Sealed Room Murder Paperback – October 13, 2007

SRM is not a truly dreadful read . . .it moves along smartly (in terms of pace, if not intellect). But there is so much that is off-kilter. For one, the murder of the title doesn't happen until 2/3 way through the book, and by that time you care little who or why or how. Lots of strange things happening before that, too many of which are simply not explained, other than tangentially. What is worse, virtually every character is annoying and/or unlikable. That includes the purported protagonist, who is a prig at best. But yes, there is a classic locked-room murder, the explanation for which is so off-the-wall, so convoluted, so just unbelievable that you end up flipping thru the "revelation", eyebrows raised, so-what smirk adorning your face. No one . . .NO ONE . . .would go thru the shenaningans (sp??) in this book to kill anyone. Except maybe the author. (I do note that this is considered a classic locked-roomer, high on the list of howdunits. Not my list.)

We know who the victim will be pretty early on, even though it's halfway through the book before the odious woman gets her comeuppance. A rich widow hires a man to come to her country home and find out who among the residents (relatives of her dead husband) has been destroying her possessions. The first half of the story revolves around that plot, and acts more of a way to get all the characters and their quirks established. The narrator is the young man looking for the vandal, although after the murder the focus shifts to the policeman trying to unravel the mystery of the locked room. The solution is clever (with diagrams and maps, of course), although as with most of these golden age locked room mysteries, too complicated to have actually worked. But it's a fun ride for the 200-odd pages.