The Middle of Things

The setup is delicious: Richard Viner reads sensational crime fiction to his aunt every evening, a woman whose appetite for mystery borders on addiction. She wants stories that begin with crime and end with detection, stories that keep her guessing until the final pages. Then Viner steps outside for his nightly stroll and discovers a body in the darkness. Now the fiction becomes all too real. The victim is Mr. Ashton, a wealthy man who has just returned to England from Australia under mysterious circumstances, and as Viner becomes the police's key witness, he finds himself entangled in a web of secrets that could destroy powerful families. The novel works beautifully as a playful inversion, here is a man who has spent his evenings consumed in imaginary crimes, only to stumble into one that threatens to unravel the very social order he inhabits. This is Golden Age detection at its most satisfying, an amateur pulled into mystery, a cast of suspects with hidden motives, and a puzzle that unfolds with expert precision. For readers who love the classic whodunit, the pleasure of watching truth emerge from falsehood, and a cozy English setting where nothing is quite what it seems.