Death and the Conjuror: A Locked-Room Mystery

Product Information

It seemed natural to write about the 1930s because that was the height of the golden age of detective fiction. This is Chloe. It seems fitting for a mystery writer to have a master thief as a pet. She steals anything she can get her paws round—edible and otherwise. Who are the suspects? Dr. Lidia Rees, daughter of Dr. Anselm Rees, seemed to be matter of fact about her father's demise. Her playboy boyfriend had many secrets. What of Patients A, B, and C? Why did the Rees family emigrate to London from Vienna? So many unanswered questions.

Classic mysteries are fascinating social documents, crammed with insights about class, domestic life, culture, police procedure … you name it! This book offered a second refreshing aspect in Edmund Ibbs, a young lawyer and amateur magician. Most of the story is narrated from his perspective which means we get to observe Spector from more than one perspective. What’s more, his presence also means that we don’t get to see Spector as uniquely qualified to solve cases since Ibbs manages to solve at least one of the three cases on his own.When Lidia and her playboy boyfriend Marcus Bowman arrive home late one night, they learn Dr Rees’ throat has been slit. His body was discovered by his patient, Cookson, and the housekeeper. Cookson arrived late in a frantic state seeking the doctor’s advice. It’s going to take all the ingenuity of Joseph Spector, also fortunately attending Paolini’s performance, to sort out how these events are connected, who is responsible and to exonerate young Edmund.

When it comes to the murder, there is a reasonably restricted suspect pool, which should have made the plot more straightforward to follow, but not only does every character have their own secrets to hide, but the illusion-magic aspect of the mysteries made them absolutely impenetrable to me! The author/narrator notes towards the end of the story that all of the clues are there, and he is right, they are – I just had not a single hope of putting them together to come up with the correct solutions. I was very much poor Captain Hastings (from Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories) when it came to the final reveal scene!

It’s perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, and all those other legends from the first half of the twentieth century. It’s a kind of umbrella term which covers all manner of impossible crimes—that is, crimes where there appears to be no way the criminal could actually have committed them. He is a prolific author of short fiction, and recently his story “Heatwave” was included in THE BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR 2021, edited by Lee Child. DEATH AND THE CONJUROR is his first novel. I’m growing quite fond of the regular characters in these stories. Joseph Spector is a bit of an enigma. A retired stage magician, he now appears to spend most of his time in a pub which he treats more or less like his office. He appears to be an einzelgänger but does have a keen interest in people and there is very little he doesn’t notice and store away for future reference. Of course, making the main character and investigator of this series a retired magician is a stroke of genius. Who could be better equipped to see beyond the sleight of hand and recognise the ways in which the seemingly impossible can be pulled off? There is nothing to suggest that the character has abruptly shifted from bemusement to bitterness. At one point, the detective's case is described as "diaphanous." This odd usage didn't appear in every paragraph, but it was frequent enough to be distracting. German immigrant Dr Anselm Rees has recently relocated to London, along with his daughter, Dr Lidia Rees. Mead wisely sets the story a few years before the gathering war clouds would have complicated things even further. The elder Dr Rees – sometimes referred to as a psychologist and sometimes as a psychiatrist – has gradually acquired a list of only three patients. They are the musician Floyd Stenhouse, actor Della Cookson and author Claude Weaver.