Vintage Murders

I’ve had two books, sent by Dean Street Press, sitting on my iPad for ages and have only just got round to reading them. Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning were a husband and wife writing team. In 1930 they produced their first mystery, The Unseen Host. It’s famous (not, previously, to me) because many people think it inspired Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. In New Orleans, a select group of people, all known to each other, receive an invitation to a party to be held in their honour at a penthouse in the city. None of the guests can resist the mysterious invitation and all turn up. While they chat and speculate about who can have thrown the party, The Voice comes over the radio, informing them that by morning they will all be dead. Cue a tense psychological drama: suspicion as to whether a fellow guest might be the organiser of this death fest; nerves stretched to breaking point as the murders begin. Who is The Voice and how is he killing people so easily? Will anyone escape? The reveal, when it comes, I found a slight let-down but it remains shocking. The book is unusual for a murder mystery in that there is no detective involved, no aftermath, no clearing up of matters by the police (there are a lot of bodies to be accounted for). Rather, the reader is left to contemplate the results of a terrible evening. It’s a very short book, which you can easily read in a day and you’ll want to!
( the other book )