Book Review: "The Ten Teacups" by Carter Dickson

Yes, I'm back to reading The British Library Crime Classics collection and this time, they've got some really good stuff on Kindle Unlimited. If you don't know what Kindle Unlimited is, it is a fee of around £8 a month in exchange for however many books you would like to lend from the library and read as long as the book is marked 'Kindle Unlimited' above. The available books include The British Library Crime Classics and The British Library Tales of the Weird and a number of independent authors you probably would have never discovered without it. Plus, you can also show off that you got a book on this offer when it was available for a short time. For example: there are many books I have snatched up on Kindle Unlimited that were only there for a few days before going back to their normal price. I would highly recommend it. It has saved me a fortune on British Library books. Now, on with the review...

The novel begins with a cryptic and unsettling event: a man named Ted Osborne receives an anonymous invitation instructing him to visit a seemingly abandoned house on a quiet London street at a precise time. The note, written in an odd, almost ceremonial tone, piques his curiosity, and despite misgivings, he decides to go. When he arrives, he finds a dimly lit room, arranged in an eerie fashion. At the centre of the room is a table with ten delicate teacups set in a ritualistic pattern, yet the house itself appears to be deserted. Before he can make sense of the situation, something frightens him, and he flees into the night, setting the stage for the sinister events that follow. I'm not going to lie, but this felt so weird because when the title said The Ten Teacups I thought it was going to be a nice tea party like the last one I read from this series.

The next morning, the police make a gruesome discovery: inside the same house where Osborne had been the night before, a man has been found dead. The manner of the crime is baffling: the victim, identified as James Caplon Answell, has been shot at close range, yet there is no sign of forced entry or exit. The doors were locked from the inside, and the only other possible way out, a window that was securely fastened. The murder seems utterly impossible, and the presence of the ten teacups only deepens the mystery. The police are completely baffled, leading them to call upon their best expert in seemingly supernatural crimes: Sir Henry Merrivale. This is all getting very Hound of the Baskervilles with weird supernatural (or supposed supernatural at least) stuff going on. I like to draw these similarities but honestly, I think the pattern might end there.

Before Merrivale can make much progress, another murder occurs under similarly impossible circumstances. The second victim, like the first, had some connection to the mysterious house and its peculiar tea set. This new killing heightens the urgency of the investigation and reinforces the sense of an almost ghostly presence manipulating events. The police are more convinced than ever that they are dealing with something beyond conventional explanation, but Merrivale remains steadfast in his belief that human cunning, rather than supernatural forces, is at work. This is probably the first crime novel I've read where I have used the phrase 'peculiar tea set' and I love it.

The case is complicated by a host of potential suspects, each with their own secrets and motivations. There’s the nervous and evasive Ted Osborne, who was at the scene before the murder took place but swears he saw no one. Then there are members of London’s criminal underworld, who seem terrified at the very mention of The Collector’s name. Merrivale must sort through layers of misdirection, discarded theories, and deceptive alibis to determine who is genuinely involved in the crime and who is merely a pawn in a larger game. The novel expands to include a lot of people very quickly and I like the way it complicates the whole atmosphere. It feels less like an open and shut case and more like something realistic.

All in all, I thought this book was fantastic and the deeper you get into it, the more twisted it becomes. You start to think that perhaps, this does not have to be a supernatural case either - but you still do not believe your eyes sometimes.