Classic Mysteries

From the Vault: "Swan Song"

Richard Wagner's great romantic opera, Die Meistersinger, is one of the absolute gems of the opera house. As with most Wagnerian operas, it tends to be a very long performance, making tremendous demands on the singers (and on the comfort of the audience). It seems both unfortunate and inappropriate, then, to find the star of one Meistersinger production murdered - and murdered under seemingly impossible circumstances. That's what happens, however, in Swan Song, by Edmund Crispin. When I first reviewed the book nearly a decade ago, I said that it was my favorite among Crispin's mysteries. I see no reason to change my mind on that point. Here's some of what I said about the book in my original review:

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Edmund Crispin was the pen name of Bruce Montgomery, a prolific composer of movie scores and an accomplished organist and choirmaster, according to Wikipedia. Music plays a significant role in at least a couple of Crispin’s crime novels, and it is central to the plot of “Swan Song.” A particularly nasty baritone, scheduled to sing the lead role of Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger is found dead, hanging from a rope in his dressing room. Was it suicide? It certainly appears impossible for anyone to have murdered him – yet an autopsy reveals a large quantity of a sleep-inducing drug in the body, and there are signs that the singer’s hands and feet had been tied.

Nobody can be said to be grieving over the singer’s death – in fact, the singer’s brother, when notified, sends a telegram back to the authorities, reading:

“Delighted. Hoping for this for months. Suicide eh query. Don’t bother me now.”

But the police, quite obviously, cannot simply ignore what has happened.

Assisting with the investigation – at least, he would argue that he was assisting and not hindering it  – is Crispin’s detective character, Gervase Fen, a professor of English literature at Oxford University. Fen is a close friend of the chief constable, and, as such, tends to get involved in such criminal goings-on as may occur. Eventually, there will be a second murder and a reasonable amount of mayhem before the mystery is solved.

To my mind, what makes this story stand out – and, for that matter, makes Crispin’s work stand out overall – is the author’s sense of humor. He has a fine touch for the ridiculous. This is sometimes overdone, and it is often incongruous to laugh through a particularly funny passage only to have it turn into something quite unpleasant and bizarre before the end. 

But in “Swan Song,” there is a balance between the humor and the unpleasant events of the book. And Crispin’s writing style, to me, is quite winning. From time to time he steps outside the so-called “fourth wall” to speak directly to the reader – this is a book, he seems to be saying, and there’s no reason to pretend it’s not. He also has a wonderful touch for bringing out the important aspects of his characters’ personalities. At the beginning of the book, two of the major characters get married, and go on their honeymoon. Crispin ends that first chapter this way:

“They stood on their balcony gazing across the water, now amethyst-coloured in the fading light. ‘How nice,’ said Elizabeth judicially, ‘to have all the pleasures of living in sin without any of the disadvantages.”

That is more than just a very well-phrased line; it tells you something of Elizabeth’s character. And that line – together with the telegram quoted earlier – gives a fair flavor of the strain of humor that runs throughout this novel.

Swan Song is extremely fair: the reader is given all the clues – although quite often in ways designed to drag a red herring across the correct path to a solution. For example, shortly after the singer’s death is discovered, we hear the evidence of the night watchman in the theater, a man named Furbelow, whose open door allowed him to see the doorway of the singer’s dressing room, where the body was discovered. The police inspector tells Fen, speaking of Furbelow, “It’s on his evidence, so far as I can see, that the verdict for suicide must depend.” At that point, Crispin inserts a footnote, which reads, simply, “The reader may like to know, at this point, that Furbelow’s evidence was in fact correct in every particular.”

This is playing fair with the audience. This is telling the reader, pay attention to what you are being told, because it will be shown to be quite literally correct. It is the kind of challenge that no true mystery buff can resist.

What we are presented with is another example of the so-called impossible crime, with a witness situated to swear that nobody could have entered or left the singer’s dressing room between the time the singer was last seen alive and the discovery of his body. And yet we are given the clues needed to determine what really happened – if we can interpret them.

It is this sense of fair play, together with the decidedly quirky humor and the good writing, that makes Swan Song very much worth your while.

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Swan Song is available in paper directly from the Felony & Mayhem Press; it's also available in electronic formats. There also seem to be a fair number of inexpensive used copies on the market. I think you'll enjoy it very much.

