Review: The Phone Booth Mystery: A Traditional British Mystery

The Phone Booth Mystery: A Traditional British Mystery by John Ironside
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reminded me very much of The Terriford Mystery , in that rather than being a standard detective story where the focus is on the detective solving the mystery, it focuses on an innocent man accused of murder and his faithful fiancée (Terriford)/wife (this book), who always believes in his innocence. In both cases, the resolution is not brought about by anyone cleverly figuring out who the real killer is, but by the killer confessing. This leaves the main characters without a lot of agency, and the detectives, who aren't the main characters, cease to be relevant well before the end. If you're looking for the experience of a standard detective story, you'll be disappointed (don't believe the "A traditional British mystery" tagline on some editions), though considered on its own terms it's reasonably successful and written fluently and competently.

The author uses a couple of coincidences to tighten up the connections between the cast members. The victim is a friend of the accused's wife's bridesmaid's music teacher, as well as being the accused's boss's wife. The couple, newly married, decide on a whim to stay with a maiden lady who runs basically a B&B, who the wife had stayed with years before, and this lady turns out to be an old flame of the husband's boss's manservant. Neither of these coincidences have much impact on the plot, not least because the resolution of the plot is by no effort of any of the characters (apart from the murderer who confesses), but this kind of coincidence, to me, shows the hand of the author too prominently. I don't like it when it happens in Dracula, and I don't like it when it happens in early Wodehouse; I don't like it here either, though it's relatively harmless.

The other thing I didn't like was that there's a bit of mysticism - a woman with "the gift" who makes an accurate prophecy that everything will turn out all right - dropped in partway through. To me, that makes the wife's simple faith look rather naive, in that she readily believes it and rests her faith on that rather than on her Anglican beliefs, and it again shows the hand of the author too obviously. It doesn't make any difference to the plot either, but it does act as a bit of an internal spoiler.

It's well enough written, and the B&B owner is amusing, though none of the characters have a ton of depth. On consideration, I'm not going to put it on my recommendation list for this year, because although I enjoyed it most of the time I was reading it, I was left discontented at the end.

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