I received a digital advance reader’s copy (ARC) of The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. Since this version is just a proof and not the final version, I won’t quote directly and will keep my comments general.

Yes, that A. A. Milne. The Winnie the Pooh guy. Apparently he wrote one mystery novel in his entire life, and it’s being reissued. So naturally I had to see what it was like.

In The Red House Mystery, in the titular country house in England, Mark Ablett is hosting several guests, but the festivities are interrupted when Mark receives a letter from his estranged brother Robert, who is returning to England after over a decade of being abroad. Shortly after Robert’s arrival, though, things go south: Robert is found shot dead, and Mark is missing. So one of the house guests, Bill, and his newly arrived friend Antony, decide to investigate matters on their own.

I’ve mentioned before on this site that I’m a fan of Sherlock Holmes, so clearly I like a good old-fashioned detective story, especially one that’s set in a fancy home. And this one was pretty good!

I liked the cast of characters, though we don’t really get to know most of them that well. They just sort of serve as backdrop and don’t really get any development of their own. But they’re still a quirky English cast, both upstairs and downstairs.

The only characters who really get any depth are Antony, Bill, and Cayley, the assistant and cousin to Mark. Antony and Bill are a fun duo, old buddies unexpectedly reunited and then thrown into a situation neither is really prepared for. Antony sort of decides on a whim to investigate the murder, despite not being a professional detective, and Bill tags along. And as for Cayley, he’s a bit more difficult of a character to describe for me. He’s sometimes an ally, sometimes an obstacle, and generally kind of an odd man. I didn’t really like him, but he was also clearly necessary for the plot to progress, so it was fine.

As for the actual crime-solving, I did find it entertaining that Antony was so self-deprecating about being an amateur. He made lots of jokes about being a wannabe Holmes, and how Bill was clearly his Watson. However, I think the joke slightly overstayed its welcome, especially since of the two dynamic duos, the originals are superior. I felt like a lot of Antony’s “deductions” were more like hunches or guesses. He didn’t obtain nearly enough evidence, in my mind, to support the conclusions he came to. He has good insight into the human mind (or at least, into the mind of a rich white Englishman of that time period), but his ability to actually investigate crimes was rather lacking to me. Really, he just got lucky.

However, in the end, The Red House Mystery is a charming enough glimpse into a beloved writer’s dip into a new genre. The main characters have an excellent rapport with witty dialogue a lot of the time. The setting is fun, a classic old English home that holds plenty of secrets. I think some elements of the mystery could have been better fleshed out, and more could have been done with the side characters, but this was still an entertaining enough read. Nothing to really write home about (if anyone does that still), but not bad.

The new edition of The Red House Mystery will be published on September 3rd, 2024!