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    Murder Has a Motive
    Murder Has a Motive
    Murder Has a Motive
    Audiobook9 hours

    Murder Has a Motive

    Written by Francis Duncan

    Narrated by John Curless

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    About this audiobook

    Amateur sleuth Mordecai Tremaine must solve a small-town mystery before the next victim takes their final bow When Mordecai Tremaine emerges from the train station, murder is the last thing on his mind. But he has never been able to resist anything in the nature of a mystery-and a mystery is precisely what awaits him in the village of Dalmering. Rehearsals for the local amateur dramatic production are in progress. When the star of the show is found dead, the spotlight falls on Mordecai, whose reputation in the field of crime-solving precedes him. With a murderer waiting in the wings, it is up to Mordecai to derail the killer's performance.before the curtain closes on another victim. Author bio: Francis Duncan was the author of more than twenty crime novels published between 1937 and 1959.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 2, 2018
    ISBN9781501962059
    Author

    Francis Duncan

    Francis Duncan is the pseudonym for William Underhill, who was born in 1918. He lived virtually all his life in Bristol and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War II, landing in France shortly after D-Day. After the war, he trained as a teacher and spent the rest of his life in education. He died in 1988.

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    Reviews for Murder Has a Motive

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Amateur detective and "murder magnet" Mordecai Tremaine teams up with Police Inspector Boyce to investigate a series of bloody murders in the English country village of Dalmering. Tremaine can play the role of the ditsy old man as well as he does the sharp amateur detective. This leads people to talk to him and share things they don't want to tell the police; as the British say, he muddles through. In this case, he solves the crimes in spectacular fashion; there's a dramatic reveal scene and would be terrific on screen. It's a solid whodunit, typical of the 1940's when it was written. A good read.
    • 4/5
      Mordecai Tremaine, fascinated with murder and involved in helping the police with two real-life murder cases since his retirement, happens to be visiting friends in the small town of Dalmering on the same day Lydia Dare has been found stabbed to death. He is a self-effacing man, who seems to have a knack for understanding the motivations of his fellow man, which can be very helpful in solving murder cases. Inspector Boyce of Scotland Yard, who has been called in to head the investigation, again allows Mordecai to assist him. As Mordecai attends the rehearsals for the play that Dalmering’s residents are putting on, “Murder Has a Motive – A Play in Three Acts,” he soon realizes that reality seems to be mirroring the acts of the play. When a second murder takes place, Mordecai realizes he must act quickly before the third act is played out in real life.Murder Has a Motive was originally published in 1947 and is the first book in the Mordecai Tremaine series by Francis Duncan. Duncan’s writing style is very easy to read, and I was instantly drawn into the story. There isn’t a lot of action or suspense in the book, but it moved along well and included a surprise or two. Inspector Boyce is not the clueless, blundering policeman that one sometimes finds in amateur detective books, but it is still all Mordecai with the final solution, who gathers the cast together in the final scene to unmask the murder. It is a solid piece of Golden Age detective fiction, with a compelling plot.I enjoyed this quote at the end of the book as Mordecai wrestles with consequences of his investigation."You couldn’t see only beauty in the world. You had to see the disfiguring stains, the sordid and sprawling things, too. Because that was life. Life was ugly and untidy besides being beautiful and marvelous and full of wonder. You had to see the dirt as well as the stars. To see the dirt and not become a cynic, to hold fast to one’s ideals, to preserve one’s belief in the underlying decencies of humanity—that was the real purpose of living."I received this book from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      This book was great. Once started I had to end it.
      The writer is good on building the atmosphere of mistrust and fear and to play with the idyllic settings against the brutal murders.
      It contains a lot of elements of the Golden Age of Mystery and, though it is nearly 70 years old it had stood the test of time
      I never heard about Francis Duncan before and went looking for other mystery he wrote.
      Many thanks to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for giving me the chance to read and review this book