The Paddington Mystery

by John Rhode

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 187
Rating:

Synopsis:

When Harold Merefield returns home from a nightclub in the early hours, he is startled by the gruesome discovery of a corpse - on his own bed! Who is he, and how did he get there?

Unconvinced by the inquest's verdict of 'death from natural causes', Harold determines to investigate the matter for himself and seeks the help of Professor Priestly, an academic with a reputation for solving curious affairs by the simple but unusual method of logical reasoning...

Apparently this is one of the first of John Rhode’s mysteries, so I was pretty intrigued: I’ve enjoyed his work, especially as Miles Burton, in a very classic mystery sort of way — perhaps not too enlightening about characters or even places, but a fun puzzle, and a satisfying sense of the world being put more or less to rights.

This book has those things, with actually a reasonable amount of character: Harold’s a bit of a mess, but cleaning his act up, and the Professor comes across quite sympathetically given that his daughter is tangentially involved in the mystery. I remember I’ve read one of the others starring Priestly, but couldn’t remember a single detail about him: this is a bit more memorable.

The mystery wasn’t too surprising, and I figured out some chunks of it quite quickly, but it was still satisfying to unravel and to see how Priestly gets things straightened out. I enjoyed it.

Rating: 3/5