Sir Henry Merrivale #8: The Judas Window

I wanna love you, but something’s pulling me away from you. Jesus is my virtue, Judas is the demon I cling to. Let’s look through The Judas Window, by John Dickson Carr writing as Carter Dickson.

Synopsis:

Avory Hume is found stabbed to death with an arrow – in a study with bolted steel shutters and a heavy door locked from the inside. In the same room James Caplon Answell lies unconscious, his clothes disordered as though from a struggle, his fingerprints on the damning arrow.

Here is the unique Carter Dickson “impossible situation” – yet the great, explosive Sir Henry Merrivale gets down to serious sleuthing and at last startles the crowd in the Old Bailey with a reconstruction of the crime along logical, convincing lines.

H.M. in his most exciting case – an original, unconventional mystery, with a rich story background and a thrilling trial scene.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Recently, I mentioned that I’d exhausted my local library’s supply of Dr. Gideon Fell novels. Ah, but that’s not the only mystery series John Dickson Carr wrote, is it? Working under the pseudonym Carter Dickson, he also created the detective Sir Henry Merrivale. I’d only read one Merrivale story before – it was in one of those collections I picked up for the Col. March stories, and it didn’t impress me much. Then again, though, I thought all the stories in those collections were quite weak in general; so, I figured I might as well give one of the full novels a try. And good thing I did, because this story is an absolutely spectacular locked-room “impossible crime” mystery.

The Judas Window has one hell of a premise: a man’s drink is drugged and he passes out, awakening to find himself in a sealed room with a murder victim. Put on trial for the crime, the great detective Sir Henry Merrivale comes to his defense. As testimony is offered by witnesses and evidence is exhibited, Merrivale expertly breaks down the case against the accused and brings to light the true culprit. The courtroom scenes were riveting, the mystery itself was rock solid… overall, it was just great. Perfect in every regard.

A truly great detective novel which has given me hope that there still remain further gems for me to discover in John Dickson Carr’s remaining body of work.

Final Rating: 5/5

Dr. Gideon Fell #15: Till Death Do Us Part

I can move mountains, I can work a miracle, work a miracle. Oh, oh, keep you like an oath. May nothing but death do us part. Let’s wed Till Death Do Us Part, by John Dickson Carr.

Synopsis:

Was it Sir Harvey Gilman of the Home Officer who had been murdered? Had Lesley Grant, engaged to the successful thriller-writer/playwright Dick Markham, already figured in three sinister cases of poisoning? Why had she and the attractive Cynthia Drew apparently done battle when the contents of the safe in Lesley’s room were still a secret?

Dr. Gideon Fell had seldom a more difficult puzzle to solve or one which seemed to have been directed especially at him to make or mar his reputation.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

There are many Dr. Gideon Fell mysteries I yet want to read: He Who Whispers, for instance, which Carr himself thought of as his best “impossible murder” novel, and The Man Who Could Not Shudder. But, alack and alas, my local library’s collection is limited, and I have reached the last Dr. Fell tome available on its shelves. Fortunately, I can at least say I ended on a high note, because this book was really very good.

Dick Markham, your typical everyman, is engaged to be married when an undercover detective warns him that his fiancee Lesley is actually a serial black widow, suspected but unproven culprit of three prior murders by poisoning in seemingly impossible locked room situations – and that Dick is likely to be her next victim. The next day, however, it is not Dick who is discovered dead, but the detective himself – killed by poison inside a locked room. In comes Gideon Fell, to uncover the truth of the matter once and for all. Lots of intriguing puzzles and clever twists kept me on tenterhooks from beginning to end.

There are a few little flaws that prevent me from ranking this one as high as The Three Coffins in terms of the sheer craftsmanship of the mystery – for instance, the clue about Sam De Villa’s stint in medical school was blatant enough that even I, poor of a detective as I am, was able to figure out who the culprit must be. And while the book made an admirable attempt to afterwards throw suspicion back on Lesley, the red herring that it used to do so – giving Lesley an non-foreshadowed habit of sleepwalking – struck me as a bit clumsy. I mean, I can accept sleepwalking as a plot element if it is established from the start to play a significant role in the narrative, such as in that wonderful Col. March story “The Footprint in the Sky”; but to just toss it in out of nowhere and have it be unrelated to the actual solution… It’s not so terrible as to utterly destroy my suspension of disbelief, but it’s just a tiny blemish in an otherwise very excellent tale.

