As one of the characters writes, "without doubt a most extraordinary concatenation of circumstances." The writing style is a pleasant one and for most of the first half of the book the plot holds your interest. But it falls apart in the latter chapters and devolves into a silly chase at the end. It's a fairly complicated tale that depends on so many of the people involved knowing each other that it stretched the suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. As Martin Edwards mentions in his Introduction to the British Library Crime Classics edition, the too-often used word "Jew" to describe one of the characters was off-putting, but reflected attitudes of the time (1930's Britain.)

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