This book is everything I hate about reading Dickens. Even the big twist at the end couldn't save it as a mystery.

A gaslight crime story written in the 1890's, which uses a Dickensian style, which grated a bit after a while.

D.N.F It took too long to get to the point

This is described as the first "locked room" mystery ever published, which is why I read it. Despite being published in 1895, I definitely didn't guess who the killer was before it was revealed. I was surprised at how FUNNY it was, too.

while I wasn't expecting much because I have read and watched so many mysteries that some just become predictable but this was not. It had me guessing till the very end and i had no idea about where it would go until the final page. Israel presents 2 conclusions which both seem plausible where only one is true and it is done so well I truly never saw it coming from the beginning till the end. The only reason I give it 4 stars is that it took so long for us to get any remnant of an answer to the problem that I was 20 pages left and felt like I had learnt nothing. There was no air of mystery or any solving of the problem till the end, there was no set journey.

This is described as the first "locked room" mystery ever published, which is why I read it. Despite being published in 1895, I definitely didn't guess who the killer was before it was revealed. I was surprised at how FUNNY it was, too.