Milne, best known for his children's stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood, was a self-proclaimed devotee of the detective novel. He particularly admired the stories that featured an amateur detective up against the amateur villain. No master criminals or investigative experts for him. So, when he decided to try his hand at crime fiction, it was perfectly natural that his mystery would be solved by someone with no detecting background.The Red House Mystery is, naturally, a country house mystery--with the added bonus of being a locked room mystery as well. Mark Ablett, owner of the country house in question, is hosting a variety of guests: a widow and her marriageable daughter, a retired major, a willful actress, and Bill Beverley, young man about town. At this time, Mark receives a message that is his long-lost brother (and black sheep of the family) Robert will be arriving soon. Robert shows up and is taken to the library to wait for his brother. Not long afterward, voices raised in argument are heard as well as a shot. The door to library is locked from within and no one answers when the house party members try to enter.In the meantime, Tony Gillingham, friend to Bill Beverley, arrives at the house. He is on hand to help break in the door and takes on the investigation from the beginning. Entry to the library reveals Robert dead, shot through the head...and Mark is nowhere to be found. It is suggested that in the heat of the argument Mark accidentally shot his brother and then ran away in a panic. Several circumstances do not match this solution, most of all how did Mark get out of the locked room?Milne does his best to stick to the Golden Age rule of presenting his readers with all the clues necessary to solve the mystery. And he does well with that--the reader can certainly look back and agree that everything was there if it had just been considered correctly. Sticklers for vintage mystery "rules" may quibble with the use of long-lost relatives and secret passages--which were frowned upon by Golden Age novelists. But the air of the mystery is that of light-hearted fun and not take-me-seriously crime fiction. In fact Tony and Bill are having such a grand time playing at Holmes and Watson, that they even feel a bit guilty.I remember being pleasantly surprised and delighted at this mystery from one of my favorite childhood authors. And being disappointed that, like Tigger, this is the only one. It's a shame that we didn't get to see Milne's skill as a detective novelist develop. All in all, this was a fun romp on the lighter side of vintage fiction that I remember quite fondly.
Milne's introduction is worth quoting at length, because it's such a hilarious encapsulation of the way publishers think (both in the 20s and now):"When I told my agent a few years ago that I was going to write a detective story, he recovered as quickly as could be expected, but made it clear to me (as a succession of editors and publishers made it clear, later, to him) that what the country wanted form 'a well-known Punch humorist' was a 'humorous story.' However, I was resolved upon a life of crime; and the result was such that when, two years afterwards, I announced I was writing a book of nursery rhymes, my agent and publisher were equally convinced that what the English-speaking nations most desired was a new detective story. Another two years have gone by; the public appetite has changed once morel and it is obvious now that a new detective story, written in the face of this steady terrestrial demand for children's books, would be in the worst of taste."Aside from this hilarious introduction, the book itself is quite amazing. For having been written so early in the history of classic detective novels (Christie had only published 2) it shows an amazing awareness of the genre and its cliches. And the mystery is fascinating. *spoilers* There are only two people ever considered as murderer, and one of them disappears after the first 20 pages or so. The real mystery has more to do with *how* the murder was accomplished, and it is all done very well. I admit that I was not (until recently) aware that Milne had written so much other than Pooh, but I am quickly becoming a fan.
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I thoroughly enjoyed this one & only mystery written by A.A. Milne who is more widely known for the Winnie the Pooh books.Imagine an English country house in the 1920's, guests who spend their days enjoying a spot of tennis or golf or croquet, who dress for dinner & cocktails, and a country gentleman host with his cousin to serve as his secretary & general factotum. Introduce a wastrel brother determined to cause trouble. Add a shot heard in the house, a locked room with a dead body and a friend of one of the guests who arrives minutes after the shot who assists with breaking into the locked room.The recent arrival, Antony Gillingham, along with his friend, houseguest Bill Beverly, undertake their own hush-hush investigation of the crime while staying at The Red House awaiting the official inquest and, of course, manage to solve the case.
—Judy Goodnight
To be honest I picked this up on a clearance shelf just because it was A.A.Milne. It's NOT Winnie the Pooh! But it is a very fun read. The dialogue is quick and witty and required some getting used to just because it is a bit older in it's style (written 1922). But once I found the rhythm I couldn't put it down. It's the basic plot line of murder in a closed room with a limited option of suspects but, the entire mystery is worked out by a constant stream of conversation going through possible scenarios with pros and cons. I found myself wanting to argue and agree with the characters at the same time until I was ultimately surprised by the final solution. Definitely worth a read.
—Carlyn
My partner bought me this: she saw a 1950 paperback edition in a second hand bookshop in Beverley. (Which happens to be the name of one of the characters in the book, but we didn’t know that at the time.) She hadn’t heard of it and nor had I. She didn’t buy it because I am a fan of English country house murder stories, but because I was brought up on Winnie-the-Pooh. And I don’t like English country house murder stories: a member of the English upper classes is murdered, another member of the establishment did it and an amateur (upper class) sleuth has to sort it all out because the police are bit useless (well, they do tend to be from the lower orders). And this book doesn’t start well with the servants having long conversations filling us in about events and the details of the Master’s household: this is a mixture of cumbersome storytelling and snobby attitudes. But it does get better. What infuriates me about whodunits is that they are little more than narrative exercises, the equivalent of crossword puzzles: we follow the clues and find the solution, but then put it aside and forget about it. It is pointlessly trivial. But the Red House Mystery revels in its triviality, being an unapologetic and totally self-conscious distillation of the form. There is the country house (the Red House), the murder, the amateur detective and his Dr Watson, his companion who he can explain his ideas to...and therefore explain them to us. The servants are pushed to the background and so are the police. But it isn’t really a whodunit: there is only one suspect, so it is a sort of how-was-it-dunit. The 1920s slang is fun and occasionally the Dr Watson character sounds a little like Winnie-the-Pooh: it’s all light and breezy and totally pointless. But it is probably quite proud to be pointless.
—Nick Jones
