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A Locked-Room Mystery
by Tom Mead
In this follow-up to Death and the Conjuror, former stage magician Joseph Spector is back to help Scotland Yard with yet another hopelessly baffling case.
In London, 1938, young and idealistic lawyer Edmund Ibbs is trying to find any shred of evidence that his client Carla Dean wasn't the one who shot her husband dead at the top of a Ferris Wheel. But the deeper he digs, the more complex the case becomes, and Edmund soon finds himself drawn into a nightmarish web of conspiracy and murder. Before long he himself is implicated in not one but two seemingly impossible crimes.
First, a corpse appears out of thin air during a performance by famed illusionist "Professor Paolini" in front of a packed auditorium at the Pomegranate Theatre. Then a second victim is shot dead in a locked dressing room along one of the theatre's winding backstage corridors. Edmund is in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time, and attracts the suspicion of Scotland Yard inspector George Flint. Luckily, conjuror-turned-detective Joseph Spector is on the scene. Only Spector's uniquely logical perspective can pierce the veil of deceit in a world of illusion and misdirection, where seeing is not always believing.
Tom Mead continues to pay homage to the locked room mysteries of the Golden Age in this second Joseph Spector novel.
"Mead plays scrupulously fair with his readers … Lovers of John Dickson Carr's puzzle mysteries will hope Mead has many more Spector tales up his sleeve."
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mead returns to the golden-age world of locked rooms, impossible crimes, and 1930s England with a triple-barreled puzzle...Even readers who live to match wits with canny authors and detectives are likely to be outwitted by this one."
―Kirkus Reviews
"Fans of Golden Age locked-room mysteries will appreciate the homage in Mead's sequel to Death and the Conjuror." —Library Journal
"In his captivating second novel Tom Mead establishes himself as the current master of the locked-room mystery, and The Murder Wheel doesn't give us merely one example of this honored tradition to solve, but three of them … three interlocking 'impossible' murders, each with plenty of twists and skillful misdirection. The characters are charming, the plot moves briskly along, and in the end, the brilliant 'Old Conjuror,' Joseph Spector, puts it all together and comes up with the goods. A winner!"
―Aaron Elkins, author of the Gideon Oliver series
"A clever writer with a mastery of setting, plotting, and the world of the illusionist, Tom Mead takes the reader on a delightful ride. Ibbs is a deliberate man―the perfect narrator for a story of murder committed very deliberately. I was pulled deep into the puzzle and held there to the very end. Kudos, Mr. Mead. Mystery readers will love this dazzling, page-turning tale."
―Carolyn Haines, USA Today bestselling author of the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series
"What an absolute treasure! Tom Mead writes with the sophisticated and knowing voice of another era, with a skilled sleight of hand, and with deep knowledge of psychology, magic, and human nature. The Murder Wheel is an engaging, perplexing, and irresistible riff on locked room mysteries―you've never seen a series of crimes as delightfully complex, or as brilliantly crafted. You will not be able to put this down, and what's more, you will never be able to solve all the puzzles within puzzles. But you will stand and applaud, as I did, at the marvelously fair solutions. I promise you'll be given all the clues, dear murder mystery readers, but, trust me: give up trying to identify whodunnit, and simply enjoy the journey to an elegant and satisfying conclusion, where the impossible becomes―presto!―possible."
―Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author
This information about The Murder Wheel was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tom Mead is a UK-based author specializing in crime fiction. His stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Litro Online, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Lighthouse, Mystery Scene and Mystery Weekly (among others). Several of his pieces have also been anthologized, most recently "Heatwave" in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 (ed. Lee Child). His debut novel Death and the Conjuror was selected as one of the top ten best mysteries of the year by Publishers Weekly.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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A million monkeys...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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