Palmer, Stuart - The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla

Aside from its howdunit aspects, the solution of The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla is not ingenious. The choice of the murderer echoes mystery clichés, and is easily suspected. The killer's motive, often a weak point with Palmer, is poorly done. This lack of a creative finale is the book's biggest weakness.

The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla does show ingenuity throughout, however, by constantly bringing its large cast of suspects into an involvement with the plot, and making many of them involved in baffling and mysterious situations. Palmer had a special skill of sheer storytelling, in which he could spin the actions of his characters into a continually unrolling plot. He does a good job of making some characters constantly at the center of suspicious looking mysteries. One can describe Julio Mendez as a Strange Person, and Dulcie Prothero as Mysteriously Involved. In fact, both are classic examples of these kinds of Palmer mystery subplots. As noted earlier, both the basic howdunit of the central murder mystery, and the subplot mysteries involving the personal lives of some of the suspects, recall the overall structure of Murder On Wheels.

Mike Grost