The Murder Wheel

Book Reviews

Mar 7

The Murder Wheel (Joseph Spector #2)
By: Tom Mead

“No matter how large or small an illusion, there is one thing to remember: your audience is in front of you. Keep them there.”

I enjoyed the first Joseph Spector Mystery— Death and the Conjuror— and this one was similar.

Like the first book, it’s a good locked room mystery with a couple other ‘impossible’ crimes/situations on the side. As it is a series, the setting is the same— London in the 1930s— and the main character is the same— Joseph Spector, magician/detective.

The Murder Wheel introduces us to a new prominent character: Edmund Ibbs. A magician/lawyer. (Let’s just say it was a good era for magic.)

Spector doesn’t enter the scene right away. Ibbs is the focus as he is defending the accused in an impossible murder:

A husband and wife are at the top of a Ferris wheel when her husband is shot and she finds herself holding the gun. She claims she had nothing to do with it and doesn’t know what happened. A mysterious bystander with a limp was sighted by multiple people and throws suspicion on the case.

The Daily Chronicle posts a story asking readers to help solve “The Ferris Wheel Murder.”

Ibbs, being a magic enthusiast, is trying desperately to solve the crime. In all his efforts, he finds himself in the middle of more than one crime.

The second murder occurs on the stage of a magic show he attends. A trick gone wrong exposes a corpse (the Ferris Wheel operator) to the audience.

Spector and Flint (the police officer from the first book) arrive at the theater to put their expertise to work and solve the mysteries.

And then, Ibbs gets himself in a pickle:

“I don’t know what to make of all this. But we found you locked in a room with a corpse, with a smoking revolver in your hand.”

One comment I made with the first book was that it didn’t feel like we really got to know Spector’s character very well. I thought his character would develop as the series went on, but that didn’t really happen.

Spector was actually even less part of this book than the previous one.

It seems like Mead is more interested in the ‘tricks’ part of the books than the characters. Which is fine. I enjoy a locked-room mystery and learning about magic tricks. You just have to know going in that it’s not a series to really connect you with the characters. It’s more about the plot.

Another comment I made in the first book was that the mystery was revealed in monologue format. This time Mead did things a little differently. There was a bit of monologue. It’s written in third person POV so dialogue is our main media for getting information. But it wasn’t quite like the Agatha Christie style: get everyone in a room and expose the murderer. It was more spread out and the last few things we find out in the epilogue.

I was glad for that because I didn’t find the original explanation satisfying or believable so I was happy to find out there was more to it!

I don’t remember this being in the first book, perhaps it was, but this one had some footnotes during the reveals that tells you which page to go back to to see the original clue in the story. I’m not sure if the reader could actually solve these puzzles on their own, but it’s a nice touch to send the reader on their own clue hunt if they want to see what they missed!

The writing style is reminiscent of an Agatha Christie novel. It did have some lines that made me chuckle:

“His eyebrows were notable in that he had three of them; two over the eyes and another on his upper lip.”

If you’re looking for a low-key mystery to give you a break from the high octane thrillers, this may be a good palate cleanser.

If you’re a fan of the Christie, you should definitely give Tom Mead’s books a try.

But if you’re looking for a thrill ride with a lot of action or a series with characters you get to know really well, then this may not be for you.

Also, if you are interested in murders in Fleet Street then definitely read Charles Finch’s book The Fleet Street Murders (which is currently on my TBR).

Learning Corner

If you follow my reviews, you know that I enjoy learning new words or information. Here is a list of words (mostly) related to magic or illusions:

acetabularri: history’s first recorded illusionists

copropraxia: Ibbs is thrust into his position as the defense because the primary lawyer on the case came down with copropraxia and was prescribed bed rest. It is the “complex motor tic involving obscene gestures. And I can imagine this would be a problem in the court room.

legerdemain: skillful use of hands in deception while performing tricks

prestidigitator: another name for a magician

perspicacity: perceptiveness

Chubb lock: the unpickable lock designed in 1818; had a security mechanism that when someone attempted to pick the lock it would ‘re-lock’ and jam and would alert the owner that the lock was tampered with.

insalubrious: unsavory

Black Maria: another name for the black police vehicles during this time period

pareidolia: the tendency to see or look for patterns in random images when there really is none

Wicked Bible: an edition of the Bible published in 1631 that had two errors, one was the omission of the word ‘not’ in the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ Most copies were destroyed so the very few copies left are considered highly valuable.

Jenny Haniver: a common old hoax; the carcass of a ray that is manipulated and molded to look like freaky monster things and passed off as evidence of dragons and other fanciful creatures.

verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real

And because I’m an art major and they referenced this painting in the book, I will display it here too! It shows a trick within a trick. The balls and cup trick (one of the oldest magic tricks) but the real trick is the spectator getting his money bags stolen while he is distracted by the trick.