The Red House Mystery

infobox Book |
name = The Red House Mystery
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover - reproduction
author = A. A. Milne
illustrator =
cover_artist = Frank Wright
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Mystery Novel
publisher = Methuen (UK) & E.P. Dutton (USA)
release_date = 6th April 1922
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Red House Mystery" is a "Whodunit" mystery novel by A. A. Milne, published in 1922. It was Milne's only mystery novel; he is better known for his children's stories and poems.

Plot introduction

The setting is batchelor Mark Ablett's English country house loaded with guests, including a British major, a wilful actress, and a young jock athlete. Mark's long-lost brother Robert, the black sheep of the family, arrives from Australia and is found murdered in a locked room. Mark Ablett has disappeared so Tony Gillingham and his friend Bill decide to investigate, progressing almost playfully through the novel while the clues mount up the theories abound.

Literary significance & criticism

"The Red House Mystery" was immediately popular; Alexander Woollcott called it "one of the three best mystery stories of all time", and Raymond Chandler, in his 1944 essay "The Simple Art of Murder" called it "an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks."

In his introduction to the 1926 UK edition, A. A. Milne said he had "a passion" for detective stories, having "all sorts of curious preferences" about them: though in real life the best detectives and criminals are professionals, Milne demanded that the detective be an unscientific amateur, accompanied by a likeable Watson, rubbing shoulders with an amateur villain against whom dossiers and fingerprints are of no avail. cite book |last=Milne |first=Alan Alexander |title=The Red House Mystery |origyear=1922 |year=1926 |publisher=Methuen |location=London |pages=ix-xii |chapter=Introduction (dated April 1926) |accessdate=2008-05-21 ]

Chandler's essay rejects this model, declaring that "It is the ladies and gentlemen of what Mr. Howard Haycraft (in his book "Murder for Pleasure") calls the Golden Age of detective fiction that really get me down." He uses "The Red House Mystery" to illustrate the problems he saw in many mystery stories of this type, particularly the central puzzle (which was intricate and clever but implausible in many ways) and the fact that the amateur detective's chance to shine comes only because the police are incompetent and surprisingly willing to put up with a "brash amateur" romping through their territory ("English police seem to endure him with their customary stoicism; but I shudder to think of what the boys down at the Homicide Bureau in my city would do to him.")

Chandler noted that "The Red House Mystery" seemed to have been in print in the US for about sixteen years. "That happens to few books of any kind." By 1948 there had been 23 editions published in the UK. The next UK reprint is scheduled for November 2008. [cite web |url=http://www.publishingnews.co.uk/pn/pno-news-display.asp?K=e2008032711415436&sg9t=0ca0056d1785bcb103780e0bf5a45632
title=Introducing Christopher Robin, Detective… |accessdate=2008-05-23 |year=2008 |format=html |publisher=Publishing News Online |quote=It will be published in the Vintage Classics series on 6 November [2008] , price £10.]

Release details

*1922, UK, Methuen (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1922, hardback (First edition)
*1922, USA, E. P. Dutton (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1922, hardback
*1926, UK, Methuen, includes an introduction by A. A. Milne (dated April 1926)
*1970, USA, E. P. Dutton (ISBN 0-525-18941-6), Pub date ? May 1970, hardback
*1980, USA, Dell Publishing (ISBN 0-440-17376-0), Pub date ? November 1980, paperback (a Murder Ink(R) Mystery)
*1983, UK, Methuen Publishing (ISBN 0-413-52040-4), Pub date 5 May 1983, hardback
*1992, UK, John Curley & Assoc (ISBN 0-7927-0853-9), Pub date ? March 1992, paperback (Large print books)
*2000, UK, Dover Publications (ISBN 0-486-40129-4), Pub date 1 February 2000, paperback
*2002, USA, BJU Press (ISBN 1-57924-702-4), Pub date ? January 2002, paperback
*2003, UK, Wildside Press (ISBN 1-59224-219-7), Pub date ? October 2003, paperback
*2005, UK, Dodo Press (ISBN 1-905432-90-9), Pub date 30 September 2005, paperback
*2008, UK, Vintage Classics (ISBN 978-0099521266), expected Pub date 6 November 2008, hardback [cite web |url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-House-Mystery-Milne/dp/0099521261 |title=Amazon.co.uk: The Red House Mystery|accessdate=2008-10-05]

References

External links

*gutenberg|no=1872|name=The Red House Mystery
* [http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html "The Simple Art of Murder"]