The Case of the Crumpled Knave

Well, it’s the usual: old man dies in locked room. Suicide? Murder? Was there a new will? Which of the suspects are not at all who they seem to be?
This is the first book in the Fergus O’Breen series by Boucher, a prolific critic and author.Two well-developed main characters help the rather standard plot move along. Some humor, good dialogue, and a sweet surprise at the end. This is a private detective novel, but certainly not of the hard-boiled kind. It reads much more like a British mystery than an American one.

I enjoyed this book. It has what I look for and enjoy in a detective mystery novel:
- A good mystery plot
- Interesting characters
- Reasonable/believable twists and turns
- Clever ending

The special twist in this book was that the detective you thought was investigating wasn't the primary detective at all. Very, very clever.

I highly recommend.

Anthony Boucher was a household name in his day. A book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, a poet; a writer of science fiction, short stories, light noir novels and radio plays, and one of the first translators of Jorge Luis Borges. How sad that Boucher is not remembered in the same way as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Carver!

The Case of the Crumpled Knave is the second novel in a series featuring young Irish private eye Fergus O’Breen. The novel begins with the death of a cruel chemical researcher, and Boucher throws enough twists and turns into the book for two mystery novels — so many twists that I’m afraid to say any more for fear of spoiling the surprises. I enjoyed every single page. Highly recommended.