The Abandoned Room

A good book! Very well-written and holds you while you read through. You are eager to know who was the one. Turns pretty spooky at a time ...and a very unexpected end. Find out yourself! :)

I do not know anything about this author or any other books he may have written. I wish I did, because this is ALMOST a very good book. I wonder if the author ever realized his full potential.

Bobby Blackburn can remeber the first part of the evening when his grandfather was murdered. The problem is, he cannot remember what happened the rest of the night, or how he ended up in the neighborhood of his grandfather's house the next morning.

This is a good locked room mystery , for the most part. The cast includes Bobby, his extremely unpleasant grandfather, his beautiful cousin, a lawyer who gives bad advice, a superstitious doctor who gives the mystery its properly eerie overtones, a somewhat shady Panamanian friend of Bobby's, and a mysteriuous woman in black, along with with two cocksure but not very competent detectives and the District Attorney.

The are some things which detract from the story. That the protagonist is egregiously stupid is part of it, since he never thinks to ask who would benefit if he is successfully framed for the murder. A second problem is that the author suddenly changes the relationships between all of the characters three-quarters of the way through the book. A third is that, in the final pages the author suddenly adds a new supernatural aspect to the story, which is just too much. The final complaint might be that the solution to the locked room problem is somewhat of a let-down, but I have found that this is almost always true in this type of mystery, even those written by masters of the form.

Despite my complaints, I think this is enjoyable light reading. I hope that anyone who knows of more works by this author will let me know.