Death and the Conjuror (2022) by Tom Mead

A review of this book almost feels pointless. Surely anyone reading this blog has already heard of and has made up their mind on Tom Mead and his debut novel. But I am determined to review as much as I can, and maybe there’s someone out there who passed this book up when it first came out.

Death and the Conjuror takes place in a fantasy England, one where locked room murders have "rolled over the city like a fog." Indeed, no less than three impossible crimes will afflict London’s finest. The first is the murder of psychologist Dr. Anselm Rees, his throat slashed in his locked office mere minutes after a mysterious, unknown visitor that appeared out of the rainy night left. The door was locked, the hallway under observation, and the locked French windows opened into a muddy yard with no footprints…at least, none near the window. This is the main impossibility of the book.

The second comes quickly: the theft of El Nacimiento, a lost painting by the insane artist Mantolio Espina. The painting was kept in a locked chest with the only key around the neck of its owner. Even if someone could have stolen the painting, the window was too small to push it through and the maids saw no one leave with it or anything that could have held it. The final impossibility comes later in the book, where a victim turns up strangled in an elevator…even though the police were just in it and it was under observation from when they left until the discovery of the body.

As mentioned, Rees’s death is the core of the book. The likeliest suspects are his three patients. There’s Floyd Stenhouse, a musician with the Philharmonic…who’s tormented by bizarre nightmares. The second murder takes place in his apartment building. There’s Della Cookson, an actress and star of the play Miss Death...and a kleptomaniac who was also the only person who know of El Nacimiento. Finally, there’s Claude Weaver, a famous author…who slips into fugue states where he’s unaware of what he’s doing, and who’s being stalked by a mysterious man…

And how is this all connected, if it’s connected at all, to Dr. Rees’s one failure, the suicide of the patient Der Schlangenmann, “The Snakeman”?

That’s the “death.” The “conjuror” is Joseph Spector, a magician who’s age could be "anywhere from fifty to eighty" and who "looks like he could get away with any crime." Spector is an appealing protagonist, someone who has the understanding both of mechanical trickery and human nature to unravel the crimes. And the crimes are good. The theft of the painting is a bit of a let-down, and the elevator murder is a tad too complex (this is one that would benefit from the television adaptation), but the murder of Dr. Rees is really good. In practice it’s simple, but there’s a very clever deception at the heart of it, and Mead does a good job of making the fiddly mechanical bits feel clever. I think the best way of summing up my thoughts on the impossible crimes is satisfied. That’s not a negative. I’ve just read enough locked rooms to not be as easily wowed. It’s satisfying to see the locked rooms, the two murders especially, explained and pieced together. There are even clues! Footnoted! (Although for some I though, “Come on Mead, no one would notice that!”) Yes, I was pleased here.

Of course, there’s the whodunit to consider as well. There’s an irony here. We’re told that the locked room mysteries at the center of the plot are "hard to let oneself become emotionally invested in" and that "you must retain a sense of intellectual distance from them." And indeed, on a mechanical level, access to the physical tools necessary to commit the crimes is important to Spector’s logic. But in practice, solving the crime requires Spector to understand “insanity.” There’s a bit close the end of the book where Spector discusses Théodore Géricault’s Portraits of the Insane and it is clear that he wishes to understand what drives the different suspects. Some are genuinely tormented by a morbid psychology that they wish to alleviate, others have far more venal motives for their actions. While I wish that we had spent more time with the suspects to get to know them, the whodunit isn't just a throwaway aspect of the book.

I quite enjoyed this. While I have some issues with it, they are ultimately minor blemishes on a very good book. Death and the Conjuror got a lot of attention among intense and casual mystery fans alike for being a locked room mystery released in the modern day. I’m sure that Tom Mead has done better since his debut, but this is still very much worth your time. Recommended.

Other Reviews: Beneath the Stains of Time, The Invisible Event, James Scott Byrnside, Tangled Yarns, Mystery*File, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, AhSweetMystery, CrossExaminingCrime, Tangled Yarns, Solving the Mystery of Murder, and Stephen M. Pierce.

The Labors of Hercules (1947) by Agatha Christie

I feel that The Labors of Hercules is an underrated Christie. I have no evidence of this, but I never see it

or the stories within mentioned very often among Christie aficionados. This makes sense. Christie was good but not exceptional at short fiction. There is, of course, her collection of Miss Marple stories, The Thirteen Problems, but outside of that, her one gem “The Witness for the Prosecution,” is a non-series. Furthermore, Labors is an unusual collection. It resembles her Harley Quin or Parker Pyne stories in plotting. There are only a few stories here that could be described as anything resembling “traditional” Christie. Most don’t feature murders. A few don’t have any crime at all.

