Dorothy Halliday Dunnett (1923-2001) was a Scottish author and portrait painter, known to readers mostly for her historical sagas about a 16th century Scottish lord and a 15th century European financier. A website about her run by a former chair of the Dorothy Dunnett Society who is also the former IT administrator of an Edinburgh bookstore with which Dunnett maintained a strong relationship mentions her mysteries only in passing. It is a good source for details about Dunnett, however, as is the Dorothy Dunnett Society website. See these pages: http://www.dorothydunnett.co.uk/ and https://dunnettcentral.org/.
The first few mysteries were initially published under her maiden name Dorothy Halliday. The protagonist is Johnson Johnson, a well-known portrait painter and owner of a yacht named Dolly, which has a prominent role in the books. He’s also a covert British agent, playing to the popular culture interest in spies and espionage at the time, a la James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Dolly and the Singing Bird (Cassell, 1968) is the first or the second in the series of seven Johnson books. The Dorothy Dunnett Society (https://dunnettcentral.org/dorothy/books), Classic Crime Fiction (http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/dorothy-halliday.htm), and Stop! You’re Killing Me! (http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/D_Authors/Dunnett_Dorothy.html) say it’s the first, Fantastic Fiction (https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/dorothy-dunnett/) says it’s the second. The multiple titles for the story only complicate matters. In addition to its original title, the book has also been published under the names The Photogenic Soprano and Rum Affair.
The singing bird here is Tina Rossi, a successful Polish-Italian coloratura soprano. With the assistance of her manager Michael Triss, she has risen to the pinnacle of her profession and she is now in the happy position to be selective in her engagements. This ability allowed her to arrange to sing in Edinburgh, near her most recent romantic interest, a Scottish engineer she met in Nevada, now at a naval station off the west coast of Scotland.
After the concert, she slipped away to a flat in a quiet side street, where she was to meet the engineer, except the flat was empty. Unable to believe Kenneth was not there somewhere, she opened every door and the body of a stranger fell out of a closet. About that time, the doorbell began ringing insistently. It was two policemen with a man she learned later was Johnson Johnson in search of a burglar seen in the area.
Johnson rescued Tina from the police and the next day turned up at a post-concert celebration to invite her on a multi-day boat race along the western coast of Scotland so he could paint her portrait. She is immensely flattered, knowing a portrait by Johnson would give her additional cachet, and plans to use the trip to meet Kenneth along the way.
Much of the story describes the race, which included a wealthy yachtsman who was anxious to attract Tina’s exclusive attention and a boat owner who built his vessel from scraps. Dunnett was clearly a sailor herself so there is far more information than I needed about dropping anchor, hoisting sails, bailing water, etc. On the other hand, her painter’s eye captured the coast of Scotland and the Inner Hebrides in spectacular detail.
I had no idea where the story was going and I found the plot resolution a surprise. I can’t say much more without incorporating a spoiler.
My initial thought is that Dunnett wrote beautifully. Her work is well worth studying by any aspiring writer. Her sentences are complex but they never seem to forget their point. Her knowledge of color added immensely to the long descriptive passages. The ocean was not merely blue, it was cerulean, aquamarine, cobalt, or sapphire. The foam on the tips of waves wasn’t white, it was opal, alabaster, cream, or porcelain. The moonlight on the sea was shards of silver. The narrative about the coastal features of Scotland is more vivid than any travelogue could be.
Second, while the plot is definitely dated, it is not so far in the past that contemporary readers can’t enjoy it. I found it fascinating with cleverly planted plot twists. There were enough references peculiar to the time, however, to send me to Google search often. One in particular, a comment about blond Blue Grass make-up, made me beg the Dean Street Press Facebook group for assistance, which they were able to provide.
Finally, while I loved the characters, the plot, the writing, and the 1960s allusions, I found the leisurely storytelling too slow. Her historical sagas are in excess of 400 pages each and I fear her tendency to spin lengthy involved tales infected her mystery writing. I would like to read more in the series, and perhaps I will when I have more patience.
For other thoughts on the book, see posts on Clothes in Books, https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2025/05/dorothy-dunnett-dolly-johnson.html, and She Reads Novels, https://shereadsnovels.com/2017/11/04/rum-affair-by-dorothy-dunnett-1968club/.