The Old Man in the Corner (1908) by Baroness Emma Orczy

One advantage to this “review a week” schedule I’ve been keeping is that it’s forced me to track down authors I’m interested in but wouldn’t take the time to read. Baroness Emma Orczy is one such writer. Although she’s most famous for her series about the Scarlet Pimpernel—a dashing hero who saves aristocrats during the French Revolution—us mystery fans know her through her mystery fiction. There’s Lady Molly of Scotland Yard. Or lawyer Skin o’ My Tooth. Or the subject of today’s review, The Old Man in the Corner.

The Old Man in the Corner has a slightly confusing publication history. Orczy wrote a series of stories in The Royal Magazine, that are collected in The Old Man in the Corner. And yet this collection was actually the second collection of stories, the first being The Case of Miss Elliot. So technically, I'm reading these stories in the wrong order! And, just to further frustrate, the first set of stories were originally in first person before being rewritten into third person…but the second collection (which came first mind you) kept the first-person narrator. How all of this came about, I do not know. So set all of that aside, take a seat at the A.B.C Teashop, and listen to an old man tell his stories.

The titular man is a wheezing, giggling weirdo who’s constantly messing with a piece of string. He’s also a fan of crime and a regular presence at inquests for the latest shocking murder or theft. Of course, the old man is a fair bit sharper than all in attendance and is able to deduce the truth simply through newspapers and inquests. So, we have what might be the first instance of the armchair detective character, who doesn’t stoop so low as to investigate, but instead merely sits and listens to the facts. Well, he does do some investigation, but that’s usually to confirm things he’s already deduced. His other interesting quality is what he does with his deductions: Zilch, bupkis, not a single finger lifted.

You see, the old man is possessed of a cheerful amorality. It’s not that he isn’t moved by the plight of victims or their families, nor does he have any real stake in criminals getting off. He’s just off the opinion that if a criminal is smart enough to outwit the police, then more power to them. “Crime interests me only when it resembles a clever game of chess, with many intricate moves which all tend to one solution, the checkmating of the antagonist⁠—the detective force of the country.” It’s this aspect that elevates this collection into something more interesting.

For the most part, the stories are pretty simple and formulaic. The first chapter has the description of the crime, the second the inquest of an innocent person, the third the Old Man’s explanation. Polly Burton, our viewpoint character, barely does anything. In the first few stories she really doesn’t do anything, and even when she does talk in the later ones, she’s pretty quickly bulldozed by the Old Man. But even so, these stories are pretty solid overall, and the Old Man is a fascinating character to watch in action, as it were. There’s also some loose continuity, with a couple of recurring characters and some references to past cases.

We begin with “The Fenchurch Street Mystery.” The mystery is the disappearance and later murder of Willam Kershaw. He was attempting a blackmail scheme on Smethurst, the millionaire, over a murder that the latter committed twenty years ago. When Kershaw’s body is found in an alley, the millionaire himself is called to the dock. It’s a clever little mystery, even if today’s readers might see through it sooner than readers of the time (and I have to wonder if it would all go as smoothly as the killer planned).

The Old Man returns in “The Robbery at Phillimore Terrace.” A suspicious tramp is tailed into the titular terrace when he is suddenly fallen upon by the servant of the house of Knopf, the diamond merchant. The house has just been robbed, but there’s no trace of the jewels on the tramp. Complicating matters is that it turns out that Knopf’s neighbor has also been robbed of his jewels. The police are force to release the tramp, but they tail him back to the terrace…where he vanishes into thin air! Yes, we have a (minor) impossible crime here! The central idea is pretty good. I didn’t appreciate it at first, but I enjoyed it more after thinking about it. But I wouldn’t read this story solely for the impossible crime.

“The York Mystery” sees the Old Man recounting the murder of bookie Charles Lavender, a bookmaker who had Lord Arthur Skelmerton over a barrel with horse racing debts. So when he’s found stabbed on the grounds of Lord Skelmerton’s house with Lord Skelmerton’s knife, after threatening to come collect that night, it’s no surprise who finds himself facing the threat of the noose. But if he’s not responsible, then who is? Well, once you eliminate him, there’s only one suspect left. But the cluing pointing to this person is pretty good.

