MURDER IN HAXFORD

Two more mysteries for Chief Inspector Pignon Scorbion and his supportive sidekicks in a 1910 English village.

The first and more arresting of the cases involves a murder than may not have even taken place in Haxford. When a hot air balloon crashes in the village fairground, Scorbion discovers Charlie Thornton, its only passenger, shot to death with an arrow. Not long before, Thornton and his friend Ronald Parker, convinced that Brookdale blacksmith Oscar Sneed had fleeced them in a poker game, shot him with a crossbow, left his body in a ditch, and obligingly provided each other with alibis that prevented Chief Inspector Jayson from arresting them. Now who could have discharged an arrow into Thornton and then escaped without a trace? The answer, sad to say, is a good deal less interesting than the question. In the briefer and less elaborate second case, loan shark and painter Archie Williams’ tonsorial session with barbershop owner Calvin Brown’s employee Yves ends abruptly when he’s found dead in the chair, the victim of massive doses of poison presumably administered in the paints he used to produce his works. Since laborer Owen Johnson, gambling plumber Bertram Tilson, and jeweler Gerald Evans all owed him hefty sums, there are suspects aplenty, and the one Scorbion fastens on isn’t especially surprising. The path to the solution is strewn with conversational gems like Scorbion’s admonition to hostile newspaper publisher Faustin Hardcastle: “Throw your darts as well as you can at the bullseye that you perceive to be me, but be assured that I will never be intimidated by you.”

Soothing retro puzzles for fans who long for the return of Hercule Poirot.