Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan (John Long, 1949) is a
classic country house detective story with a gathering of ill-assorted
characters, a heavy snowfall, and an amateur detective in the person of
Mordecai Tremaine, a retired tobacconist. While this is the first book to
document his adventures, there are references here and there to previous
investigative achievements and embarrassingly glowing newspaper articles. The
letter from Benedict Grame’s secretary inviting him to Grame’s old country manor
for the Christmas holidays suggests Grame may want to consult him in this
capacity.
Tremaine is delighted with Denys Arden, the ward of Grame’s
good friend Jeremy Rainer, whom he meets soon after his arrival at the secluded
estate. He is pleased to see that she has found a prospective matrimonial match
in Roger Wynton, as his preferred reading material is a serial called Romantic
Stories and he is happy to see one playing out in front of him. The
course of true love is not running smoothly unfortunately, as Rainer has taken
a dislike to Wynton and has forbidden any talk of marriage. Other guests
include a politician with questionable ethics, an irritable scientist, an
outgoing brother with a reclusive sister, a married couple recently moved to
the area from London, and a neighbor who is known for his practical jokes.
After a visit from neighbors who have come a-caroling, everyone
retires for the night on Christmas Eve, giving Grame time to dress up as Father
Christmas and put gifts on the lavish Christmas tree. Well before morning
dawns, a scream awakens Tremaine and he, with others in the house, rush to the
drawing room to find the unsociable sister has discovered the body of Father
Christmas. Just why she was fully dressed and downstairs in the middle of the
night is only one of the questions that Tremaine tries to answer in the
following days while the police conduct their formal inquiries.
An excellent example of the Golden Age mystery that
uses a stock setting while incorporating enough plot twists to surprise me. Francis
Duncan is
the pseudonym for William Underhill, who was born in 1918 and lived most of his
life in Bristol. So far two of the books in this series have been reprinted. Vintage
re-published this book in paperback in 2015, and Sourcebooks released it in
digital format in 2017. This review is based on the Kindle edition.
·
File Size: 2818 KB
·
Print Length: 242 pages
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Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1784703451
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Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
(October 10, 2017)
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Language: English
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ASIN: B072JHLQ8L
Aubrey Hamilton © 2017
Aubrey Hamilton is a former
librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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