Connington, JJ - Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (1927)
Review by Nick Fuller
2/5
Sir Clinton’s second case presents him with rather a tangled situation: two (or more) robberies (one a practical joke), two murders and a disappearance. Although the fabulous artistic treasure (here a set of da Vinci medallions) is an old device, the set-up augurs well for admirers of the 1920s domestic detective story. Unfortunately the plot is a mess of ideas ingeniously contrived (the statue, the “family curse” of agoraphobia) but very poorly combined. The most glaring example is the agoraphobic suicide of Maurice Chacewater, which could (and should) have been used as the central idea of an ingeniously horrible murder along Chestertonian lines (c.f. “The Eye of Apollo”), but is instead tacked on to the central plot, which, in its reliance on a criminal gang of characters the reader is scarcely aware of, is quite disappointing.
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