Review: The Chestermarke Instinct

The Chestermarke Instinct by J.S. Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An unusual classic mystery. Rather than the standard body in the library, we have the absence of somebody - a bank manager who has disappeared, along with some securities belonging to the bank and some valuable jewellery belonging to a nearby aristocrat who's a friend of his, and left them with him for safekeeping. The thing is, nobody who knows him well - the bank clerk who was his ward, his niece, his friend the earl - believes for a moment that he would steal these things and abscond. The niece, who's wealthy in her own right, having inherited a profitable brewery business, calls in the police, over the objections of the unlikeable owners of the bank, and offers a reward and to fund any search or advertising that might be necessary.

While the plot is partially set up by coincidence (as it eventually turns out), it doesn't rely on coincidence to solve it; that's all done through protagonist effort, both of the bank clerk ward and the niece on the amateur side, and the local superintendent and the Scotland Yard detective sergeant on the professional side. The dramatic climax involves an implausibly powerful explosive, but everything else is believable and makes sense, the crime is pleasingly complex, the working out enjoyable to watch, and the comeuppance of the villains satisfactory. There's a romance thread - though not much of one - which is nothing out of the ordinary. All the characters are well drawn and distinctive. Overall, a solid mystery story, and I will be searching out more J.S. Fletcher; I read a couple of others before this one ( The Copper Box and The Middle Temple Murder ) and enjoyed them both.

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