Customer Reviews

The Mystery of 31 New Inn

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

31 New Inn, a Dr. Thorndyke mystery, was a delightful old-fashioned mystery in the best sense of the phrase. The background added so much to the story, and the descriptions made one feel as if they were there. The mystery in itself was well-woven, even if the reader connected the stories before the detectives did. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and am looking forward to more Dr. Thorndyke mysteries.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RKR9Q4/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_img

I LOVE Dr. Thorndyke, no matter which narrator is telling the story. This was especially good, with red herrings cluttering up the crime until it is hard to determine even whether there WAS a crime, much less who did it and why. I did figure out what was going on, but that might be because of specialized knowledge I have: Dr. Thorndyke is a CSI before CSIs were invented, and I was a CSI before being a CSI became fashionable. So I was able to follow, and a few times (because the point-of-view character wasn't one of the usuals) to precede, Dr. Thorndyke's reasoning. You might be able to. But whether you succeed or not in solving the crime before Thorndyke does, you'll certainly enjoy this old-time detective story.

Having gathered together a list of mystery, detective, and crime writers from Agatha Christies Secret Notebooks I turned to both Munsys and Gutenberg to find any of these influences and contemporaries of Ms. Christie. My delight upon finding myself thoroughly engrossed in this novel after the terrible dullness of a previous writer was great. I found that though the story is told in such a way that I knew the reasons and the murderer very quickly that none of my enjoyment in this very readable novel was hindered.

I intend to read as many of this author's work as I can as not since Collected Works of Anna Katharine Green (25 Books) have I found such a readable writer from their shared era. This is the third book starring the very learned Dr. Thorndyke. His friend, and as of this book his junior, fulfills the role of sidekick in a typical manner. Dr. Jerris learns and shares, and even if you find it difficult (as I did) that he would not put two and two properly together, I at least found his learning certain things via his friend as instructive of good scientific reasoning as propounded by Dr. Thorndyke.

I'm writing this review on an iPod Touch which has the Kindle application. That makes it difficult to keep track of my review. But it does mean I can rate this Kindle eBook properly - the mistakes and typos were few and the formatting unobtrusive and the eBook as a whole looked decent. For free I don't expect linked TOC - though it would be nice.

On completion I can say that I highly recommend it.

I am so picky about which mystery books I like to read. I want a brilliant plot, choked full of scientific evidence, intellectually engaging (yes I want to solve the crime along with the book's detective), well developed characters that I like, and lots of adventure. Very few authors meet my criteria consistently. Agatha Christie does and so does my recent discovery, R. Austin Freeman. 31 New Inn is a fantastic good read and a great mental workout.

This is the 2nd Dr. Thorndyke story - The Red Thumb Mark is the 1st.

I enjoyed this one more. There was much less detail about detective work (which I didn't find that interesting) and more about the two apparantly unrelated cases.

If you like detective stories, give this one a try. As a free Kindle version, what do you have to lose? It's also pretty short, so don't worry about a large time commitment.

This book was at first interesting because it was written in the early 1900's and uses a highly refined writing style. The reader is always one step ahead of the detectives solving the case and while this is at first interesting it soon becomes redundant. This is the first of a series that had been reproduced in pocket book form. I don't think I'll read any more of them.

The book started out ok but then it had too much going on. Then it dragged on for too long and I almost lost interest in it. It could have been much better but alas it was free.

You'll figure out the "who done it" early on, the the how will take longer. The facts are laid out logically without any real twists. But the real fun with this book is the method and the prose. A good read.

R Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke is reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or Rex Stout's protaganist whose name I can't think of right now. Personaly, I don't enjoy this type of detective novel- very very little action, more sitting around thinking and linking impossible pieces together. The way the pretentious Dr Thorndyke links the extremely random clues and pieces together is really ridiculous. I can see how others might enjoy this, but it's just not my type of detective novel.

Basically it's a detecting doctor/lawyer, who is oddly fond of the protagonist, but he's affable, so that's not a complete rip-off from Doyle. I couldn't finish it.