Next week: The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers

"Unnatural Death"

Almost nobody was surprised when the old lady died. After all, she had incurable cancer and was in tremendous and nearly constant pain, expected to die very soon. The only person who was surprised, it seems, was her doctor, who had expected her to live a few months longer. Although her fortune would pass, on her death, to her grand-niece, there seemed to be absolutely no reason or opportunity for anyone to hurry that death along just a little bit. There was no sign of anything wrong with her death - only the nagging doubt which kept troubling her doctor. And when the story reached the ears of Lord Peter Wimsey, things began to go wrong with a diabolical and troubling plot for murder. For even when Lord Peter had figured out who was doing the killing, he still couldn't figure out how or why. You'll find details in Unnatural Death, a 1927 classic by Dorothy L. Sayers. It's the book that is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

The book and the investigation begin almost by accident. Lord Peter is dining with Detective-Inspector Charles Parker at a restaurant in London’s Soho. A young doctor tells them of a case a few years earlier where a wealthy old woman died quite suddenly. The death certainly seemed natural – she was suffering greatly from cancer, and everyone had expected her to die within a couple of months. The doctor who had been taking care of her, however, was quite surprised at the suddenness of her death – though a careful investigation found nothing suspicious about it.

There are elements in the story that intrigue Lord Peter. He thinks that murder was done – though he can’t tell how. But as he becomes involved in the case, the bodies begin to pile up – all of the victims apparently dying from "natural" heart attacks. As I said, we’ll soon be as certain as Lord Peter that murder is being done – and we’ll have a good idea by whom – but how? And why?

Unnatural Death was the third mystery to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, and I've always liked it for the sheer cleverness of the murder plot. There's a lot going on here beyond just the basic puzzle plot. There are memorable characters. Sayers also tackles a number of issues here, including the question of euthanasia and whether/when it might be justified. But the villain, evident to the reader from pretty early in the book, is quite thoroughly unpleasant and unprincipled - as Wimsey observes at one point, “I don't think I've ever met a more greedy and heartless murderer.”

I strongly recommend Unnatural Death, whether it’s your first time reading it or as a reread – it’s well worth your time.

From the Vault: "The Doorbell Rang"

Regular visitors to this blog know that Rex Stout is one of my favorite authors. I love the books, featuring the sedentary genius, Nero Wolfe, and his right-hand assistant, Archie Goodwin; a check of the blog's backlist page will show that I've reviewed a great many of those novels and novella collections over the past decade. One of the first ones to be reviewed here was The Doorbell Rang, and it remains one of my all-time favorites. In it, Wolfe and Archie take on J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Here's what I had to say about it in my original podcast review.

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The year was 1965. The American public, for the most part, still had a deep respect bordering on hero-worship for the FBI. While public attitudes were starting to change, it was still very much the agency of, say, “The Untouchables,” the 1959 TV series about Elliot Ness and a heroic group of agents who took on gangster Al Capone. The director of the agency was J. Edgar Hoover, and, at the time, he was still very much an untouchable, even if questions were beginning to be asked about the bureau’s methods and Hoover’s autocratic style.

But he was no untouchable to Rex Stout. And certainly not to Stout’s detective character, Nero Wolfe, who took on Hoover’s FBI in the delightful mystery, The Doorbell Rang.

Here’s the situation: a very wealthy woman comes to Wolfe’s office on West 35^th Street in New York. She has read an unflattering book about the FBI, and has bought 10 thousand copies of it and sent them to friends, government officials, and others whom she believed should read the book. As a result, she says, she has been harassed by the FBI. She believes they have tapped her telephone, spied on her movements, and generally made her life miserable. She wants to hire Wolfe to stop the FBI.

It takes some persuading. Neither Wolfe nor his assistant, Archie Goodwin, is a fool. They know that if they do get involved, the FBI will shift its harassment to them. They could wind up losing their licenses as private detectives.

But Wolfe’s ego – and Archie’s too – make them accept the case, even though Wolfe doesn’t have any immediate answer to the question: how do you persuade the entire FBI organization – not to mention its boss – to stop doing what they won’t even admit they are doing.

But Archie Goodwin can put it much better than I can. When Wolfe tells Archie that he has decided to take the case – and asks Archie for his opinion – here’s how Archie answers him:

"I would say that you should sell the house and contents and go live in a nursing home, since you’re obviously cracked. Unless you intend to gyp her, just sit on it?"

"No."

