Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead

Joseph Spector #3

320 Pages

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Release Date: August 1, 2024

Netgalley

 

Blurb

Sleuth and illusionist Joseph Spector investigates his most complex case yet in this gripping new locked-room murder mystery from Tom Mead, set in an English country house just before the Second World War.

Hampshire, 1938. Victor Silvius is confined in a private sanatorium after attacking prominent judge Sir Giles Drury. When Sir Giles starts receiving sinister threatening letters, his wife suspects Silvius. Meanwhile, Silvius’ sister Caroline is convinced her brother is about to be murdered... by none other than his old nemesis Sir Giles.

Caroline seeks the advice of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Flint, while the Drurys, eager to avoid a scandal, turn to Joseph Spector. Spector, renowned magician turned sleuth, has an uncanny knack for solving complicated crimes – but this case will test his powers of deduction to their limits.

At a snowbound English country house, a body is found is impossible circumstances, and a killer’s bullet is fired through a locked window without breaking the glass. Spector and Flint’s investigations soon collide as they find themselves trapped by the snowstorm where anyone could be the next victim – or the killer...

 

Review

Almost a decade ago a young woman died under suspicious circumstances, but the mystery of her death has never been solved. The aftermath left one man, Victor Silvius confined to a private sanatorium for attacking Sir Giles Drury, the judge he held responsible for the death of the woman he loved.

Now, in 1938 the old case is coming back to life and Scotland Yard inspector Flint and Joseph Spector, former magician and occasional sleuth, are asked to investigate. Unfortunately, their involvement doesn’t prevent further bloodshed. In fact, it isn’t long before Spector and Flint are up to their necks in murders which all appear to be impossible and require all of Spector’s skills to eventually unravel.

If the description of this book makes it sound as if there’s a lot going on in the story, you are right. In fact, the blurb barely scratches the surface when it comes to (impossible) murders, victims, and mysteries. There is so much happening in this story that it should be too much and overwhelming. And, I want to say that in the hands of a lesser author this story and the solutions to the mysteries wouldn’t have worked. Tom Mead works some kind of magic of his own in this book which allows him to tell a story at neck-breaking speed without overwhelming the reader.

Eighteen clues are masterfully hidden in this story and tagged so that the reader can check and discover, like I did, that Tom Mead plays fair with his audience. All the information the reader needs to solve the mysteries in this story is available to those who pay close attention. I for one have to admit that I missed most but, I’m proud to say, not all of them.

This is the third Joseph Spector mystery I’ve read and with every book I’m more in awe of Tom Mead’s storytelling and mystery-creating prowess. The release of the next book in this series can’t come soon enough for me.

Related reviews:

Death and the Conjuror: https://helenasheat.blogspot.com/2023/05/death-and-conjuror-by-tom-mead.html

The Murder Wheel:  https://helenasheat.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-murder-wheel-by-tom-mead.html

 

 

The Twelve Days of Murder by Andreina Cordani

315 pages

Publisher: Zaffre

Release Date: October 26, 2023

Netgalley

 

Blurb

 Find the truth. Solve the murder. Never reveal your secret.

 Twelve years ago, eight friends ran an exclusive group at The Murder Masquerade Society. The mysteries they solved may have been grisly, but they were always fictional - until their final Christmas puzzle, when one of the group disappeared, never to be seen again.

Now, the remaining members receive an invitation to a reunion masquerade, to be held in a beautiful and remote country house in Scotland. The game begins, and it feels just like old times.

Until the next morning, when Lady Partridge is found hanging from a pear tree.

It quickly becomes clear that in this game, the murder will be all too real, and the story is bringing long-hidden secrets to the surface. If they hope to survive the festive season then they will need to face the truth about what happened on that fateful night twelve years ago.

 

Review

If I had to summarize this book in one sentence, I’d say: The Secret History meets And Then There Were None. The group of students who form the Murder Masquerade Society are all rich and confident. All of them, that is, except for Charley. As a result, Charley always felt like an outsider, although that never stopped her from participating.

The last time the Society got together twelve years ago, one of them, Karl, disappeared without a trace. He was the organiser of their murder games. He was also the appointed victim for that particular game. While the locked room in which his body should have been found did contain the (fake) blood smears and other clues, no sign of Karl could be found. And after more than a decade it is still unclear what happened to him.

For twelve years the society has been dormant but now Karl’s twin sister Ali has invited all the participants to take part in another mystery game in a remote location. For reasons best known to those individual members, the remaining seven all return with one of them bringing an uninvited eight guest.

From the start, things are a bit off. For starters, there’s no sign of Ali, who is supposed to be in charge of proceedings. But matters don’t get really worrying until the appointed victim in the game, Lady Partridge, is found hanging in a pear tree. Her death being anything but pretend.

With a snowstorm isolating them from the outside world, the landline down, and their venue having no telephone reception or Wi-Fi, the survivors are on their own. But what is going on? Can they trust each other? And does enjoying fake mysteries mean they are also able to solve a real case?

