I’ll let you in on a secret: much as I struggle to read two books by the same author close together, there are certain writers whose diversity of approach enables me to sidestep this consideration. One such personage is Erle Stanley Gardner, and I’m starting to suspect that E.C.R. Lorac might be another. Lorac’s country-set novels featuring Inspector Robert Macdonald are very different beasts to his London-based cases, and Death of an Author (1935) — not featuring Macdonald at all — is different again: a zesty, propulsive, and supremely clever little puzzler dug out from seemingly inescapable obscurity by the British Library for our not inconsiderable enjoyment.

In the latter stages of World War 2, artist Bruce Manaton is painting the portrait of a friend dressed in the robes of a cardinal, and his sister Rosanne fretting about the efficacy of the blackout curtains on the studio where they live, when there is a knock at the door. It seems that a special constable has discovered the body of murdered Old Mr. Folliner, the Manatons’ miserly landlord, and apprehended the killer as he was fleeing. Leaving the suspect in the care of the five people in the studio — two chess-playing friends have also dropped by for the evening — the constable summons the police, and before long Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald finds himself with another complex tangle to unfurl.