''Men Die at Cyprus Lodge'' is a 1943

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

John Rhode Cecil John Charles Street (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), who was known to his colleagues, family and friends as John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British Army. During the course of World War I, he became a ...

, the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

of the British writer Cecil Street. It is the thirty eighth in his long-running series of novels featuring

Lancelot Priestley Dr. Lancelot Priestley is a fictional investigator born in July 1869 in a series of books by John Rhode After 1924, Dr. Priestley took over from Dr. Thorndyke as the leading fictional forensic investigator in Britain, and featured in 72 novels ...

, a

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...

armchair detective An armchair detective is a fictional investigator who does not personally visit a crime scene or interview witnesses; instead, the detective either reads the story of the crime in a newspaper or has it recounted by another person. As the armcha ...

. Reviewing it for the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

'',

Anthony Boucher William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher (), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio d ...

wrote "at his best, nobody can touch Rhode for ingenious murder gadgets and very few can top him for meticulous unravelling; he's very close his best in this one".Evans p.78

Synopsis

Cyprus Lodge is a reportedly

haunted house A haunted house, spook house or ghost house in ghostlore is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were otherwise connected with the prope ...

in the English countryside that has remained unoccupied for many years. Ghost hunter Sir Philip Briningham is fascinated by the nineteenth century building but his violent death adds to the rumours about the house. It draws the interest of

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

, and particularly Priestley who becomes convinced that Briningham's death and several others were at the hands of a very human murderer.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Magill, Frank Northen . ''Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Authors, Volume 3''. Salem Press, 1988. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1943 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British crime novels British mystery novels British detective novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set in England {{1940s-novel-stub