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This Delicate Murder: A Golden Age Mystery
“A lot of quiet people are sitting about talking, and one of them suddenly feels there will be murder done. And it was!”
The narrator of This Delicate Murder is Penny Mercer, murder-mystery author. She and novelist-husband Vincent are invited by Lionel Fonders to a shooting-party at Chustable Manor, where the other guests are mostly fellow-writers of various types. But Penny and Vincent become embroiled in a vexing murder case when their host is fatally shot in the field. Fonders was not generally beloved, but it is Vincent himself who becomes the chief suspect in his host’s unnatural death.
In his attempt to clear himself, he enlist the help of clever attorney and amateur sleuth William Power to find the fiend who put paid to Fonders. With so many jealous authors at hand, the field of suspicion is wide. Can you keep pace with Power?
“Nearly watertight impeccability” Observer
“Henrietta Clandon’s novels are always welcome. She has developed a style of her own in crime fiction.” Anthony Berkeley
The narrator of This Delicate Murder is Penny Mercer, murder-mystery author. She and novelist-husband Vincent are invited by Lionel Fonders to a shooting-party at Chustable Manor, where the other guests are mostly fellow-writers of various types. But Penny and Vincent become embroiled in a vexing murder case when their host is fatally shot in the field. Fonders was not generally beloved, but it is Vincent himself who becomes the chief suspect in his host’s unnatural death.
In his attempt to clear himself, he enlist the help of clever attorney and amateur sleuth William Power to find the fiend who put paid to Fonders. With so many jealous authors at hand, the field of suspicion is wide. Can you keep pace with Power?
“Nearly watertight impeccability” Observer
“Henrietta Clandon’s novels are always welcome. She has developed a style of her own in crime fiction.” Anthony Berkeley
290 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 2, 2020
7 people are currently reading
16 people want to read
About the author
Henrietta Clandon
6 books2 followers"Vernon Loder was a pseudonym for John George Hazlette Vahey (1881-1938), an Anglo-Irish writer who also wrote as Henrietta Clandon, John Haslette, Anthony Lang, John Mowbray, Walter Proudfoot and George Varney. He was born in Belfast and educated at Ulster, Foyle College, and Hanover. Four years after he graduated college he was apprenticed to an architect and later tried his hand at accounting before turning to fiction writing full time." - DSP
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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July 8, 2020Intermittently entertaining Golden Age murder. The murder plot is thin and fairly dull, all hanging on persnickety details of ballistics endlessly rehearsed, but the setting (a group of ill assorted authors) and characters and satire of writey types are hugely entertaining and laugh-out-loud at times.
March 10, 2025
I really enjoyed the first Henrietta Clandon book I read, so I settled into this one prepared to enjoy...but after the first chapter it just felt like being trapped at a social engagement where you don't really know anyone and the snacks are subpar (and there aren't enough of them).
Interminable wrangling over cartridges is part of the problem. Not being familiar with guns, there was a lot of discussion that just wasn't worth googling to understand. The larger problem was that it felt very inconsequential. Yes, I know, it's detective fiction and not capital-L-Literature, but you still expect someone in the book to have actual feelings. No one here does. No one liked the guy who was dead, characters say they are concerned that they will be blamed for the death but don't act particularly bothered by it, and it wraps up with essentially a shrug of the shoulders, as though you had persevered through a very short story told in excruciating detail and are tossing off the rest of your martini so you can escape by claiming to need another drink. Skip this one.
Interminable wrangling over cartridges is part of the problem. Not being familiar with guns, there was a lot of discussion that just wasn't worth googling to understand. The larger problem was that it felt very inconsequential. Yes, I know, it's detective fiction and not capital-L-Literature, but you still expect someone in the book to have actual feelings. No one here does. No one liked the guy who was dead, characters say they are concerned that they will be blamed for the death but don't act particularly bothered by it, and it wraps up with essentially a shrug of the shoulders, as though you had persevered through a very short story told in excruciating detail and are tossing off the rest of your martini so you can escape by claiming to need another drink. Skip this one.
May 31, 2024
Pretty disappointing. The voice is good and seemed initially promising, but nope. Endless talk of guns and shooting and various calibers, a murder that seems almost incidental, and a motive that didn't particularly make sense made it a giant nope for me.
September 25, 2025
An interesting period tale
With a slow build on the motive and means elements of what appears at first to be an accidental death, but a satisfactory conclusion that makes it more a procedural case than a deep mystery of cozy.
With a slow build on the motive and means elements of what appears at first to be an accidental death, but a satisfactory conclusion that makes it more a procedural case than a deep mystery of cozy.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews