Review: Murder in the Maze

Murder in the Maze by J.J. Connington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A reasonably promising series starter, with an unusual detective - unusual in that he's the Chief Constable of the county where the murders occur, which is not often a post that involves detective work. The author was a chemist by profession and wrote on the side, and his chemical knowledge comes through in several places.

The title is slightly misleading in suggesting that there was one murder in the maze; in fact, there were two, twin brothers who looked similar (it's never clarified whether they're identical, but people who know them well distinguish them easily) and habitually dressed in similar clothes. There are clear motives for murdering either of them, and no shortage of suspects, so... did the murderer aim to kill one of them, discover that the first victim was in fact the other, and rectify the mistake? After all, what could be the motive for killing both?

Well, that was extremely obvious to me, though not to the Watson figure in the story: (view spoiler)[a family member who stood to inherit would have a motive for killing them both, and making it look like one had been killed for an external reason and the other by mistake. I didn't guess which family member, though, and for a while thought that the detective's eventual fixing on a particular one was poorly justified, though he made it work in the end, based on knowledge the murderer had that, by their own statements, they shouldn't have possessed. I also guessed that the "death" of the third victim was faked. (hide spoiler)]

It doesn't really stand out above the pack of Golden-Age mysteries for me. The detective, although not someone you'd expect, doesn't have much distinctiveness and has a rather high-handed attitude to determining who should face the process of the law, given that he holds a high position as a law-enforcement official. The Watson, though said to be smarter than he looks, is not at all smart. The detective's process is largely hidden from the reader until the end, though at least the clues are not. The suspects are the usual country-house lot. It's OK, but it isn't one of the greats. I might give the series another go eventually - the third one is also on Project Gutenberg - in case the author's skills improved as he went along.

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