A book of golden-age-esque mystery stories supposedly written by a maths professor exploring the maths of mysteries that was actually real-life-written by a mathematician/software engineer author? It could almost have been written for just for me! So I’m sorry not to be giving it more than three stars, but it’s a debut novel and I’ll definitely be looking out for the author again.

Short stories aren’t my thing usually, I don’t like to get to know the characters over a couple of dozen pages and then have it all end. I always want to know where is the rest of the story? The framing device makes it clear early on that these stories are going to have some kind of link between them but mostly I still found them pretty free of interesting enough characters, and on the whole I didn’t find the book that engaging to read.

Every mystery story needs the reader to wait until the end to get the whole story, and there is a really good story here but it’s pushed way to the back of the book. Maybe I missed the clues, but I never had that “Oh, I know what’s going on” feeling that a good mystery gives me, before the “Oh, but I didn’t see that” bit comes along.

I’m sounding more negative than I feel now, I enjoyed the conclusion of the story and I’m definitely intrigued enough that I’ll be back to see what the author does next.