"Then you’re cracked. You’ve read that book. We couldn’t even get started. The idea would be to work it so you could say to the FBI, ‘Lay off,’ and make it stick. Nuts. Merely raising a stink wouldn’t do it. They would have to be actually cornered, the whole damn outfit. Out on a limb.”

But Wolfe decides to do it – as he says, “I will not return that check for one hundred thousand dollars because I am afraid of a bully. My self-esteem won’t let me.”

And so battle is joined. Wolfe comes up with a plan, all right, and it’s one of the most delightful, daring and ingenious charades he has ever created. Along the way to finding an answer to his problem, he solves a murder which the New York City police have, in effect, been told by the FBI not to solve. It’s not often that Wolfe finds his old nemesis, New York City homicide detective Inspector Cramer, cheering him on…but that’s one of the many odd developments in this case.

By the way, the unflattering book about the FBI which acts as the centerpiece for this novel was a very real book – The FBI Nobody Knows, by Fred J. Cook, an investigative journalist who had published a series of articles in “The Nation” unflattering to both Hoover and the FBI. Rex Stout quite clearly admired the book, and The Doorbell Rang was his reaction to it.

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As I said, there IS a murder in the book, but - to be honest - that's treated as almost a side issue. The book is really about that clash between the FBI and Nero Wolfe - and how Wolfe goes about earning his fee. I have additional quotes and information in the original podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here.

Next week: Swan Song, by Edmund Crispin.

Murder of a Lady"

Dr. Eustace Hailey is a specialist in mental diseases and an amateur solver of puzzling crimes. He is careful to note, however, that he only agrees to help the police solve crimes that interest him. That would explain why Dr. Hailey is quite willing to get involved helping police when Mary Gregor, sister of the Laird of Duchlan, is stabbed to death in her castle in the Scottish Highlands – but there is no sign of the weapon, when family members break into her bedroom. The doors are locked from inside. The windows are shut and inaccessible. There is no way that anyone could have gotten into – or out of – that room to commit the murder. Yet Mary Gregor’s body is there, alone, with a terrible wound that doctors say could not have been self-inflicted. The police are mystified. To solve the murder of Mary Gregor, Dr. Hailey will have to explain how a killer got into and out of that locked room without being seen. It happens in Murder of a Lady, by Anthony Wynne, originally published in 1931. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

In his time, Anthony Wynne was particularly well known for writing mysteries that featured impossible and/or locked room murders. Dr. Hailey proved quite good at solving such crimes. He was certainly faced with seeming impossibilities in Murder of a Lady. There certainly seemed to be no way a killer could have gotten into or out of the room where the murder occurred, yet with nobody hidden in the room, and no weapon that could have made what is repeatedly called a “dreadful” fatal wound, quite obviously somebody must have gotten out.

Many of the people living in the nearby village believe the murder is the work of an apparently supernatural being hidden in the waters of the nearby fishing village – a character called “the swimmer” whose appearance (always at a distance, of course) means terrible things are going to happen. In fact, as Dr. Hailey will find, the victim’s body will have a telltale sign: a small, silver scale from the body of a fish is found on or near the victim. (This is an important enough clue, by the way, to explain why the original title of the book was The Silver Scale Mystery.)

But Dr. Hailey is no believer in the supernatural. He begins by digging into the character of the victim – and it doesn’t take long before he finds that she was a truly terrible person, dedicated to manipulating and ruining the lives of many people around her. It is in those roots that Dr. Hailey will find the tangled motives for murder – and, eventually, the answer to the riddle of the impossible crime.

Murder of a Lady has been republished as one of the British Library Crime Classics series, published in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press. It's a very clever puzzle, and I'd recommend it to fans of the impossible crime genre.

"Now It's Time to Say Goodbye to All Our Company..."

(from left: Jon & Ruth Jordan, Fan Guests of Honor; Julie Smith, "Local Legend"; Craig Robertson, International Rising Star Guest of Honor; Alexandra Sokoloff & Harley Jane Kozak, Toastmasters; Heather Graham, Bouchercon co-chair; David Morrell, Lifetime Achievement award; Harlan Coben, American Guest of Honor. Not shown: R. L. Stine, Bouchercon Kids Guest of Honor, who had an early morning flight; Connie Perry, Bouchercon co-chair.)

