Death and the Conjuror
by Tom Mead, narrated by Jake Ruddle

No way I was going to figure this one out! Once we get to the denouement my head was spinning and then doing flips and pretty much just gave up before it was finished. No mere mortal could have thought all of this up. I'd have certainly made a lousy villain back in these olden days.

It's 1930s London and there is a murder. Psychiatrist Anselm Rees has been murdered and the murderer has disappeared under impossible circumstances. What we have here is a closed room mystery but actually there is more than one closed room mystery before the story is over. It's the job of Scotland Yard Inspector George Flint to find the murderer and when confronted with the impossibility of the crime he calls on retired stage magician-turned-part-time sleuth Joseph Spector.

We have a large cast of characters, including Patient A, Patient B, Patient C, the doctor's daughter and her rake of a boyfriend, an actress, a producer, several maids, the staff of a hotel, and more. Just a whole slew of suspicious people and almost witnesses but there are no answers. It will take magician and sleight of hand man such as Spector to figure this one out.

I enjoyed this story very much and the narrator did an excellent job narrating this book. You do have to really like this kind of old fashioned story telling where, in the end, the explanation for everything is long, detailed, verging on impossible, and requiring numerous contortions and eye squinting to really see how things pull together. But it was fun and I felt like I was right there in the parlor with all the characters while Spector laid out the happenings for us. Such clever fun although too clever for me.

Thank you to HighBridge Audio and NetGalley for this ARC.