The Riddle of Sphinx Island

October 21, 2013
Raichev's formulaic eighth homage to mystery fiction's Golden Age (after 2012's Murder of Gonzago) is an uneasy pastiche of the 1930s and the present. Maj. Hugh Payne and his wife, mystery writer Antonia Darcy, are inveigled by Payne's aunt to visit the isolated de Coverley home on Sphinx Island, off the Devon coast, where a tedious "murder game" has been planned in honor of Payne and Darcy's 10th anniversary. Meanwhile, the island's owner intends to sell the place to the loathsome Oswald Ramskritt, much to the dismay of her mentally ill brother. Also present in this classically isolated setting are two women with unhealthy ties to Ramskritt, a German doctor, an actor, and another crime writer. Not surprisingly, they all have secrets. There are references galore to Christie and other famous writers of the period, but having characters talk in the arch style that was all the rage 80 years ago grates on the modern ear. Moreover, the characters would have to double in depth to be paper-thin. That makes it hard to care who is eventually murdered and why.