1930s, London. When Dr. Anselm Rees is found murdered in a room locked from the inside, the cops are flummoxed. Inspector Flint calls on a retired stage magician, Joseph Spector, to help him solve the puzzling case.

Let me start with the good: I enjoyed the mystery in this book. I never figured out what was going on, and the plot kept me engaged. That was enough to give the book a solid 3 stars, if I rated books. Unfortunately, that’s where the good ended.

I wanted to start with the good, though, because most of the “bad” is very subjective, and wouldn’t irritate every reader. It also wasn’t bad enough to negate the good. Ironically, weighing the two together made this a “just okay” book – the type of book I try to avoid or cull from the beginning. If I hadn’t been in my summer-brain mode, I definitely would have culled this one early on. But as I said in my most recent Sunday Coffee, I kept going for 28 pages when finally the mystery itself overcame my other reservations. Culling may have been a better choice for me, but also, it had been weeks since I’d really read anything, and that may have made continuing worth it.

But enough. Extremely minor spoilers – to do with how the book was written, nothing to do with the mystery itself – to follow.

I also mentioned in my Sunday Coffee post that the writing style wasn’t my favorite. It remained unimpressive. The author seemed to relish in his own cleverness, using obscure vocabulary (sometimes incorrectly – one doesn’t wake “with a priapic jolt” from a terrifying nightmare, for example) and whole sections of the book where two characters outline what we know in the mystery thus far. There was zero character development, as the characters’ personalities didn’t matter at all to the mystery. There were odd consistency errors that seemed like misdirection but ended up just being errors, like the emphasis on when the rain started – at 11pm on the dot, then at 9pm, then back to 11pm as if the 9pm declaration never happened. Then at the end, there’s literally a one-page section that speaks to the reader to essentially tell them that all the clues are there and it’s their last chance to say they know the answer before it’s revealed. Followed by footnotes during the revelation to show the reader what small details they may have missed. Oh please.

Then to cap all that, the reveal isn’t made organically, like in a good mystery. Instead, the magician gathers all the suspects – without even telling the inspector the answer, but having him look on as all is revealed – and proceeds to explain the night in painful detail. Honestly, the last time that worked in fiction was when Clue released in theatre, and only then because they made it funny – parody of a very old, very tired trope! So the ending fell flat, the reveal feeling a lot like the way it’s disappointing when a stage magician tells you how they did a trick, and said trick is so mundane the magic is ruined.

So in the end, I guess – good mystery, badly presented? At least for me? The thing is, while that all sounds very negative, I’m actually willing to give the author another chance, hoping he’ll improve over time. He has another Joseph Spector locked-room-type mystery releasing soon, called The Murder Wheel. I plan to give that a try, but perhaps with a little more wariness than I had going into this one. If it seems to be written the same, perhaps I ought to skip ahead to the inevitable Spector-Tells-All section to get the answer, and return the book to the library.