And yet I find this a truly fascinating collection. Christie is being experimental here, and it works out in her favor. To be sure, these aren’t always her best mysteries; some of them can be light on cluing. But as works of fiction they are excellent, and I think that some of her most interesting work can be found here.

We begin with a foreword where Poirot brings up his impending retirement with Dr. Burton. The other man is rightly skeptical of the idea. The conversation turns to Poirot’s lack of knowledge of the classics, which provokes an idea from Poirot. While the Greek gods themselves are poor models ("These gods and goddesses--they seemed to have as many different aliases as a modern criminal. Indeed they seemed to definitely be criminal types. Drink, debauchery, incest, rape, loot, homicide and chicanery--enough to keep a juge d’Instruction constantly busy."), he decides that the Labors of Hercules themselves appeal, and that he will take twelve cases “no more, no less” in reference to them.

The first case is “The Nemean Lion,” and it does not bode well for Poirot’s glory. He is asked to look into the dognapping and ransom of a Pekinese dog. At first dismissive, he agrees to take the case because of how unimportant it is, and because he is being hired by the husband, not the wife. He soon learns that there’s a "racket" about kidnapping and ransoming the pet dogs of the rich. The clues are good, and the root of the plan is a Christie classic, though applied in a different context.

“The Lernean Hydra” is the most traditional story of the collection. Poirot is hired by a small-down doctor who’s hypochondriac wife has recently died. The “hydra” in this case is gossip; half the village is convinced that the wife was murdered. Interestingly, Poirot isn’t hired to solve a murder, but to instead bring an end to the rumors. Which he does, and it will shock no one to find that the wife was spirited to an early grave. The cluing feels a little weak (Poirot brings up evidence that I don’t believe was mentioned earlier), but the solution still feels like the logical resolution. It’s Poirot investigating a case meant for Miss Marple.

“The Arcadian Deer” is one of those crime-less stories I mentioned. Poirot is stranded in a small town due to car trouble, and gets acquainted with a local mechanic. ("one of the handsomest specimens of humanity he had ever seen, a simple young man with the outward semblance of a Greek god.") Ted Williamson has a problem for Poirot: last year, he had a charming encounter with a beautiful young woman, a ladies maid with golden hair. He wanted to meet her again, but found that the lady in question had a different maid, and he has had no luck in tracking down the woman he fell in love with. What seems like a simple inquiry sends Poirot around the world, even to "the world’s end," before he is able to find the Arcadian deer in question. This is almost a fairy tale.

After the previous story, Poirot decides to enjoy his time in Switzerland, only to be caught up in the case of “The Erymanthian Boar.” The boar in question is Marrascaud, a ruthless criminal on the run for murder. The police believe he is hiding in Rochers Neiges at an off-season hotel. But why would a criminal choose to hide on a mountainside hotel from which he cannot hope to escape? Obviously there are more guests than expected at the hotel, of varying degrees of suspicious. The funicular leading to the hotel is damaged. Poirot himself is nearly attacked in his bedroom and an undercover police officer is murdered. The solution hinges more on Poirot’s instinct than on evidence, but this is still a good story.

“The Augean Stables” sees some of the highest levels of government consulting Poirot on a scandal of government-destroying proportions. The tabloid rag the X-Ray News is threatening to publish an expose of the previous Prime Minister, John Hammond, revealing him as a fraudster and all-around scoundrel. Unfortunately, these allegations are all true, and are threatening his successor. Now, I would say to let them all hang, but Poirot believes strongly enough in the successor to intervene on his behalf. I will let the reader discover what his strategy is. It’s a different-than-normal story, and Christie stacks the deck by making the editor of the X-Ray News a slimy blackmailer and the successor an honest man, but I, both then and now, have little sympathy for corrupt governments.

However, the next story, “The Stymphalian Birds,” is one of my favorite Christies, no, one of my favorite mystery stories of all time. It’s an unconventional one, where our focus is on the young diplomat Harold Waring. He’s taking a holiday in Herzoslovakia (from Christie’s The Secret of Chimneys) and makes the acquaintance of Elsie Clayton and her mother. His attraction to the former is hampered by her abusive and jealous husband, who shows up breathing fire one night and is killed in the struggle. Bad enough for our young rising political star, but then two ugly old ladies, "birds of ill omen," begin to peck away with blackmail demands.

