If you are a regular reader of mysteries written by British authors during England's Golden Age of Detection, you will surely have read any number of very good puzzle-plot mysteries set on board passenger trains. Sometimes they are set on board glamorous long-distance passenger trains, such as the fabled Orient Express. More frequently, I suppose, the trains are good, solid hard-working everyday English trains. Consider, for example, the 10:35 local train from Horston. It was on board that local that a body was discovered one afternoon at the train's final stop at Kempsford Junction. Oswald F. Preston, Esq., had been shot several times and his body left lying partially under a seat in an otherwise empty first-class carriage. Superintendent Ross, of the local police, suspected that this was going to be a tough crime to solve, as, in fact, it was. There were very few clues. One of those clues, however, would ultimately prove useful - a couple of railway tickets. It is the story told in The Two Tickets Puzzle, a classic puzzle mystery written in 1930 by J. J. Connington, and it is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to that complete review by clicking here.
Oswald Preston – to be honest, a pretty unlikeable man – had been traveling alone in that first-class compartment. There were a few almost random clues. For instance, there was an attaché case missing which – it was presumed – would have had a good deal of money in it, as Mr. Preston was in the inflexible (and ill-advised) habit of carrying a large amount of cash with him every Friday, which was to be used to pay the employees of his firm. And there were other, apparently unrelated pieces to put into the jigsaw puzzle of a criminal investigation. For example, there was the shooting death of a local farmer’s prize ram. There was what may have been a false telegram designed to lure one suspect away from home. Ultimately, though, proving the case would require those two railway tickets – which could prove to be enough to hang someone.
J.J. Connington was the pen name of Alfred Walter Stewart, one of the founding members of Britain's prestigious Detection Club. Widely praised during his lifetime for his skill at creating clever and complicated plots, his books virtually disappeared after the author's death in 1947. The Two Tickets Puzzle doesn't have Connington's primary series detective, Sir Clinton Driffield, but it does have in Superintendent Ross a clever, likeable and quite competent investigator to help guide readers through the complexities of the plot. The book is available in various formats in a new edition from Orion's "Murder Room" imprint which also boasts a very informative introduction by mystery historian Curtis Evans.
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