Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead
Fans of locked-room mysteries and superior murder plots will revel in Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead.
Authentically atmospheric and brimming with nostalgia, this mystery opens in 1938. A quite “ordinary” steamer trunk washes up on Rotherhithe beach in the UK containing “not so ordinary” contents. And so the story begins.
Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard has his hands full. There’s the awful business of the mysterious steamer trunk. Then a Miss Caroline Silvius pays Flint a visit. She’s convinced someone is trying to kill her brother, Victor, committed to a sanatorium 9 years ago by a judge, Sir Giles Drury.
The Drury’s are an old family. Sir Giles is staunch and rigid . He rules over his 4 adult sons with an iron fist and tells Spector that “the lot of them” are a bunch of ingrates – he’s thinking about cutting them out of his will.
Now up in years, secrets and scandals that Sir Giles thought he had permanently laid to rest, are coming back to haunt him. He’s getting threatening letters – letters announcing his impending demise. His wife, Lady Elspeth, hires a retired stage magician, Joseph Spector, who is also known for discreetly solving complex crimes.
Sir Giles and his wife invite Joseph Spector to join them and their family at their estate, Marchbanks, for the Christmas holiday season – a perfect way for Spector to do his own brand of sleuthing. At Marchbanks, he notices subtle jealousy between brothers. One is a high profile celebrity in the theater, soon to be in motion pictures. Another is a struggling artist desperately trying to re-invent himself — and he’s got a serious taste for money. Even the two other brothers, staying quietly in the background, seem to have their own hidden agendas.
When a failed attempt is made to silence Judge Drury forever, Spector finds himself teaming up with his old friend, Inspector Flint. What neither of them anticipate is the successful murder of another Drury family member – and it doesn’t end there!
Mead quietly weaves together suicides, murders, illicit family affairs, blackmail and other secrets from the past to each and every one of the Drury family members.
Acts of murder and malice can be bizarre….revenge can be diabolical. Illusions within illusions come into play. The author has laid them all out before us. He dares us to uncover a most twisted culprit, then entices us with the possibility that there’s more than one during this snowy Christmas season.
Tom Mead couldn’t have picked a more fitting book title than Cabaret Macabre. Spector, as an old retired magician, is no stranger to “illusions” and “slight of hand,” – useful tools when it comes to putting together the pieces of this ultra-complex puzzle. Both nostalgic and reminiscent of the Golden Age of Mysteries, Cabaret Macabre is pure genius!
Cabaret Macabre is a Joseph Spector Locked-Room Mystery by Tom Mead and published by Mysterious Press, an imprint of Penzler Publishers. Find this book online at Amazon and other book retailers. Cover photo was provided by the publisher.