Slippery Staircase

E. R. C. Lorac is a wonderful mystery writer of the Golden Age of mysteries. Hopefully, more of her work will be republished.

Two old ladies, estranged sisters living apart, lose their lives by falling down a staircase. Scotland Yard finds that a strange coincidence. Inspector Macdonald looks into the second death.The setting is appealing — a vast and opulent old London house that has been converted into flats. The large rooms, high ceilings and magnificent central staircase make for a somewhat creepy atmosphere. The old lady who fell, Miss Fanny Seeley, lived on the top floor. Macdonald has great difficulty tracing her family connections. Photos have even been cut out of her old family album.The inhabitants of the house are a diverse lot — an old man once a matinee idol, a hard-eyed widow with a drug-addicted younger sister, a young aviator who has borrowed the flat while the tenants are away, and an Amazon of a woman who owns the house and inhabits the largest part of it. Macdonald looks for his murderer among these people and their friends. A party was in full force the night the old lady died.E.C.R. Lorac does a workmanlike job of plotting this 1938 Golden Age mystery. The characters are strong and believable. But the murder method is so complicated, that it almost lost my interest. I also found Macdonald’s calculations of people’s movements to the second a bit tedious. Mathematical-minded readers may not feel this way.But I really enjoyed Lorac’s Case in the Clinic, so I’m still interested in this author. She wrote a total of seventy-one mysteries under two pseudonyms, and I’m betting that at least some are as good as Case in the Clinic. Reprints are coming this year from British Library Crime Classics. I’ll be getting them.

E.C.R. Lorac was one of the less well known mystery writers of the British "Golden Age." While not as clever as Agatha Christie or as witty as some of the other authors of this period, she could be very good on occasion. Slippery Staircase is one of those occasions. With a number of interesting suspects and some unsuspected plot twists, it is one of her better efforts. Lorac deserves to be read more than she is these days. Fortunately, some of her works our reappearing in print.

Perfect book. I will buy more from the seller.

A surprisingly unsatisfying story from Lorac, who wrote a few other mysteries I rate higher. The set-up to the first death in the house is a bit long, and the house itself is more interesting than some of the goings-on. In fact, floor plans could have helped. Once McDonald starts investigating the tale picks up steam, but runs down near the end as he reconstructs the killing with so much emphasis on timing that it became boring. The mechanics behind the crime seem terribly convoluted, and the motive equally hard to swallow.

A mystery set in an old London townhouse. An artist's daughter renovates and rents out flats in her father's Regency townhouse. She keeps her father's old studio for herself, and on the first floor (the second floor to North Americans), lives a retired actor. Above him lives a young widow whose sister-in-law is mixed up in the murder which occurs in the house. Next is the flat belonging to two authors who have sub-let their place to an attractive young man. He & his two friends seem to specialize in rowdy parties and athletic running up and down the stairs. In the attic at the very top of the house lives an elderly woman, Miss Fanny Seeley. She is the first victim when she tumbles down the steep attic stairs.There is a lot of sneaking around the spooky old house, with doors which may be sealed up or maybe not, hidden alcoves and a disused back staircase as well as the lethal front staircase and the very dark & unpleasant basement. Very atmospheric - I really liked this book.