Bouchercon 2016 has ended in New Orleans this morning, and the nearly 1900 guests are - for the most part- on their ways home. It's been a great weekend, including:

• Hundreds of authors, both celebrity and newly-published writers;
• Dozens of panel discussions on just about every subject, relevant or pleasantly irrelevant;
• A Mardi Gras style Second Line Parade, with convention attendees and floats and bands marching from the hotel to the Orpheum Theater several blocks away, for the Anthony Awards;
• The Anthony Awards themselves - and the Barry Awards, the David Thompson Special Service Award, Derringer Awards and the McCavity Awards;
• A day of workshops and activities for students from local schools at the New Orleans Public Library;
• Live and silent auctions to raise funds for the library (haven't heard total amounts raised yet);
• Lots of books - some free, many bought - to take home with us and added to our groaning To Be Read piles.

 New Orleans has a well-deserved reputation as a party city - and a restaurant city. It has lived up to its promises.

On to Bouchercon 2017: Passport to Murder, which will be held in Toronto, Canada, October 12 - 15, 2017. Hope to see some of you there!

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

Thunder and rain in New Orleans - but it wasn't enough to keep Bouchercon 2016 from presenting the Anthony Awards, named in honor of Anthony Boucher, for many years a major mystery author and critic.

The award winners in each category:

Best Crime Fiction Audiobook: The Nature of the Beast, Louise Penny - Robert Bathurst, narrator

Best Young Adult Novel: Need, Joelle Charbonneau

Best Anthology or Collection: Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015 - Art Taylor, Editor

Best Short Story: "The Little Men: A Bibliomystery," Megan Abbott [MysteriousPress.com/Open Road]

Best Critical or Nonfiction Book: Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime, Val McDermid

Best Paperback Original: The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou Berney

Best First Novel: Past Crimes, Glen Erik Hamilton

Best Novel: The Killing Kind, Chris Holm

 You'll find a complete list of all the nominees in each category listed on the Bouchercon website. Congratulations to all the winners and nominees.

 

Before the awards were presented, convention-goers were treated to an interview conducted with Lifetime Achievement honoree David Morrell by Lee Child (right)...

...or, to put it in terms of their most famous creations, Rambo interviewed by Jack Reacher.

The conference continues through the weekend.

 

From the Vault: "The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars"

I am bringing this out of the vault on the same day - Thursday, September 15, 2016 - that Bouchercon begins its annual convention, this year gathering in New Orleans. For those unfamiliar with the festivities, Bouchercon is the World Mystery Convention, the oldest and largest mystery conference in the world, attracting well over a thousand people each year. This year, there are nearly 1900 people scheduled to be here. There are hundreds of authors eager to meet more than a thousand readers and fans. The conference is named for Anthony Boucher, the tremendously influential author, editor and mystery critic. He died in 1968; the first Bouchercon was held in his honor in 1970 and has been held every year since then.

It's a huge party, and it honors a most singular man. To give you some idea of his writing, here is the review I wrote about one of his truly excellent books, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, first published in 1940. The review is from 2007; I didn't start attending Bouchercons until 2010, so the convention isn't even mentioned in the review. More on that later.

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The game’s afoot again Watson – but this time, it’s not Sherlock Holmes, but the Baker Street Irregulars who are called upon to solve the case. And what a mystery it turns out to be!

As you must guess from the title alone, The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher, is a particular delight to fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories – or, as the Irregulars themselves would call them, the “sacred writings.” The irregulars were – and are – a devoted group of Holmes fans, who take their name from Holmes’s irregular army of street urchins, who would carry out errands for him. Back in 1940, when this story was written, the irregulars included a great many famous writers and critics, such as Christopher Morley and Alexander Woollcott, among its ranks.

Here’s the situation: a major movie company is about to make a film based on one of the Holmes short stories. For reasons known only to Hollywood, it has picked a screenwriter who is not only a mystery author of what we will politely call the blood-and-guts school…in addition, he hates everything about Holmes and about people who admire Holmes.

The studio receives a petition from the Baker Street Irregulars – and remember, these include influential critics and writers – demanding that this script writer be removed from the project. With the real possibility of a boycott looming over it, the studio responds by inviting members of the irregulars to come to Hollywood to supervise the making of the film.

So several leading (and fictional) members of the group go to Hollywood. Immediately, of course, there is a violent confrontation with the despised scriptwriter There are cryptic warnings – all delivered in a fashion that readers of the Holmes stories will recognize: an envelope containing dried orange pips, for example, and another with a series of drawings of what appear to be dancing men. The irregulars very quickly become involved in a murder, followed by the disappearance of the body. And, in very quick order, each of them is lured into what can only be described as an individual fantastic adventure – each based, as we will discover, on one or more of the supposedly unwritten Sherlock Holmes cases mentioned and promised in the original stories, but never delivered, by Dr. Watson.

