The Red House Mystery

True confession: I’ve never actually finished any of the Pooh books. I’ve tried more than once; most recently, I attempted Winnie the Pooh as a read-aloud. Failure again.

But The Red House Mystery is one of A.A. Milne’s books for adults, written, one source explains, for his father, who loved mysteries. I found it an entertaining, witty read that maintained a light-hearted mood despite being a whodunit.

In the office of an English country estate, a shot is heard, and a corpse is found. Just at that moment, Antony Gillingham appears coincidentally on the scene. Tony is a jack of all trades, possessed of unusually keen powers of observation and a questioning mind, so in this tale he decides to try his hand at detective work. He and his friend Bill Beverley hearken back to Holmes and Watson, whom the two go so far as to allude to and purposely emulate.

I enjoyed my foray into detective fiction. It’s been several years since my last mystery read (Dorothy Sayers’ Have His Carcase), and it’s a genre that puts my mind to work in a unique way. It’s possible in this tale to figure out who the murderer is, and why and how s/he did it. Milne furnishes all the information necessary. But I made only a half-hearted attempt; it was more fun to listen in on Antony and Bill as they put the pieces together.

After getting bogged down recently in a long and detailed biography, I needed an entertaining page-turner to coax my dozing reading mind back awake. The Red House Mystery filled the bill.