As I said, this is an unusual story. Poirot doesn’t show up until the last few pages, but he quickly extracts Harold from the mess he’s found himself in. Christie expertly plays with the audience and lampoons her own countrymen in this very good mystery.

“The Cretan Bull” continues to be unconventional. Poirot is approached by Diana Maberly who tells him that her fiance (another magnificent specimen of male beauty) has suddenly broken off their engagement; he’s convinced that he’s going insane. Indeed, there is insanity in his family, and he’s been suffering from hallucinations. And someone is killing farm animals in the dead of night. The blood he finds in his washbin in the morning is incriminating. Poirot exposes something just as disturbing in a tale that one can read as a Gothic, only with a young man as the target instead of a woman. The key evidence against the guilty party is slight but still convicting, and Christie will successfully deceive the reader again.

Next we have a tale of drug abuse. “The Horses of Diomedes” has Poirot called to a place he normally would never be seen at: The mews in the aftermath of a party where cocaine was passed around. The doctor who calls him is particularly concerned about a young woman, Sheila Grant, who might have been the one to bring the drugs. Poirot investigates her and her sisters and brings the crime home to the metaphorical flesh-eating horse behind it all. A minor work, honestly, but I again appreciate the game Christie plays with the audience here.

We have a more traditional work up next: “The Girdle of Hippolyta.” Poirot is asked to look into the theft of a valuable painting. He has no real joy in the task, and instead is far more interested in the disappearance of a schoolgirl. The young woman in question vanished from a train, and only her hat was found, fourteen miles from where the train stopped--and from where her classmates last saw her. I would say that the disappearance is an impossible crime, but Christie doesn’t dwell on it, and it’s not worth tagging the post as one. Obviously the theft and the disappearance--and reappearance--of the girl are tied together. The answer for the disappearance isn’t shocking, but the evidence for how and why it was done are good.

“The Flock of Geryon” sees the return of a culprit from a previous story. Having been let off by Poirot, she’s been struggling with boredom and wants to volunteer her services for the great man. A friend of hers has been drawn in by a religious group, the Flock of the Shepherd. The leader of the group, one Dr. Andersen, is an attractive man preaching a message of love and unity, so it’s unsurprising that his flock is filled with older, wealthy women…but a great concern that many of them have died. However, they all died of different illnesses, quite some time apart, attended to by different doctors, etc. Poirot’s client wants to go undercover to determine what is going on. Not really a “mystery,” but still a good story starring one of Christie’s most fun protagonists.

The next story, “The Apples of the Hesperides,” bears resemblance to “The Arcadian Deer,” in that the case doesn’t involve, or in this case, focus on, a crime. Emory Power is a ruthless businessman who many years ago purchased a valuable goblet, originally meant for Pope Alexander IV. The chalice was stolen before he could claim it, and he’s been hunting for it ever since, "Not for its beauty. Not for its value." but for his "pride." Like “Deer,” Poirot treks around the world before arriving at another desolate location at the "world’s end," where he finds the goblet. This one isn’t clued except in the broadest sense possible, but it’s more of a religious tale than a mystery, one where the solution involves the salvation of a man’s soul.

“The Capture of Cerberus” opens with Poirot suffering as he is pushed and shoved through the London Underground. Then someone calls out to him. It’s Countess Vera Rossakoff, a jewel thief he’s met before (and is attracted to, "It’s the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women."). They’re going on opposite escalators, him up and her down, and when he asks where they can meet, she cries back, "In Hell…"

“Hell” in this case refers to the Countess’s new nightclub, modeled after Hell. It comes with devils painted on the wall, steps with words like "Wipe the slate clean and start afresh…" and "I can give it up any time I like…", and the titular Cerberus, a large and vicious dog that the Countess controls completely. It is also, according to the police, a hub of drug trafficking. Poirot again outwits the culprit, but I admit to finding this one a little unsatisfying. The reveal of where the drugs were concealed was good, but I didn’t like the choice of culprit.

But wait, there’s more!

If you look up the original publication dates for these stories, you’ll see that the first eleven were published in The Strand from November 1939 to September 1940. So far so good. But “The Capture of Cerberus” wasn’t published until it was collected in the full collection in 1947. What happened? Well, Christie wrote a story called “The Capture of Cerberus,” but it was never published due to its political content. The one collected here was Christie’s second attempt at the story. Luckily for us, the original was included in John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

The original “Capture” once again features Countess Vera Rossakoff, albeit in a reduced role. She introduces Poirot to a friend, Dr. Keiserbach, and tells said friend, "He can even bring the dead back to life." This statement leads the other man to meet with Poirot that night about the death of the modern-day demagogue August Hertzlein. Herzilein is a dictator who has the whole of Europe under his spell, setting "huge crowds rocking with frenzied enthusiasm." Chillingly, this spell remains unbroken even after he was shot during a speech; in fact, it’s gotten even stronger: "For the dead man had become a symbol, a martyr, a Saint." Keiserbach’s son was accused of the shooting and torn about by the crowd, but his father knows he was a loyal follower of Hertlein and never would have shot him. No, there’s something more unsettling going on, which Keiserbach tasks Poirot with exposing.