Final Rating: 4/5

Santa Olivia #1: Santa Olivia

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Olivia is coming to town. Let’s shadowbox Santa Olivia, by Jacqueline Carey.

Synopsis:

Lushly written with rich and vivid characters, SANTA OLIVIA is Jacqueline Carey’s take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth.

Loup Garron was born and raised in Santa Olivia, an isolated, disenfranchised town next to a US military base inside a DMZ buffer zone between Texas and Mexico. A fugitive “Wolf-Man” who had a love affair with a local woman, Loup’s father was one of a group of men genetically-manipulated and used by the US government as a weapon. The “Wolf-Men” were engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, sensory capability, stamina, and a total lack of fear, and Loup, named for and sharing her father’s wolf-like qualities, is marked as an outsider.

After her mother dies, Loup goes to live among the misfit orphans at the parish church, where they seethe from the injustices visited upon the locals by the soldiers. Eventually, the orphans find an outlet for their frustrations: They form a vigilante group to support Loup Garron who, costumed as their patron saint, Santa Olivia, uses her special abilities to avenge the town.

Aware that she could lose her freedom, and possibly her life, Loup is determined to fight to redress the wrongs her community has suffered. And like the reincarnation of their patron saint, she will bring hope to all of Santa Olivia.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

A werewolf superhero story. So said this book’s synopsis, and such was the stage set for my disappointment. For, this story contains neither werewolves nor superheroes. Instead of werewolves, we get your typical generic government genetically-engineered super-soldiers. Instead of superheroics, we get a few childish pranks, like tossing a basketful of snakes over a group of wrong-doers. I kept waiting for the part of the story where Loup would become an actual vigilante hero; but no, the actual plot was about her training for a boxing match.

So, I came into this one with incorrect expectations, and ended up pretty disappointed. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad book; I mean, I’ve probably given better grades to worse writing in the past – but these reviews are ultimately about my subjective experience reading the book, and I ultimately ended up unable to enjoy this one due to its failure to live up to my expectations.

Not that the book did itself any favors, mind, when it did stuff like spend seven chapters following Loup’s mother before Loup was even born. Talk about getting off to a slow start. My patience has limits. And then to tease me with Loup making some initial forays into vigilantism, only to drop that and spend the rest of the book learning to box… yeah, no.

This book isn’t what I expected, and this series isn’t for me.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dr. Gideon Fell #22: Panic in Box C

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham. I wonder to myself, could life ever be sane again? Let’s run down to the safety of Panic in Box C, by John Dickson Carr.

Synopsis:

Sailing from England to America with a writer friend, Philip Knox, Dr. Gideon Fell, that eminent crime solver, encounters some odd characters, who are fated to have a volcanic effect on his stay in the U.S. Prominent among them is the imperious Lady Tiverton (the former actress, Margery Vane), her latest young lover, and her longtime female companion.

All wind up at a dress rehearsal in a Connecticut theater endowed by Miss Vane. Murder stops the show, but provides Dr. Fell with a superb opportunity to display his own singular talents.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

A theater company is putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet, and some absolute numbskull has decided that the extras must be equipped with genuine war-crossbows – for historical veracity, you understand. Well, wouldn’t you know it: during dress rehearsal, the sound of a crossbow shot echoes through the theater, and the company’s owner is found murdered with a quarrel through her heart. Fortunately, the audience happens to include Dr. Gideon Fell, and now the great detective is on the case.

