The House at Devil’s Neck: A Joseph Spector Locked-Room Mystery

Mead’s fourth historical puzzler featuring retired magician Joseph Spector (after Cabaret Macabre) is a fiendishly clever tour de force. In 1939, Spector joins a busload of passengers, including a medium and a reporter, en route to a legendary haunted house on the English coast. The gothic dwelling was reportedly the site of a 17th-century confrontation between a witch-finder and a demon-summoning alchemist that ended with the former’s neck broken. Later converted into a military hospital, the house has just been opened to the public. Soon after Spector and his party settle in for their visit, they hold a séance, and then someone is found hanging in their locked room, a death that Spector quickly classifies as murder. Then the causeway floods, trapping guests in the eerie house with a killer—possibly a supernatural one. Mead artfully dials up the suspense notch by notch, keeping readers off-balance all the way through to the masterful conclusion, which again proves that he’s a fastidious student of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. This superlative series remains in top form. Agent: Lorella Belli, Lorella Belli Literary. (July)