“The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway” is only a two-chapter affair. “Will you be good enough,” he said suddenly, “to give me a description of the man who sat next to you just now, while you were having your cup of coffee and scone,” the Old Man taunts Polly. Obviously, she cannot, and this failure to tell one London man from another forms the basis for the shocking poisoning murder of a young woman on the Underground, allegedly at the hands of a possible lover. While the means of poisoning the victim is a cliché, the rest of the story is pretty good, with a good clue pointing at the culprit.

Next up is another short one: “The Liverpool Mystery.” There’s no murder here, merely the scamming of a clerk out of some banknotes for a purchase of jewelry.“A title⁠—a foreign title, I mean⁠—is always very useful for purposes of swindles and frauds,” muses the Old Man this time around. The solution is obvious, but scam stories almost always have a certain charm to them, and I suspect the Baroness was jabbing at some of the prejudices of her countrymen.

“The Edinburgh Mystery” (I’ll give you three guesses where this is set) involves the failed marriage of David Graham, a sweet but physically deformed young man. His godmother, determined to see him married, announces that she’s setting aside a deed of gift to her godson’s future wife. Within the week, he’s engaged to a doctor’s daughter. Sadly, this marriage is doomed to end in tragedy, as the fiancée finds herself in the dock on charges of robbery and murder of the godmother. Once again, the culprit stands out, but mystery itself is pretty solid, with a simple but clever dodge at the heart of it.

Like before, you get three guesses what “The Theft at the English Provident Bank” is about. Got it? Good. The bank is robbed in the night and the manager is found inconsolable (that old Victorian dodge, brain fever) in front of it in the morning. The night guard claims he saw the manager’s wife speak to the manager in the dark, but she flatly denies it. This one feels like a letdown, with a solution that probably should have occurred to the police.

However, we follow that up with “The Dublin Mystery,” my favorite of the collection. The mystery starts with the death of Millionaire Brooke (presumably not his actual name) of natural causes. What’s not natural is the death of his solicitor, who is strangled to death on his way home. Further excitement comes when Brooke Sr’s will leaves most of his estate to his wild younger son, while the dutiful older receives almost nothing. Allegations of fraud and murder follow. This one is fun because of the cluing. It’s the kind of subtle bit that you just brush over without really thinking about what it means that Christie and Carr would later use to good effect.

The titular unparalleled outrage of “An Unparalleled Outrage” is the robbery and kidnapping of Francis Morton, who is found in an apartment on the verge of death. Morton alleges that he was meant to deliver money to his wife’s first husband, who she assumed was dead. Instead, he was robbed and left to die. The renter, one Edward Skinner, stands accused in court…but Morton clears him. The Old Man points to the obvious solution, the main stand-out being just how completely the culprit gets away with everything.

“The Regent’s Park Murder” is another highlight. The inhabitants of Park Square West are awoken at three in the morning by cries of “Police” and “Murder,” followed by gunshots. The body of Aaron Cohen is found shortly thereafter, though he’s been strangled to death. The police suspect the killer killed the man then shot at him to make sure he was dead, missing in the process. They turn their attention to John Ashley, a minor noble who had a bad run at a gambling den against Cohen, and who owns the gun found at the scene. Obviously, a case this clear can’t help but collapse, but then who committed the crime? The Old Man’s solution is clever and surprising, making this one of the gems of the collection.

“The de Genneville Peerage” is another legal dispute over inheritance. Like in “The Dublin Mystery,” we have a dutiful older son dealing with a more careless younger. This young man is sweet-talked by a lawyer into arguing that he’s entitled to the inheritance on the basis of an old will centuries old. His case is derailed by the minor issue of his brutal murder in his hotel bedroom. Might his older brother have been so threatened by the lawsuit that he took a dramatic risk? The hotel porter seems convinced that he went to the hotel the night of the crime. And what about the lawyer who started all this mess, who disappeared the same night? I figured out the central idea but applied it the wrong way round. This is on par with the other stories in the collection.

We end with “The Mysterious Death in Percy Street.” The death is that of the caretaker for a series of studios, who is found dead in her bedroom, the windows wide open on a winter night. For some reason the story acts like there was any ambiguity about what happened, with some characters in story thinking that it’s possible it was suicide for some reason. No, of course not. An admirer is briefly suspected but cleared, leaving the Old Man to explain the simple truth behind the crime. But this time, it’s Polly who gets the last laugh on the Old Man, with one of the more surprising solutions from this time period. It’s a good reveal that casts some of the earlier stories in a more unsettling light.

