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A Locked-Room Mystery (Joseph Spector Series)
by Tom Mead
In this latest locked room mystery from the author of Cabaret Macabre, amateur sleuth Joseph Spector pits his knowledge of stage magic against the seemingly supernatural when a seance at an isolated old hospital turns deadly.
An apparent suicide in a London townhouse uncannily mirrors a similar incident from twenty-five years ago, prompting Scotland Yard's George Flint to delve deep into the past in search of the solution to a long-forgotten mystery.
Meanwhile, Joseph Spector travels with a coach party through the rainy English countryside to visit an allegedly haunted house on a lonely island called Devil's Neck. The house, first built by a notorious alchemist and occultist, was later used as a field hospital in the First World War before falling into disrepair. The visitors hold a seance to conjure the spirit of a long-dead soldier. But when a storm floods the narrow causeway connecting Devil's Neck to the mainland, they find themselves stranded in the haunted house. Before long, the guests begin to die one by one, and it seems that the only possible culprit is the phantom soldier.
Flint's and Spector's investigations are in fact closely linked, but it is only when the duo are reunited at the storm-lashed Devil's Neck that the truth is finally revealed. Tom Mead once again creates a brilliant homage to John Dickson Carr and the Golden Age of mysteries with this intricately plotted puzzle.
"A fiendishly clever tour de force... . Mead artfully dials up the suspense notch by notch, keeping readers off-balance all the way through to the masterful conclusion, which again proves that he's a fastidious student of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. This superlative series remains in top form." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mead piles on enough complications, red herrings, misdirections, impersonations, and period details ... to fill a whole shelf of Golden Age puzzlers. The most confounding, mystifying, mind-boggling 24 hours most readers will ever encounter in fiction or real life." ―Kirkus Reviews
"A brilliant homage to the locked room mysteries of the golden age, with Tom Mead bringing his own gruesome sensibility to the mix. The House at Devil's Neck is brilliantly structured, exceptionally macabre, and filled with reversals and twists. This is a wonder cabinet of a book, and Mead is a magician." ―Peter Swanson, New York Times bestselling author of A Talent for Murder
"I love this series. Tom Mead is a master of the locked room mystery and his series character, Joseph Spector, is one of the most compelling sleuths in crime fiction today. However, that said, Tom's latest Spector book The House at Devil's Neck is next level. Fast paced but also creepy and atmospheric, Devil's Neck is the work of a writer at the very top of his game." ―Barbara Nadel, CWA Dagger-winning author of the BBC's The Turkish Detective
This information about The House at Devil's Neck was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tom Mead is an author, translator, and aficionado of Golden Age crime fiction. He is the creator of the Joseph Spector locked room mystery series, which has been translated into ten languages (and counting), and is soon to be adapted for the screen. His debut novel, Death and the Conjuror, was nominated for the Capital Crime Award for Debut Novel of the Year and the Historical Writers' Association Debut Crown. It was also named one of the best mysteries of the year by The Guardian and Publishers Weekly. Its sequel, The Murder Wheel, was named one of the Best Traditional Mysteries of 2023 by Crimereads and the Daily Telegraph, as well as nominated for a Capital Crime Award and longlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award. His third novel, Cabaret Macabre was published in August 2024, along with a collection of short stories, The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments, in November 2024.
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