Treefall Manor sits in Rockinghamshire and it is soon to be the venue for a wedding. Alexander Grimcombe, the patriarch of the house, is about to host the wedding of his daughter to the neighbouring Lord Freddie Taylor. When Ed Grimcombe, an old friend of Freddie, arrives, things don’t seem quite right to him. The wedding seems to have been arranged very hastily and why was he invited by Freddie’s future father-in-law, rather than Freddie himself?

Once the visitors get together, it becomes abundantly clear that there are tensions in the household, mostly directed towards Alexander himself. But when Alexander is found locked inside his study, stabbed by an antique dagger, things become far more dangerous in the household. Enter Inspector Graves…

OK, so a bit of a story here. You may recall that in a moment of self-delusional grandeur, I presented my Doc-ologue, my version of Ronald Knox’s Decalogue, basically a way of getting a good review from me – the ten things that I look for in a mystery novel. And I received an email from J S Savage basically saying that I should try his – because it ticked all the boxes.

Now I had a look on Amazon, grabbed a Kindle copy (as it was free) and then… well, I decided to put it on the back-burner. I’m always up for a challenge, but I was a bit concerned at turning the spotlight of the Doc-ologue onto a self-published book. And, as ever, when I finally got round to reading it, I proved once again that I am a complete idiot.

This is an outstanding book. There are a few authors who I feel channel the Golden Age style of mystery – Dolores Gordon-Smith and Tom Mead are the two who immediately spring to mind. Well, now I can add another name to that group.

There are echoes of certain classic stories – I was a bit worried at one point that, with the dead patriarch in the locked room, we were redoing Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, but that simply isn’t the case here. There are clues, a disparate group of suspects, a complex plot that is easy to follow – and yes, every single rule of the Doc-ologue is followed.

It’s a great read – the sleuth, Inspector Graves, has a back-story that is clear (I think) but not hammered home, his assistant DC Carver works well with him. Every member of the cast is there for a reason and the murderer is well-chosen. Oh, and I didn’t spot who the killer was (second properly clued book in a row to fool me)

Shall I include a minor issue? Well, Graves solves the locked room quickly but not explaining it to Carver (or us) as he wants his protégé to sort things out, but even that old cliché of the sleuth keeping things to themselves has a reason for it (although possibly it does mean that Graves could have worked out the murderer a bit quicker…). Oh, and it does seem a bit odd that Scotland Yard are summoned so quickly by the local constabulary that nobody has disturbed the scene of the crime. Yes, hardly a book-destroying issue, but I felt I had to find something…

Regardless, this is an exceptional debut mystery and well worth being part of any mystery reader’s collection.

So, if there are any publishers out there looking for a new classic crime author – and I do know some of you read this blog – why not give this book (and this author) a try? This series deserves every chance and every success – and not just because the author had the balls to challenge my Doc-ologue rules!

The Mystery Of Treefall Manor is out now on ebook and in paperback.