Death at the bar

This was a serviceable mystery with a fairly interesting (although confusing) mechanism, and an okay solution - nothing super mind-blowing.

Luke Watchman falls down dead after being nicked on the hand by an errant dart, when another pub patron attempts to do a dart trick on him. The dart is later found to be laced with cyanide, but the packet of darts was newly opened and all the people in the private bar couldn't have done the poisoning without the others seeing them at it.

I missed Marsh's engaging storytelling, where the story plods along without much drag. There isn't much bloat or filler, which I've come to appreciate after having explored some other golden age mysteries which seem to go on forever. It doesn't hurt that we're back to a good ol' straightforward murder mystery.

But overall, this was just OK. The cast of characters were not very likeable in general. It did play some games with me in terms of who the culprit might be in the end (is it a bluff? A double bluff? A triple bluff?). The solution was satisfying enough, although not as mind-blowingly twisty as I might've hoped.