Another country house, another weekend party. This time, the host is Dr Thurston, a happily (?) married man who has invited a number of his friends to stay with him. The first night, however, three screams are heard from upstairs. After the bolted door (from the inside, obviously) is broken down, Thurston’s wife is found dead, her throat cut. The only exit is through the window, but there’s no evidence of escape that way… It seems to be an impossible crime…

Luckily, the upper-class crime solver Lord Simon Plimsoll is soon on the scene. As is the eccentric foreign detective Amer Picon, he of the egg-shaped head. As is the clerical sleuth Monsignor Smith. With the combined brain power of all three sleuths, how can the killer possibly escape justice? Well, probably quite easily – it’s a good thing that Sergeant Beef is grumpily skulking in the background…

It’s Book Club time, hence the re-read of this book, the first thing to say…

OK, everyone who’s read this know that it is the first Sergeant Beef mystery, but I wonder, was there a possibility that the fact that Beef was the sleuth here could have been supposed to be a surprise? Clearly not how it’s written, with Beef intoning early on that he knows who the murderer is but has been told to let the three amateurs sort it out themselves. This idea might have worked really well if there had been a single sleuth – who knows, maybe there’s a book in that idea.

On to what is here… and on a re-read, if you know what’s coming, it’s actually a bit of a drag in the middle section. The primary point of this section is the pastiche of Wimsey (or, just possibly, Campion), Poirot and Father Brown. I can’t judge the Wimsey one, but from this, my impression is that Bruce was a fan of Christie but not of Chesterton, as the Poirot spoof is basically just Poirot, whereas the Father Brown one is just a bit… mean, sitting around spotting parables and metaphors rather than actually doing any sleuthing. It also cuts down the page time for Sergeant Beef, but as he knows what’s going on from minute one, that’s probably a good thing.

The best pastiches of the genre still maintain the structure of the actual mystery and here, the cluing that reveals the truth is non-existent. Allied with a character who really has no reason to keep a very important fact a secret, it does make the actual solution, which is a pretty good one, one that the reader cannot legitimately solve.

When I first read this one, I really enjoyed it, but the entertainment value of the pastiches dimmed on the second reading, making me look a bit harder at the plot mechanics. It’s still a good book, and everyone should read it, but it’s not quite the classic that I remembered.