It’s been a while since I’ve read one of Alan Conway’s works.
Atticus Pünd Takes the Case is the third entry in Conway’s beloved series of classic mysteries starring Holocaust survivor and great detective Atticus Pünd . I admit it’s a bit weird to be reading someone’s books so soon after their death, but I figure that Conway would rather be remembered for his detective fiction than anything else.
The book is set in the small village of Tawleigh-on-the-Water, a gentler, long-forgotten England. The intro to the book is a little slow, as we get a bird’s eye look into the villager’s lives. The central figure is Melissa James, an actress creeping close to being past her glory days. She’s the owner of the local inn, the Moonflower, but suspects that she’s being ripped off by the managers, Lance and Maureen Gardner. Not to mention there’s domestic trouble at home: She’s growing distant from her husband and her butler, Eric Chandler, has a secret of his own. Finally, she has an unpleasant run-in with Simon Cox, a producer who’s based his upcoming script around James…and she’s not interested. There are also some other hangers-on who will play a role in the plot. Such as Algernon Marsh, who’s introduced thinking about how he’s scamming Melissa and other investors before hitting a man while driving drunk. Then there’s his sister, Samantha Collins, who might be able to come into a large inheritance, and her husband, the village doctor. Conway does a good job at setting up his cast and laying the groundwork for the murder, which comes at the end of chapter 4, when Melissa is found strangled to death in her bedroom.
At this point, we introduce Atticus Pünd, fresh off solving the Ludendorff Diamond case. Which is actually a locked room mystery where jewelry vanishes from a safe to which only three people know the combination and with only one key, in possession of the owner. I liked this, it’s a good little mystery, but it does slow the plot down right when it should be ramping up. I wonder what his editor was thinking. Anyway, Pünd is contacted by Melissa’s agents to investigate the crime, and he agrees. He’s assisted in his investigation by his assistant, Madeline, and the local police officer. This guy is a great side character. He’s worked in this sleepy little town all his life and is getting close to retirement and is frustrated that his last case is a publicized murder that’s he making little progress on. I really liked his interactions with Pünd; he’s not the typical “stupid cop” of fiction.
The mystery is pretty good on the whole. Pünd quickly picks up on some odd facts about the crime. Such as the tissues in Melissa’s house, two in the bedroom, one in the living room, and a ten-minute gap in her schedule that the murder must have been committed in. Pünd is on good form, and I really liked his explanations. Conway is good about crime scenes with weird details.
The characters are good, if a bit shallow. Like I said, we get a good bird-eye view of them early on, but some get more attention than others. But they are well observed; almost as if they were pulled from life. Some of them come off quite badly—Eric in particular —but they are at least memorable.
This is a well-clued mystery. As usual for Conway, in spite of all the chaff thrown around the central crime is quite simple. While there is one implausible bit about the murder—I suspect most of you will know what I’m talking about—this is easily overlooked. We get some solid cluing and even multiple false solutions, with proper evidence for each. Even some of the smaller plot twists get cluing! It’s all very well done. And the final twist is excellent. One clue hinges on differences between English and American culture, but other than that I have no issues.
All in all, this is another excellent mystery from a writer taken from us too soon. This tale of murder and skullduggery beside the English sea is another worthy mystery. Recommended.
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