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Nine Times Nine

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 9 months ago

Boucher, Anthony as HH Holmes - Nine Times Nine

 

Wolfe Harrington is a wealthy man who exposes religious cults. Matt Duncan is a young writer he recruits to assist in writing up his research. Sister Ursula is a nun called in to dissuade Harrington's daughter from entering a convent. When Wolfe alienates a sham Swami and goes after a fake guru his life is at risk and he has to lock himself in his study...

 

And the scene is set for a locked-room mystery, Boucher's overt tribute to John Dickson Carr. Harrington is found dead in his locked study. A yellow-robed figure was seen there from outside; but the figure has disappeared. Oxford-educated Lieutenant Marshall is called in to sort things out: and thanks to the aid of Duncan, Sister Ursula and his mystery-reading wife, he manages to do just that.

 

Boucher's writing is sharp and his characters engaging. But the mystery only scores a B minus. For this reader, everything hovers on just the wrong side of plausibility. Would an audience of several hundred really not notice the substitution of one regular speaker for someone else? Would the complex locked-room plot really work perfectly first time, unrehearsed, with the absolute certainty that a murderer needs? And if you saw something through a window...?

 

Boucher himself did a lot of sniping at implausible plots in his review columns; but it's one thing to spot others' flaws and another to avoid them yourself.

 

Jon.

 

See also http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2011/04/sister-act.html

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