Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Sir Christopher Clarke is shot dead in his billiard room, and at the other end of his London townhome, his private safe has been burgled with securities and diamonds stolen. Earlier in the day, Clarke had visited his solicitors, Marsden, Marsden, and Carsley, to change his will, bestowing 40,000 pounds on his stepdaughter, Brenda Liang, and leaving the rest of his fortune to his daughter, Jennie. However, the new will is not signed, and Brenda is penniless. There have also been some irregularities at the soliciting firm, with Sir Christopher Clarke at the center. To make matters worse, the young partner in the firm, Peter Carsley, secretly married Jennie two weeks before the murderand now benefits greatly from the death of Sir Christopher Clarke would disapprove of the match and, through his wife, Jennie’s ample inheritance.

Patrolling the street, just outside the house where the murder took place, is young police constable Bobby Owen, who has spent the last three years and two months of his police service helping old ladies cross the road and chasing cats out of trees. His luck changes when he notices a burglar outside the Clarke residence. He begins piercing together the clues in this swirling mass of motives and eerily connected crimes with the keen, clever, and watchful Inspector Mitchell.

The Review

Information Received is a twisted story about a murder that everyone in the household is inclined to believe isn’t a murder, a burglary, or possible financial embezzlement, and the singular mysterious clue is that Sir Christopher Clarke was repeatedly gifted tickets to Hamlet before his demise.

The book’s first half is a little plodding and slow due to the sheer volume of possible crimes surrounding the death of Sir Christopher Clarke, which I found interesting, but I wanted some of the elements to either be discarded or for the plots to move forward.

The affable and astute Bobby Owen held the story when it seemed like the center would not fit under the weight of the various plot lines. He’s a likable, if a little green, constable who works hard, works through clues with remarkable vigor, and is deeply passionate about solving these problematic crimes. Owen is paired with a cheeky, dedicated superior officer who enjoys mentoring young Owen through his first big case. Plenty of pithy one-liners and sound wisdom passed between the two leads as they forged a bond, which is heartwarming to read.

Information Received relies on this budding relationship a little too heavily until Peter Carsley is found in an abandoned house digging what appears to be a grave and is thought to have killed his wife. Somewhere in the home is her body, except locked in a bare bedroom, is Brenda Liang, and no one knows how she got there. Then, the book is off to the races, and the pieces begin falling into place.

Most Golden Age mysteries gather all the suspects together until the murderer is unmasked. Still, Information Received ends with a letter explaining the death of Sir Christopher Clarke, which lasts several chapters. While this is a novel way of ending the book, a three-chapter letter is….a bit excessive.

While I think the reader will be able to guess the killer, the motive will not be apparent unless you are very familiar with Hamlet, which, to be fair, was regularly mentioned and discussed at length. However, I never realized how Hamlet came into it until it was explicitly explained.

If you like golden age fiction, you will enjoy this debut mystery by E.R. Punshon, and I can’t wait to read more of Bobby Owen mysteries.