After reading this one, I’d have to say that it’s quite good, probably the best of the bunch I got this time (the other two being Below Suspicion and The Arabian Nights Murder). That said, however, I cannot elevate it to the exalted level of The Third Coffin or The Blind Barber, which remain my favorite Dr. Fell mysteries. My main problem with this one is that, well, there seemed to be too much padding and filler. Instead of actually doing any detecting, the characters seemed to spend the majority of the time reciting the lyrics to old songs. The solution was perfectly fair and all the necessary clues were included in the narrative – but rather than follow the usual practice of planting red herrings which would lead the luckless Watson to come to the wrong conclusion before Dr. Fell brilliantly reveals the true answer, the author this time seems to have endeavored to hide the clues by burying them within mounds of irrelevant tedium. Kind of makes me miss Philo Vance, actually – yes, he deliberately wasted my time with a bunch of knowingly incorrect theories before giving the correct one, but at least he was wasting my time in an interesting and memorable manner. If he’d spent the whole book singing drinking songs, I really would’ve felt the need to give him a kick in the pants.

Well, still; that grievance aside, it was a decently entertaining mystery with a clever and proper solution. So, unlike Beneath Suspicion, it gets a passing grade.

Final Rating: 3/5

Dr. Gideon Fell #18 / Patrick Butler #1: Below Suspicion

She’s in love with the devil, she’s in love with Lucifer. This is her revenge for all the years of pain and tears. Let’s rain fire from the sky on Below Suspicion, by John Dickson Carr.

Synopsis:

A terrifying cult of devil-worshippers makes murder part of its evil ritual. An arrogant lawyer cynically defends a woman he’s sure is guilty and finds himself helpless to clear one he knows is innocent. Here is a chilling story of horror and brutality told in the heavy atmosphere of marihuana-filled chapels of the Devil.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I have no one but myself to blame for picking this one up. I saw the synopsis, I read the words “marihuana-filled chapels of the Devil”; what was I expecting? But surely, I thought, John Dickson Carr wouldn’t let me down; not with his great sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell, one of the exemplars of the genre. Ah, dame da, zenzen dame da ze.

And it started off so promising, too, with the character of Patrick Butler: a cynical defense attorney who believes that his client is guilty of murder, but nonetheless uses every trick at his disposal to get her acquitted – only for a second related murder to take place, with the police’s prime suspect this time being an innocent woman who is implicated by the falsehoods Butler himself fabricated to help his first client. It was fascinating. I was loving it.

But then, inevitably, came the revelation that the case actually centered around a conspiracy of Satanists involved in a ludicrous poison-exchanging scheme conducted out of a secret underground marijuana-filled chapel, and I tearfully waved goodbye to my suspension of disbelief as it set sail over the horizon.

Not only is it dreadfully narmy, reading all this very serious and deadpan Satanic panic malarkey about secret societies and ritual murders and Black Masses; but it’s also terrible dirty pool for an orthodox detective story. The book very self-satisfiedly explains near the end how it technically avoided violating Knox 1 (“The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow”), but I would bring its attention to Van Dine 13 (“Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. Here the author gets into adventure fiction and secret-service romance. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability.”)

Well, say this for the story: though the plot may have lost me, I did enjoy the character of Patrick Butler. So, upon learning that he actually got his own spinoff sequel, I decided that I’d go ahead and give it a chance. May he next time be graced with a more worthy mystery.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dr. Gideon Fell #7: The Arabian Nights Murder

Follow me to a place where incredible feats are routine every hour or so. Where enchantment runs rampant, wild in the streets. Open sesame; here we go! Let’s take off and take flight with The Arabian Nights Murder, by John Dickson Carr.

Synopsis:

“…And then he said to me, ‘You killed him, and you’ll hang for it, my fine impostor. I saw you in the coach’. And with that he came at me with both hands.”

Thus the police sergeant concluded his account of how the tall, thin, oldish man in top hat, frock coat, and white whiskers attacked him. The sergeant had been walking his beat along the wall of the Wade Museum at the time. But who was this old man? What did he know about the body of the actor discovered stabbed in a museum coach? And did the coffin really contain the mummy of Haroun al Raschid’s wife?

Three investigators try to solve this most bizarre of cases. But it is Dr. Gideon Fell – vast and genial, with his chins, his chuckle, and his unerring sense for the important clue – who defeats the mystery.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

A familiar feeling recently struck me: the longing to read a good old-fashioned orthodox mystery. Thus, I decided to see if I couldn’t rustle up a few more Dr. Fell novels from my local library. Happily, my previous dive into the series had not fully exhausted the available supply, so I was able to pick up a few mysteries to peruse. Starting with: The Arabian Nights Murder.

