The Three Taps

Just okay. This has all the elements that should make a good golden age murder mystery: isolated country inn, witty repartee, locked door murder (or was it suicide?), eccentric characters. Unfortunately it seemed that most of the book was taken up with the two detectives discussing theories of the crime based on what little evidence they had. Over and over and over again.

The first of Msgr. Knox's handful of detective stories is also probably the best. Insurance investigator Miles Bredon is sent to look into the death by gas of the rich Mr. Mottram. As there will be a huge payout if it was not suicide, Bredon initially supports this hypothesis. He finds himself in friendly rivalry with the policeman Leyland, who's trying to prove it was murder. The evidence seems finely balanced on both sides, and turns on the fact that the door was locked but the gas had been turned off - oddly, without any fingerprints being left. The solution Bredon eventually arrives at is satisfying and genuinely surprising