Cabaret Macabre

This was my first Tim Mead book and the third in a series of this detective and stage magician pair-up. Set in 1938 it was a bit Agatha Christie but with more dead bodies than a Midsomer Murders episode. Lots of twists, lots of victims, lots of guilty parties. And a surprise ending that told us that we should have been asking more questions all the way through.

This was the review I put on another site after a bit more thought:

Set in 1938 and mostly in a grand English country house it's like Agatha Christie but with more dead bodies than Midsomer Murders. And also more over-contrived ways of killing people. And also more murderers than Christie ever needed. It's quietly funny, simply because of the way it pokes fun at the Christie world. The detective is partnered by a stage magician, one has the crime experience and the other knows how to understand misdirection and illusion. I took it kind of seriously at first but started to see the absurdity slowly building up by the halfway mark. And then he drops a very unexpected ending, and then he drops another even more unexpected ending, and then a third unexpected ending. He knows how to overkill.