Books › The Clocks
The Clocks
438 pages
A delightfully bizarre puzzle box that invites you to sit back and watch a master untangle the impossible.
What it feels like
Reading this mystery feels like sitting down to a perfectly constructed, slightly surreal jigsaw puzzle. The atmosphere is distinctly quaint yet laced with the eerie, ticking tension of a crime scene that makes absolutely no logical sense. It moves at a steady, methodical pace, relying heavily on crisp dialogue and sharp character observations rather than action or gore. The narrative splits its time between a young, active investigator and an aging, brilliant armchair detective, creating a delightful contrast in how the mystery is approached. It is a deeply cozy, intellectually stimulating experience that rewards readers who love to sift through red herrings and hidden identities. Ultimately, it offers the profound satisfaction of watching chaos neatly ordered by pure, unadulterated logic.
- Mood
- cozy
- baffling
- quaint
- suspenseful
- Tone
- analytical
- wry
- methodical
- playful
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- armchair deduction · hidden identities · the illusion of time · suburban secrets
- The writing
- Crisp, dialogue-heavy, and unadorned, designed to deliver clues and character quirks with maximum efficiency.
- The arc
- Begins with a delightfully bizarre and disorienting puzzle that slowly resolves into a deeply satisfying, logical clarity.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love a bloodless, intricate puzzle box and delight in watching a genius detective solve a crime without leaving his chair.
Content notes
- murder
- mild peril
About the book
Sheila Webb, typist-for-hire, has arrived at 19 Wilbraham Crescent in the seaside town of Crowdean to accept a new job. What she finds is a well-dressed corpse surrounded by five clocks. Mrs Pebmarsh, the blind owner of No. 19, denies all knowledge of ringing Sheila’s secretarial agency and asking for her by name — yet someone did. Nor does she own that many clocks. And neither woman seems to know the victim. Colin Lamb, a young intelligence specialist working a case of his own at the nearby naval yard, happens to be on the scene at the time of Sheila Webb’s ghastly discovery. Lamb knows of only one man who can properly investigate a crime as bizarre and baffling as what happened inside No. 19 — his friend and mentor, Hercule Poirot.
Description from Open Library.
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