All in all, The Old Man in the Corner is a good collection. It’s of great historical value to the genre, and is worth reading on that basis. But even if you’re just looking for good Victorian mysteries, you could do a lot worse than this. These aren’t as sophisticated as what would come later, but are good for what they are, and if you engage with them on their level, they may just surprise you. And the Old Man is a fascinating detective to spend time with. Recommended

Other Reviews: The Invisible Event.

The Labyrinth House Murders (1998/2024) by Yukito Ayatsuji (translated by Ho-Ling Wong)

The Labyrinth House Murders is the debut novel of Shishiya Kadomi. Rather ambitiously for a first book, Shishiya bases it off the actual brutal murders in the titular house. The Labyrinth House was home to Yotaro Miyagaki, a famous mystery writer who had effectively gone into retirement. For his sixtieth birthday, he invited his four “disciples,” as well as an editor and his wife, a critic, and a mystery fan to his home. Note that the name isn’t a metaphor: The house is an actual underground labyrinth with rooms named after characters from the myth of the Minotaur. Is this plausible? Could a mystery author really afford to build this thing? Who cares, it’s cool.

Anyway, the viewpoint character is editor Hideyuki Utayama, who’s hoping that Miyagaki is planning on writing another book soon. Instead, he and the others are treated to a shocking announcement from Miyagaki’s secretary: The great author has committed suicide. And he’s left a last will where he lays out his wishes. He plans on giving half of his fortune to a prize for mystery writers, but the other half will go to one of his disciples. They have five days to write a mystery story of their own, which will be judged by the other guests. The winner gets the prize. Each story must be set in the Labyrinth House. No one can leave until the contest is over (and yes, the doors are locked). And each author must make themselves the victim. It’s a borderline sick contest, but half of Miyagaki’s fortune is tempting. Very, very tempting.

During the first night, Utayama is woken by one of the other guests. One of the authors has been killed in the library. Not just strangled to death, but decapitated, with a bull’s head put on his stump. Horrifying enough, but when they go to search his room, they find a copy of his story, “The Minotaur’s Head.” It’s about a body with a bull’s head placed over his own…

And the phone lines have been cut. And no one can find the secretary, the only guy with the keys. And one of the authors is insistent that the competition go on. But what else do you expect to happen in a house built by eccentric archetic Seiji Nakamura? Luckily, the guests do have some hope, as the general mystery fan invited to the house is none other than Kiyoshi Shimada…

Because The Labyrinth House Murders is also the third novel by Yukito Ayatsuji and is not based on any real murders. If you thought The Decagon House Murders was meta, whew boy are you in for it here. We have an in-universe fictional text about authors who get killed according to their own in-universe fictional stories. And Ayatsuji pulls out all the stops. There’s a clever death trap. There’s a dying message. There’s a locked room murder. If you’re the kind of person to whom “Brutal series of murders in a house that no one would ever live in” is a hook, there’s something in here for you.

These ideas are all executed pretty well. Ayatsuji is also a horror author, and while he doesn’t really lean into that here, you can see him feeling out the potential of this literal maze of a house, with creepy masks lining the walls. I will say that the locked room is a pretty minor part of the story, with a really simple solution, but Ayatsuji/Kadomi makes up for that with a really good reason why the locked room came about. There’s also another fascinating meta-mystery: Kadomi mentions in the Afterword that they were actually in the house during the massacre, meaning the reader is not only trying to solve the mystery, but try and pick out who of the survivors will later write the events down…and why they’d do it in this way. “This is nothing more than a murder mystery, a piece of entertainment that allows the reader to escape the boredom of daily life,” they swear, and while that might be Ayatsuji’s intent with his book, Kadomi has something else in mind…

Of course, the book isn’t perfect. One of my issues is a structural one. The set-up is great, giving us time to dwell on how bizarre this whole situation is. The bit after the first murder is great, with Ayatsuji giving us a great motive to decapitate someone. But then the other murders come thick and fast, and we really don’t have time to let them breathe. Part of the appeal of these sorts of And Then There Were None-style stories is the downtime between the deaths as the survivors dwell on what’s happening. Seeing how big the house was, you could have had some great moments of panic as everyone know there could be someone slinking around the labyrinth. It felt like it needed about 25-30 more pages. I also felt at first that the motive was a bit weak, but some added context made it work for me.