Eventually, the murder is solved. But along the way, we have a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson, and the Los Angeles Police even manage to come up with a Sergeant named Watson, so our Sherlock Holmes atmosphere is maintained on all fronts. And it’s worth noting that the ultimate clue leading to the solution will be provided by Sergeant Watson.

All of this is done in fairly high good humor, and the Holmesian references are broad enough and familiar enough to even the casual reader to make them easy to follow.

In addition, Boucher writes all of this as a conventional mystery – that is, the reader is given the clues fairly in the course of the novel, though, of course, they are pretty well obscured by all the references to the Holmes stories.

A word or two about Anthony Boucher: he is probably better known to readers of science fiction and fantasy than he is today to mystery readers. Boucher was one of the founding editors of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and throughout the 1950s and 60s he edited an annual collection of fine science fiction stories.

His mysteries, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten today – and I think that’s a pity, because I believe he was very much a part of the American version of the “Golden Age” of mysteries. His plots, while convoluted – and The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is no exception – always played fair with the reader. Boucher was a fan of Holmes – the book is dedicated to Sherlock Holmes – and there is enough to satisfy anyone, from the most casual reader of the Holmes stories to a true Baker Street Irregular who delights in the kind of trivia that we find at the heart of the Holmesian adventures contained in this book.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to go searching for this one – The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars is long out of print.

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While that last point remains true nearly a decade after I wrote it, I see that there appear to be used copies of out-of-print editions available on the market. I'd suggest talking to your favorite mystery bookseller to see if they have, or can find, a copy. If you don't have an independent mystery bookseller, you can check out Amazon's resellers or try Abe Books. It's really worth the effort.

If you'd like to see what others have had to say about The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, click here for an article from the GAD Wiki. If you want to know more about Boucher and his contributions to both mystery and science fiction, click here for a number of critical posts from the same source.

If you would like to listen to my original review (most of which appears above), you can do so by clicking here.

Next week: The Doorbell Rang, by Rex Stout.

Bouchercon, Here We Come

Heading out to Bouchercon 2016, being held this year in New Orleans. Some dinner reservations already lined up...er...I mean several mysteries ready to study and discuss with friends. Yeah, that's the focus. Anyway, this week's "From the Vault" feature here, to be published on Thursday (which is the opening day of Bouchercon) will be my review of one of Anthony Boucher's fine mysteries - The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars - certainly appropriate for the mystery conference named in his honor. I think you'll enjoy the review, and I know I'll enjoy Bouchercon, which is attracting more than 1800 visitors this year!

"Death in the Dentist's Chair"

Dean Street Press continues to uncover British Golden Age authors who have slipped into obscurity along with their mysteries. Their latest find is an author named Molly Thynne, an author so obscure that her name doesn't appear at all in the online Golden Age of Detection Wiki - the first GAD author I've discovered to be missing from that invaluable reference collection. Between 1925 and 1933, she wrote six crime novels, which apparently were quite well received at the time, but the author and her books pretty much disappeared after initial publication. Dean Street is now bringing all six of those books back into print. The publisher provided me with an e-book version of Molly Thynne's fifth book, Death in the Dentist's Chair. It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

There are several patients waiting with considerable trepidation in the dental office of Mr. Humphrey Davenport. When he ushers one patient, a Mrs. Miller, into his consulting room, he asks her to wait in the dentist's chair while he finishes working on a set of dentures for her. He goes to his laboratory and finishes the dentures - but when he returns, he finds himself locked out of the consulting room. 

Mr. Davenport and the remaining patients out in the waiting room, are puzzled by that – how did that door get locked? But when they are successful in removing the door lock and opening the way into the room, they find that Mrs. Miller will no longer need those dentures. She has been murdered, a quite bloody murder at that, while seated in the dentist’s chair. But nobody out in the waiting room or elsewhere in the office could have gotten through that locked door. It’s not really a locked room mystery, however, because one of the windows is open, and there are distinct signs that the killer must have fled through the window and into an adjoining vacant house. 

One of the waiting patients is Dr. Constantine (no first name is provided to us), a man with some success at solving difficult puzzles, and he begins to investigate while waiting for the police to arrive.The case falls into the hands of Scotland Yard Detective-Inspector Arkwright – once again, no first name is shared with us. The inspector knows Doctor Constantine from a previous case and promptly enlists him to help figure out who could have killed Mrs. Miller – and why.

