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I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the CABARET MACABRE by Tom
Mead Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours.
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Check out my review and make sure to enter the giveaway!
CABARET MACABRE: A Locked-Room Mystery
(Joseph Spector Series)
Author: Tom Mead
Pub. Date: July 16, 2024
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook
Pages: 320
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Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/CABARET-MACABRE
This latest puzzle mystery from the author of Death and the
Conjuror and The Murder Wheel takes stage magician
sleuth Joseph Spector to a grand estate in the English countryside.
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Victor Silvius has spent nine years as an inmate at The Grange, a private
sanatorium, for the crime of attacking judge Sir Giles Drury. Now, the judge’s
wife, Lady Elspeth Drury, believes that Silvius is the one responsible for a
series of threatening letters her husband has recently received. Eager to avoid
the scandal that involving the local police would entail, Lady Elspeth seeks
out retired stage magician Joseph Spector, whose discreet involvement in a case
Sir Giles recently presided over greatly impressed her.
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Meanwhile, Miss Caroline Silvius is disturbed after a recent visit to her
brother Victor, convinced that he isn’t safe at The Grange. Someone is trying
to kill him and she suspects the judge, who has already made Silvius’ life a
living hell, may be behind it. Caroline hires Inspector George Flint of
Scotland Yard to investigate.
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The two cases collide at Marchbanks, the Drury family seat of over four
hundred years, where a series of unnerving events interrupt the peace and quiet
of the snowy countryside. A body is discovered in the middle of a frozen pond
without any means of getting there and a rifle is fired through a closed
window, killing a man but not breaking the glass. Only Spector and his mastery
of the art of misdirection can uncover the logical explanations for these
impossible crimes.
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An atmospheric and puzzling traditional mystery that pays homage to the
greatest writers of the genre’s Golden Age, Cabaret Macabre is
the third book in Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector series, hailed by the Wall
Street Journal as “a recipe for pure nostalgic pleasure.” The books
can be enjoyed in any order.
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MY REVIEW
Dust off the old brain pan folks. This one will put it to the test. How does a man get shot to death in a locked room and there are no bullet holes in the windows? How does a body get in the middle of a frozen pond? See, I told you this would be a tough solve. I love it when it’s tough. Makes me wish I was Peter Falk’s character, Lt. Columbo. Remember that show. He knew who did it, how they did it and why from the first time he met the suspect. The fun was seeing how he figured it out and proved it.
The cast or characters couldn’t be more fascinating…. or different. An inmate at an insane asylum. A judge and his wife. A retired stage magician. An inspector from Scotland Yard. They all brought something to the table.
And the author did his best to keep my thoughts spinning and leading me down the garden path to some dead ends. Gotta love it when you have no clue of the who and how and still derive so much pleasure in not knowing.
This is the third book in the series and didn’t require my having to read the first two. It read easily as a stand alone. But, I want more by this author and will be grabbing those too.
5 STARS
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Reviews:
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“Ingenious . . . Mead hides all
the clues in plain sight, constructing a fair-play puzzle that will delight and
challenge readers who love pitting their own wits against the author’s. It’s
another crackerjack entry in an exceptional series.”― Publishers
Weekly STARRED REVIEW
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“Mind-bogglingly complex . . . A lovely valentine to Mead’s idol, John
Dickson Carr, and even more to Clayton Rawson’s tales of The Great
Merlini.”― Kirkus
Enjoy this peek inside:
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Bit by bit, Joseph Spector’s
world was shrinking. He was an old man now; his friends were dying off one by
one; his legs and back ached. A new decade―the 1940s―was scarcely a year away,
but to Spector this felt less like a new beginning than an eked-out ending.
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However, time had left two
of Spector’s attributes mercifully unharmed. The first was his mind, which was
as quick and devilishly brilliant as ever. The second was his hands, which had
lost none of their spindly dexterity. In the distant past he had been a music
hall conjuror, and he still dressed like one in a suit of black velvet, with a
cloak lined in red silk. He brought a touch of old-world flamboyance into the
murky 20th century; he walked with a silver-tipped cane and dabbled in the
occult. He was out of step with his era, and yet he was an indelible product of
it; an embodiment of the baroque, the Grand Guignol.
