The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant

2 1/2 stars: I didn't particularly like it or dislike it; mixed or no real interest

From the back cover: "The Most Imaginative
Detective Stories of Our Times" So wrote Ellery Queen about The Curious Mr. Tarrant, an extraordinary collection of detective stories by Charles Daly King (1895-1963). The cases solved by Trevis Tarrant, during the early 1930's, assisted by his manservant (who is in actuality a Japanese spy) include locked rooms, headless corpses, a vanishing harp, and newly built but haunted house, and other bizarre events. With the encouragement of Ellery Queen, King wrote four additional stories about Mr. Tarrant, some of them becoming "curiouser and curiouser." They include the case of a Hollywood star who disappears from a show more locked suite of rooms, in a house surrounded by detectives, and the murder solved only because of the absence of a fish. These additional stories along with the original six tales are included in The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant.

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Fairly forgettable, this series is mostly memorable for having one of those detectives that themself is the "mystery" (like Agatha Christie's Mr. Quin). In particular, the very ending of this collection lies on a cryptic note, the tales themselves loosely tied together. show less