“It has become a game, a mere game like chess, this writing of murder mysteries. While in real life, it is no game, but something quite simple and savage, with about as much mystery wrapped round it as that piano leg. And that’s why I’ve no use for detective fiction. It’s false. It depicts the impossible.”
…
“That may be so. But I enjoy the game. It has, as you say, become far more subtle lately, and no one can guess the murderer till the last few pages. But after all, we expect fiction to transcend life, and a murder in a book to be more mysterious than a real one.”
—Alec Noris and Sam Williams in discussion, Case for Three Detectives
When I wrote my review of Paul Halter’s novel Le Tigre Borgne, I was convinced that it would be my last review before I left for a three week vacation on Monday morning. But, as it turns out, my next read, Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce, was such a delightfully quick one, it simply flew by!
It seems so horrible, doesn’t it, to discover one’s hostess dead? Yet that is precisely what happens to Mr. Townsend, the narrator of the story, who along with a group of his fellow guests, have a discussion on the merits of detective stories. It seems like an innocent discussion, but things take a dark turn when Mary Thurston, Dr. Thurston’s wife, is found in her room, with the door bolted shut and the windows closed, murdered… From then on, Townsend is thrust into an investigation involving ingenious false alibis, ropes, rats, apples, box rooms, and the like, as three detectives found their way onto the scene of the crime to do some proper investigatin'.
