Wynne, Anthony -- The Tolll-House Murder (1935)

I've decided to join in the fun and am past the halfway point of "The Toll House Murder". The prose is really a chore to get through, as it truly hasn't got any sense of humour whatsoever. In fact, it's a collection of melodramatic cliches with no individuality about it. It seems like a robot has written this, or it has been recycled from some other place. There's simply no personality in this writing.

The pacing of the plot is poor. We're given the initial interesting locked room problem, and then nothing really happens for 70 pages or so. Then, we get a murder and a few pages after an attempted murder. Nothing much happense for about 70 pages or so. Then, we get a murder and a few pages later, another murder. Although there's quite a bit of plot, it's just too much. They will now investigate the newest murder presumably until they discover that Mrs. Horbury of the village of Wainscotting knew Sir Andrew's secret from her sister's cousin's neighbour's nephew's wife, but she was garrotted before being able to share her knowledge.

This may turn out to have a clever solution yet, but if so, that will be its main feature of interest. Either way, Wynne strikes me as an author whose books need to be read at least a month apart.

Patrick O.

See also: http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2011/07/murder-most-dull.html