"Death and the Conjuror"

Tom Mead is a UK crime fiction author specialising in locked-room mysteries.

He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, International Thriller Writers, and the Society of Authors.

Mead applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, Death and the Conjuror, and reported the following:

As it happens, page 69 of Death and the Conjuror is a pivotal point in the narrative. The story concerns three interlinked and seemingly impossible crimes in 1930s London; a murder, the theft of a priceless painting known as El Nacimiento, and a final equally baffling murder. On page 69 the detective character- a retired music hall magician named Joseph Spector- is discussing the second of these crimes with Inspector George Flint of Scotland Yard:

“Oh, the whole thing’s gone all right. Not a trace of painting or frame,” Spector said almost gleefully. “The window was bolted on the inside, but of course it was much too small to remove the painting anyway.”

So the Page 69 Test works very well indeed: it brings us to a point in the story where two of the main characters are in conversation, imparting several salient clues and details relating to the stolen painting.

The linking factor between each of the crimes in Death and the Conjuror is the fact that there seems to be no physical way in which the criminal could actually have perpetrated them. By the time we reach page 69, the first gruesome murder has already been committed inside a locked room, and the theft of a painting from an upstairs room of a house on the other side of London (during a cocktail party, no less) merely compounds the criminal’s apparent uncanniness. But of course, Scotland Yard has recruited Joseph Spector for a reason: his knowledge of illusion, magic and misdirection gives him a unique insight into what makes the impossible possible.

Visit Tom Mead's website.

My Book, The Movie: Death and the Conjuror.

--Marshal Zeringue