The Red House Mystery

Well written, quietly pleasant.

A.A Milne is best known for his children's poetry and the Winnie the Pooh stories. It was whilst recently reading his autobiography that I discovered he had also written a murder mystery.
The Red House Mystery is an enjoyable read, reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series of books. A pleasant reading experience.

This book is a classic locked room mystery without much fluff. The mystery has more to do with How than Who, which was honestly refreshing for a puzzle mystery. There were some funny moments, but the characters were generally static and the focus was placed mostly on the puzzle. I love puzzles so I didn't hate that aspect. Overall it wasn't the most clever, most genius, or most compelling but I enjoyed reading it all the way through.

There were some good exchanges between characters but overall it was incredibly long. The murder occurs withing the first chapter or two, and the rest of the book is spent putting together the pieces. I made it to the halfway point before skipping to the end.

The part that stuck me was how “cool” the detectives were about there being a murder/murderer. If I was staying at the potential murderers house while he ran loose, I wouldn't have been so calm about it all.

In short, may be good for sherlock Holmes fans. Otherwise its rather boring and long.

2.5 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews

A dilettante visiting his friend happens on a murder mystery.

A. A. Milne is chiefly known for his Winnie the Pooh stories, and his collections of nursery rhymes, When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six, all of which overshadowed his more serious plays and novels. One of those novels was a mystery.

Wikipedia tells me that The Red House Mystery was both popular and critically acclaimed. I'm not sure why. It's a competent but uninspiring locked room story, and if I could find any external evidence, I'd say it was written primarily to show Conan Doyle that Milne could do better.

Milne starts off with oblique references to Sherlock Holmes, but quickly moves to full-fledged, if light-hearted, mockery. Yet, while Milne jeers at Holmes' unique intelligence and retentive memory, his own amateur detective himself relies on a remarkably detailed eidetic for several issues. Milne works hard to address tired stereotypes of the detective genre, but his story is so carefully and obviously constructed as to take all the joy out of the story. Yet, despite all that work, his solution doesn't make a great deal of sense, and the clues aren't provided in advance. Often they come up through a close examination of the protagonist's eidetic memory - not something the reader has access to - but sometimes it's just crucial new information. For all his jokes about Holmes and Watson, reading the story feels very much like being led around by someone who's just having his fun with us. Even so, Milne leaves some fairly basic plot holes that we just have to ignore.

The book certainly shows another side of Milne, and I'll be trying his plays, but I can't say I'm sorry this was his only mystery. Point to Conan Doyle.