The Viaduct Murder

Rating:
Summary: British mystery at its most classic, most entertaining best
Review: The Merion Press specializes in bringing out-of-print masterpieces to a public hungry for old mysteries. Being its second publication, The Viaduct Murder, by Ronald A. Knox, was originally published in 1925. It was included in the ultimate mystery list, selected by Howard Haycraft for The Haycraft-Queen Definitive Library of Detective-Crime-Mystery Fiction, Two Centuries of Cornerstones 1748-1948. Ronald Knox himself was a native of Leicestershire, England; born in 1888. He was educated at Eton and Oxford; held a position as chaplain of Trinity College; converted to Catholicism; and served at Oxford University from 1926-1939, during which time he became domestic prelate to the Pope in 1936.

The Viaduct Murder finds a clergyman (Marryatt); a retired don (Carmichael); a former military intelligence man (Reeves) and a vacationing golfer (Gordon) playing on the links in Paston Oatvile, where the come upon the dead body of Mr. Brotherhood. They set out to solve his murder and take the reader on a merry chase of misplaced logic, secret passageways, mysterious beautiful women, and walls that have ears:

"'We could have tried. But tell me: how much of our conversation does this gentleman overhear? And whereabouts in your room could you have hidden with any safety? Honestly, I don't believe he would have come out except while he knew that you are Gordon were busy watching the wrong side of the door.' 'You're assuming, of course, that he can't have got in at the door by a duplicate key after Reeves and I went to bed?' 'I am not assuming that, I know it. I took the liberty of putting a bit of that useful chewing gum across the lock of the door, and it was still undisturbed in the morning.'"

Ronald A. Knox provides us with the classic whodunit in a light vein. While our amateur sleuths are stumbling around for the answer, it is in plain sight. Their antics, without disturbing their golf game, of course, send the reader into circles of delightful missteps, until the answer is finally provided to the hapless reader by Mr. Knox. The Viaduct Murder is British mystery at its most classic, most entertaining best. Knox knows how to weave a good yarn.

Shelley Glodowski
Reviewer