Review: The Middle Temple Murder

The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fletcher was a journalist, which is probably why the journalist who is the hero of this story, and solves the case, is so exemplary. He's empathetic to people who could be hurt if he reveals everything he knows, and keeps some things out of his paper in consequence, though admittedly they are friends and a potential love interest.

The pacing worked well for me, and never bogged down in a lack of progress; the journalist and (less frequently) the police detective were constantly discovering new clues and facts that progressed towards a solution, and those facts revealed a complex and engaging story, involving fraud, false identities, theft, blackmail and murder.

I was engaged enough that I'm not even demoting it by one tier in my annual recommendation list for relying on coincidence for the plot to happen. The core cast of nine people turn out to have multiple connections to one another, a good many of them completely coincidental, and the murder itself is the result of at least three coincidences. But given that those coincidences happened, it does all make sense, and the process of unravelling it all was enjoyable.

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