Twice Round the Clock, Billie Houston
Twice Round the Clock was pretty much what I expected of this series, which means it was pretty comforting. I knew nothing about the author, though she was somewhat famous in her time (for reasons other than being an author); I wonder how much that impacted the initial reception of the book.
As it goes, it’s a country house mystery with a somewhat closed circle of suspects (not a locked room mystery, and events make it clear that people can make it to the house, but most of the suspects are cooped up in the house due to an impressive thunderstorm). The victim is a rather awful man, and the author does well at making clear that he’s awful without ever doing anything that you can point to as being so very bad.
There’s quite a bit of melodrama, fainting ladies and spurious engagements and the like — not to mention poisons that can be smeared on a person or animal and kill them spontaneously at a pre-determined time later — but that’s pretty par for the course for a crime novel of the period, and enjoyable in its way.
One thing Houston did really well is the pacing: starting off with the discovery of the body, then winding the clock back to show us the preceding hours, and then ratcheting up the tension to the climax. With each chapter having a clock time, that does help to create the tension of the story.
I went and looked up the author as best I could – she retired from the stage in 1936 and seems to have entirely fallen off the radar after. I wonder if changing tastes stifled her (she specialized in male impersonation). Her sister continued in film and had a solid career.
It sounds like this was a pretty nice debut for the genre and it’s too bad she didn’t write more books.
According to the introduction of the book (which quotes the sister’s autobiography), she stopped performing due to ill health.
And yeah, I think it’s a shame. With more practice I bet she’d have written some great mysteries (and this one really wasn’t unenjoyable). I liked that she described a guy as menacing, completely terrifying to his daughter, without him ever laying a finger on her or seeming to be cruel; it’s easy to go too far with writing an evil character. (Granted, he does then kill kittens, but after ratcheting up the tension and weirdness, so it doesn’t feel like “oh, he’s evil because he kills kittens”, it was more “he’s evil and now he’s killed a kitten”.)