Jack Haldean, successful crime author, is staying with some relatives and attends a fete. Someone who was in the RFC during the war approaches him and he is reminded of how much he disliked the man. When Boscombe, the man concerned is found dead in the fortune teller’s tent it soon becomes clear that there is more to the case than meets the eye and the ramifications may involve his own family and put Jack in danger.The plot involves betrayal during World War I and some very dodgy going on in nineteen twenty one too. The plot is complex and while I had worked out who the murderer was quite early on I still found the untangling the plot of interest to me and there were a couple of twists which I definitely didn’t see coming. I thought the characters were well drawn and believable and I liked the nineteen twenties background.The tension gradually built up to the ending which had me reading faster and faster to find out what happened. This is a well written crime story and I recommend it to anyone who likes Golden Age detective fiction and its modern imitations. It is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Jack Haldean.
I think this book deserves better than the 2 stars I originally gave it. It did have a pretty good plot and there was a more than decent solution to the murder...it definitely fooled me for an embarrassingly long time. BUT, my problem was with the characters. They seemed to me to be so urbane and languid, and so darned shallow. Even the "hero." Ya, he has a talent for detecting, but he had little empathy or personality. And if he'd called another character "old thing" one more time I'd have thrown the book in a snowbank. There, I feel less guilty about trashing it before, but I still won't be reading the 2nd one any time soon.
