Paperback, 212 pages
English language
Published May 14, 2007 by BiblioBazaar.
This is probably one of the top classics of "golden age" detective fiction. Anyone who's read any mystery novels at all will be familiar with the tropes -- an English country house in the first half of the twentieth century, a locked room, a dead body, an amateur sleuth, a helpful sidekick, and all the rest.
It's a clever story, ingenious enough in its way, and an iconic example of Agatha Christie / Dorothy Sayers -type murder mysteries. If you've read more than a few of those kinds of books, you might find this one a little predictable, but it's fun despite that.
It's particularly of note, however, because Raymond Chandler wrote about it extensively in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder." After praising it as "an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks," he …
This is probably one of the top classics of "golden age" detective fiction. Anyone who's read any mystery novels at all will be familiar with the tropes -- an English country house in the first half of the twentieth century, a locked room, a dead body, an amateur sleuth, a helpful sidekick, and all the rest.
It's a clever story, ingenious enough in its way, and an iconic example of Agatha Christie / Dorothy Sayers -type murder mysteries. If you've read more than a few of those kinds of books, you might find this one a little predictable, but it's fun despite that.
It's particularly of note, however, because Raymond Chandler wrote about it extensively in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder." After praising it as "an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks," he proceeds to take it sharply to task for its essential lack of realism. This book -- which Chandler admired to an extent -- was what he saw as the iconic example of what was wrong with the detective fiction of his day, and to which novels like "The Big Sleep" or "The Long Goodbye", with their hard-boiled, hard-hitting gumshoes and gritty realism, were a direct response.
So this book's worth reading not just because it's "an agreeable book, light, [and] amusing in the Punch style", but also because reading it will give a deepened appreciation for the later, more realistic detective fiction of writers like Hammett and Chandler.
The mystery is fine, but the light amusement of the amateur sleuth and his enjoyment at his own cleverness in figuring it out all along the way is deftly delivered.
Antony Gillingham, humorous and astute observer of life, arrives at The Red House, the manor house of a quiet, uneventful English village, just as a fatal shot is fired, and finds himself tangled up in a mystery that requires all of his ingenuity, trained curiosity and bravery to unravel.
A lot of expository dialogue and conscious Holmes/Watson patter ('I'll put forth a cunning observation, and then you say to me 'By Jove! You are a marvel in this rum business!'" is not a misrepresentation) in this locked-room mystery. Most guests, visitors, and help are absent or rare by the fifth chapter. The denouement is slightly dissatisfying (yes, dissatisfied is the correct word here), but it is an early locked-room mystery, published in 1922.
