.
You will meet people who each hide something, and you will watch several clever guesses rise and fall. Everything you need to follow the case is here, so you can try to solve it alongside the reporter. Let us begin where the story begins, with a young woman coming home a day early and finding that her house, and her heart, have changed.
En este resumen
- 1Joan comes home to a changed houseFree
- 2A smudged letter frightens the new bride
- 3A room on Eighth Avenue holds her past
- 4A husband's trust begins to crack
- 5Sarbella arrives and recognizes the bride
- 6A fugitive crook flees to Greenacres
- 7A scream and a shot in the night
- 8A doctor, a constable and a reporter
- 9Small clues and a fingerprint on glass
- 10What the story is about and how it is told
Idea clave 1 de 10
Joan comes home to a changed house
The story opens with Joan Sheridan racing up the walnut-lined driveway of Greenacres in a rattling village taxi. She is twenty-one or twenty-two, and she has spent a little over a month in France with friends called the Sharps. She arrives a day early, eager to surprise everyone, and she greets the old butler Bates with his family nickname, Daddy Bates.
Bates already knows what she does not, and he cannot bring himself to say it. Upstairs, her mother, Mrs. Gilmore, tells her the news in halting pieces. Joan's stepbrother Kirklan, the novelist she has helped and cheered for years, has married. His bride is Helen Banton, a woman he met only a week before the wedding.
The second blow follows quickly. Helen has taken Joan's beloved bedroom, the one with the window seat that looks across the Tappan Zee to the Palisades. Joan's belongings have been moved to the east wing. Kirklan did it at his wife's demand, and he now sleeps in an adjoining room that had a doorway cut through the wall.
Joan hides her heartbreak, but she cries alone on the bed. She admits to herself that she loves Kirklan, and that she helped shape his successful novel Rogue's Paradise, even writing a line he now uses about marrying a girl and not a family tree. From her window she sees Helen crossing the lawn in white, bronze hair shining in the sun. Joan whispers that she hates her.
This opening sets the emotional ground for everything that follows. Mrs. Gilmore distrusts the new wife, who is silent about her family and bored with country life. The reader learns who lives in the house, who owns it, and who has reason to feel pushed aside, all before any crime is mentioned.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La máscara de porcelana
What is The Porcelain Mask about?
It is a detective novel about a murder at Greenacres, a Hudson Valley estate. A novelist's bride of three weeks is found shot, and a village constable, a New York detective and a reporter each try to find the killer.
Who is Wiggly Price in The Porcelain Mask?
Jimmy Price is a New York newspaper reporter nicknamed Wiggly because his ears move when he is excited or thinking. He reaches Greenacres through a tip and follows small clues that the police dismiss.
What is the porcelain mask in the title?
The title points to something worn to hide the real face of events. The book sets up that image through a black pottery vase found broken in the murder room, and the characters talk about it near the end.
When is The Porcelain Mask set and is it a true story?
It is fiction set in the Prohibition era, with Hudson River estates, New York rooming houses and police methods of the time. The people and the crime are invented, though the settings are real places.
Is The Porcelain Mask a quick, easy read?
Yes, the short chapters, brisk dialogue and humorous side characters make it easy to follow. Clues are laid out clearly, so you can guess along with the reporter and enjoy each turn of the case.