In these classic reprint-rich days, the work of Tom Mead — not just recycling the past, but building upon it by paying informed homage — feels like a breath of fresh air. His debut Death and the Conjuror (2022) was a genuine puzzle plot filled with the playfulness of this most spirited of genres, and if sophomore effort The Murder Wheel (2023) isn’t quite as successful, Mead deserves huge credit for the love he brings to his writing — and how superbly readable that writing is, never feeling weighed down by an excess of referencing or the weight of the history he is so lovingly revisiting. This is still bags of fun, and bodes well for what I hope is going to be a long and storied career.

Tom Mead is that rare thing these days: an author writing detective fiction in the classic tradition with some actual interest in the classic tradition of detective fiction. When he peppers the text of Death and the Conjuror (2022), his very entertaining and easy-to-read debut novel, with references to the work of R. Austin Freeman, G.K. Chesterton, Melville Davisson Post and others, you know it’s the result of time spent reading the genre rather than a few quick Google searches to give him credibility. And when he plays the games of identity and location as well as he does here, you also know he’s having a joyous time playing in his favourite sandbox…and wonderful it is to see.