The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop is the second Mrs. Bradley mystery, published in 1930. It is written in a flippant, comic style and depicts Mrs. Bradley, a psychoanalyst (very 30s), as all-knowing.
When Rupert Sethleigh’s solicitor appears at his house about a will, his cousin, Jim Redsey, says he left unexpectedly for America. No one else in the household seems to be aware of Sethleigh’s departure, and Jim Redsey behaves in a suspicious manner. Then human remains are discovered, dismembered in the local butcher’s shop but lacking a head. Inspector Grindy soon assumes that the body belongs to Sethleigh, but they have no way of proving it.
So much confusing activity goes on in this novel that, after a while, I stopped paying attention. The head appears and disappears, someone in a Robin Hood outfit almost kills Mrs. Bradley with an arrow. A suitcase disappears and reappears. Clothing of the dead man is worn by several people. Some curtains are burned.
One of the events is impossible. The skull is found and taken to an artist, Cleaver Wright, for reconstruction. It returns looking like Sethleigh but constructed on a coconut. The skull is lost again. But you can’t do facial construction on a coconut. Nor, if you’ve finished it on a skull, could you remove it and put it on a coconut. It’s just silly.
The next-to-last chapter is Mrs. Bradley’s notebook, with which we are expected to correlate her comments with the appropriate chapter of the book. I didn’t bother.
What? Me Read? 
Oh dear! This is on my TBR as it’s one of Martin Edwards “100 Books”. I suspected i wouldn’t like it much because I disliked the TV adaptation years ago, but it sounds even worse than I feared!
I certainly didn’t go for it, but maybe Martin had another reason for putting it on his list than its quality as a mystery. Maybe for having a psychoanalyst as the main character?
I can’t remember, but I always check what he had to say about each book when I get around to reading them, so I’ll find out then!
I haven’t seen this list. I guess I could google it.
It’s from his book The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. I’m on a mission to read them all for my Murder. Mystery, Mayhem challenge, although some of them are either impossible to get hold of or very expensive to track down second hand copies of. But I expect to read at least 70 of them.
Wow!