A classic Golden Age mystery – with all that entails…
I had never realized that AA Milne, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame, had written a murder mystery. And, to be fair, he only wrote one, way back in 1922. But it’s pretty good one: a classic Golden Age mystery, complete with a death in a locked room during a house party, an obvious solution that seems just a bit too obvious, lots of people behaving oddly, some extremely doubtful timelines, a renegade back from “exile” in Australia, and a pair of rather unlikely Holmes-and-Watson style amateur detectives. Oh yeah, and we shouldn’t forget the (not-so) secret passage either!
Of course, The Red House Mystery also comes with the downsides of a Golden Age mystery. In the hundred-or-so years since 1922, we’ve seen lots of variations on the death-at-a-country-manor theme. So although this was probably fresh and original at the time, it is a little less so now. And the rather classist attitude of the times (servants serve, guests play golf, impecunious cousins help out, mothers scheme on behalf of their daughters, the rich do whatever they want) grated a bit against today’s mores, while also helping me guess what happened, rather early on. But even after I was 90% certain I knew whodunnit, there were still a couple of red herrings that made me doubt, so I had to keep reading.
In the end, although I did have to keep the book’s age in mind from time to time, I enjoyed reading The Red House Mystery. And I think anyone who likes classic mysteries would too – it’s just such a perfect exemplar of its type. And finally, my thanks to Pushkin Vertigo for the review copy.
Buy: Amazon US | Amazon UK (paperback) | Amazon Canada | Kobo US | Kobo Canada