Ordinarily this section would come first, chronologically speaking, but 160 pages in a detective novel before the first murder occurs is an awfully long time to keep a reader’s interest at a high edge of anticipation. This portion, over 160 pages long, consists entirely of Tremaine’s interactions with the murder victim and his wife and all of the other suspects-to-be. This section is about 90 pages long, and it serves largely as a prologue to Part II, all of which takes place before the murder. Part I consists of the murder and the immediate investigation. The structure of So Pretty a Problem is an odd one, especially at first glance.
He’s done so well at the latter that’s he’s on a first name basis with several policemen at Scotland Yard, and they don’t mind in the least if he does some investigating for them on his own. I don’t have any books there over 20 million.įor an author no one had even heard of a year ago at this time, that’s quite an achievement.ĭuncan’s series character is a chap named Mordecai Tremaine, a retired tobacconist whose hobbies are reading romance novels and solving crimes. Most of the books I have listed for sale on Amazon have rankings in the 3 to 8 millions.
They may not look spectacular, but believe me, they are - especially for detective fiction. Four of his six novels are back in print, and in the list of the titles at the end of this review, I’ve added the current Amazon sales ranking.
It’s strange, but I have a feeling that Francis Duncan’s detective novels are selling now as well as they ever did, if not a whole lot better.
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