It will prove a difficult challenge. There are a couple of obvious suspects – and some less obvious ones, to be sure. And there are several conflicting motives – especially since Mrs. Miller was wearing some extremely valuable jewelry, some of which apparently has disappeared, quite possibly taken by the murderer. Was that the reason for the murder? There are also rumors of blackmail being paid – and that too might have been a reason to kill. And another murder pretty much sends Inspector Arkwright and Doctor Constantine back to start over again.

It’s an interesting puzzle – although the clues, to be fair, are obscure and not always passed along to the reader. It is refreshing to find, in Inspector Arkwright, a very smart and efficient police investigator; he and Doctor Constantine work well together as a team, and the inspector makes a number of significant discoveries on the way to solving the case.

This new edition of Death in the Dentist's Chair comes with a new introduction by mystery historian Curtis Evans, who provides more information about Molly Thynne and her mysteries. I think you'll enjoy the book.

From the Vault: "And Then There Were None"

Ask just about any fan of Agatha Christie's mysteries to name their favorites, and one title will almost invariably be on their list: And Then There Were None. It doesn't feature either of her regular sleuths - no Hercule Poirot, no Miss Marple - but it is probably her cleverest thriller-mystery by far.

I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie, widely acknowledged as being among the reigning "crime queens" of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, widely defined as the period between the two world wars of the twentieth century. Her skill at misdirection, at pointing her readers carefully the wrong way while still providing clues to her mysteries, was virtually unequalled. Even though she died more than 40 years ago, almost all of her books - perhaps all - remain in print. Here's some of what I had to say about And Then There Were None in my original podcast review back in 2007:

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Ten people are invited to spend a few days on a lonely island off the British coast. When they arrive on the island, they discover a peculiar setup: the person or persons who invited them to the island aren’t there, a children’s nursery rhyme has been framed and placed in each of their rooms, they are completely cut off from the outside world  – and even more disturbing – it quickly becomes apparent that there is nobody else on the island except the ten of them. And then the deadly countdown begins.

In this book, Agatha Christie set out to accomplish a number of goals, not the least of which was writing one of the finest “impossible crime” novels ever.

We soon discover that the ten people who have been invited to Soldier Island, on a variety of pretexts, all have been involved in crimes before – but the kind of crimes that could not be punished. Shortly after they arrive on the island, they hear a voice – from what turns out to be a recorded message – accusing each of them of murder. The accusations may be true, although the deaths involved may or may not have been what the law would call “murder,” but they have never been punished and the perpetrators are beyond the law.

But the reason for the summons quickly becomes clear when the first person is murdered.

If you don’t remember the nursery rhyme, it begins:

Ten little soldier boys went out to dine

One choked his little self and then there were nine

And the countdown continues, verse by verse.

The murderer is following the guidelines set forth in the nursery rhymes. It becomes apparent (with the second murder) that he or she plans to continue the countdown until there are none.

So, naturally, they decide to search the island. And they discover that there is nobody hiding anywhere on the island. Which means the murderer must be one of their group.

If it sounds suspenseful, it is. Freed from the need for a detective character to act omnipotent, Christie looks to different characters among the group of ten to provide some insight. You learn a great deal about what each character is thinking at any particular time – but you will probably learn very little about what is really happening, or how. And the suspense continues to build.

One of the characters, Justice Wargrave, a retired criminal court judge, sums it up this way, as the frightened survivors meet after the third murder:

“We have inquired into the circumstances of these three deaths to the best of our ability. Whilst probability in some cases is against certain people being implicated, yet we cannot say definitely that any one person can be considered as cleared of all complicity. I reiterate my positive belief that of the seven persons assembled in this room one is a dangerous and probably insane criminal. There is no evidence before us as to who that person is.”

As we will see, Agatha Christie does play fairly with the audience – providing some clues along the way, had we deciphered them correctly. I suspect most of us will not.

And Then There Were None, according to Wikipedia, is Agatha Christie’s best selling novel, with more than 100 million copies sold to date. I believe it is among the best and most gripping novels she ever wrote. The paperback should be readily available at your local bookstore. Enjoy it.

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For more details, you're welcome to listen to my original podcast review from 2007 by clicking here.

Next week: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, by Anthony Boucher