The book’s main claim to fame is its final twist, where Shimada confronts Kadomi about the book. I admit, I was fooled. I was filled with rage. I hated the book (laudatory). It’s a neat reveal. “I don’t care how well-rounded a story feels or whether it will sell or not…What matters to me is the degree in which some excessive, over-the-top element in the work resonates with me,” says Utayama, and he’s obviously speaking for Ayatsuji there. But I admit this twist didn’t fully resonate with me. Although Shimada cites some clues about it, they’re pretty vague. It’s hard to explain without spoilers, but it’s a reveal you pick up on through vibes more than hard clues. It’s good, but I do think it leaves the book open to accusations that it’s more “clever” than “good,” and I can’t totally disagree. The in-universe reason for this is…weird. Surely there were more direct ways of doing X? In the end, I liked it, but I can see someone thinking otherwise.

But if all this book is is “clever,” then Ayatsuji at least hit a home run there. This is a really fun murder mystery. I also have to give full kudos to the translation by Ho-Ling. He has an article on his blog talking about the translation choices, and it’s really interesting (and amusing how the dying message gave him the most trouble). While I can’t give it my highest recommendation, I do think it’s very much worth your time. A low four-stars. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: The Case Files of Ho-Ling, Criminal Musings, Beneath the Stains of Time, Bad Player's Good Reviews, Ah, Sweet Mystery, Countdown John's Christie Journal, The Invisible Event, Volt's Vault (spoiler analysis).

The Twyford Code (2022) by Janice Hallett

The Twyford Code is the second book by Janice Hallett, author of The Appeal. This book sounded interesting, but it wasn’t until I read her first that I decided to give it a shot.

The book is narrated by Steven Smith, an ex-con who’s taken up recording voice logs in an old cellphone given to him by his son. Steven is a reflective soul, and before long he’s recounting his life. He was in a remedial English class taught by one Alice Iles, along with four other students. One day, he brought a book to class that he found on a bus: Six on Goldtop Hill by Edith Twyford, a famous children’s book author whose works have been silently banned from schools due to outdated language and offensive portrayals. Still, Miss Iles reads it to the fascinated class, and seems interested herself in the notes inside the book and some scribbles in the margins. And eventually decides to take them to Twyford’s beachside home where…

Well, Steven doesn’t remember. Just that somehow, all of the kids made it home, but Miss Iles was never seen again. Her disappearance has bothered Steven for years, and he sets out to reconnect with his old classmates, hoping for answers. Instead, he meets with stonewalling, a refusal to talk. When he does start to find answers, they prove to be the cover of a rabbit hole. It seems that there are rumors that Edith Twyford put a code into her works, leading to…something. No one knows what. But Steven starts to wonder if Miss Iles didn’t come close to cracking it. And so, he sets out on a treasure hunt, hoping to find closure at the end of the road.

But the readers already know that his logs were recovered from an iPhone, evidence in a missing person’s case…

Like The Appeal, The Twyford Code is an epistolary novel, but instead of emails, it’s voice logs and phone calls. Hallett has some fun with this. The transcription software has a habit of mixing up words, meaning that readers have to read carefully to figure out what people are actually saying. It gives the characters more distinctive voices (literally) than in The Appeal. The idea of a code hidden in the works of a children’s book author that’s also connected to a mysterious disappearance is like catnip to me. Cynical readers might suspect that this whole “code” is nothing more than a wild goose chase, populated by poor, sad people who have nothing better to do than obsess over hidden messages. Indeed, some of the characters quickly go off the deep end with the possible meanings of the code. But there are two men in black who seem to be stalking Steven and have little problem using violence. And there’s just enough weird stuff along the way to keep Steven—and the reader—hooked.

