The Notched Hairpin

This is another Sherlockian mystery from the inimitable author of A Taste for Honey, and Reply Paid. And once again the meticulous Mr. Mycroft plays the role of detective. The setting is simplicity itself. Here is a lovely arbor in a quiet Shropshire garden. There lies the body of a man killed by the thrust of a slender instrument identifiable as an antique hairpin. Was it really suicide, as Mr. Mycroft's colleague believes? In his quest for the answer, Mr. Mycroft take us from the antiquarian gentility of twin Shropshire houses, through the haunts of a munitions runner and "hotels" of prostitution, to the continent-wide reaches of the slave trade. With him go his friends--among them a murderer--exploring, in the depths of the human mind and soul, motivations and events more uncanny and more sinister than the gentle lady--whose coil of hair the notched hairpin originally must have held--could ever have dreamed of. The result is a mystery as unique as Mr. Heard's other famed tales, and one that will evoke the shades of Baker Street. ISBN: 978-1-57733-233-6 Endorsements "Mr. Heard returns with The Notched Hairpin, after several volumes of fantasy and science fiction, to the detective character of Mr. Mycroft, with whom he so startled the crime-reading world eight years ago in A Taste for Honey. But even this familiar return to an established protagonist he handles with a difference. The names are the same, but the characters have changed. "The Notched Hairpin is essentially a reductio--partly ad absurdum, but also ad verum atque sublime--of the Detective Story. Its only characters are The Detective, The Narrator, The Policeman, The Witness, and The Murderer. It falls neatly into an expository overture, a series of brilliantly cryptic deductions culminating in the answer to Who?, a fantastic flashback to explain the Why?, an elaborate mechanical explanation of the How?, and an expiatory postlude on the theme of What Then?" The New York Times, 1949


Genre: Mystery