This is the third of Carr's three timeslip detections. (The second, Fear is the Same, published as by Carter Dickson, is now on my reading pile.)  The title is from the Macbeth line "Fire, burn, and cauldron bubble" -- which line is quoted occasionally within the text, although its relevance at any point is a little stretched, as in the observation that the victim get herself killed because her emotional cauldron briefly bubbled over. Perhaps she paused to muse. mid-bubble, about there being more things in heaven and earth . . .

The taxi of present-day Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot has just pulled up outside the Yard when he spontaneously (or so it seems) timeslips back to 1829 where, with remarkably little pause for acclimatization, he becomes the first Superintendent of the fledgling Metropolitan Police; he also discovers that he has a mistress, the beautiful widow Lady Flora Drayton, and a reputation for loose living. He is immediately told to go investigate the mystery of who has been stealing the seed from the cages of the exotic birds owned by dotty old aristocrat Lady Cork; with the instinct of any detective finding himself in a John Dickson Carr, he realizes there is a far more sinister crime here than mere petfood thievery . . .

Sure enough, at Lady Cork's house it proves that she has taken to hiding her family jewellery in the birdseed reservoirs -- in other words, what's been stolen is not the seed but the baubles. Before Cheviot can really register this, however, his attention is distracted by an impossible murder: as he and Flora, plus sidekick Alan Henley, watch, Lady Cork's beautiful, wanton-looking but somehow strangely repulsive niece Margaret Renfrew is shot dead by an invisible hand in the middle of a broad, brightly lit corridor. Solving the murder, protecting Flora and himself from suspicion, recovering Lady Cork's jewels, setting his relationship with Flora on a sound footing -- all these tasks and more besides involve Cheviot in such escapades as penetrating the notorious London gambling house Vulcan's and taking on its fearsome boss and a gang of his hoodlums; in a subplot, Cheviot must also deal with a vile and treacherous Guards officer, Hugo Hogben, who seems determined to murder Cheviot because the latter, a filthy scum of a policeman, has been insufficiently obsequious to him. At story's end, the case solved, Hogben kills Cheviot . . . who recovers consciousness back in his real life, having been knocked cold when his taxi was involved in a minor accident. Has his timeslip been a genuine event, or was he merely dreaming?

Bizarrely, when Cheviot emerges into the 19th century it's as if his persona there, while coming into existence only with his arrival, does so complete with a past history: his romance with Flora is clearly of long standing, other characters know him, some well, and Lady Cork makes occasional references to knowing his father. Also a little puzzling is the ease, alluded to above, with which he acclimatizes to the 19th-century society; despite a few stumbles and hastily corrected anachronisms, it's almost as if he has indeed been living a life here in the past era. This all becomes plausible if we accept the "it was all a dream" explanation. But if not . . .?

Leaving aside any quibbles as to its mechanism, this novel is tremendous fun in the usual romping John Dickson Carr fashion. The timeslip part of the plot does add a layer of extra interest, although the main tale could have been told perfectly well without it. ( )

There is some similarity to "The Devil in Velvet" with this, but the time is certainly different. A policeman from 50's London is transported back in time to 1829 in London. He is placed smack in the middle of a crime when he is sent to investigate missing bird seed of all things. While he is at the house where the birdseed has disappeared, a murder occurs, and Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot is right in the middle of a puzzling "locked-room" mystery. As we know this type of mystery is Carr's forte, and he handles this one with his usual aplomb. I loved the time-travel angle, and I really like Cheviot. Carr's characters are very realistic. These books are timeless. ( )