Tom MeadRezensionen

Pitch-perfect, entertaining mystery in the Golden Age tradition. Three impossible crimes rolled into one good book.

I wanted to like this but the ending was too overly complicated. I liked the book until the reveal and then it got a bit too much for me.

Thus far, Tom Mead has only written two volumes in his Joseph Spector mystery series. Let us all hope that he will produce many, many more. If I weren't aware that this novel is coming out in July 2023, I would be absolutely convinced The Murder Wheel came from the "golden age" of detective fiction. The puzzles are wonderfully puzzling. Joseph Spector, the central character, is a former stage magician who now works informally with Scotland Yard's Inspector George Flint as a consultant on particularly outré cases, the kind of cases that seem as if they could involve magic—though they don't because Spector is as devoted to rationcination as was Holmes.

The Murder Wheel begins with a confounding murder. A man has been shot at an amusement park while riding the Ferris wheel. His wife, who was with him, insists that a) he hadn't brought a gun with him, b) that she did not kill him, and c) that he did not commit suicide. Edmund Ibbs, a lawyer and amateur magician is working for the defense on this case. As the narrative grows more complex, readers discover that there must be a connection of some kind between this murder and criminal activity within The Pomegranate, a variety theatre.

Ibbs is in The Pomegranate's audience watching a performance by Professor Paolini and finds himself called on stage to serve as the shooter in a bullet trick. All goes well with that trick, but shortly after events turn deadly. Inspector Flint arrives at the scene of the crime. He'd met Ibbs prevously due to Ibbs' work on the Ferris wheel case, and viewed him as, if not an ally, then a honest man going about the work involved in his job. But encountering Ibbs again, Flint grows increasingly suspicious of Ibbs. Spector joins Flint, making Ibbs an awkward, and possibly criminal, third wheel in the Pomegranate investigation.

Besides the inexplicable shooting at the amusement park, other conundrums abound. There's a locked room, a mysterious man who appears inexplicably backstage—as a corpse, multiple interlocking witness statements, and so much more. If you're a lover of "old school" mysteries, The Murder Wheel will absolutely delight you. Even if you have no idea what the "golden age" of mysteries is, if you're a reader who enjoys puzzles of any kind, you'll want to pick up a copy of this book.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

Death and the Conjuror - T. Mead
Audio performance by Jake Ruddle
3 stars

Joseph Specter is a retired illusionist. He is drafted to assist Scotland Yard with an apparently inexplicable locked room murder. A locked room murder which coincides with a seemingly impossible art theft and an additional ‘locked elevator murder’. It’s a complicated plot with many of the classic suspects of vintage murders. There’s great 1930’s London atmosphere. Poirot would have been in his element.

There was nothing original to the plot or the setting to make this book a standout. It was a good puzzle and entertaining in that way. The book lacked any humor or emotional connection between the characters. The audio performance was soporific. Jake Ruddle did nothing to increase the tension or keep my interest. If I try the next book in this series, I will read it.

This locked-room mystery combined whodunnit with a howdunnit that had me hooked from the get-go. And so well read by narrator Jake Ruddle, thus making it a delightful mystery puzzle and listen.

Suspects and murders are not what they seem and are eventually revealed by an elderly conjuror consulted by the police.

I had high hopes for this one, but was seriously let down.

A famous Viennese psychologist is found murdered in his home office; all the doors and windows are locked from the inside. Who could the culprit be and how could he possibly have perpetrated this locked room feat of legerdemain? There is no dearth of possible suspects. There is the doctor’s ambitious daughter and her unlikely buffoon of a fiancé…not to mention the doctor’s three high-profile patients who all suffer from serious mental disorders. Or could it be the mysterious stranger who visited the doctor around the time of the murder? And what about the colossal professional failure from the doctor’s distant past, The Snakeman; could someone related to The Snakeman have finally exacted the ultimate revenge for the doctor’s one tragic mistake? A police inspector and an old stage magician join forces to uncover the culprit.

Compared to a lot of contemporary novels, the writing quality was fairly decent. However, the author needs a refresher course in the proper usage of ‘who’ and ‘whom’.

