My huge thanks to Poppy Delingpole and Sophie Ransom for inviting me to be part of the launch celebrations for The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Published by Head of Zeus on 12th October 2023, The Murder Wheel is available for purchase here.

The Murder Wheel

1938, London. Young lawyer Edmund Ibbs has a new client: a woman accused of shooting her husband in the already infamous ‘Ferris Wheel Murder’ case.

The case proves to be a web of conspiracy, and Ibbs himself is accused when a second suspicious death occurs, during a magic act at the crowded Pomegranate Theatre.

Also present at the theatre is Joseph Spector, illusionist turned highly respected sleuth. Spector begins to investigate the mystery, but when another body is discovered later that same night, all evidence points to Ibbs being guilty.

With time against him, and a host of hangers-on all having something to hide, can Spector uncover the guilty party, or will he and Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard conclude that Ibbs is the culprit after all?

My Review of The Murder Wheel

Carla Dean has been arrested for murdering her husband.

Warmly written with wit and oh so clever plotting, The Murder Wheel is an absolute gem of its genre and a joy to read. It’s top notch writing with pitch perfect storytelling and I loved it. As an example of a kind of Golden Age crime writing I think it outshines them all. There literally is a smoking gun and a locked room mystery and all is not as it seems, so that discovering clues along with Edmund Ibbs, Joseph Spector and Inspector Flint makes for huge engagement with the narrative. I loved the evidence cross-referencing in the latter parts of the story. 

The characters are well depicted so that they instantly become people the reader is invested in, enhancing the total enjoyment in reading The Murder Wheel. I loved the way dialogue helped uncover who they are as people, and not having read the first Joseph Spector book, Death and the Conjurer, didn’t detract at all, but has made me determined to catch up with it because I enjoyed The Murder Wheel so much. I also fully appreciated the scope for reencountering some of the characters in future stories even though this narrative is brilliantly and satisfactorily concluded.

Whilst there is a high body count, there’s no gratuitous gore or unnecessary violence so that the reader can relax into the why and how of the crimes rather than having the what of them forced upon them. Tom Mead knows exactly how to engage as he explores means, motive and considerable morality here. The denouement left me wondering just what I might have done with the information he uncovers so that the story resonated long after I’d finished reading it, adding to the enjoyment. 

I loved the title. There’s a physical murder wheel – the Ferris wheel where Carla Dean’s husband has died, but there’s a metaphorical wheel of fortune as characters find their zenith and nadirs and there’s a real sense actions circling back to haunt characters, but you’ll need to read the book to discover them for yourself in this fabulous plotting.

The Murder Wheel is a delicious mystery that keeps one step ahead of the reader’s guesses and is immensely entertaining. I thought it was brilliant and cannot recommend it highly enough. I absolutely loved it.

About Tom Mead