The Phantom of the Dagonet

I read Puzzle for Players bit by bit with a fellow mystery aficionado, trying to piece the puzzle together before it was unveiled by Patrick Quentin. In retrospect, it might not have been the wisest reading strategy. Throughout this time, I read other mystery novels. As good as my memory is, it’s little wonder that small and seemingly irrelevant plot points got deleted from my memory. As a result, when the solution was revealed, I stared in disbelief, not remembering a single one of the facts that Patrick Quentin referred to. Frankly, I felt cheated, and although glances at previous pages revealed that some clues were there after all, the overall feeling of dissatisfaction remains, as the solution is kind of problematic. There’s an inherent weakness in the murderer’s plot that no amount of red herring can disguise, and one of its main “clues” is basically ignorant of the theatre’s workings.

That’s somewhat surprising, because Puzzle for Players is a very well-done theatre mystery. I just love these: death is hiding in the shadows in the wings, waiting to strike again, while the actors are on stage rehearsing… This particular theatre is the Dagonet, which comes complete with an age-old jinx (shows that play there constantly fail) and a ghost named Lillian, who has a nasty habit of turning up in mirrors. The theatrical atmosphere is nicely done— Quentin captures the general bedlam of backstage before the performance. The petty, pointless rivalries, the progression of the show as the performance is being moulded… It’s really nicely done.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

The name Patrick Quentin was a penname for a complex writing team of several people, whose inner workings I really cannot speak of with any sort of authority. I freely admit it: I know nothing whatsoever about the internal workings of this group. In fact, you will get so much more information by reading the GAD Wiki entry on Quentin. My purpose here is to discuss the first Patrick Quentin novel, A Puzzle for Fools.

The main character in A Puzzle for Fools is Peter Duluth, a theatrical producer who hit the bottle a little too hard after the death of his wife in a fire. Eventually, he realised he was throwing his life away and his friends were getting tired of being sorry for him, so he decided to fix his life while he still had the chance. He enrols in a sanatorium run by the very modern Dr. Lenz, who prefers his patients to feel like on some sort of vacation, and not in a sanatorium.