It’s fair to say that this is more of a puzzle thriller than a fair-play mystery like The Appeal was. Some of the mysteries, like how the kids got home, don’t really have satisfying answers, hinging on Steven’s convenient amnesia. But the book works overall. The last bit of the book is the best part, containing a certain trope that’s not super common but that I love: a seemingly unconnected side character has to go through the in-universe narrative and piece together what in the world happened. When we get the bevy of plot twists at the end, I was impressed to see that most of them have some form of hinting, even if it’s off-hand comments that come up once. The titular Code is the highlight. You can solve it, though I’d be surprised if most did so. It reminds me of an alternate reality game, in that you are absolutely going to have to get out Google to get anywhere. This is a book that is better as an eBook with in-text searching, which will make it easier to find the necessary terms. But the reveal of what the Code actually is is very staying. Hallett fly’s very close to a plot twist that normally would annoy me greatly, but she makes it work.

The only thing that kind of bothered me isn’t really Hallett’s fault: I assumed she was going to do more with Twyford—who’s obviously a take on Enid Blyton—and the idea of texts that aren’t, like, vile but contain stuff that’s totally inappropriate for a modern generation, but she doesn’t’ actually do anything with those themes. This might have been the fault of the reviews I read leading me to expect that. This is more of a tribute to Blyton, a grown-up version of one of her novels.

But all in all, I liked The Twyford Code. It’s a good puzzle thriller that toys with the common plot devices of conspiracy thrillers while still giving the reader something genuine to work out. While I don’t quite know if this would, ahem, appeal to all mystery fans, if you want something a little different, or just enjoy Hallett as an author, this is Recommended

Other Reviews: The Invisible Event, crossexaminingcrime, Ah, Sweet Mystery, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

The Summons (1995) by Peter Lovesey

Last year, I read the first book in Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, The Last Detective. And I didn’t like it. The mystery was merely okay and I found Diamond insufferable. It put me off both the character and the author for a time. However, I’ve been getting back into Lovesey recently, and so I decided to return…for the third book in the series. I read a review of the second, Diamond Solitaire, that was pretty negative, and Lovesey himself seemed to be struggling for what to do with the series, based on an essay of his that I read. So I skipped ahead to the third book, The Summons.

The book opens with the daring prison escape of John Mountjoy. He’s been imprisoned for four years for the murder of Britt Strand, an investigative journalist who was on the verge of exposing a scam he was running at his school. Combined with his history of violence towards women and the fact that he was the last to see her alive, he was the obvious suspect. Now he’s free, and he’s kidnapped the daughter of Assistant Chief Constable Tott. He wants to speak to the man who arrested him in the first place: Peter Diamond.

Problem: Diamond left (i.e. quit) the force. The police are able to wrestle him into helping long enough to meet with Mountjoy and lay out his demands: Find the actual killer. An absurd request, but Peter has to admit that this is a lot of effort when he could easily have gone underground. And the police never did find the murder weapon. Nor did they find out who ordered the red roses found in Britt’s bedroom and stuffed down her throat…

So Peter teams up with DI Julie Hargreaves to track down the old witnesses and go over the evidence again before the trigger-happy brass find Mountjoy themselves. Could the killer have been one of Britt’s other boyfriends? Could the police have missed one? Maybe it has something to do with one of her final projects: a report on a group of “crusties” squatting in an abandoned home. As the two dig deeper, Peter starts to remember how much he loved his old job…

I admit, I went in expecting not to like this book after bouncing off the first so bad. So I was surprised to find myself pretty quickly invested in the plot. The mystery is pretty interesting, and Lovesey wastes little time in getting to the point. Diamond and Hargreaves make a great team as well. When Diamond is focusing on the investigation, he’s great, a dogged detective with a good mix of charm and intimidation depending on who he’s talking to. Of course, when he’s taking advantage of this situation to get his job back, I wanted someone to sock him in the jaw, though thankfully this is a small portion of the book. The bulk is focused on the mystery.

Of course, this is a police procedural like the Kate Ellis I reviewed earlier this month. But there’s more cluing here. The key information is only discovered pretty late in the book, but there are clues pointing to some of the conclusions Diamond comes to throughout the book. With a little more work, this could have been a really good mystery novel. But I don’t want to take away from what’s here, which is still a very solid police procedural with plenty of twists and turns along the way. And finally, the reason for the roses is pretty good.

All in all, I really liked this book. I really expected this to be a slog on my way to the locked room mystery Bloodhounds, but now I’m not only looking forward to that book, but to others in this series. In light of that, I can only say that this is Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Mystery*File.

