I decided to give this one a try after reading The Puzzle Doctor’s review of it a few months ago.
Synopsis
‘A house full of suspects. Two dogged detectives. One impossible murder.
When the owner of the Treefall Estate, Alexander Grimbourne, is murdered on the morning of his daughter’s wedding, the local police are stumped by the case. After all, Alexander’s body is found inside his study, the door and windows of which are locked from the inside – yet someone has stabbed the tyrannical man with a dagger through the heart and seemingly vanished into thin air.
An impossible murder case requires a uniquely talented detective, and there is no one better than Inspector Graves of Scotland Yard, who together with his new constable, James Carver, travel to Treefall Manor where they find a host of suspects. From the dead man’s resentful son to his fearful secretary, the local pub landlord to the gossiping housekeeper, the neighbouring landowner to the flighty socialite – even the village vicar is not above suspicion.
But in order to unmask the killer, Inspector Graves must first find the answer to some baffling questions: Who is the mysterious figure seen lurking on the Treefall Estate? How did the killer escape from a locked room? And why is Alexander found clutching The Canterbury Tales in his dead hand?’
Overall Thoughts
The prologue sets up a blackmailing servant talking to an enraged manor owner, as well as two anxious lovers meeting by moonlight. The prologue concludes with them saying to each other:
“What are we to do?” asked the hooded figure.
“What can we do? Our options seem rather limited, don’t you think?”
The prologue creates some obviously suspicious character dynamics, with associated lines of thought as to who will be committing murder later in the book. However, I felt the “obviousness” was too strong and therefore is more likely to put a reader on guard, trying to figure out the catch. There is definitely some ambiguity to puzzle over in the prologue and whilst the reader may avoid the red herring trap, it is not definite that they will figure out the truth of the situation.
The first chapter launches various key characters on to the page in a more upfront manner, such as a barrister who is a wedding guest, as well as the inhabitants of the Grimbourne household who live at Treefall Manor. Naturally, we see more of the goings on at the manor and this encourages us as readers to try and map the events of the prologue on to the cast of characters we have been introduced to. The geographical setting of the story is established with a bird’s eye view of the local area. I thought this was a nice idea, charting a bird’s flight, but the lyrical style of this section seemed forced. The narrative voice is okay, but it feels like it is trying too hard to convey the presumed voice of someone from the interwar period. There was a degree of blandness to it, as well as a generic quality.
When murder strikes, Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Graves is sent to deal with the case, and he naturally goes home to explain the trip to his wife and to put together a few things in a suitcase before heading for the train. Oh, and he takes his dog with him, who he routinely gives ale to, at the pub they stay at near the crime scene. Both aspects struck me as odd and unusual, and I thought something would be made of this irregularity. But all the characters just accept this as normal.
I like how Inspector Graves encourages his new constable to give his initial findings on the corpse. I think the constable is designed to be a kind of Watson whose sleuthing skills are not bad but are sometimes lower than the reader’s level of detecting. On one occasion, Inspector Graves has his constable interview a spoilt and loud suspect, which is unsurprisingly not a success. This scene felt like it was engineered to be a comic one, but I found it too contrived and predictable.
The novel felt like it was peopled with a lot of stock characters that were hard to engage with and they didn’t really seem to break free of their “types” until the solution, which seemed too late. Looking at the solution, for me, there was an excess of secrets in this mystery. Some the reader will be able to anticipate, whilst others are harder to deduce, as they are not so well established in the previous narrative. The story wasn’t character driven enough, in my opinion, yet the solution has a strong character focus. Consequently, this leads to a long section at the end, in which the crimes are explained, and the characters are shown in their true colours. The device of letters as a way of providing the reader with evidence for a solution also seemed a bit overused.
Overall, this mystery just didn’t grab me unfortunately. There is a clever playfulness with the murder attempts (successful and thwarted), which makes you think one thing is happening, when in fact something else is happening instead. Yet I think it is the way this puzzle was packaged that did not work for me so well.
Rating: 3.5/5