I’m growing quite fond of the regular characters in these stories. Joseph Spector is a bit of an enigma. A retired stage magician, he now appears to spend most of his time in a pub which he treats more or less like his office. He appears to be an einzelgänger but does have a keen interest in people and there is very little he doesn’t notice and store away for future reference. Of course, making the main character and investigator of this series a retired magician is a stroke of genius. Who could be better equipped to see beyond the sleight of hand and recognise the ways in which the seemingly impossible can be pulled off? In some ways it’s more challenging because you have fewer words to play with, so it’s not as easy to plant clues and guide the reader up the garden path. But the process itself is actually pretty similar—in my case, I might begin a short story with a single puzzle, image, idea or character, whereas I will begin a novel with a few disparate elements that I gradually weave together. What can we find you doing when you aren’t writing and reading mysteries? I haven’t read the first in the series, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of this book at all. Though this is a Joseph Spector investigation, the reader will find three different investigators in this book; Spector himself; Edmund Ibbs, a young solicitor with his own interest in the art of magic, who has a personal stake in finding the perpetrator and Police Inspector George Flint. this is not a historical mystery. It is supposedly set in the past (I forgot what the time period is supposed to be, and you'll see why if you read this yourself), but I think that's only a device to ensure that the author doesn't have to account for modern police procedure or use technology. I loved all the characters. Touching on the different types of psychomachia was clever and made the characters more tangible. Della really was a conundrum and I would have actually liked to have known more about her for my own curiosity. The only character I didn't much care for was the daughter Lidia. I think she was deliberately made unlikeable which shows how much skill the author has.

Classic mysteries are fascinating social documents, crammed with insights about class, domestic life, culture, police procedure … you name it! No one is going to buy a half-finished novel. You may not get it right first time, but it’s best to tell your story from beginning to end and worry about the rest later. That’s what editing is for. Author Pet Corner! Chloe!I thought it was fitting to set my novel—which pays conscious tribute to the genre—right in the middle of its most productive period. So I suppose you could say that the London I’m writing about is seen through the lens of the golden age.

London. Young lawyer Edmund Ibbs has a new client: a woman accused of shooting her husband in the already infamous 'Ferris Wheel Murder' case.I was particularly fond of the psychological slant to the storyline, with the victim being a psychiatrist and the suspects including three of his patients and his psychiatrically-trained daughter. I love any exploration of the quirks and shadows of the human mind, and here we get glimpses into anxiety, kleptomania and possibly hints of sociopathy… so very intriguing trying to work out how each individual psychological profile might match up to the crimes under investigation. It’s going to take all the ingenuity of Joseph Spector, also fortunately attending Paolini’s performance, to sort out how these events are connected, who is responsible and to exonerate young Edmund. The pacing is slow, with numerous numbing recaps and restatements. No real surprises, very pedestrian drama, and the weakest of murderers. We have a large cast of characters, including Patient A, Patient B, Patient C, the doctor's daughter and her rake of a boyfriend, an actress, a producer, several maids, the staff of a hotel, and more. Just a whole slew of suspicious people and almost witnesses but there are no answers. It will take magician and sleight of hand man such as Spector to figure this one out. Who are the suspects? Dr. Lidia Rees, daughter of Dr. Anselm Rees, seemed to be matter of fact about her father's demise. Her playboy boyfriend had many secrets. What of Patients A, B, and C? Why did the Rees family emigrate to London from Vienna? So many unanswered questions.