Where I really lost interest, though, is on page 110, when Sherman gets down to the business of checking out the alibis of the people at the party where and when the manuscript first disappeared, only a few decades late. Someone should read John Dickson Carr again. And to tell you the truth, I still don’t understand the paragraph on page 100 in which the mechanism that opened the lectern’s hidey-hole is discovered, losing the entire impact of interesting item #3 in the rigamarole. This is all that really happens in the first 100 pages. (3) The manuscript is found, hidden all these years in a secret hiding spot under the lid of an ornate lectern. (2) Thirty or so years later, some of the other items in the same collection are donated to Sherman’s school, but when they arrive, they’re discovered to have been severely vandalized.
A servant of the man who bought it is murdered at the same time, but I tell you this only in passing as dar more attention is paid to the missing play Let’s enumerate: (1) Back in 1953, a rare manuscript of a 17th century play turns up, the suddenly disappears. II mentioned three things that happened that I found interesting. Getting down to details, however, should you be interested.
That’s 30 years worth of book time, and it’s far too slow. The first 100 pages or so are readable, mostly because of the characters, but only three really interesting things happen in all that time. Unfortunately, that’s all he has going for him. Winchester Hyde mystery novels, and in his own right, the most overtly eccentric character in detective fiction since Gideon Fell. Bantam, paperback original 1st printing, April 1990.Ī mystery introducing Winston Marlowe Sherman, semi-retired professor of English, pseudonymous author (as Henrietta Slocum) of the G.
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