The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I an see why a.A. Milne didn’t see another mystery published. This one is a mighty stretch of reality that is poorly written and seems to have been written as the writer was thin king it all out.

The story opens well and i settled in with what I suspected a mystery in an English setting. Instead, I find myself, after the evil is done, slogging through, what seems, endless patter about what-might-have-happened, what-could-have-have-happened, who-did-it, who-didn’t, etc. All of this barely moving the story along at all for decades of pages.

Worse, the characters are never defined except for the beginning. Making this all worse involves two main characters who pretend to be Holmes and Watson. Seems Milne knew he had troubles defining characters, so he uses others to do it for him.

The solution is intellectually dishonest. Today would be impossible, but pretty hard to believe that such a mistake could have been made even in the 1920s.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book.

View all my reviews