Webindexing.biz

For me this is vintage Carr, with H.M. at his very best. The plot starts with a flashback: the history of the murderer Roger Bewlay, who managed to kill three wives in succession and hide their bodies without being detected, and who -- despite a police guard and an eye-witness -- disappeared into thin air after the death of his fourth wife was reported. Some writers would have spent a hundred pages on Bewlay's early history: Carr tells us all we need to know in four.

Back to the present day in post-war England. Masters, in frustration, has at last brought the case to H.M., but other parties are also taking an interest. Bruce Ransom, the actor, has received an anonymous and unsolicited script for a play about Bewlay's career. He wants to test the plausibility of the ending, set in a small village, and picks Aldebridge on the south coast, apparently at random, to host his impersonation of Roger Bewlay. His friends Dennis Foster and Beryl West try and dissuade him; but the police are curiously uninterested, and Bruce sets off to try the act. An urgent telegram calls Beryl and Dennis down to Aldebridge two weeks later. Bruce is in severe trouble -- in fact he's been saddled with a corpse -- but luckily H.M. and Masters are already on the spot.

There are no holds barred in this story; red herrings abound, and the savvy reader will have to go over every page carefully to disentangle the facts from the interested parties' versions of the facts. Clues are fair and it is possible to reach the end with a good idea of who the murderer is, but anyone who picks up all the hints can give themselves a very high score. H.M. is less prominent and a little more subdued than usual, but his golfing activities provide a good deal of humour, particularly the dry interventions of his Scottish professional Mr MacFergus.

A first-rate puzzle.

Jon.

< Prev		Next >