Thursday, February 20, 2014

One You'll Probably Never Get to Read

THE TORHAVEN MYSTERY.
By J. B. Harris-Burland (1870-1926).
Chapman & Hall.
1910. 316 pages. 6s.
No e-book version available (or any other version, for that matter).

This author is better remembered for his fantasy and SF; and even though this reviewer denies it, s/he really does blab too much:
Mr. Harris-Burland's latest book is one of the best mystery stories we have read for some time—until we get to his explanation.
It was rather too bad of him to spirit a young lady out of a railway carriage which is occupied also by her father, her lover, two friends, and a queer stranger; then to have her body washed up by the tide on her father's property; and to permit the stranger in the railway carriage to be mysteriously murdered, and to find that he was carrying a very large sum of money in his bag—to do all this, and then to allow a large number of police and private detectives to discover that the young lady committed suicide, and that the mysterious stranger was murdered by——, but that is the real crux of the mystery.
There is no reason why we should spoil the book by giving it away altogether, for, as we have already said, the story is developed with great skill, and it will keep any reader guessing.
Mr. Harris-Burland is already in the first rank of sensational writers, and "The Torhaven Mystery" presents many of his best characteristics. — "Novel Notes," THE BOOKMAN [U.K.] (December 1910)
Category: Detective fiction

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