The mystery story itself suffered from a number of major problems.

There were way too many subplots flying around. Rather than adding to the storyline, they detracted from the primary action. Whether it was the fugue-state writer’s shadowy pursuer or the impresario’s stolen painting, all of those secondary plotlines piled on top of one another & just became unnecessary & irrelevant distractions.

The author’s explanations for everything were just convoluted and ridiculous. The methods described for achieving the impossible locked room murders were just that: Impossible. India rubber, unnoticed alcoves, scarves, doorbell tampering, alarm clocks, flying guns…it was all completely implausible and made no sense whatsoever. No one on planet earth will find any of the solutions presented reasonable or even remotely realistic.

The killer’s motive came completely out of nowhere & was utterly out of character.

I (in addition to the other members of my book club) identified the killer early on; unfortunately, Tom Mead couldn’t seem to figure it out himself, and identified a different perpetrator for the conclusion of his story. All of the scenarios we concocted for the how and the why were infinitely more interesting and realistic than the author’s version. That’s just sad.

And, although one would expect The Conjuror to play a major role throughout the book, he really doesn’t. He mostly just sits in a booth at a dingy pub doing tricks and chatting with the inspector. Occasionally, he interrogates a witness, but he spends most of the book in the background, not doing much of anything. I really didn’t see the point, except that the author wanted an excuse to include ‘Conjuror’ in the title.

I probably would have given this book closer to two or two and a half stars if it hadn’t been for that asinine page toward the end in which the author obnoxiously announces that the reader now has all of the information needed to solve the crime (No, he doesn’t.) and—even though it’s completely awkward and unnecessary—isn’t it fun to include this nonsense at this point in the story (No, it isn’t.) On top of everything else, that bit really, really irked me. The foolishness of it all flat-out killed what was already turning out to be an exasperating reading experience.

Truly a tribute to the Golden Age of crime fiction as the reader sorts through the story for the clues to the mystery. Enjoy the sleight of hand and the red herrings! Spector and the Scotland Yard detective are great characters; the suspects an unlikable bunch.½

This is the first novel by Tom Mead who generally writes locked-room mystery stories. The setting is 1936 London. The stage magician Joseph Spector is called in when a prominent psychiatrist is murdered inside his firmly-locked office. The sytlu and pace are a bit too cozy for me and I didn't finish.

I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher via NetGalley.

I had heard so many good things about this novel that I was sure I was going to love it, but in the end I found it too cerebral and a little tiresome. As other reviewers have noted, although it is set in 1936 there isn't a lot of period colour and the characterization was rather superficial. Maybe it was listening to it while trying to overcome jet lag, but it was all too convoluted and the solutions so deviously convoluted and unlikely that I lost interest in trying to grasp them, let alone work them out for myself. The audiobook narrator made Joseph Spector's voice very supercilious and 'stagy' which grated on me. I've only recently started listening to audiobooks again and I don't understand why the narrator, having got to the end of a sentence where they clearly misplaced the stress or mispronounced a word (e.g.Bodleian), doesn't re-record that sentence...?½

The promotional materials for Death and the Conjurer compare this title to some of the best work from "the golden age of mystery writing," a description that's spot-on. I had a hard time remembering whether I was reading a forthcoming novel or a reprint of a classic from the 30s.

Death and the Conjurer has all the traits of a mystery from the period it emulates. We have
• not one, but two locked door mysteries
• a cast of suspicious characters including—
• an emigre psychiatrist
• his odd, but brilliant daughter
• three of the psychiatrist's patients
• a clueless, rich young man
• a housekeeper who listens at doors
• a Scotland Yard detective aided by a civilian, in this case a former stage magician

It took me a little while to hit my stride with this title, but once I did, I was hooked. Death and the Conjurer is a read-in-one-sitting title. The solution to the crime is complicated (I'm not sure I completely bought all its elements) and is presented in an Hercule Poirot-style assembly of all the characters involved in the case, with sudden revelations that maintain the guessing game for as long as possible.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

Non-Fiction written as racist fiction. Interesting insight into some of the history of the local area. Pretty dry read.

Eden; Whaling