The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne

This week, it's a review of a story from the Golden Age - The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. A murder, a locked room and an English country house.

10 years ago, at about 7.45am I was standing on a Circle Line tube heading to Paddington station.

Back then I often read on my daily commute, but sometimes I was just too tired. 

This was one of those tired days.

To pass the time, I tried to see what other people were reading, apart from Metro or something on their phones. That's when I spotted a man opposite me reading a novel. The only part of the cover I could see was the author's name.

A. A. Milne.

Why is he reading Winnie the Pooh? I was intrigued.

As he turned the pages, I tried to get a better view of the cover to see which Winnie-the-Pooh story this was. Eventually, he lifted the paperback and I saw the title, The Red House Mystery.

Now it was my turn to bury myself in my phone, to find out what the book was about. After visiting Wikipedia, I discovered A. A. Milne's detective story.

However, it's taken me 10 years to read it. Thanks to Mrs MM for finding a copy in Waterstones.

Originally published in 1922, the story is set at the eponymous country house. A man is murdered and an amateur detective attempts to solve the case.

A.A. Milne loved reading detective stories, although he only wrote this one. The introduction to the book, from Milne himself, gives a humorous account of his interest in detective fiction.

Antony Gillingham is the amateur detective who arrives at the house just after the murder. He chooses his friend Bill Beverley to be his Watson.

While the story clearly draws a lot from Sherlock Holmes, the constant references to Bill being Antony's 'Watson' become quite annoying and add little.

The dialogue and narrative are also very much of the time. It's been a while since I've seen "Hallo" in a book. And you have to get used to the extra spaces around punctuation marks.

With one of the endorsements from P. G. Wodehouse, it's unsurprising that it has a Jeeves and Wooster feel about it. There's a gentle humour that runs through it, but it's not something that worked for me.

There's a wide cast of characters staying in the house at the time of the murder, but most of them oddly disappear for the rest of the story. That does make the story seem smaller and slower-paced, with Antony and Bill taking up the lion's share of the story.

When I first saw that the story was a locked room mystery, I had high hopes for the plot. Unfortunately, these weren't met.

There was little to hold my attention and I found it a slog to get through. The ending wasn't unexpected, although the way it was handled by Gillingham seemed quite bizarre.

I'm glad I've ticked The Red House Mystery off my TBR list, but I can't say that I enjoyed it.