The Robthorne Mystery
 First Edition (UK) | |
| Author | John Rhode |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Lancelot Priestley |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club (UK) Dodd Mead (US) |
Publication date | 1934 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | The Venner Crime |
| Followed by | Poison for One |
The Robthorne Mystery is a 1934 detective novel by John Rhode, the pen name of the British writer Cecil Street.[1] It is the seventeenth in his long-running series of novels featuring Lancelot Priestley, a Golden Age armchair detective. It was published in the United States the same year by Dodd Mead.[2]
Synopsis
[edit]Warwick Robthorne is found dead on Guy Fawkes Night in the greenhouse of his twin brother's country home, apparently having committed suicide. This coincides with a police operation in London led by Inspector Hanslet against a gang of drug smugglers. It falls to the gifted criminologist Dr. Priestley to tie the evidence between the two cases together.
Literary Significance
[edit]Reviewing the book for The Sunday Times, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, "One always embarks on a John Rhode book with a great feeling of security. One knows that there will be a sound plot, a well-knit process of reasoning, and a solidly satisfying solution with no loose ends or careless errors of fact."[3]
Isaac Anderson in The New York Times remarked that "no one who has ever read a Dr. Priestley story will be surprised to learn that this is a genuinely baffling crime puzzle of the first quality".[4]
References
[edit]- ^ Evans p.247
- ^ Reilly p.1257
- ^ Sayers, Dorothy (2017). Edwards, Martin (ed.). Taking Detective Stories Seriously: The Collected Crime Reviews of Dorothy L. Sayers. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-9563374-9-8.
- ^ "THE ROBTHORNE MYSTERY. By John Rhode. 287 pp. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $2". The New York Times. 5 August 1934. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
Bibliography
[edit]- Evans, Curtis. Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961. McFarland, 2014.
- Herbert, Rosemary. Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.
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