A bit of a dud, I'm afraid. Overly convoluted (and unlikely) puzzle, with little character or local colour to recommend it.
I yield to no one in my love of Caroline Rivett, aka ECR Lorac. But, in all honesty, this was very disappointing. Usually, with Lorac, any longeurs in the exposition, or holes in the plot are smoothed over by her sharp characterisation, and her wonderful summoning of place and time period -- 1930s London, wartime Lancashire, early 1950s Austria, among others. In the 30s, Lorac couldn't have known that she was chronicling a lost world, taking her characters down streets and into buildings that would soon be bombed to near oblivion, putting suspects and investigators alike through the motions of lifestyles that would soon seem as quaint and archaic as anything in Jane Austen.
Her war-time novels are snapshots of life as it was lived in a time of desperate uncertainty, sketches of people who had no choice but to "keep calm and carry on," whether that meant coping with rationing and blackout regulations, going about day to day life as bombs rained down, solving murders (or, indeed, doing the murdering). The Lorac novels I have read have seemed worth it for the way they balance the formulaic whodunit with telling little details of life in mid-Twentieth Century Britain.
Here, not so much.
It starts well: a novelist is found dead at a party at his publisher's house, a party that Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald has (against his better judgment) been persuaded to attend. Is it an unfortunately timed heart attack, or .... No, don't be silly: it's murder. MacDonald's suspicions are quickly aroused, and confirmed when he discovers the ingenious method of dispatch. Not quite a closed room mystery, it is at least a "closed house" mystery, as the suspects can be limited to the eight party guests, the host and hostess (the publisher and his formidable former Suffragette sister), and a mysterious intruder spotted by two of the guests.
Things start to go downhill when the focus shifts, inexplicably, away from MacDonald, and follows instead a couple of the suspect party-goers, who seem determined to behave as suspiciously as possible. They just aren't that interesting, and hard to keep straight because of Lorac's insistence on maintaining a very tiresome wheeze from the party -- most of the guests have never met, and they are given literary alter egos to preserve their anonymity while they do a treasure hunt. Constantly switching back and forth between real names and temporary pseudonyms makes it very hard to keep track of who's who, and how it even matters.
The revelation of the murderer seems to come from nowhere, because the antics of these characters are a distraction, and MacDonald is relegated to a backseat, pondering the names that supposedly make clues. There is much coincidence, and awfully convenient connections that only needed to be recognized for all to fall into place.
I yield to no one in my love of Caroline Rivett, aka ECR Lorac. But, in all honesty, this was very disappointing. Usually, with Lorac, any longeurs in the exposition, or holes in the plot are smoothed over by her sharp characterisation, and her wonderful summoning of place and time period -- 1930s London, wartime Lancashire, early 1950s Austria, among others. In the 30s, Lorac couldn't have known that she was chronicling a lost world, taking her characters down streets and into buildings that would soon be bombed to near oblivion, putting suspects and investigators alike through the motions of lifestyles that would soon seem as quaint and archaic as anything in Jane Austen.
Her war-time novels are snapshots of life as it was lived in a time of desperate uncertainty, sketches of people who had no choice but to "keep calm and carry on," whether that meant coping with rationing and blackout regulations, going about day to day life as bombs rained down, solving murders (or, indeed, doing the murdering). The Lorac novels I have read have seemed worth it for the way they balance the formulaic whodunit with telling little details of life in mid-Twentieth Century Britain.
Here, not so much.
It starts well: a novelist is found dead at a party at his publisher's house, a party that Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald has (against his better judgment) been persuaded to attend. Is it an unfortunately timed heart attack, or .... No, don't be silly: it's murder. MacDonald's suspicions are quickly aroused, and confirmed when he discovers the ingenious method of dispatch. Not quite a closed room mystery, it is at least a "closed house" mystery, as the suspects can be limited to the eight party guests, the host and hostess (the publisher and his formidable former Suffragette sister), and a mysterious intruder spotted by two of the guests.
Things start to go downhill when the focus shifts, inexplicably, away from MacDonald, and follows instead a couple of the suspect party-goers, who seem determined to behave as suspiciously as possible. They just aren't that interesting, and hard to keep straight because of Lorac's insistence on maintaining a very tiresome wheeze from the party -- most of the guests have never met, and they are given literary alter egos to preserve their anonymity while they do a treasure hunt. Constantly switching back and forth between real names and temporary pseudonyms makes it very hard to keep track of who's who, and how it even matters.
The revelation of the murderer seems to come from nowhere, because the antics of these characters are a distraction, and MacDonald is relegated to a backseat, pondering the names that supposedly make clues. There is much coincidence, and awfully convenient connections that only needed to be recognized for all to fall into place.
