In 2020, P.J. Fitzsimmons debuted his series of humorous, lighthearted historical locked room “cozies” about the bantering, snooping idler-about-town Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly – who's ever ready with a funny quip or unhelpful comment. I was aware of the series since The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) was published, but the series description "cozies" made me hesitant to give it a try. I've been tricked before!
I decided last December the season was appropriate enough to take a risk on a Christmas-themed locked room cozy, even it turned out the plot lacked any kind of substance. So picked up The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021), second title in the Anty Boisjoly series, which proved to be a pleasant surprise. Leo Bruce meets Jonathan Creek plotted around a handful of impossible crimes and inexplicable situations. It has everything from a murderer who leaves no footprints in the snow and ghostly visitations to the theft of the church's weather vane. The solutions are neither routine nor uninspired. I immediately added the first and third title to the big pile.
So anyone who's not a willfully, chronologically-challenged dipstick would have peddled back and started The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, but the third novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), has a premise I found hard to ignore – not merely for its alluring locked room premise. Detective stories plotted around the classic tontine scheme tend to be good or at least a ton of fun. I always enjoy them!
The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine begins at the Juniper Gentleman's Club, in Mayfair, where Anty gives his condolences to his fellow clubman, Tristian "Lager" Tenpenny, who recently lost his Uncle Ratcliffe and Cousin Hadley. Ratcliffe Tenpenny and Hadley Tenpenny were two elderly relatives and "rival beneficiaries" in "the vast, unfathomable wealth of the Tenpenny Tontine." A tontine that was established in 1825 and has been accumulating a fortune over the course of more than a century, but it's going to be dissolved upon the death of either Ratcliffe or Hadley. And the whole pile goes to the last survivor. Ratcliffe and Hadley "shared" a house, Wedge Hedge Square, which was cut in half. One half was for Ratcliffe and Lager and the other half for Hadley and Lager's cousin, Victoria. Another part "remained neutral ground" for receiving guests and shouting matches ("this was very much a house divided").
Ratcliffe and Hadley apparently decided to take matters into their own hands and settle the whole thing in a good, old-fashioned duel. They appear to have locked themselves into the reading room and barricaded the doors by slipping a candle stick through the handles. When they're inside, they take a shot at each other with dueling pistols with troublesome results. They both end up "lifelessly slumped into their wood and wicker wheelchairs" dead of gunshot wounds to the heart. So the problem starts out not as a double murder in a locked room, but a question as to whom dead first? If there's a despite over the legal claim, the court could award the whole lot to the crown instead of one of the heirs, Lager or Victoria. Lager asks Anty to do "that thing you do" and see if he can discover who died had first.
It doesn't take Anty long to turn a simple, uncomplicated case of an illegal duel with two fatalities into a full-blown locked room murder. Not the last, seemingly impossible murder, to take place in that room. A third murder sees the room barricaded with a chair with the added complication that the murderer appears to have left the room without leaving bloody footprints all over the place. I'll return to the locked rooms in moment.
Just
like the previous novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine very
much is a continuation of the comedy mysteries and genre parodies of
Leo
Bruce, R.T.
Campbell and Edmund
Crispin. A story full of eccentric characters, witty dialogue and
scenes in which two collide head on. I particular enjoyed the lot of
character who turned up for this one. Like the family lawyer,
Chauncey "Chancy" Proctor, who hails from a long line of "notoriously inept solicitors" known and dutifully
maintained "the appallingly low standard of advice and care the
firm had been offering its clients for generations" – not
wholly unsuccessfully either. There's a maid who pilfers umbrellas
and walking sticks and the crowd at the Swashbuckling Society with
their glorious tales of adventure, daring-does and crooked duels, but
the best character and hero of the book is Hadley's "wire-haired
havoc on four legs." A Scots Terrier variably-named Satan,
Lucifer, Diabolus, etc., who has it in for employees of His Majesty's
Postal Service. He's the reason why they haven't had a letter-box
delivery for months as the postman usually pushes their letters into
the hedge, before fleeing in terror. But the devil gets to help Anty
solve the case. So he really is the hero good boy of
the story.
The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is a very amusing, highly readable and lighthearted mystery that's over before you notice it. I breezed through it at a leisurely pace. It therefore pains me to to say that the story, plot-wise, is not a patch on its predecessor. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning admirably balanced the lighthearted comedy with clever plotting and the locked room-tricks had some creativity behind them. I found that a bit lacking here with overall plot aiming for short term effect with the long term consequences causing the case to become muddled, which can work, but it didn't feel like it really held together here. Not convincingly. For example, the supposed duel in the locked room (SPOILER/ROT13) bayl jbexf orpnhfr ab nhgbcfl vf rire zragvbarq, cerfhznoyl abg cresbezrq, orpnhfr vg jbhyq erirny bar zna unq orra yrtvgvzngryl fubg naq gur bgure bar unq qvrq sebz n fgno jbhaq erfrzoyvat n thafubg jbhaq sebz n qhryvat cvfgby. The other locked room murder is fine, if you don't expect anything fancy from the solution, but it probably would have worked better had the room not been barricaded. Just the problem of the murderer crossing "the pool of blood between the body and the door" without leaving bloody footprints would have been good enough considering its solution.
So still enjoyed the hell out of it, but definitely expected more from the plot and its pair of locked room murders after the previous one. I was also a little disappointed. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning has earned this series enough credit to not immediately abandon it. Every series has its dips. You can expect reviews of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) in the near future. Hopefully, they provide me with ample reason to move to the fantastic sounding The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). That first title is not misspelled with one of my redundant typos and the second one sounds like a long-lost episode from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? So don't let me down Fitzsimmons!
A note for the curious: I still intend to do an addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century," an excuse to talk about impossible crimes thinly disguised as a historical overview, to focus on the developments from the 2015 to 2025 period. I want to make it either the last post of this year or the first one of next year. Yeah, adorably optimistic and another thinly disguised excuse to sink into another locked room study. So expect a noticeable uptick this year of locked room reviews from the 2015/25 period and the 2000s in general.