Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Arbie Swift, a seasoned ghost hunter, has finally returned to his central home in the Cotswolds after an extensive tour around Britain to write his latest book, ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting.’ The book’s unexpected success has catapulted Arbie into local celebrity status, a role he’s not entirely comfortable with. Despite the allure of fame, Arbie longs to leave the world of ghost hunting behind and embrace a life of leisure and tranquility.

However, Amy Phelps, one of the wealthiest families in the district whose fortunes were made through the lowly profession of blacksmithing, requests Arbie to come to her mansion, a place shrouded in mystery and whispers of the supernatural, and perform a ghost hunt. After some prodding, Arbie and his unwanted assistant, Val, the vicar’s daughter, get Amy to admit someone has been prowling the house pretending to be her long-dead ancestor.

The ghost hunting is uneventful, but the urgency of the situation becomes palpable when Amy Phelps is pushed down the stairs a few days after the hunt. She survives but asks Arbie and Val to do another ghost hunt to ensure whoever is haunting the house is alive.

The following day, Amy Phelps is found dead in her bed, her face in a horrible grimace. With all the doors locked from the inside, Arbie and Val must discover whether a ghost or flesh and bone person killed Amy Phelps and how.

The Review

Murder by Candlelight starts with a strong premise of ghost hunting and an unwilling hero who is too polite to say no when propositioned to hold a ghost hunt for the oppressive and wealthy Amy Phelps. However, the premise is quickly undermined by Faith Martin’s inexplicable decision to make sure that everyone knows there will be no supernatural elements in this book and that Arbie thinks that ghost hunting is always a hoax.

With the tension of a possible supernatural phenomenon dashed, we are left with the rather mundane and eminently boring humans who might have wanted to kill Amy Phelps: her oily nephew, her meek niece, an old school friend, her brother’s lover, and possibly even her cook-housekeeper. All are waiting for the old girl to pop off so they can have a piece of the Phelps fortune. Unfortunately, she’s fit as a fiddle.

Martin then writes some flimsy characterization and an unpleasant love story in which Val is so besotted with Arbie that it’s a wonder she can see straight. There’s lots of will-she-realize-her-feelings-for-him nonsense, and we hang out here until the book is 60% over. Then Amy Phelps is finally murdered, and the locked-room mystery portion finally begins.

The locked room portion is quite good, but the clues are doled out with practically a neon sign that it’s child’s play to figure out how it was done. If you study the book cover, you’ll figure it out quickly. The whodunit portion of the book is slightly better laid out, but the red herrings are so tepidly laid out that once the reader has the killer’s scent, these half-hearted attempts to obscure who the killer is don’t have any counterweight.

Despite its promising ghost-hunting premise, Murder by Candlelight disappoints with its slow pace and delayed introduction of the titular locked room element. The execution, while competent, lacks the originality and thrill that readers might expect from a mystery novel, leading to a sense of vast disappointment.