Turnabout Pairs (2012) by Bad Player and Blackrune

A few years ago, I binged a bunch of Ace Attorney fancases, hoping to pick out some good ones to review. Ultimately, I didn’t go through with that until recently. Part of it was me feeling that some of the cases were too reliant on AA knowledge to be really satisfying. Some weren’t that good. And then there were some that were good, but I thought would be frustrating to someone who wasn’t a hardcore AA fan. One of those fancases was Turnabout of Courage.

Courage is one of the most infamous fancases in Ace Attorney history. It’s a brutal, difficult case that delights in messing with you, the player, personally. After playing it, I decided that, while the mystery was good, the case as a whole was too irritating to recommend. But I kept it in mind. And I knew there was an “independent sequel” that I wanted to play. That brings us to Turnabout Pairs, by Bad Player and Blackrune.

I should note that while Pairs doesn’t explicitly spoil Courage, there are some key twists that would be very clear if you played Pairs first. So keep that in mind.

I should also note that this was the winner of a competition dedicated to troll cases. So keep that in mind too.

Pairs opens with attorney Mia Fey heading to Embassy Hotel to meet with a client, prosecutor Klavier Gavin. Klavier is in a legal dispute with his brother, Kristoph, over their father’s inheritance. Mia arrives and joins a maid, Maria, bringing room service, but finds that Klavier’s door has been locked, the key still inside. Mia and Maria manage to get the door open, where they find Klavier’s body, with a bloody knife on the floor! And yet, Klavier has been shot to death…

A suspect is soon arrested. Ron DeLite, a shy, retiring man staying in the room next door. Not that the prosecution is explaining how he’s supposed to have committed the crime. Mia investigates for his trial when she learns that Kristoph is staying at the same hotel, on the opposite side of his brother. Mia goes there with another employee, but this door is locked too. No surprise what they find on the other side. Except for the twist that Kristoph has been stabbed to death, even though the gun that killed Klavier is lying on the floor next to him...“It’s just like Kristoph killed Klavier. But it’s also almost as if Klavier killed Kristoph.”

And so, Mia heads off to court to defend Ron on the double murder, little realizing the disaster she’s about to walk into…

To be clear, Pairs is very much a hard case too. It’s just less aggressive with its trolling than Courage. Courage was willing to pull the rug out from under you at a moment’s notice, constantly shifting the “facts” of the case whenever you got a handle on them. It was happy to waste your time, as a joke. Here, the difficulty comes from the case genuinely being very complex, and you having to fight for every little contradiction…that seems to make no impact on the case against your client. There’s nothing like the nightmare of Luna von Doppelbohringen here. (Although one testimony is clearly a callback, it is, in my view, easier and less inclined to mess with you when you make a mistake.) One infamous instance of trolling from Courage gets reused as more of a plot twist here, for example, making it feel less like the case playing games with you and more an obstacle you’ve overcome.

The locked rooms are pretty good. If someone wanted to quibble with them, they could point out how there’s no grand trick here, but a serious of smaller ones linked together. I don’t mind that too much, and the central mystery is still a meaty one to ponder, with plenty of moving parts. The only real issue I have is that the clue that tips Mia off as to what really happened is A. something she only discovers through a massive coincidence and B. a really minor bit that she blows up for all its worth. Sure, the best Ace Attorney cases hinge on the implications of small details, but this feels like a lot to base your case-winning theory on.

And yet, I enjoyed this case. In fairness, I made heavy use of the provided walkthrough, or “Invisiclues,” which do a good job at guiding the player’s logic and making clear what the developers were thinking with the puzzles and contradictions. Most of them made sense. There were a couple where you’re presenting an alternative theory or a possibility, instead of pointing out a contradiction, and I found these a little more frustrating since it wasn’t always clear when that was intended. But if you can put up with the rest of this case, you can put up with that.

So all in all, I do think that Turnabout Pairs is worth a shot. If you have no Ace Attorney experience, then, unlike the previous fancases I’ve reviewed, maybe you shouldn’t dive right into it, but if you do and want a challenge, this is worth your time. Recommended. But you probably should play Turnabout of Courage first. Just have a walkthrough open. Keep that in mind too.

