Review: Mystery At Lynden Sands

Mystery At Lynden Sands by J.J. Connington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the third Sir Clinton Driffield novel, Sir Clinton is accompanied both by his Watson from the first book (his friend Wendover, a JP who represents the sound British county chap who's a stickler for the done thing), and his inspector from the second book, who tends to play Scotland Yard bungler to Sir Clinton's Sherlock Holmes, though he's sound enough at basic police work. He can collect evidence and notice evidence, he's just not that good at stringing it together into a narrative, which is where Sir Clinton shines.

The motive for the first murder seemed pretty obvious to me, and gave a clear suspect from the start, though Sir Clinton tries to make out late in the book that it could have pointed two different ways. The main mystery, though, involved gunshots, multiple sets of footprints later washed away by the tide, several different people believing that something had taken place which had not, tyre tracks, eavesdropping, and bigamous marriages, and had me completely confused until Sir Clinton cleared it all up neatly. He's still a bit of a know-it-all; it would be nice to see him confounded, or making a mistake, from time to time just to humanize him (or having a non-professional relationship with anyone besides Wendover, who, because he's drafted as the Watson, ends up still being a professional relationship). But the crimes and solutions are clever, and if you enjoy Freeman Wills Crofts and/or R. Austin Freeman, with their puzzle-solving detectives who don't have much personality, this is another author for you.

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