1938, London, and Edward Ibbs is working on the case of the moment – the so-called “Ferris Wheel Murder”. Unfortunately, he is defending the only person who could have committed the crime.

Clara Dean was in a carriage on a Ferris Wheel with her husband, Dominic Dean, a man who seemed to be in fear of his life. When the carriage is at the top of the wheel, a shot rings out and Dominic lies dead. Yet Clara swears that she didn’t shot her husband – she looked away and then he was shot, the gun lying at his feet – and she also swears that he did not bring a gun with him into the car…

Convinced of her innocence, Ibbs find things become even more complicated when, as he visits the Pomegranate Theatre to see a magic show, another suspicious – and impossible – murder occurs. Thankfully Joseph Spector, magician-turned-sleuth is also there, but even he is struggling to find the truth of the matter – especially when a third murder, in the vein of the first, occurs inside a locked dressing room.

Well, someone likes The Judas Window, don’t they?

Hang on, I hear you cry, surely it still being September, this is supposed to be History Mystery Month, or whatever I ended up calling it. Well, if A Fatal Crossing can win an award for Best Historical, then this certainly counts as well. As I said with Death And The Conjuror, this is a spot-on recreation of the Golden Age, in particular the style of John Dickson Carr.

I mentioned the Judas Window, the tale of a man waking up inside a locked room with a dead body where they are the only person capable of committing the murder – here, Tom Mead gives us the same setting twice, but with wildly different solutions, and a third impossibility to baffle the reader. And the reader is expected to be baffled and to have to think about things, as evidenced by the Challenge To The Reader, and a solution with plenty of footnotes to the multitudes that you overlooked because they didn’t seem important. The Ferris wheel is a great locked room setting – I only know of one other use of it, the short story The Vanishing Of Vera by Edward D Hoch, but this is a very different story.

The central characters are all strong. The idea of a new character being the focus while the sleuth hovers in the background is very Golden Age, as is the romance element of the story. The sense of time and place is well done too – nothing too overt, like name-dropping the King – but you would never believe this was set at any time other than the given date. There you go, it’s an historical mystery. Well, it’s not, pastiche’s really shouldn’t count, but it’s still a great recreation of the time.

As for the locked rooms, one is beautifully simple, one is a little more complex, but the central idea is clear and the third is complicated but easy to follow. I was a tad concerned with the various maps but they aren’t really necessary most of what is happening. There’s a misdirection near the end that I thought was a little obvious – maybe it’s supposed to be – and some interesting choices made by Spector.

Oh, and another thing that I really liked. Spector doesn’t solve the mystery until quite late in the day. None of the traditional “I know what’s going on but I’m not going to tell anyone until there are some more bodies (which definitely won’t be my fault)” stuff which always bothers me, so he behaves like quite a sensible character compared to some classic sleuths.

All in all, as you may be able to tell, I loved this one. It’s such a great homage to the greats and can sit side by side with many of them.

The Murder Wheel is out from Head Of Zeus in hardback and ebook on 12^th October in the UK (it’s been out in the US for a while). Many thanks for the review copy.