In the midst of World War II, Lord Erroll was murdered in Kenya. His circle of wealthy aristocratic friends closed ranks - and as a notorious womanizer (among other character flaws) - there was no shortage of suspects who might have wanted Erroll dead. Still, police closed in pretty quickly on Sir Jock Delves Broughton, whose young wife was Erroll's latest conquest. In fact, she planned to run off with him. He was arrested, tried, and ultimately found not guilty - yet the question lingered, did he do it and, if not, then who did?
In somewhat the same way as Donnie Eichar became interested and then obsessed in the mystery of who or what killed a party of Russian hikers in the 1950s, so James Fox became obsessed by who killed Lord Erroll in 1941. He worked on the case from 1969 to 1984, when he published White Mischief, and there is no reason to believe he has got it wrong.
More interesting than the death of Lord Erroll is the colonial life in Kenya. The overwhelming majority of the expats succumbed to the "Three A's": alcohol, altitude, and adultery. It is a life not unlike the one described by Lady Pamela Hicks in, My Life As a Mountbatten, in which she recounts her parents' lovers who lived with the family at various times, or the very unhappy Porchey and Catherine Carnarvon. (In fact, Porchey makes an appearance or two in White Mischief, and years later Fox visits Highclere Castle to learn what the Carnarvons make of it all. It's a bit surreal to read descriptions of the rooms I've come to know so well from the set of Downton Abbey!)
Ultimately, my verdict is that White Mischief is interesting for its examination of the colonial ruling class in Kenya, particularly in the midst of a world war. Fox does the field of journalism proud in his dogged pursuit of the aged and far-flung protagonists as he pieces this back together decades after the fact. Still, I wouldn't put this in the must-read category.
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