The Murder Wheel

Starred review from May 1, 2023
Mead’s brilliant second Joseph Spector novel (following 2022’s Death and the Conjurer), again set in 1930s London, sees the retired magician saddled with three seemingly impossible murders to solve. First up is a bizarre killing committed on a Ferris wheel: bank manager Dominic Dean was fatally shot while he and his wife, Carla, were the only occupants of a compartment at the very top of the ride’s arc. That fact, coupled with Carla’s fingerprints on the revolver used to shoot Dominic, make her the obvious suspect, despite the absence of any apparent motive. The puzzle only becomes more intricate after her defense attorney, Edmund Ibbs, seeks exculpatory evidence, only to stumble into the middle of two other murders—one onstage at a magic show and one backstage—where he becomes the primary suspect. Spector gets involved and utilizes his unique illusionist knowledge to solve all three killings. Mead plays scrupulously fair with his readers, going so far as to include footnotes that identify which prior pages displayed clues in plain sight. Lovers of John Dickson Carr’s puzzle mysteries will hope Mead has many more Spector tales up his sleeve. Agent: Lorella Belli, Westbourne Studios.

May 15, 2023
Mead returns to the golden-age world of locked rooms, impossible crimes, and 1930s England with a triple-barreled puzzle. It's a trying week for Edmund Ibbs. The newly anointed solicitor has just stepped into a leading role in the defense of Carla Dean, whose ride on a Ferris wheel with her husband, bank manager Dominic Dean, ended with him fatally shot. Carla swears that she didn't kill him, but who else could have committed the murder as the pair circled alone above the earth? Ibbs, an enthusiastic amateur magician, welcomes the chance the impossible crime brings to rub shoulders with Joseph Spector, who so handsomely produced a solution to Death and the Conjuror (2022); with Professor Paolini, the prestidigitator who's performing nightly at the Pomegranate Theatre; and with whomever wrote The Master of Manipulation, a tell-all handbook whose pseudonymous byline turns out to conceal the identity of a wholly unexpected author. But worse is yet to come. First, a corpse tumbles out of a suit of armor that was supposed to provide a much more upbeat surprise during Paolini's performance. Then, summoned to Paolini's dressing room, Ibbs is knocked unconscious and awakens to find himself in a sealed room with the magician's corpse, the murder weapon literally glued to Ibbs' hand. It will take not only a good deal of slack from Inspector George Flint, but some seriously extended explanations and reexplanations of these impossible, and impossibly stylized, murders before Mead is ready to detonate a final surprise that's well worth waiting for. Even readers who live to match wits with canny authors and detectives are likely to be outwitted by this one.

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June 1, 2023

Idealistic young lawyer Edmund Ibbs is stuck with an impossible, infamous case in 1938 London. Carla Dean and her husband, Dominic, were atop the Ferris wheel at a fair when Dominic was shot in the stomach and died. Carla insists she didn't shoot him, and he didn't have a gun on him. Several witnesses claim to have seen a limping man leave the scene. Ibbs is an enthusiastic amateur magician, fascinated by what he cannot see. The same night he starts his investigation, he goes to the theater to see a master illusionist, Professor Paolini. When a dead man falls out of Paolini's crate, Ibbs insists they call the police. Paolini is later found shot in a locked room, and Ibbs is arrested. Ibbs may protest his innocence, but his insatiable curiosity puts him in all the wrong places. Former stage magician Joseph Spector, now a detective, is the only one who can see the impossible solutions to all the murders. VERDICT Fans of Golden Age locked-room mysteries will appreciate the homage in Mead's sequel to Death and the Conjuror.--Lesa Holstine

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