You can find the case here.

The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie

I read this for the Honkaku Discord server’s bookclub.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Miss Marple.

The Murder at the Vicarage is set in the small village of St. Mary Mead. Nothing really happens here. The worst crime is poaching. Even the last murder was fifteen years ago. Life in the village is simple, only occasionally broken up by a bit of local drama, like the archeologist hunting for artifacts. Most news is transmitted by the local gossip circles, of whom Miss Marple,“the worst cat in the village,” is a leading member. The only blemish on the peaceful life here is Colonel Protheroe, a magistrate. Devoid of mercy and almost taking pride in how disliked he is, the colonel is currently raising a fuss about some allegedly missing money from the church offering plate, an act that’s so gotten under the skin of Vicar Clement that even he grumbles at lunch that“anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service.”

He will eat his words when he’s decoyed out of his house, and returns to find the colonel shot at his writing desk.

Murder at the Vicarage is charming. That’s the best way of putting it. This is one of the most well-known village mysteries of all time, and Christie does an excellent job at capturing the feel of a small English village. There’s plenty of gossip floating around, like how Dr. Stone’s assistant is obviously angling for marriage. Of course, one of the themes of the Marple stories is that humans are much the same everywhere, and that sin and vice are just as present in small villages as they are in the city. So there’s plenty of drama and skullduggery afoot, even outside of the murder. The vicar walks in on the colonel’s wife, Anne, in bed with traveling artist Lawrence Redding. The colonel’s daughter, Lettuce, hates her stepmother. The new curate, Hawes, has been bullied by the colonel over his High Church beliefs. So there’s plenty of people who would have very good motive to kill the colonel.

The best part of this book is hands down Vicar Clement. Christie peaked with narrators here. Poirot should have fired Hastings and replaced him with this guy. Clement is the idea Watson: observant enough about the evidence and the relationships between the villagers, but lacking that needed insight into human nature to put the pieces together. He’s also very witty. I couldn’t get enough of him. Maybe it’s a bit unlikely that the police would keep him so close to the investigation (in spite of the murder occurring in his home he’s not treated as a serious suspect), but we accept that in other stories. The relationship between him and his wife is good too.

Of course, this means he overshadows Miss Marple a bit as well. While she’s present, she actually doesn’t get all that much page time. Don’t get me wrong, she gets all the best lines, and her role as a witness means she’s very involved even before she “officially” starts investigating. Once she quits observing and starts making her deductions known, she’s great. But again, she’s not the central figure here. I’ve heard it argued (by Robert Barnard, at least), that Miss Marple underwent “flufflification” shortly after her debut, going from a snoop and gossip into a more gentle, grandmotherly figure, her sharp views about human nature blunted in later books. I admit I don’t see that. Miss Marple is more proactive about getting information than in later books, but she’s still the same character, in my view. And while her view of human nature is quite caustic, I don’t read it as harsher than later books, though keep in mind it’s been year since I’ve read those books.

Moving onto the murder, that’s handled well. The case is complicated by a speedy clock, two dramatic yet disproven confessions, as well as the general skullduggery that everyone in the village gets up to around the time of the murder. For the most part, this works. The central idea behind the murder is quite clever, hinging less on physical tricks and more on psychology. There are some physical aspects to the crime, but they’re secondary to that central idea. Still, I can see some readers not liking it. This is one of those Christies where a bunch of people get up to some minor crimes that don’t really intersect with the central murder at all. Some of the characters are pretty minor as well. There’s a reason most of the adaptations cut Dr. Stone, for example. Combine that with some clues that are introduced late (and one of which isn’t even mentioned until the summation!) and some weaker minor elements (the gunshot), and I’m open to arguments that this isn’t top-tier Christie.

Still, I think it would be wrong to deny it a place of honor in the Christie pantheon. Complaints aside, this is a great village mystery that has both a strong village and a strong mystery. I know, saying that a book Christie wrote in the 30s, and that brought Miss Marple to the novel to boot, is a good one is kind of a given. But it is very good. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Ah, Sweet Mystery! (longer post with spoilers), Beneath the Stains of Time, The Grandest Game in the World (contains spoilers), FictionFan's Book Reviews, My Reader's Block, Countdown John's Christie Journal (second post with spoilers), Mysteries Ahoy! (audiobook review), Crossexaminingcrime (behind Patreon).

