John Rhode is a pseudonym for John Cecil Street, who also wrote books using the names Miles Burton and Cecil Waye.

An intricate mystery involving a possibly haunted house, a small village, a country estate near a military camp, and military secrets being received by the German Minister in Ireland. As in another book from the Golden Age of British Mystery, someone who appears not quite right is worthy of more suspicion than he gets. There is also mention of a weird religious cult.

I liked the explanation of the name Cyprus Lodge, the house where mysterious deaths occur: Cypress trees surround the house, which in no way is anything like the definition of a lodge. [pp. 5-6] And I learned "the first armoured fighting vehicles [were] camouflaged as [water] tanks"! [p.127]

I read the book because I happened upon the website for the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, MA, which had an exhibit called "Murder He Wrote". The description lists some of Gorey's favorite murder mystery authors: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Georgette Heyer, Josephine Tey, Michael Innes, Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and Cecil Street. I would read another Street (aka John Rhode) if I saw one to give him a second change, but I wouldn't seek one out. ( )

Entertaining wartime story from the prolific Rhode (a.k.a. Miles Burton). A supposedly haunted house is the scene of a series of deaths, mostly involving the poison aconitine. Jimmy Waghorn, Inspector Hanslet and Dr. Priestley all contribute to the solution, which may or may not involve a leak of information from a nearby army camp (the author seems to have a subtext along the lines of "careless talk costs lives"). ( )