The Mystery at Stowe by Vernon Loder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I came across the prolific Belfast-born John Haslette Vahey advertised on the dust jacket of an old copy of Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train. As a Golden Age contemporary of Christie, he published 22 crime novels between 1928-1938 under the penname ‘Vernon Loder’. Plenty to get one’s teeth into!

The Mystery at Stowe is the first of these, although as far as I could glean, there is no ‘hero’ detective, and if anything I found it difficult to identify a clear protagonist in this work.

For the most part it is a tidily written, tightly constructed traditional mystery, the archetypal country house murder. A well-intentioned benefactor gathers together an upper-middle-class crowd, and a poison dart from a wall-mounted trophy blowpipe does the ill deed.

The victim is the wife in a rumoured love triangle, and her female explorer rival becomes the chief suspect. Out of the blue from Africa, enter a long-estranged suitor (not universally welcomed), bent on proving the police wrong.

So far, so good. The narrative keeps the locus tight, and the police make steady progress. But … I had forgotten one thing … the ‘rules’ of the Detection Club: anything goes!

Authors were invited to ‘cheat’ by concocting a practically implausible but theoretically possible modus operandi – indeed, it seemed the more contrived the better. In achieving the unfathomable whodunit, no amount of jiggery-pokery was off limits!

All well and good, but a rather unsatisfying climax for the reader who seeks a credible scenario.




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