'...to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
--Hamlet'

As far as I'm concerned, False to Any Man is the most memorable of the Primrose-Latham mysteries, although Siren in the Night and Washington Whispers Murder come close. I hadn't reread it for over 10 years when I picked it up this time, but I knew who would die, who did it, and why. That didn't spoil my enjoyment in rereading it again (although the racism and sexism were detractors).

Grace Latham's older son, still unnamed, is almost 17 in this book. It's 1939 and Grace is worried about her boys getting too close to war age, even though the USA hadn't entered World War II yet. She's still seeing Colonel Primrose. Sergeant Buck is still certain that Grace intends to marry his Colonel and is still against it. We get to see more of Lilac, the African-American who works for Grace. Her official domain is the kitchen in the basement, but Lilac has her opinions and doesn't hesitate to give them. I loved the verbal trap she set for Grace in chapter four. Lilac came before Grace's older son was born and Grace admits she couldn't do without her.

Once again it's Grace's social connections that bring her into the murder. This time it's the fact that her younger son goes to school with Judge Peyton Candler's younger son. Grace was present when Billy Candler's appendix had to be removed while he was lying on the kitchen table during Thanksgiving, so it's no wonder that his older sister, Jerry (short for 'Jeremy'), comes to Grace with wonderful news about her father.

The author doesn't come right out and say what appointment the White House is considering for Judge Peyton Candler, but it's a high one. Any scandal might ruin the Judge's chances, which is going to put Jerry on the spot. I certainly hope that Peyton Candler is a better judge of humanity when he's in the courtroom than he is at home because he can't see that his ward is as spoiled and greedy as she is beautiful.

Karen Lunt's father was the Judge's best friend, but he made the mistake of marrying a gold digger who was going to dump him after she ran through his money. Gossip says that's why Mr. & Mrs. Lunts' car went off a cliff during Prohibition. Judge Candler considers friendship a sacred obligation. The Candlers don't have much money. The Judge's own children have had to do without so that Karen could be kept in a fancy school and have the old carriage house done up in expensive style for her to live in. Sandy and Jerry have jobs, but not Karen. Now Karen wants to marry a man who, like the Candlers, comes of good family but is poor. Karen doesn't want to do without, so she's trying to get back some of her father's stock that was worthless when Candler bought it, but is worth a hundred thousand dollars now. The Judge would gladly give it to her, but he'd put it in trust for Jerry and Billy, and Jerry just turned 21.
Jerry's thinking of Billy more than herself when she refuses to sign the stock over. The Judge's oldest friend and former law partner, Philander Doyle, won't let Jerry sign when she finally gives in.

The Candlers come from Cavalier stock, their family going back to William the Conqueror. That's why their social standing isn't affected by being relatively poor. Philander is the son of a bartender. After years of hard if somewhat sleazy law work, Philander is a rich man. He's so rich that he bought the mansion across the street from the Candlers -- the mansion that the Judge's family lost by being on the losing side in the Civil War. That's why the Candlers live in the much less imposing old Georgian house where Peyton and his children were born. Still, not all the money Philander made can put the Doyles in the same social bracket as the Candlers. In Regency Romances, rich social climbers could solve this sort of problem through a marriage of convenience with a member of an impoverished aristocratic family. Philander doesn't have to stoop to that practice because his son, Roger, is in love with Jerry Candler and vice-versa. So why is Philander opposed to the match? His eccentric sister, Isobel Doyle, knows.

It's quite possible that the murderer could have gotten away with the crime if Grace hadn't instinctively called Primrose after she found the body. It might well have been written off as a sucide -- don't want to cause any trouble for a socially prominant family, you know. Now the murderer has a much bigger problem to deal with, a problem that could lead to another murder. As usual, Colonel Primrose wants to make sure that Grace isn't the next victim.

The descriptions of Alexandria, Virginia, past and present, are very good. So are the back stories that help the reader to understand why murder was done. For readers who like to keep track of that sort of thing in a series, Jeremy Candler is another Ford heroine to have copper/red-gold hair. Her eyes, though, are the yellowish-brown of a tortise shell instead of some shade of blue.

My copy is a hardcover without a dustjacket, but I can assure cat lovers who are thinking of buying the paperback with the Siamese cat on the cover that there is such a cat in the book and she's a sweetie.

I also have the Bantam paperback with the old house and the woman's head on it. The decorated endpapers show three houses in the snow with a man coming out of one of them. The back cover has the head of the cat and part of a woman's face. It also has a small black-and-white reproduction of what I think is the hardcover's dust jacket -- for the Grosset & Dunlap reprint, at least. ( )