Book Review: You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson & Jay Cooper
November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery? Keep reading for a review from John Valeri.
New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson (the Truly Devious/Stevie Bell series) and illustrator Jay Cooper (The Spy Next Door)—each distinguished in their respective fields of words and/or imagery—just may be the proverbial partners in crime. Longtime friends, the two first collaborated on 2021’s Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village—a prose and Gory-like picture book serving as a tutorial on how to survive seemingly cozy yet surprisingly crime-ridden hamlets. Now, they’ve once again teamed up, this time for a solve-it-yourself mystery that recalls the popular “dossier” whodunits of the Golden Age: You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder.
The book opens with a “Dear Detective” letter … and you are that detective! This brief missive solicits your cooperation in investigating a “baffling situation” that New Scotland Yard has thus far failed to resolve. To further entice your interest, its author—Harold Jensen, Detective Chief Supervisor of the Metropolitan Police—promises the contents of the case file, including personal insights and a cache of evidentiary materials. Needless to say, the contents are confidential, and you must proceed with all due discretion.
Here are the facts of the case. On the evening of Monday, November 27, 1933, Constable Reginald Jenkins is summoned to Finsdale Fine Tailoring, where the owner and proprietor, Mr. Edward Finsdale, furnishes him with an anonymously written letter that was dropped through the mail slot; it reads: “Send police to 19 Tootley Row at once. There has been a murder.” Suspecting the note to be a ruse of some sort, Constable Jenkins nevertheless reports to the address as directed—an opulent townhouse owned by socialite Ambrose Belvoir—and learns that there’s a small gathering in progress. Invited to take a look around, Jenkins discovers six other individuals in the Sitting Room, one of whom is slumped in his chair—apparently asleep but, upon closer examination, actually dead from a puncture wound to the chest. A bloody ice pick is found underneath his chair.
The victim is famed American novelist (and notorious crank) Roy Peterson. He died in a roomful of company and yet nobody saw, or suspected, a thing—at least not that they’ll admit to. Jenkins soon learns that each of Belvoir’s guests received an anonymous note summoning them to Tootley Row at risk of their individual misdeeds (which range from addictions to affairs) being exposed. Everybody’s a suspect, as they say, but nobody emerges as a primary person of interest. That’s where you come in. The case file, as it is, represents the entirety of Scotland Yard’s inquisition and includes relevant documents, floor plans, interview transcripts, newspaper clippings, photographs, poison pen communications, and other ephemera. Everything you need to know to solve the case is contained within. And at the book’s end, you’ll find a sealed letter that explains how and why Peterson died, and by whose hand. Indeed, it’s foul play made fair.
With You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder, Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper have revived the dossier mystery in grand style. Accessible and appealing to aspiring sleuths and more casual genre readers alike, the book is also painstakingly plotted and presented, which becomes increasingly apparent in retrospect. Easy (and F-U-N fun) reading is often the hallmark of hard, well-honed work, and this collaboration stands as proof. A second volume is set to follow, meaning the tradition has not only been resurrected but will continue into the foreseeable future.
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