In retrospect, Poirot doesn’t solve much. Keiserbach has more or less figured it out, Poirot just brings everything to a conclusion. But he does it well. The cluing is also pretty good in this one. As for the political content, I agree that it’s certainly more explicitly political than most of Christie’s work outside of earliest fiction. I find some of the ideas she expresses here interesting when looked at in the light of her play Akhnaton, which she’d written before this. It’s more optimistic than you might think, and it seems to me that she was wish-casting a bit. I’m not shocked it was never published considering the state of the world in 1940 (and one must remember that the Battle of Britain had just begun.)

At first, I thought that the first “Cerberus” was the better one. It’s certainly a grander finale, with Poirot’s actions affecting the entire world. I also feel that it’s a slightly better mystery than the current version. But after chewing on it, I have to give the nod to the current version of “Cerberus.” It’s not as dramatic, but it makes better use of Vera, the setting of Hell is inspired, and the titular “capture” is much better integrated. But don’t get me wrong, both are good finales.

Obviously, I love this collection. This is Christie at her most creative and interesting, putting Poirot into the type of mysteries you wouldn’t normally think of as “Poirot stories.” While they aren’t super-complex mysteries, they are still excellent stories that are must-reads for fans of Poirot or Christie in general. Highly Recommended.

Other Reviews: Ah Sweet Mystery, The Passing Tramp (in two parts, link to part 1 is on the page), and Countdown John's Christie Journal.

The Last Detective (1991) by Peter Lovesey

The Last Detective is the debut of Peter Lovesey’s DCI Peter Diamond

who would be the star of the rest of Lovesey’s novels. Diamond is the titular “last detective,” “a genuine gumshoe, not some lad out of police school with a degree in computer studies.” The case he’s faced with promises to be “a real test of his sleuthing ability. An unidentified corpse. No clothes to identify her from a million other women. No marks of any significance. No murder weapon.” The woman in question is fished out of a lake, having been there for weeks. Diamond thinks the key to figuring out who she is and who killed her will come through wearing out leather, knocking on doors, and making public inquiries. Her identity is swiftly determined to be Geraldine “Gerry” Snoo, a former soap opera star who lost her main role a year and a half ago and has never quite gotten over it. Diamond quickly narrows in on her English professor husband, who’s explanation for why it took him three weeks to report her missing sounds flimsy. But of course, it’s not that easy.

Unlike the previous two Lovesey’s I read, this is a police procedural, with a focus on realism. We get our first glimpse of this early on when the reliable M.D. isn’t able to give a firm cause of death for quite a bit of the first part of the book. The solution comes not through brilliant deductions from small pieces of evidence, but from careful elimination of the suspects, Diamond’s knowledge of human nature, and his distrust of the “men in white coats” and their DNA evidence (which at this early stage, is referred to as "genetic fingerprinting.”) It’s a very slow-paced and talky novel, with much being dedicated to the narratives of two of the key suspects in the crime. This is no simple domestic drama, but has its roots in the saving of a young boy from drowning, a forbidden attraction, and, befitting a former English professor, two letters from the hand of Jane Austin.

Diamond is a respectable protagonist. He’s gruff, rude, and a technophobe, but Lovesey doesn’t allow him to rampage freely over the narrative. He embarrasses himself, doesn’t always get one over his subordinates, and ultimately proves to be a fair man, capable of pushing aside his personal frustrations. The bit of his backstory where he's implicated in police brutality reads worse today, but Lovesey doesn’t dwell on it. He goes through the wringer here, and you’re rooting for him at the end. But I don’t know if Lovesey really pulls off the “last detective” element. Diamond does figure out how the men in white coats were outsmarted at the end, but other than that, I didn’t really get the feeling that old-fashioned police work was winning out over technology. I also would have liked to see more cluing. The final culprit makes sense, but like I said, it's more Diamond's instinct and knowledge of people that points him towards the truth.

