Shelf Control #49: Diabolic Candelabra by E.R. Punshon #Mystery #TBR #GoldenAge

Wednesday, June 19–time again for Shelf Control! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, just pick a book from your TBR pile and write a post about it. Link back to Lisa’s page, and do also leave your links in the comments below as I’d love to check out your picks!

This month as I wrote before (last week’s post here), I’m simply featuring random picks from my TBR pile in Shelf Control rather than picking books around my monthly reading ‘theme’ as I usually do since I this month, I’m trying to catch up with reads left over from previous months, and haven’t picked a theme as such. So this week’s pick is another such book, a golden age mystery in fact–Diabolic Candelabra by E.R. Punshon.

Diabolic Candelabra (1942) is the seventeenth in a series of thirty-five mysteries featuring Bobby Owen, who works his way up from police constable to Commander at Scotland Yard over the course of the series. In this one, Inspector Owen’s wife Olive is on the hunt for a recipe for chocolates. But where Owen is concerned, a simple hunt for a chocolate recipe doesn’t as expected remain that. Instead into the recipe are added a wood-dwelling hermit, a girl who talks to animals, an evil stepfather, and two very valuable works of art–of course, a recipe not for chocolate but murder! Described as a ‘beguiling story of labyrinths and seemingly impossible murder’ which is a ‘treat for armchair sleuths’.

I picked this one up (with a couple of others in the series) a few months ago when it was free on Kindle. Having never tried Punshon’s books before, I thought that was a good chance to. As far as this specific story is concerned, I like the description–a recipe for ‘uncommonly good’ chocolates which turns into a complicated puzzle, and that too, a Golden Age mystery–just my cup of tea!

E.R. Punshon
via Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6583643.E_R_Punshon

E.R. (Ernest Robertson) Punshon (1872-1956) was an English novelist and literary critic, most successful in the 1930s and 1940s. He is best known today as the creator of Bobby Owen; the series featuring Owen was published between 1933 and 1956. Punshon also wrote crime and horror short stories, and was reviewer for many of Agatha Christie’s books in the Guardian when they were first published. Find a full list of his works here.

Do you enjoy Golden Age mysteries? Which ones or which authors are your favourites? Have you read Punshon before–this book or any other/s? How did you find them? Looking forward to your thoughts!

All descriptions are from Goodreads and wikipedia, as always.