An Unhallowed Grave (1999) by Kate Ellis

Like Dolores Gordon-Smith, Kate Ellis is another author I was introduced to by the Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. She sounded right up my alley: good storytelling, complex plotting, and mysterious crimes in the past. So I decided to pick up one of her books from the library and finally give her a shot.

An Unhallowed Grave is the third book in her Wesley Peterson series. Peterson is a Black police detective who has just been transferred to the quiet village of Stokeworthy. It’s a cozy little place. The only real excitement comes from the increasing development, which is bringing in tourists who disrupt the quiet, to the frustration of the locals. The lord of the local manor is trying to push more development, but is stymied by protestors and by an archeological dig held on the grounds. But again, this is a quiet place where the worst crimes are drug-taking by the local teens. The book opens on two of them creeping into the churchyard at night to do a ritual to see their true loves…but they see a body hanging from a tree instead.

The doctor on scene quickly realizes that the woman hasn’t been hanged but strangled and hung after death. She’s identified at Pauline Brent, a doctor’s receptionist. She’s lived in the village for fifteen years, and is liked by everyone, but no one was really close to her, nor did they really know anything about her. Piecing together her past is the major hurdle for Peterson and his fellow officers to overcome. Of course, readers will already know that the prologue features a young girl being arrested on the charge of murder…

Meanwhile, the dig stumbles on two discoveries in rapid succession. One is a collection of sculptures that formed a Jesse Tree—a design tracking the ancestors of Christ, rising up from Jesse, the father of King David—which have been buried since the Reformation. Also unearthed is the skeleton of another young woman, who’s also been hanged, professionally. Wesley’s college friend Neil Watson is heading the dig, and dives into the local manor records to figure out who this woman was and what she did.

This tying in of a long-distant case to the present is the main hook for the Peterson books, and I liked it here. Obviously, considering the distance, the cases aren’t directly connected, but there are parallels with both deaths that get drawn out throughout the book. The blurb mentions that Ellis is fascinated by “‘armchair archeology” and it shows. These aren’t the only plot threads in the book. Some are more personal, like Wesley’s wife’s search for a nanny for their son. Some are criminal, like the thief stealing items from local churches only to return them a couple of weeks later. It’s to Ellis’s credit that most of these threads end up tying together. Like the two deaths, sometimes the connections are thematic, but they are there. Only the bit with the church thefts doesn’t, to my eyes, go much of anywhere beyond some criminal activity for one of the suspects. Said suspects range from an artist acting shady on the night of the murder to an outsider who threatened the victim to a local politician who seems uninvolved but proves to be deeper in this than it seems.

Wesley is pleasant company. Him and his fellow officers (as for once the protagonist isn’t the one in charge) are well-characterized, and if they aren’t ground-breaking characters they at least stand out (though the one guy trying to sleep with teenagers to the mild annoyance of his colleagues wasn’t great. At least he contributes to the investigation.) The tone is pretty light, actually. That’s not to say that Ellis shies away from human evil, but this is a book where most of the characters are halfway pleasant and where the author isn’t setting up strawmen to knock down. The best example of this comes when Wesley and his boss have to go to a nursing home to talk to Pauline’s former employer. Wesley (and the reader!) except to find a nightmare house where bored, uncaring employees ignore the elderly wasting away, body and mind…and instead are greeted with a pleasant young woman who takes them to the witness, who’s living his best life with mystery novels and his own computer. Wesley is kicking himself.

However, this is a police procedural, not a fair-play mystery. There is some foreshadowing to the killer’s identity, but not much cluing. The end of the book has our heroes switching between two suspects not because of Queenian interpretation and reinterpretation of evidence they already have, but because of new information and some of the characters admitting they lied. It’s a good solution that fits with the book and makes sense, but it’s not something you can really deduce. And, in spite of some good speculation about why the killer would do that, the reason the victim was hanged is disappointing,

And yet, I liked this book. I’m a sucker for any sort of crime influenced by past events, and so I liked seeing everything come together. Ellis is a good writer, and I really enjoyed my time with her. I get why the Puzzle Doctor likes her so much, and I’ll be checking her out again in the future. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.