White Mischief All Over – Alice de Janze and Happy Valley

My forthcoming book Murder in Peking (Penguin, sometime this year) has been likened by some early readers as a sort of White Mischief in China. In a way it is – my story is January 1937 and the murder of the daughter of a former high ranking British Consul in China while the murder murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll was January 1941. Still both books are really about not just previously unsolved murders but also goldfish bowl  ex-patriot communities (Kenya’s Happy Valley/The Peking Legation Quarter)  where morals, laws and self discipline rather collapsed when faced with distance form the mother country, impending war, economic collapse and a feeling that barbarism was ascendant. I reread White Mischief recently and was even more struck by some overlaps – both murders led to swirling local rumour mills among the resident ex-pats and the locals, both led to the further airing of a whole range of embarrassing private behaviour and  criminal activities by otherwise seemingly law abiding citizens and both had strong sexual components with a little too much booze and dope lying around. Both were also investigated by ex-Scotland Yard coppers and, of course, both were ultimately not solved at the time though a new book (below) claims to solve the murder of the Earl of Erroll and my book….well, just wait. White Mischief of course became a great film – Murder in Peking…well, we’ll see.

Anyway this is all a bit of a plug but the point is that for anyone interested in that White Mischief milieu and those events there is a new biography out, Paul Spicer’s The Temptress, about one of the most intriguing and beautiful (though seriously unbalanced) characters in the whole saga – Alice de Janze. Her life is one of the most fascinating and destructive of that Bright Young generation after WW1 that swanned through London (though she was American originally) and the colonies. She was also stunningly beautiful and among all the women of that Happy Valley set (how, you often wonder were they capable of inspiring such lust and anger in men?) was the one you’d clearly hang for. As usual no full review but blurb below.

In Kenya’s ‘Happy Valley’ no one paid too much attention to the privileged colonial set as they farmed their estates, partied until dawn and indulged in extra-marital affairs. Not until Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was shot dead at the wheel of his Buick in the early hours of 24 January 1941. Some said the good-looking womaniser had it coming. He was a philanderer who could have had any number of enemies who wanted revenge. Ageing Jock Delves Broughton stood trial for Erroll’s murder but was acquitted and the mystery remained unsolved – until now. American heiress Alice de Janze had been conducting a clandestine affair with Joss for years. Married into French aristocracy, her stunning beauty was to prove a fatal lure to men of adventure. Previously tried by a French court for shooting one of her lovers, scandal followed her wherever she went. She arrived in Kenya as a newly married Countess in the 1920s, but by 1941 she had turned forty and the years of partying had taken their toll. Pushed aside by Erroll for younger lovers, Alice was thrown into desperation, resulting in Errol’s murder and her own tragic demise. The Temptress not only solves the mystery of Josslyn Hay’s murder with the utmost conviction – it eloquently paints a portrait of a volatile, captivating woman.