Punshon, ER - Mystery Villa (1934)

Review by Nick Fuller

2/5

Occasionally books are published which could have been – and should have been – masterpieces, but which are not. Mystery Villa is one of those books. When it was published in 1934, it was greeted with acclaim by such well-known critics as Dorothy L Sayers and Torquemada (two of the three critics whom I respect most). What is significant about their reviews is that they praised the work for its story: for the tragedy of Miss Barton and her bridegroom, a story inspired in equal measure by Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham and Stevenson’s “Story of the Saratoga Trunk”; for Bobby Owen’s search of the house where she lived and from whence she vanished, a scene which, building up an overwhelming atmosphere of decay and horrifying poverty from such small details as a canary cage whose occupant has crumbled into dust, a drawing-room in which the flowers were shut up to decay, and an abandoned sheet of Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” is one of the finest pieces of sustained description in a detective story; and for its presentation of desperate respectability ebbing into neglect, degradation and insanity. What neither of these critics mention is the plot, for it is disappointing. The clue of the yellow gloves gives away the murderer’s alias far too early and too easily, but there are too few clues to the murderer, who barely appears at all. This is a great shame, for, had Punshon successfully integrated theme and story (as he has done elsewhere – c.f. Death Comes to Cambers among others), this could have been one of his best. As it is, I can only recommend the reader to close the book after the discovery of Miss Barton’s body and to invent a solution which will satisfy him more than Punshon’s.