The Cheltenham Square is a flat u-shaped neighborhood with lots of odd characters and lots of gossip. They all have their little idiosyncrasies and many of them don't like certain ones on the square but one never expected murder...

Poisoned Pen Press and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published March 7th.

It took several unrelated incidents to lead up to murder. A hundred year old tree was cut down. A woman leaves her husband. The husband moves because he's going under after being swindled by a neighbor. All this makes the crime plausible.

One neighbor is visiting the other in a study that faces the street. The windows are open. When the owner gets up to pour them each a whiskey, he hears an odd sound. Turning around, he finds the visitor dead. He's been shot with an arrow and was instantly killed.

There are five archery people on the square. They try to figure the angle of the shot and determine it must have come from the vacant house. But with no one living there and no one seeing anything, it's a hard crime to solve.

Before the story is over, the surviving neighbor man is killed, too. It takes a lot of investigation and a lot of legwork before they get a clue about what might have happened. They're almost too late to catch the killer but they do.

Living in this square was like living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody else's business. But some clues lead to dead ends. It took some brainwork to solve this crime.

The genteel Regency Square, Cheltenham Spa is home to a disparate collection of well-heeled yet slightly eccentric folk who would fit in nicely in St. Mary Mead or Midsomer Mallow, but the apparent peace and tranquillity of the square mask all manner of sordid undercurrents. Although the controversy over whether to cut down an old tree or the speculation as to who is having an affair with whom might not seem particularly shocking, such troubles prove to be only the tip of the scandalous iceberg. Late one evening, a resident of the square is sitting in an armchair with his back to an open sitting-room window when he is shot in the head with an arrow. Of course, Regency Square happens to be the one address in England where nearly all the residents are members of an archery club.

While the killer might be both an excellent shot and a crafty conniver, it is of course impossible to account for all eventualities. For instance, when plotting the perfect murder, the killer couldn’t possibly anticipate that Superintendent Meredith, the leading light of the Sussex County Constabulary, would be staying in the square while visiting his friend Aldous Barnet (the two having met in John Bude’s previous novel The Sussex Downs Murder) at the time chosen for the killing. Meredith is intrigued by the seeming impossibility of the crime and he agrees to help Inspector Long and the local force with the investigation.

The circumstances of the murder (the arrow having to have been shot from the balcony of one of the other houses in the square) seem to suggest a finite group of suspects, which allows John Bude to engage in some excellent, often amusing characterisation. Among the suspects who live in the square are a cuckolded husband, a volubly pious reverend, two overly happy newlyweds, a respected doctor, two dotty spinster sisters, a dodgy manservant, a strident woman who likes dogs more than people, and a miserly ex-stockbroker who rubs everyone up the wrong way. Many of the residents seem to have something to hide and it’s up to Meredith and Long to determine who knows more about the murder than they’re letting on.

In addition to the “whodunit” element of The Cheltenham Square Murder, the story is also something of a “howdunit”, since every time Superintendent Meredith thinks that he knows how the murder was accomplished (that is, with what and from where), the evidence seems to disprove his theory. In fact, determining how the killer managed to accomplish the dastardly deed actually proves more difficult than sleuthing out the killer, although Meredith himself seems to take an unnecessarily long time to spot the guilty party. Perhaps the cleverly inserted red herrings, coincidences and factual improbabilities have thrown him off his detecting stride?

The Cheltenham Square Murder is an intriguing murder mystery of the gentle, cerebral variety. It is not fast paced – the detective work could perhaps accurately be described as plodding – but it is compelling. There is a real puzzle element to the murder that just demands to be cracked. It is a crime novel for those who enjoy unravelling complex plots, breaking seemingly airtight alibis and using the little grey cells to determine who is psychologically most likely to be a murderer.

John Bude sets this murder mystery in the lovely Cotswold town of Cheltenham. Inspector Meredith is on a short break from his Sussex duties when, right next door to the townhouse where he is a guest, a very strange murder occurs. Captain Cotton is shot in the head by an arrow projected through an open window. It is the shot of a master archer and would appear to be an easily solvable crime until the police discover that five of the residents on the square are members of the Archery Club!

Meredith uses his tried and true investigatory style; examine the clues and eliminate each possible subject one by one. And there are plenty of subjects in the eight houses: a betrayed husband, a blackmailed couple, an angry dog lover, a ruined scientist. When a second murder happens, almost exactly like the first, a debt ridden relative can be added to the list.

The puzzle mystery all comes down to timing. How could the murderer get from point A to point B in such a narrow window of time in order to do the deed. It looks as though he or she can’t. In fact, Bude has written such a tight mystery that the ending is a little strained. After analyzing every single clue for weeks, Meredith is ordered back to Sussex and has 24 hours to resolve the case. Only a very timely action by the police on a totally unrelated case gives Meredith the answer to the puzzle. After investing in the physics of arrow projectiles, visits to Somerset House for marriage licenses, quarrels about destroyed elms and dead dogs, the reader is presented with a solution that is a bit of a yawn.

Still, the book is charming and well worth the read for the eccentric inhabitants of the square. My favorites were two elderly maiden sisters who could have stumbled off a page by Dickens and the truly despicable second victim. It is a glimpse into more innocent times (which never existed) where the bodies are not immediately moved to the morgue for an autopsy but carted to the victims’ bedrooms to peacefully await the inquest, even in a 1937 Cotswold market town.

A fun read.

Another reprint on one of the writers within the sphere of the golden age of crime. I really love these books, the have a gently written style, one that appreciates our language. The stories, as this one is, are well crafted and the story moves along really at an even pace. The ending is always surprising and well explained. No bad language, no gratuitous sex or violence - just good mysteries fiction that does not pretend it's anything else.