Description: In this locked room mystery from the author of Cabaret Macabre, amateur sleuth Joseph Spector pits his knowledge of stage magic against the seemingly supernatural when a seance at an isolated old hospital turns deadly.
An apparent suicide in a London townhouse uncannily mirrors a similar incident from twenty-five years ago, prompting Scotland Yard's George Flint to delve deep into the past in search of the solution to a long-forgotten mystery. Meanwhile, Joseph Spector travels with a coach party through the rainy English countryside to visit an allegedly haunted house on a lonely island called Devil's Neck. The house, first built by a notorious alchemist and occultist, was later used as a field hospital in the First World War before falling into disrepair. The visitors hold a seance to conjure the spirit of a long-dead soldier. But when a storm floods the narrow causeway connecting Devil's Neck to the mainland, they find themselves stranded in the haunted house. Before long, the guests begin to die one by one, and it seems that the only possible culprit is the phantom soldier. Flint's and Spector's investigations are in fact closely linked, but it is only when the duo are reunited at the storm-lashed Devil's Neck that the truth is finally revealed. Tom Mead once again creates a brilliant homage to John Dickson Carr and the Golden Age of mysteries with this intricately plotted puzzle.Brief description: Tom Mead is a UK mystery writer and aficionado of Golden Age crime fiction. His novels in the award-winning Joseph Spector Locked-Room Mystery series include Death and the Conjuror, The Murder Wheel, Cabaret Macabre, The House at Devil's Neck, and So Speak the Dead. He has also published a collection of impossible crime short stories, The Indian Rope Trick (and Other Violent Entertainments), and co-edited (with Gigi Pandian) an anthology, All the Crime in the World: Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Puzzles from Across the Globe. His works have been translated into fifteen languages (and counting) and named books of the year by The Guardian, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, CrimeFictionLover, and CrimeReads. Death and the Conjuror is currently in development for screen adaptation.
Review Quotes: "Mead piles on enough complications, red herrings, misdirections, impersonations, and period details . . . to fill a whole shelf of Golden Age puzzlers. The most confounding, mystifying, mind-boggling 24 hours most readers will ever encounter in fiction or real life."-- "Kirkus"