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Spector was on his way back
from a meeting of the London Occult Practice Collective when he first realised
someone was following him. The meeting had been out in Greenwich. It was a
pleasant trip with good food, good conversation, and one or two amusing tricks
into the bargain. Spector waited for the train back into the City feeling fat
and happy. But as he perched on one of the metal benches which lined the
platform, he felt eyes on him.
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It was mid-afternoon, and
already dusk was closing in. The platform’s overhead lamps flickered to life
and clutches of travellers chatted, smoked and stamped their feet to stave off
the chill. Spector sat motionless with his bare fingers twined around the
handle of his cane.
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Once he realised he was
under scrutiny, he waited a moment or two to make sure it was not simply his
imagination, or a trick of the gathering dark. But it wasn’t. Somewhere among
the little clusters of waiting travellers, somebody was watching him. Very slowly,
Spector turned, and with a sweeping glance took in the entire vista of the
platform. There were a few lone commuters, but only one viable suspect: a tall
man whose head was now hidden behind a three-day-old Herald. Spector studied
the man’s lower half, which was all that could be seen of him. Smart, tailored
trousers and impeccable patent leather shoes; a poor choice for this weather.
Whoever the man was, he was certainly no professional.
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Soon enough, the train
arrived in a shriek of steam, and Spector smiled to himself as he boarded.
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He disembarked at Paddington
and took a gentle amble through the crowds. He was in no rush to get back to
Putney. And once again, the eyes were on him. The man followed him along the
central concourse, past the various concession stands, as he threaded his way
through the bustle and toward the stone steps down into the Underground. Before
he began his descent, Spector cast a quick glance in the man’s direction, just
to check that he had not lost him.
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He hadn’t. There the fellow
was, loitering in the shadow of a nearby pillar beneath the clock. Spector
headed down the steps, and the man followed.
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His pursuer maintained a
careful distance on the Tube, but even though he frequently employed his
out-of-date newspaper, Spector got a good look at the man’s face. He was
younger than Spector had first thought, which went a considerable way toward
explaining these idiotic “Boy’s Own” antics. He had a merciless
Gwynplainian grin, but there was a vacancy in his eyes that told of both
ignorance and arrogance. He was convinced that he had the upper hand.
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Stepping off the train at
Putney, Spector ascended the steps to street level and wondered briefly how
best to go about dealing with this fellow. There were two places in which he
was truly comfortable: the first was his home in Jubilee Court, a weird ramshackle
dwelling crammed with decades’ worth of macabre bric-a-brac. The second was the
nearby public house, The Black Pig; an ill-lit, low-ceilinged Elizabethan
tavern. To step through its door was to step back in time. Spector was as much
of a fixture there as the brass beer taps; it would not be the same without the
grey fug of his cigarillo smoke choking the atmosphere, or his skeletal,
cheerily funereal figure seated by the fire in the snug. From time to time he
gave impromptu displays of legerdemain: cardistry or coin manipulation to
bamboozle the regulars.
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The Black Pig glowed warmly
at the other end of the street, its painted sign swinging in the icy breeze.
The young man halted. The magician had pulled off some kind of vanishing
act―the street was empty. The young man continued at a slower pace, his brow
creasing. He tilted his trilby back, as though he might find Joseph Spector
hiding behind the brim.
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“What in the
hell―” he said, before his words were cut off by a sudden, sweeping motion
at his feet. The silver-tipped cane clipped his ankles and sent him sprawling,
his hat scudding off into the darkness.
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The young man rolled onto
his back with a groan, and Joseph Spector towered over him. The old conjuror
smiled. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
About Tom Mead:
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Tom Mead is a Derbyshire mystery writer
and aficionado of Golden Age crime fiction. His debut novel, Death and
the Conjuror, was an international bestseller, nominated for several
awards, and named one of the best mysteries of the year by The Guardian and Publishers
Weekly. Its sequel, The Murder Wheel, was described as “pure
nostalgic pleasure” by the Wall Street Journal and “a delight”
by the Daily Mail. It was also named one of the Best Traditional
Mysteries of 2023 by CrimeReads. His third novel, Cabaret
Macabre, will be published in 2024.
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Giveaway Details:
3 winners will receive a finished copy of CABARET MACABRE, US Only.
Ends August 6th, midnight EST.
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a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
Week Three:
Week Four:
Week Five:
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