The above made for a fascinating and fast-paced mystery, especially since Lady Partridge wasn’t the only victim. There is always something delicious about the friction between reasonable mistrust between the characters and the need to work together in order to survive. The fact that it isn’t immediately clear whether what is happening is in some way related to Karl’s disappearance or a new ordeal adds to the tension. And there’s some wonderful character development in this book, especially where Charley is concerned.

For obvious reasons, I can’t say a whole lot more about the story. I will therefore limit myself to stating that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The mysteries were truly mystifying, and the solutions were mostly satisfactory. I’m just not sure the reader was given entirely enough information to work out (part of) the solution along with Charley. With that in mind, I still highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys an original murder mystery that will have them scratching their heads for the longest time.

West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman

 

 

288 pages

Publisher: Raven Books

Publishing Date: October 24, 2023

Netgalley

 

Blurb

'Any respectable practitioner must follow the rules in making the truth - however skilfully camouflaged by lies - accessible to all'

It's the Fourth of July weekend at the prestigious West Heart country club. Gathered for cocktails on the first evening are just some of the guests: the club president, the treasurer and his pregnant wife, the snooping school boy, the bereaved father, the taciturn caretaker, the prospective member, the private detective...

And there will also be a body.

And a fiendish mystery to solve.

But everything else is to play for.

And you are about to find out that you have a role to play in this mystery too..

West Heart Kill is an outrageously original and imaginative murder mystery that is both a love letter to the greats of classic crime fiction and a brilliant puzzle the likes of which you will never have read before.

 

Review

When a blurb states that the mystery in the book is ‘a brilliant puzzle the likes of which you will never have read before’ it is hard not to see that statement as a challenge. Therefore: challenge accepted. 😊

Brace yourself for a review filled with vagaries. So much of the plot depends on the things that make this story unique and surprising, and I wouldn’t want to ruin those discoveries for others. I do have a few things I want to say about the fascinating, original, surprising, and thought-provoking reading experience I just had, though.

The book starts with the narrator/author comparing West Heart Kill to all other murder mysteries. In fact, the book starts as if it hasn’t started yet, with the narrator describing what is happening, or going to happen, as if this is not the actual story yet but rather a description of what is to come. I’m going to stop relaying how the story is told soon, but I do want to add that the list of ‘dramatis personae’ has some parts of the description of individual characters blacked out. The text implies that the missing information would either tell the reader a lie or reveal too much.

I have to say a bit more about how this story is narrated after all because the second chapter is told from a first-person perspective, the third section shifts to the “we” of the first-person plural, and the book finishes as a play. Interspersed between the sections of murder mystery are apparently random theoretical facts about and opinions on murder mysteries and their authors. Except that nothing in this story turns out to be random. With one possible exception, although I can’t go into that. Which is probably just as well since I haven’t figured out how I feel about that yet.

If all of the above gives the impression that this book is anything but a mystery, allow me to reassure you. The components you’d expect in any whodunnit are all present here. We’ve got a private detective, deaths that need explaining, a locked room, and a closed circle of suspects, to mention a few familiar tropes.

But those are the bare bones. There is so much more going on. As an avid reader of the genre, I knew that everything on the page had to be in some way relevant to the mystery plot. And while a lot of what I read had me stretching my head in the moment, it all made a wonderful sort of sense when I reached the end of the book. If all you want from your mysteries is the traditional set-up of murder, followed by investigation, and denouement, this book may be too much for you. If, on the other hand, you enjoy discovering something new and being taken by surprise, you are going to love this story.

All too often the claim that the book a reader is about to start is unlike anything they’ve ever read before turns out to be a disappointing overstatement. Not this time. This time I fully agree with the last line of the blurb. West Heart Kill is indeed an

outrageously original and imaginative murder mystery that is both a love letter to the greats of classic crime fiction and a brilliant puzzle the likes of which you will never have read before.

All I know is that if ever a book deserved a re-read, this is it. I’m already anticipating how much fun I will have starting the story again but this time armed with the knowledge I’ll need to figure out exactly how immensely clever this work is. Because I’m sure I haven’t recognised the half of it.

 

 

 

 

 

Supper for Six by Fiona Sherlock

 

295 pages

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Release Date: October 19, 2023

Netgalley

 

Blurb

When Lady Anderson invites five guests to her apartment in Bruton Square, Mayfair, none of the guests know why they have been summoned. And it isn't long before dinner turns DEADLY.

Supper for Six . . . but murder is on the menu

London, 1977: Agapanthus and Francois Langford, Jeremy Crowley, Elizabeth Chalice and Chrissy Crowley have very little in common - except for the fact they have all been summoned at fairly short notice to attend a dinner party hosted by Lady Sybil Anderson, in her rather charming and opulent apartment in Bruton Square, Mayfair.

Except each guests believes they are having a private dinner party with their host - so the other visitors are quite a surprise.

Once the awkward introductions are out of the way, a powercut sends shockwaves through the group - and when the lights come back on, Jeremy is discovered dead.

