Dean Street Press| 2016| 255 pages| e-book|3.5* rounded up to 4*

This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. After my disappointment reading The Red Lacquer Case by Patricia Wentworth I decided to see if Who Pays the Piper? was any better. And I’m delighted to say that it is. It was originally published in 1940, so 16 years later than The Red Lacquer Case. It’s the 2nd book in the Inspector Ernest Lamb Mysteries. This new edition published by Dean Street Press features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Description from Dean Street Press:

Lucas Dale, new owner of King’s Bourne, was flirting with danger when he showed his priceless collection of pearls to the guests assembled in his period salon. But when, under threat, he forced lovely Susan Lenox to break her engagement and consent to marry him, he started a train of events that inevitably led to murder, shattering the quiet of the English village. Bill Carrick, Susan’s former fiancé, is the primary suspect, but as Inspector Ernest Lamb and Detective Frank Abbott soon discover, Dale’s questionable past offered motives of revenge and greed to darken the mystery. Motives which would lead another victim into the path of murder…

It’s a murder mystery, so that may explain why I prefer this one to The Red Lacquer Case, as I do enjoy crime fiction more than stories about enemy agents and unconvincing kidnappers that left me feeling exasperated. Who Pays the Piper? is complicated, with many twists and turns, convincing characters and plenty of suspects with plausible motives, along with red herrings – very much like some of Agatha Christie’s plots.

The title is part of the saying ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ meaning that the person who provides the money for something decides what will be done, or has a right to decide what will be done. The ‘piper’ in the title is Lucas Dale, who in the opening pages declares that he always gets what he wants. And having bought Bourne House from Mrs O’Hara what he wants is Susan Lennox, her niece. He forces her to agree to marry him and break her engagement with Bill Carrick, which in turn makes him a prime suspect when Lucas is found dead, shot through the back of his head. Bill had been overheard threatening to kill him. 

But he is not the only suspect and it is down to Inspector Ernest Lamb and Sergeant Frank Abbott (who also appear in some of the Miss Silver books) to investigate the case. They discover Dale’s questionable past includes others with a motive to kill him. There is his ex-wife wife, Cora de Lisle and Vincent Bell, his American business partner who both wanted money from Dale. I thoroughly enjoyed trying to unravel it all, even though when the murderer was revealed I was rather surprised.