Customer Reviews

The Red House Mystery

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is probably one of the top classics of "golden age" detective fiction. Anyone who's read any mystery novels at all will be familiar with the tropes -- an English country house in the first half of the twentieth century, a locked room, a dead body, an amateur sleuth, a helpful sidekick, and all the rest.

It's a clever story, ingenious enough in its way, and an iconic example of Agatha Christie / Dorothy Sayers -type murder mysteries. If you've read more than a few of those kinds of books, you might find this one a little predictable, but it's fun despite that.

It's particularly of note, however, because Raymond Chandler wrote about it extensively in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder." After praising it as "an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks," he proceeds to take it sharply to task for its essential lack of realism. This book -- which Chandler admired to an extent -- was what he saw as the iconic example of what was wrong with the detective fiction of his day, and to which novels like "The Big Sleep" or "The Long Goodbye", with their hard-boiled, hard-hitting gumshoes and gritty realism, were a direct response.

So this book's worth reading not just because it's "an agreeable book, light, [and] amusing in the Punch style", but also because reading it will give a deepened appreciation for the later, more realistic detective fiction of writers like Hammett and Chandler.

This was the most fun I've had reading a mystery since I read the Hardy Boys as a kid. It seems you should be reading it under the covers with a flashlight. In The Red House Mystery, A.A. Milne (of Pooh fame) lets us pal around with Tony Gillingham, a jack-of-all-trades who is trying his hand a being a detective. The setting is an English country house loaded with guests, including the British major, the willful actress, and the dim-but-lovable young athlete. These are stock characters; Tony and his friend Bill even gleefully refer to each other as "Holmes" and "Watson". It's all very playful, despite the corpse. So much so that Tony and Bill are guilty about how much fun they are having.

There are tons of mentions of amateur theatricals and acting. Tony is playing at being a detective and so is the reader, which draws you into the story alongside him. In a way you are competing with Tony and Bill to solve the crime. It's a fair contest: only amateurs allowed. Milne gives you all the clues, even to the point of saying things like "This would be important later." In the reader's head a siren goes off and a sign lights up saying "CLUE". Tony and Bill bounce theories off each other and the theories change as the clues mount up. Still, Tony is always ahead of Bill (and probably the reader). He knows the real question in a mystery is not "How?" but "Why?"

The best parts are the gasps of surprise and moments of anticipation while we wait in darkness for the sounds of approaching footsteps. Milne has a great way of setting the mood, whether it's nervous tension or eager curiosity. A fun mystery is like opening up a big present: You can't wait to know what it is. Milne conveys this sense of "I need to know" in this his one-and-only mystery novel. If you're like me, you'll need to know and keep saying to yourself, "One more chapter and I'll put out the light."

This is Milne's only foray into writing an adult-level book (unfortunately), having written it for the sake of his father (a consummate lover of mysteries). A country side mansion is a common gathering point for several of the upper crust of British society. One of the guests invites a friend of his over to meet the host. As the friend arrives the host suddenly dies behind a locked door. Foul play is immediately suspected, but the police are stumped. Somewhat formulaic, this mystery had a couple of unexpected twists and turns which kept me guessing, until near the end, what had happened to the host (yes, even the manner of his death is mysterious). I was pleasantly suprised when I realized that all of the data to solve the mystery had been there all along, but I had missed it! This smacked a little of Christie and Holmes wrapped together (perhaps an unfair comparison, but I did enjoy this book). Well worth the purchase price. 156pp. I wish there had been more books like this from the author. A shame.

I had a free version of this eBook for the Kindle but it had issues with the Table of Contents (making several hundred locations a link in the TOC as far as I could tell - but making it very difficult to know where to start reading and made me concerned about potential other problems with that version) so I decided I would spring for an official Amazon Kindle Version. There were three versions available, one version coupled with a second book called The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux. This "Public Domain" version of just the Red House Mystery and a more expensive digireads version. Since I already had a copy of Mystery of the Yellow Room I went with the digireads higher priced version.

Shortly after beginning to read the digireads version of this book I notice that many places in the book where characters were speaking that there were no quotation marks. In some places this made reading the book very difficult, trying to determine who was speaking or if it was the writer describing something.

I thought perhaps A.A. Milne actually might not have employed quotation marks when he wrote this book but having read several of his other books I did not think this would be the case just because this was a Mystery book.

So I bought this cheaper "Public Domain" Kindle version since there was no sample available and ta-dah the quote marks were there.

There is no Table of Contents in that version though. But I decided I could live without the TOC but not without the quote marks so kept this version and am about 1/3 of the way through it.

The writing is typical Milne style and I am really enjoying the "locked room" mystery written early last century and need to go back to find out whodidit.

This is a world gone by but fun to read the mystery. I did figure it out quite early, though. Well written and the characters are fun. He really is a fun writer to read.

"I envy those readers who are coming to this lighthearted masterpiece for the first time," writes Douglas G. Greene in the introduction of A. A. Milne's "The Red House Mystery." Since Greene is considered the leading expert on John Dickson Carr--one of the greatest Golden Age detective novelists--I was tremendously excited by his recommendation and plunged into the book straightaway.

It took me a little under two weeks to finish. Yes, for a book that isn't even two hundred pages. The story features Antony Gillingham and Bill Beverley as a rather unlikely Holmes and Watson who set out to unravel a bizarre murder at the Red House. Although Gillingham and Beverley make an interesting pair, the way they tackle the problem is a bit too languid and leisurely for my taste (and I usually thrive on cozy mysteries), and since there is virtually no action and almost no other major characters to focus on--well, it's not exactly a page-turner. There are a few nifty plot tricks--one twist involving a door key is particularly clever--but the resolution (which falls back on that most irritating of cliches, the letter of confession) doesn't carry much in the way of suspense or surprise.

Still, it's all very witty and well-written, and the droll humor that spawned "Winnie-the-Pooh" is very much in evidence. Anglophiles will treasure it for its delineation of mid-1920s England alone. But I was expecting a masterpiece, and as a detective novel, "The Red House Mystery" is no masterpiece--but then again, Mr. Milne is no John Dickson Carr.

During a weekend party at the Red House, guests become amateur sleuths when a murder is discovered. An eccentric host holds court over his guests as secrets are revealed, estranged siblings meet for the first time,while murder and mayhem abounds.

Fun and lighthearted mystery by the author of Winnie-the-Pooh.

This book was interesting and then way too slow at times, Good twist in the story line but took too long to get there.I HAD TO MAKE MYSELF FINISH IT.

I found this to be a delightful mystery that was easy to read and well done. It had enough twists and turns to be a bit Sherlock Holmes (in fact they reference him) yet it's own style and flavor. Though obviously written some time ago, it was fun to read and I recommend it. No super big suprises, though the author did manage to keep the mystery until the very end. I invested in the characters and hope he wrote some more books with them!

Humorous, well-written, clever, and engaging. What more could you ask for? I'm very glad I came across it.