"Fine picture of period vice, good mystery plotting, and fun.” —San Francisco Chronicle
A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.
The mystery is good enough that it managed to hold my interest even without a body and I laughed far more than in either of its predecessors. Also, the Cribb and Thackeray partnership feels more developed to me, partly because they are on the scene from the start of this book.
Read my full review at Mysteries Ahoy!