Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Wealthy mine owner Charles Knox, returning to England after spending eight years in South Africa, soon falls in with his old set. After several weeks of reacquainting himself with old friends, he is invited to a house party at Sissingham Hall. The mistress of Sissinham Hall, Rosamund Strickland, once engaged to Knox, wishes to renew their acquaintance after his extended reclusion in South Africa. The house party, full of parlor games and sumptuous dinners, soon takes a nasty turn when Sir Neville Strickland, Rosamund’s wealthy, older husband, is found dead, locked in his study. Soon, everyone is under investigation, and suspicions run high among the friends. Quiet and observant houseguest Angela Marchmont has been watching everyone closely, and her unobtrusive investigation is the only thing that might save an innocent man from the gallows.

The Review

The Murder at Sissingham Hall had all the ingredients of a great Golden Age-style locked room mystery: glittering house party, suspicious guests, hidden affairs, and unrequited love; however, it could never reach such great heights. 

The chief issue with this Angela Marchmont mystery is that Clara Benson tells it from the wrong point of view, Charles Knox, whose interactions with the amateur sleuth are negligible at best. He hardly notices her and only talks to her when Angela marches into a scene and makes a vague and brilliant pronouncement before she fades into the background again. Usually, the chronicler of the mystery, if it is not from the detective’s point of view, is someone in a close relationship with the investigator, privy to the same information as the investigator, privy to their moods and quirks. While they could be more adept at working out the clues- they provide them for the reader to work out with whoever is doing the detecting.

Charles Knox is not close with Angela, so there’s not much interaction between them, and Charles isn’t filling the role of a rival blundering amateur detective. Charles is…quite frankly, an idiot. He wanders from room to room, trying to decide which of the two girls pays him any mind. He is in love with and is friendly to everyone. He’s concerned about the mystery but is unwilling to investigate anything because he trusts everything that any of the characters say until he is ultimately trapped and made the patsy to the murder.

I’m baffled by the choice to make Charles the character leading the reader through the story since it hampers the story’s structure from the outset.

The Murder at Sissingham Hall is further crippled by the author not obscuring the killer well. While the mechanics of the locked room element are meticulously laid out, it’s ruined by only one possible suspect due to where everyone is in the house. It’s so apparent that I was hoping there would be a twist or a bluff, but that’s not the case. Unfortunately, you’ll probably know the killer very early in the book.

However, the story is damn pleasant. I liked the characters and atmosphere, the denouncement of the killer, and I even wanted to see how dumb Charles Knox is and how ridiculous his antics are throughout the book. I don’t know if he’ll be back in further Angela Marchmont books, but I hope so. 

I don’t feel like I know Angela Marchmont, even though this is supposedly her story, which is frustrating. She waffles on whether she should have even begun investigating the crime and privately is ambivalent about telling the police what she knew. A reluctant amateur detective is an interesting take on the genre, but given that the reader gleans so little of her character, it’s hard to say what drives her to be the protagonist of two more books.
There’s a lot of fun window dressing with dialogue, a period house, and hapless romances, and the book is incredibly entertaining, but I don’t think it’s a good mystery. The Murder at Sissingham Hall is an uneven first foray for Angela Marchmont.