At an Arabian exhibit at a museum, a planned prank unexpectedly turns deadly when a fake murder produces a real corpse. Everyone involved, awkwardly trying to cover up their original prank, proceeds to infinitely complicate matters by lying to the police about every detail. Was obstruction of justice not a thing back in the day when this was written?

The book’s main gimmick is that it is split into three parts, each narrated by a different policeman who worked on a different aspect of the case, resulting in a gradual unraveling of the mystery: the first establishes the bizarre and inexplicable circumstances of the crime, the second explains some of the circumstances but not the murder, and the third explains the murder. These sections vary in writing style to convey the different voices of the narrating characters – which, unfortunately, means the writing sometimes becomes nearly insufferable.

Still, a clever crime and a unique narrative structure made this an interesting enough mystery story; and despite the rough spots, I ended up enjoying it overall.

Final Rating: 3/5

Magic the Gathering #33: Ravnica

I’m waking up at the start of the end of the world, but its feeling just like every other morning before, now I wonder what my life is going to mean if it’s gone. Let’s walk the beat with Ravnica, by Cory J. Herndon.

Synopsis:

A labyrinth of intrigue…

Lieutenant Agrus Kos enjoys his work. A top-notch officer of the city guard, he’s been on the force over fifty years. He works alone. And the League of Wojek never had problems with him or his work. Until now.

They gave him a partner to train, who promptly got himself killed. And the more he looks into the death, the less he likes it.

Something dark is moving within the guilds of Ravnica.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

From Mirrodin to Kamigawa, and now to Ravnica: Magic continues its creative winning streak. There are three essential elements to a good novel – setting, character, and plot – and Ravnica excels at all of them. Let’s take a look.

First, the setting. Ravnica benefits from the fact that it’s more than a one-gimmick plane. Mirrodin was “the metal plane” and Kamigawa was “the Japanese plane”, but Ravnica has multiple distinguishing features to give it depth. Physically, the plane is covered in a single vast city, which occupies almost all available space. Metaphysically, the plane is notable for the prevalence of ghosts, with nearly everyone leaving behind a specter when they die. And socially, the plane is distinguished by its ten Guilds, each of which embodies the philosophy of one of the color pairs: White-Blue is the Azorius Senate, White-Black is the Orzhov Syndicate, White-Red is the Boros Legion, White-Green is the Selesnya Conclave, Blue-Black is House Dimir, Blue-Red is the Izzet League, Blue-Green is the Simic Combine, Black-Red is the Cult of Rakdos, Black-Green is the Golgari Swarm, and Red-Green is the Gruul Clans.

The main character this time is Agrus Kos, a 110-year-old Boros wojek (cop) who has repeatedly refused retirement despite his chronic health problems. He is metaphorically haunted by the long-ago death of his first partner, Myczil Zunich, and literally haunted by the ghost of his recently deceased latest partner, Bell Borca. Joining him are Feather, a bound angel who is being forced to serve as a wojek as punishment for some unspecified crime; Pivlic, an imp information broker; and Fonn, Myczil’s half-elf daughter who has recently returned to the city center as bodyguard for the holy pilgrim Saint Bayul. It’s a shining cast of interesting characters I was easily able to get invested in.

Finally, the plot. When Bell Borca is killed in an assassination attempt on Saint Bayul, the various characters are pulled into investigating what turns out to be a great conspiracy: a plot by the ancient vampire Szadek to overthrow the Guildpact and drain the life from Mat’selesnya, the Worldsoul. It’s faced-paced, full of interesting twists, gives plenty of room for the character to shine and paints a vivid picture of the setting… Basically, it’s damn near perfect.

Ravnica stands as one of the strongest Magic novels.

Continuity Alert!

This book claims that Szadek is the last vampire on Ravnica, and that the Sisters of the Stone Death are the last gorgons. Naturally, future card sets and stories will introduce more vampires and gorgons, who apparently didn’t get the memo. Can’t really hold it against this book, since it’s the later stories that violated the premises set by this one; this just seemed like a natural place to mention it.

