The Cheltenham Square Murder

De: John Bude

Narrado por: Gordon Griffin

In the seeming tranquility of Regency Square in Cheltenham live the diverse inhabitants of its 10 houses. One summer's evening the square's rivalries and allegiances are disrupted by a sudden and unusual death - an arrow to the head, shot through an open window at no. 6. Unfortunately for the murderer, an invitation to visit had just been sent by the crime writer Aldous Barnet, staying with his sister at no. 8, to his friend Superintendent Meredith. Three days after his arrival, Meredith finds himself investigating the shocking murder. Six of the square's inhabitants are keen members of the Wellington Archery Club, but if Meredith and Long thought that the case was going to be easy to solve, they were wrong....

©2016 Estate of John Bude (P)2017 Soundings

A tantalizing plot!

A masterful work of literature that made me cling to a discrepancy in the evidence for half the book to prove I had correctly deduced the murderer.

Great Cozy!

I enjoy listening to a great cozy mystery from the golden age of mystery writers and this one did not disappoint. I thought that narrator did a fine job and has now become one of my favorites. This mystery had a few good twists and turns. And liked how it gradually illuminated who the culprit was and it became more about finding out just how the murders were done.

Not a bad cozy mystery

I enjoyed this mystery and listening to the solving of the crime. There are numerous suspects who are knowledgeable in the art of Archery, which is the means of the murder. A bow and an arrow used to kill from a nearby house but with some intricacy involved in the doing. So the archer has to be more than an amateur.
Was good to listen to while dozing to sleep

Implausible Plot, Slow Detective Work

Sometimes you come across one of these old British mysteries and are astonished never to have heard of it.

Then again, there’s this sort of book where you understand why it dropped into obscurity for decades.

The chief inspector is no omniscient or even charming egghead. He writes a lot of pros and cons lists. He has a lot of sticktuitiveness. But he lacks the charm and quirks of the classic detective hero.

There are very few interesting characters and quite a few tropes who are quite predictable—the bickering spinster sisters, the masculine single woman who cares only for dogs, a selfish stockbroker. And although this takes place in a charming part of England, little physical description or sense of place unlike the books of ERC Lorac, for instance, who makes up for slow moving plots with a lot of precise and evocative scene setting and characterization.

The narrator Gordon Griffin is excellent as always. But I just wish he had better material to work with!

Very Entertaining Book

The story was really good and the narrator was brilliant. A great bit of escapism.