Murder in Haxford

November 28, 2022
Early in Bleiweiss’s charming sequel to 2022’s Pignon Scorbion and the Barbershop Detectives, likewise set in 1910 England, Police Chief Insp. Pignon Scorbion witnesses a tragedy at the Haxford Town Fair and Feast: the crash of a hot-air balloon. But the dead balloonist inside the smashed gondola didn’t perish from the fall—he was killed by an arrow to the chest. The case presents multiple puzzles, starting with the corpse’s identity. The woman who first identifies it as her husband changes her mind, and there’s no simple explanation as to how the murderer could have shot the fatal arrow while the balloon was aloft. Furthermore, only six balloons were scheduled to fly that day; the downed one constituted a seventh. Scorbion, aided by his eccentric group of amateur investigators who congregate at Calvin Brown’s Barbershop, including a crime reporter, a printing press mechanic, and a bookstore owner, seek to get to the bottom of the multiple mysteries. Bleiweiss keeps things breezy while making it fair for readers to anticipate the solution. Golden age fans will be pleased. Agent: Nicole Resciniti, Seymour Agency.

February 15, 2023
The detective is named Pignon Scorbion. Where that moniker came from, and how to pronounce it, author Bleiweiss sayeth naught. This is the second novel in his series of parody/pastiches of Golden Age detective stories. It's 1910 in an English village marinating in quaintness, and the crime is suitably odd: a balloonist takes an arrow through the heart, and the details don't add up. Enter Chief Inspector Scorbion, an amalgam of Holmes, Poirot, and maybe Philo Vance. But Bleiweiss layers the eccentricities on with a trowel: surely none of these old sleuthing gods would say he plans to "utilize the telephone to ring him up," or speak of someone's "distinctly bespoke footwear." This affectation is sanded down in the second half of the book, which introduces a fresh corpse--a landscape artist and maybe forger who augments his income with loan sharking. The cast is suitably quirky but manageable in size, making it easier for Scorbion to gather the unusual suspects at the end and unleash a few detective lightning bolts. Never mind Scorbion's saddle shoes and blue-lensed glasses, this one is great fun.

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January 1, 2023
Two more mysteries for Chief Inspector Pignon Scorbion and his supportive sidekicks in a 1910 English village. The first and more arresting of the cases involves a murder than may not have even taken place in Haxford. When a hot air balloon crashes in the village fairground, Scorbion discovers Charlie Thornton, its only passenger, shot to death with an arrow. Not long before, Thornton and his friend Ronald Parker, convinced that Brookdale blacksmith Oscar Sneed had fleeced them in a poker game, shot him with a crossbow, left his body in a ditch, and obligingly provided each other with alibis that prevented Chief Inspector Jayson from arresting them. Now who could have discharged an arrow into Thornton and then escaped without a trace? The answer, sad to say, is a good deal less interesting than the question. In the briefer and less elaborate second case, loan shark and painter Archie Williams' tonsorial session with barbershop owner Calvin Brown's employee Yves ends abruptly when he's found dead in the chair, the victim of massive doses of poison presumably administered in the paints he used to produce his works. Since laborer Owen Johnson, gambling plumber Bertram Tilson, and jeweler Gerald Evans all owed him hefty sums, there are suspects aplenty, and the one Scorbion fastens on isn't especially surprising. The path to the solution is strewn with conversational gems like Scorbion's admonition to hostile newspaper publisher Faustin Hardcastle: "Throw your darts as well as you can at the bullseye that you perceive to be me, but be assured that I will never be intimidated by you." Soothing retro puzzles for fans who long for the return of Hercule Poirot.

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