Penny, Rupert - Sealed Room Murder (1951)

From the cover:

Rupert Penny excels all his previous form with this highly successful murder mystery. Unlike most "sealed-room" stories, the problem is perfectly clear-cut and extremely simple in its elements. Where other mysteries try to baffle the reader by their complexity, this one will baffle by its simplicity. The story of Harriet Steele and the family that was forced upon her, is good reading even when considered as a straight novel, the situation is very real, very familiar and always lively and amusing in spite of the undertone of grimness. The thoroughly ingenious and exciting crime is put before the reader with scrupulous fairness so that he has every possible chance of leaping to the solution that will prove completely satisfying.

B

Penny’s last book.  It’s a pity he didn’t write more, because six of the eight I’ve read have all been very good.  (Thanks to Torquemada for drawing my attention to this treasure trove of Pennys!)  This one isn’t the best—it takes a while to get going (murder committed quite late in the book); the problem is one of those that is so baffling I didn’t suspect anybody; and the solution is ultra-ingenious in a Heath Robinson way, with five diagrams to explain it.  On the other hand, the characterisation is good (particularly of the unpleasant yet oddly pathetic victim); the problem had me completely baffled (like trying to scale a glass wall, as Ralph Partridge said of Christie’s Sparkling Cyanide); and, although contrived, the murder method is extremely clever and worthy of Carr himself ***(the essential simplicity of the carpet trick)***.

Nick Fuller.

See also http://www.classicmysteries.net/2012/03/sealed-room-murder.html