The Markenmore Mystery by J.S. FletcherMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
When I first started reading Fletcher, I thought I'd found someone who didn't write to a formula. What I've discovered is that it's more the case that he doesn't write to the usual formula for a detective story of the period. He writes to a (loose) formula of his own, though, and I'm coming to not care for it.
This is because it relies heavily on coincidence, and the existence of witnesses to events that should have had no witnesses, and the detective, if any, generally doesn't solve the crime, at least in the way fictional detectives of the time usually solved crimes. In this one, for instance, the police detective does eventually come to understand what happened, but only thanks to a Convenient Eavesdrop (in a remote place, late at night, by total coincidence, by a character who withholds the information until late in the book); a complete accident; and a curious dog belonging to one of the minor characters happening to be in the right place. He works hard throughout, following up clues and eliminating red herrings (one of which had me completely convinced it was the solution), but all of that is rendered irrelevant by the let-down of an ending.
There's a hint of a possibility of a romance that's so underdeveloped it looks like Charles Atlas's Before picture. And (like most police detectives of the period, to be fair) the police detective has almost no personality; he's a machine for solving crimes, but in the end he doesn't actually do that in this case.
The pattern I'm seeing in most of the Fletchers I've read recently is that the journey is good, but the destination disappointing. I think I'm going to either stop reading them or at least look for the best-reviewed ones only.
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