3.5-Stars.

Right out of Agatha Christie, but predating her by some 20 years, the crime in this mystery occurs on a train. Lawrence Blakeley is an attorney traveling home from a client meeting and carrying some papers that will make the difference in securing a conviction in a forgery case. Due to a mix-up, another man takes his berth in lower ten, and during the night that man is murdered.

Why is he murdered? Was the intended victim meant to be Blakeley? The papers have also been stolen. Are the murder and theft connected? Who is the beautiful girl Blakeley is so taken with on the train, and how does she figure into the intrigue? All questions raised in the first couple of chapters and, of course, all answered at the end, with a lot of revelations and red herrings in between.

With an atmosphere and style that reminded me of Wilkie Collins, I was drawn right in to this story and unable to connect all the dots until the last chapter reveal. A lovely break and great fun.
( )

L-2

This has been the best of the three MRR mysteries I've listened to lately, as well as being the best Librivox record. Very enjoyable! ( )

The Man in Lower Ten was Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart's first mystery novel, written at the request of her magazine editor for something long enough to be serialized. (She'd been writing short stories for the same reason as Louisa May Alcott: to help support her family. Her husband lost a lot of money in a stock market crash. The editorial request was made in 1905, so it was probably the crash of 1901.)

Lawyer Lawrence Blakeley was not supposed to be the one who had to take Bronson's forged notes to rich old steel manufacturer John Gilmore to get his deposition that they were fakes. It should have been his partner, Richard McKnight. McKnight is in love, though, and wants to spend the weekend courting the object of his affections, lovely Alison West. Coincidentally, she's Gilmore's granddaughter.

Blakeley's troubles start when a drunken man crawls into his train berth by mistake. It turned out to be Mr. Harrington's fatal mistake because someone stabbed him during the night. Blakeley also manages to get his clothes and his bag o' important papers stolen while he's off having a smoke. This is where he meets Wilson Hotchkiss , an unimportant government employee whose hobby is using the deductive methods of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. Hotchkiss' deductions don't help. The conductor thinks Blakeley is the murderer!

Through an accident that is fortunate for Blakeley (aside from his injury) and a few other characters, our hero is not arrested. He still needs to get those forged notes and that signed deposition back before they're sold to Bronson. That dry 30-year-old lawyer considered the "unkissable" has also reluctantly fallen in love. Is the lady already taken? Worse, she does seem to be involved in the affair of the train.

Blakeley isn't off the hook for the murder. A very talented detective named Johnson is shadowing him. I thoroughly enjoyed Blakeley and McKnight's relationship with Johnson. Hotchkiss isn't out of the picture, either. Will the amateur detective prove successful? How about the professional? Will either of the law partners have any luck in their courting?

NOTES:

Chapter I: McKnight's machine (car) is called 'Cannonball'.

Despite what some sources will tell you, this is NOT a MIss Cornelia Van Gorder book. She does not appear anywhere in this book. ( )

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in Lower 10, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of over-crowding.