Also, the book claims that humans are the shortest-lived sentient race on Ravnica; which is a bit odd, as Ravnica has goblins, which usually hold that distinction.

Final Rating: 5/5

Dragon Apocalypse #3: Witchbreaker

Fear me, fear me, the heartless breaker, all of you and everybody. I take you, take to the end of the world, while praying. Let’s break Witchbreaker, by James Maxey.

Synopsis:

Five hundred years ago, the famed Witchbreaker, Lord Stark Tower, launched a war against the cult of witches, nearly wiping them out. Today, only a handful of women still practice the craft in secret. A young witch named Sorrow has dedicated her life to changing this reality, vowing to wipe out the Church of the Book and launch a new golden age of witchcraft. In pursuit of her goals, she bonds her soul with Rott, the primal dragon of decay, giving her nearly limitless powers of destruction. Unfortunately, tapping this power comes at the cost of her humanity, leading her into a desperate quest to find the greatest witch of all time, Avaris, in hopes of mastering her dark magic before it destroys her. But she’s not alone in hunting Avaris, as fate throws her into an uneasy partnership with a man who wants to be the new Witchbreaker. Can either of them survive their mutual quests when their journey leads them into battle with Tempest, the primal dragon of storms?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

In my review of the previous Dragon Apocalypse book, I said that Sorrow was an interesting new character, and that I hoped to see more of her. Which just goes to show: I should be careful what I wish for. Sorrow is the main character of this book – which is to say, Stagger and Infidel, the characters I’ve spent the last two books following and getting interested in, are suddenly out of the picture. It’s a bit of an abrupt transition. I was still interested in their story!

Furthermore, one of the things that made Sorrow an intriguing new character was her weaving powers. However, in this book, these are mostly disregarded in favor of focusing on her new connection to Rott, the Primal Dragon of Decay, which is just your typical too-awesome-to-use forbidden superpower: it gives her the ability to destroy anything, except she loses some of her humanity whenever she uses it, so much of the book is about her trying not to do anything. Which, in general, is less interesting than doing things.

For supporting characters, there was the Romer family, who are kind of interesting on occasion but don’t get enough focus, plus new addition Slate. I didn’t really like Slate. He was the typical boring stick-in-the-mud overly-moral Lawful Stupid paladin type. Blech.

Well, at least the end of the book was interesting, with the battle against Tempest and then the twenty-year time skip. This setting still has a lot of potential, and I remain interested in it. This particular book, however, was the weakest in the series so far.

Final Rating: 3/5

Wearing the Cape #7: Recursion

I feel it everyday, it’s all the same. It brings me down, but I’m the one to blame. I’ve tried everything to get away. So here I go again. Chasing you down again. Why do I do this? Over and over, over and over. Let’s read and reread Recursion, by Marion G. Harmon.

Synopsis:

It’s been just weeks since the state funeral for the Sentinels, Atlas, Ajax, and Nimbus, lost in the Whittier Base Attack. Astra, Hope, is recovered from her own injuries. At least physically. Mentally . . . not so much, but she feels ready to actively wear the cape again. Which is good since, between the revelation of her short-lived relationship with Atlas (nine years her senior) and her virally pungent public comments on the current political debate over breakthrough registration (the National Public Safety Act), she needs to raise her profile. But she’s better now, steady, ready for anything.

Or is she? First her quantum-ghost BF Shell reveals that something’s off. Hope’s CHANGED. Unaccountably and impossibly changed, she’s not the Hope she was even just last week. Confronted with Shell’s evidence, Hope recovers an impossible memory and follows it to the realization that she’s really not the Hope of last week. She remembers three years of memories of a life she hasn’t lived yet. She remembers the fight with Villains Inc., the addition of the Young Sentinels, her adventures in Littletone, Japan, and across a dozen extrarealities. The one thing she doesn’t remember is how she got here.

How did she get here? WHERE is here?

