Review: The Clue

The Clue by Carolyn Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although there's a good deal of investigation by both an amateur and a professional detective, a Great Detective is called in (about three-quarters of the way through or more) and figures out something that hasn't been hinted at up to that point and requires specialist knowledge, which points to someone who has, until then, appeared an unlikely suspect and whose explanation of the crime I didn't find particularly plausible. So it's far from a "fair play" mystery, and the mystery aspect, while it is a focus, wasn't particularly satisfying to me.

Everyone is very excitable, especially the women, who are given to having hysterics and fainting when under emotional strain. I don't know if it was looser clothing or World War I making everyone more stoic, but the characters you see in detective stories of even 15 or 20 years later make all of these Gilded Age people seem absurdly melodramatic and lacking in resilience.

It had the potential to be better than it was, since it's mainly the ending that lets it down. Up to that point, it's decent for the time.

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