Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our October/November 24 buddy read of Everybody Always Tells Book 27 in the Bobby Owen series this was first published in 1950.

Bobby Owen of Scotland Yard and his wife Olive are busy bargain-hunting in a famous London department store. But a shopping expedition nearly turns into a crime scene when Olive discovers a necklace stuffed in her handbag. The plot thickens when it transpires it was placed there by one Lord Newdagonby - whose stout denial of the act is swiftly followed by a fatal knife blow to a prominent scientist. The meaning of this locked-room murder, and its connection to a dilettante inventor, a disrespectful daughter, and the pearls in Olive's bag, form one of Bobby's most puzzling investigations.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

Another entertaining outing with Bobby Owen though Punshon certainly had a strange view of women. Interesting start. The science of the explanation is definitely suspect, though may reflect a fear of the time. This may be first time a murderer escapes Bobby.

This begins with Olive and Bobby in a department store where it is pointed out to Bobby that a man had slipped a necklace into Olive's bag. It turns out the man is a Peer of the Realm, and has done this to get Bobby's attention. Bobby calls on the Peer the next day to find that the man's daughter has been threatened over the telephone and it needs investigation. Whilst Bobby is there a murder is committed, not the daughter, but the daughter's husband. Bobby is now investigating, and like most fictional families, this one is pretty dysfunctional. The situation soon becomes quite complicated with a scientist, different men and women friends of the occupants, and a huge showdown.
I enjoyed the story even though I was not keen on any of the characters

This one was a little bit of a let-down. None of the characters could match the drama of the last book, but I do appreciate that they tried, but I mostly thought that Mrs. Findlay was annoying. I guessed the ending pretty early on, but having someone stuck in a well and a good chunk of the cast running around in the dark kept things interesting.