Worse, things here are already starting to happen differently. Is her presence here messing things up? Or is she supposed to fix something already messed up? And what does Kitsune have to do with everything?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

In the latest Wearing the Cape novel, Astra finds herself reliving the events that occurred after the end of the first book. Though she doesn’t understand how or why she’s been sent back through time, she proceeds to use her future knowledge to change the course of events of the series. And I… kind of have a problem with this. We’re six books into the series now – I’ve gotten interested in the direction that it’s going, the characters that have been introduced and how they’ve developed. To go all the way back to the beginning and undo all that’s come before, erasing everything that I’ve come to know and love as if someone sold their marriage to Mephisto… I’m not down with that.

Hold on, though, there’s a plot twist: this isn’t a retcon, it’s an alternate history. Astra has somehow been transported to a parallel world, like those she traveled through in Team-Ups and Crossovers, and so she can mess up events there as much as she wants without altering the timeline that we’ve come to know and love. And I… kind of have a problem with this as well. If all these events are taking place on an alternate world, with no connection to or bearing on the main timeline world, then none of it really matters, does it? It makes no difference whether Astra succeeds and fails, whether these characters live or die, because at the end of the day we’re just going to be going back to the main world and nothing there will be affected.

But wait, the book’s going for the rare double-Shyamalan with a second plot twist: turns out it’s not really an alternate history, either. No, the whole plot turns out to actually really truthfully be a game being conducted by Kabukicho, the Japanese god-fish who was introduced back in Ronin Games. And I… am actually okay with that. It means the story has real stakes, mattering to the present without undoing anything that actually happened in the past. Fine by me.

However… the revelation about the true nature of events doesn’t come until the very end of the story, at which point it’s a bit too late for me to get invested. I already spent most of the book believing that nothing that was happening mattered, and I can’t retroactively change my first impression of those parts.

The actual plot of Recursion is fine; but the book spends most of its length pretending its premise is worse than it actually is for the sake of a twist. As a result, the most I can give it is an overall average rating.

Final Rating: 3/5

Ellery Queen Detective #23: The King is Dead

I’m headed straight for the castle, they wanna make me their Queen. And there’s an old man sitting on the throne that’s saying that I probably shouldn’t be so mean. Let’s head straight for the castle with The King is Dead, by Ellery Queen.

Synopsis:

Armed men invade the Queen apartment, led by Abel Bendigo, brother of one of the world’s most powerful men. King Bendigo of Bodigen Arms is an industrial monster whose tentacles embrace the planet. Someone is threatening to kill King, and Ellery must undertake to save his hated life. Virtual prisoners, Ellery and his father are whisked away to an island somewhere in the Atlantic. In a frightening atmosphere of industrial slavery and brute militarism, Ellery comes to grips with a baffling murderer who calmly announces the exact moment of the assassination.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I was feeling in the mood for a good old-fashioned closed room mystery, so I looked up a Guardian article about the top ten locked room mysteries of all time and picked one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an English translation of La Septième Hypothèse on short notice, so I went with my second choice: The King is Dead.

The book admittedly has some very good elements to it. The setup for the “impossible” crime, with Judah pointing an empty gun and pulling the trigger and King getting hit by a bullet at the same moment in the next room over – masterful. And the ultimate reveal o the motive for the murder, a childhood lie that King maintained for 40 years, was very well executed. That said, however, I feel the book has a few too many flaws to make my personal best-of list.

For one thing: most mysteries start with the crime, and the detective getting called in to investigate. The King is Dead, however, takes its sweet time getting to the actual mystery, instead spending the first half on extravagant descriptions of King’s suspension-of-disbelief-breaking private island which not even the US government knows about and private personal military complete with army, navy, and air force. While I don’t normally consider myself a big proponent of Van Dine’s 16th (A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations), there is something to be said for getting to the point in a timely manner.

Then, there’s the matter of the crime itself. I am not a great detective: though I enjoy reading mystery novels, I rarely solve them before the detective’s explanation at the end. However, stupid goat that I am, even I figured out how this “impossible” crime had been carried out – that Judah’s posturing was all misdirection and that it was actually King’s wife Karla who really shot him. I couldn’t figure out where she hid the gun afterwards, so no points for me on the “howdunnit”; but I got the “whodunnit” down cold.

In the end, I found this novel to be a decent mystery, but far from one of the top ten greatest of all time.

Final Rating: 3/5