You might suspect I didn’t care for the book too much. That would be true. Part of this is simple expectation; I thought that Lovesey was going to write something more traditional. But like I said, this is a police procedural. Lovesey does have some good surprises in store. He got me good with the killer, for one. But overall, this really wasn’t what I expected. I found it heavy going at times.

But I will say that as an example of it’s form, The Last Detective is good. This won’t be the last you see of Peter Diamond on this blog, but hopefully I’ll have adjusted my expectations, or Lovesey will have written something more traditional. Recommended, with Caveats (i.e. I didn’t like it, but you might.)

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

Till Death Do Us Part (1944) by John Dickson Carr

I read this for the Honkaku Discord server book club.

Dick Markham is the happiest man in the world. He’s just gotten engaged to Lesley Grant, a charming young newcomer to the village of Six Ashes. Other than some slight local grumbling about how he really should have married that nice Cynthia Drew, it looks like smooth sailing ahead. But during the village fête, Lesley enters the tent of the fortune teller and runs out in shock. When Dick confronts the man--who he knows is secretly famed pathologist Sir Harvey Gilman--he tells Dick that he doesn’t know his wife very well at all…before Lesley shoots him through the tent. An accident, she says, someone jostled her arm.

Sir Harvey turns out all right, but Dick’s nightmare is only beginning. Sir Harvey tells him that his sweet young fiancée is really a black widower who’s left multiple husbands and lovers in her wake, all of whom allegedly injected themselves with hypodermics full of poison in locked rooms. It is “one of the few problems that ever defeated my friend Gideon Fell.” Dick agrees to help Sir Harvey to set a trap to find out how Lesley does it. But the following morning, Dick gets a phone call saying “Colonel Pope’s cottage. Come at once. If you don’t come at once, you’ll be too late.” He rushes down to where Sir Harvey is staying, just in time to see someone take a shot into his drawing room with a rifle, the same one that Lesley shot him with. Sir Harvey is dead…but the shot missed him. He has been poisoned with a hypodermic. The doors and windows are locked from the inside.

Carr has yet more twists to throw at the reader. This is a book in motion; things never stop happening. Every chapter has a cliffhanger, and I can only think of one (that ends Chapter 8) that’s a dud. Yet it never feels crowded or confusing. The clues are doled out well, and while I have my issues with Carr’s choice of murderer, there is solid evidence pointing to them; from the clues that point right at them (but are obscure enough that most readers will miss them) to the obvious ones that sail right in front of you that you nonetheless simply don’t think about until Dr. Fell highlights them.

I also enjoyed the locked room. The solution isn’t genre-defining and is in many ways a conventional one. But the key is that Carr uses it in a slightly different way and puts the focus on how it differs from similar tricks. There’s also another minor impossible crime where the rifle that Lesley shot Sir Harvey with goes missing even though no one had the chance to remove it, but I didn’t like this one as much. We simply don’t get a good enough detail about what was and wasn’t possible.

I will give Carr credit for the main relationship between Dick and Lesley. I thought I knew what to expect from a Carr novel, but he made me waver. Near the end I thought, “He’s not actually going to…?” That said, while I was invested in the relationship, I didn’t find the love triangle all that convincing. This might be the fault of expectations; I first read about this book in Douglas Greene’s Carr biography, and he puts a lot of emphasis on the love triangle between Dick, Lesley, and Cynthia. “One of these girls…was clear-eyed and honest, telling the truth with a sincere purpose. The other hid many ugly thoughts behind a pretty face, which might wear a very different expression if you caught it off guard.” But I don’t think Carr sells this. There’s no real effort to implicate Cynthia in the crimes beyond any of the other suspects. She has more motive than they do, but only at one, non-murderous point does the story hinge on whether you believe Lesley or Cynthia.

This ties into another issue I had with the book: the lack of setting. "But…where is everybody?" Lesley asks at the nearly deserted village fête, and I thought the same thing. We never really get any sense of place from Six Ashes, only a small sampling of its citizenry from the suspects. The village lurks in the background, a gossip engine that Lesley is terrified of, but we do not feel that same pressure.

But overall, I enjoyed this book. While I wouldn’t go as far as some to call it an underrated Carr masterpiece, it still presents a solid mystery that will entertain and enthrall readers. Recommended.

Other Reviews: Beneath the Stains of Time, CrossExaminingCrime (with a look at the different covers here, beware of spoilers in the comments), The Invisible Event, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Green Capsule, Dead Yesterday, The Book Decoder, Golden Age of Detective Fiction (be warned, I think this review goes into too much detail about the plot), Mysteries Ahoy (beware of spoilers in the comments).