Eric Keith

It’s a classic from the Golden Age of the mystery novel. A group of people, each concealing secrets and motives of their own, gather in a remote location only to be picked off one by one by an unknown killer. Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None,” right? Not quite.

It’s been fifteen years since they graduated from Damien Anderson’s Detective Training Agency when a group of former classmates all receive invitations to join him for a class reunion at his isolated, mountain top retreat, Moon’s End. But when the guests arrive, their host is nowhere to be found and mysterious happenings begin to put them all on edge. Missing guns, screams from no one and disappearing room keys all seem to cast an ominous shadow over the weekend reunion.

A search of the small, snow-covered grounds reveals no one else except their host, stuffed in a closet with a knife in his stomach. Further investigation reveals cut phone lines, no internet access, no cell phone signal and a smashed up short wave radio, so there’s no way to contact the authorities, and when an explosion destroys the only bridge off the mountain, there’s no way out until their ride returns in three days.

Frightened, the guests soon discover a note announcing a game called “Nine Man’s Murder.” The note informs them all that they’re going to be killed one by one unless they can use the skills they learned in detective school and unmask the murderer. And soon enough, corpses start to pile up. As the death toll rises, it becomes apparent that the killer must be one of them, and if they want to survive, they must work together yet trust no one.

“Nine Man’s Murder” owes a lot to Agatha Christie and the conventions of the Golden Age of the mystery novel such as the impossible locked room murder, but Keith manages to successfully pay homage to these while still being original. Carefully doling out clues as he sets up the elaborate web of events, secrets, motives and alibis, Keith has certainly created a tale worthy of the comparisons to Christie’s work. “Nine Man’s Murder” is part mystery novel, part horror film and part Clue game, and while it is not without its flaws, it is a thoroughly entertaining puzzle that can be solved if you pay attention. The evidence is all there waiting to be discovered, but be sure to read carefully because Keith, like the Golden Age authors of whodunits before him, doesn’t lie to his readers, but he’s more than happy to trick them.… (més)