Alan Alexander (A. A.) Milne (1882-1956) is most prominently remembered as the author of the well-known Winnie-the-Pooh tales, written for his son, Christopher Robin. Milne was born in London and raised in his father's private school, Henley House, after which he attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge to study mathematics. By 1925 he had published 18 plays and 3 novels, including "The Red House Mystery". This was Milne's first and final venture into the detective and mystery genre, despite its immediate success and an offer of two thousand pounds for his next mystery novel.
The setting is an English country house, where Mark Ablett has been entertaining a house party consisting of a widow and her marriageable daughter, a retired major, a wilful actress, and Bill Beverley, a young man about town. Mark's long-lost brother Robert, the black sheep of the family, arrives from Australia and shortly thereafter is found dead, shot through the head. Mark Ablett has disappeared, so Tony Gillingham, a stranger who has just arrived to call on his friend Bill, decides to investigate. Gillingham plays Sherlock Holmes to his younger counterpart's Doctor Watson; they progress almost playfully through the novel while the clues mount up and the theories abound.
Milne lets his readers inside the head of his amateur detective, disregarding the clichéd romance or violence of other detective novels, as the mystery becomes a puzzling sort of parlour game for the novel's characters and readers alike.
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitze
As a professional pasticheur, Anthony Horowitz has already copied (and pasted) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming. Here he turns his attention to Agatha Christie. The first 200 or so pages are a perfect parody of a typical Christie mystery by one Alan Conway featuring his regular detective, a German refugee called Atticus Pünd. It is the Fifties and, in an idyllic country village, a nasty housekeeper and then her employer, the ghastly Sir Magnus Pye, are found dead. There are lots of suspects and lots of secrets. So far so good.
However, Horowitz, much to his credit, wants to have his fake and beat it. The last chapter of the Magpie Murders typescript is missing so Conway’s editor goes in search of it — and, when the obnoxious writer is found dead at the foot of a tower, his killer.
It’s almost half a century since Roland Barthes published The Death of the Author — and Gilbert Adair borrowed the title for his 1993 novel — but Horowitz has great fun showing how art imitates life and vice versa. The narrative is full of in-jokes, allusions and anagrams (and unmentioned typos). Somehow he manages to make all the inconsistencies and interconnections hang together while providing a cynical yet accurate portrait of modern publishing.
The plot runs as follows: when editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway...
But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.
As a professional pasticheur, Anthony Horowitz has already copied (and pasted) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming. Here he turns his attention to Agatha Christie. The first 200 or so pages are a perfect parody of a typical Christie mystery by one Alan Conway featuring his regular detective, a German refugee called Atticus Pünd. It is the Fifties and, in an idyllic country village, a nasty housekeeper and then her employer, the ghastly Sir Magnus Pye, are found dead. There are lots of suspects and lots of secrets. So far so good.
However, Horowitz, much to his credit, wants to have his fake and beat it. The last chapter of the Magpie Murders typescript is missing so Conway’s editor goes in search of it — and, when the obnoxious writer is found dead at the foot of a tower, his killer.
It’s almost half a century since Roland Barthes published The Death of the Author — and Gilbert Adair borrowed the title for his 1993 novel — but Horowitz has great fun showing how art imitates life and vice versa. The narrative is full of in-jokes, allusions and anagrams (and unmentioned typos). Somehow he manages to make all the inconsistencies and interconnections hang together while providing a cynical yet accurate portrait of modern publishing.
The plot runs as follows: when editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway...
But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.
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