The Circular Staircase - Mary Roberts Rinehart

I flew through the last 60% of this mystery. Written in 1908 the novel didn´t feel dated and it´s acually been an awful lot of fun to read this book, especially since the main character has a wonderfully dry humour and a whole lot of the other characters are suffering from severe cases of superstition. And I liked the British feel of it, so it took me completely by surprise when I realized half way through the book that the story is actually is set in America.

 

The plot may be a little bit too out there and there are too many mysteries and riddles at once for it being a believable scenario, but Mary Roberts Rinehart has managed to write a satisfactory ending so I can live with that. And I have a hard time believing what happened in the end:

 

I cannot believe that a upper lip mustache and a bad hair cut can be such perfect disguise. I would like to believe a clever woman like Rachel would be able to recognize that Alex and Jack are the same person. Despite having seen him only for a short amount of time before everything went down the drain.

(show spoiler)

This book has been written by an author that has been born before 1955.

 

Page count: 362 pages 

Money earned: $6.00