Elizabeth Chalice - the only private investigator in the group - becomes detective, witness and suspect all at once . . . Is Jeremy's death an accident - or is it the very reason they've all been called here at once?

A murderous Abigail's Party - Fiona Sherlock's Supper for Six is immersive and incredibly entertaining. Join Elizabeth Chalice on her quest to get to the bottom of this rather deadly dinner party . . .

 

Review

To say I’m conflicted about this book would be a gross understatement. I’ll try to explain why that is the case.

But, first things first… What the blurb doesn’t mention is that this case is presented in the form of a podcast, hosted by Felix Caerphilly, an investigative journalist who started looking into the case as a teenager in 1978 but doesn’t make his findings public until the present day.

The podcast format means that the whole set-up is rather high-octane. I get it, with a podcast you need to keep your listeners on edge so that they return for the next episode. While the same is true for chapters in a book—you want to write them in such a way that your reader keeps on turning the pages— the need for cliffhangers is bigger with a podcast, simply because the listeners have no option but to wait for the next episode to be launched.

But…there is such a thing as too much and too fast. A breather, a moment to reflect, every now and again would have been nice. As it was, this story felt chaotic. It went back and forth, repeating itself more than once while also suddenly springing new information on the reader, as if out of nowhere. It had a bit of an ‘everything bar the kitchen sink’ feel to it. One suggested solution seemed to be in the story only to make a (political) point rather than because it had any real relevance to the mystery in question. And finally, I had to suspend my disbelief a bit too far on one or two occasions. For obvious, spoiler related, reasons I can’t actually go into the details of exactly what didn’t feel right to me.

Having said all that, I can’t deny that I read the book in under 24 hours without ever feeling the urge to put it aside because of any of the ‘issues’ I mentioned above. It is definitely a story that keeps you racing through the pages as you try to keep up with the various revelations and possible outcomes. Every single character in this story has secrets they want to keep hidden and reasons to be less than truthful, which raises the stakes and therefore keeps the reader engrossed.

Maybe this is not the book for those who feel strongly about the level of realism they expect to find in their mysteries. However, if you’re in the mood for a fast-paced (turbo-charged) story that will hook you and keep you captivated until the very end, you’ll almost certainly be entertained by this book.

The Couple at the Table by Sophie Hannah

 

358 pages

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

#11 Culver Valley Crime

Library

 

Blurb

You're on your honeymoon at an exclusive couples-only resort.

You receive a note, warning you to 'Beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours'. At dinner that night, five other couples are sitting close by, but none of their tables is any nearer or further away than any of the others. It's almost as if someone has set the scene in order to make the warning note meaningless. Why would anyone do that?

You have no idea.

You also don't know that you're about to be murdered, or that once you're dead, all the evidence will suggest that no one there that night could possibly have committed the crime.

So who might be trying to warn you? And who might be about to kill you, and seems certain to get away with it?

Review

 

Six couples.

One honeymoon resort.

An impossible murder.

Trust me to start reading a series of mysteries with title #11. I usually go out of my way to avoid starting anywhere other than at the start, but in this case, it didn’t even occur to me to check before bringing the book home and diving into it. After reading and loving Sophie Hannah’s Hercule Poirot novels, I just didn’t think twice when I saw her name on the cover of this fascinating-sounding book.

Is there such a thing as a slow-burn mystery? Slow-burn is a huge trope in romance, but is the term used for the mystery genre too? Because if it is, I think it applies to this book. Although the murder has happened six months previously, I didn’t get any sense of an (ongoing) investigation until about halfway through the book.

The story in this book alternates between July 2019 and January 2020. In July Jane Brinkwood was murdered in an exclusive resort in what appears to be an impossible murder. Six months later, Lucy, one of the other guests at the resort and the ex-wife of Jane’s new husband, contacts the investigating police officer, Simon Waterhouse in the hope of breathing new life into the case, which appears to have stalled.

Simon Waterhouse, much to the disgust of his superior, hasn’t given up on the case at all, mainly because he and his wife and colleague Charlie, were also guests at the resort at the time. However, Lucy’s action sets in motion a chain of events that will, eventually lead to the solution.

The first part of the book centres mostly on Lucy and Simon and it isn’t until later that we get introduced to the other guests at the resort. In fact, for the first part of the story, it isn’t clear that most of those guests had reasons to at least dislike Jane. For me, the story didn’t really start to flow until all those other voices came into play too. But as soon as it started flowing, the story washed over me like a tsunami; I was hooked and had to finish the book in one long sitting.

And I liked the ending. The solution to the seemingly impossible crime was plausible. Not only that, but it was also somewhat obvious now that it had been explained to me. And yes, I did want to kick myself for missing one or two clues that were hiding in plain sight. Having said that, while the how and the why were very much a mystery (pun intended) until the very end, I figured out the culprit early on. Discovering I had been right was hugely satisfying.

Overall verdict: A very well-plotted mystery featuring fascinating characters, and a wonderful read. I will be diving into more, none Hercule Poirot, books by Sophie Hannah in the not-too-distant future.