James Sant, Enigma
An officer returning from India is involved in a murder mystery.
Albany de Grenier de Fonblanque (1830-1924) wrote a dozen novels between 1859 and 1892. This one has a clever, lively narrator (not averse to straining for a joke now and then), a suspenseful (if absurd) plot that lives up to the title, and several amusingly annoying characters.
“The ‘Tangled Skein’ is no unfitting title for a story which even the author himself is at a loss to unravel. It is a sensation novel of the most approved type. There is a murder, of which a baronet, a peer, and a tinker are suspected in turn. There are secret marriages and illegitimate children, and hidden papers, and haunted rooms, and intelligent detectives, and all the regular apparatus of excitement and horror. However, the novel is well written and sparkling, and those who like this class of literature might spend their time worse than in exercising their wits over Mr. Fonblanque’s puzzle.” Reader, January 10, 1863
“A modern tale of mystery, with detective police, telegraphic messages and express trains. Withal, it is well written, and there is nothing forced in the descriptions or in the manner in which the incidents are related. . . . There are no highly-wrought passages, wherein any appeal is made to the reader’s feelings, but the interest is so well sustained, and the various incidents so ingeniously and mysteriously interwoven, that ‘A Tangled Skein’ bids fair to become a popular work.” Athenaeum, February 21, 1863
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