Hélène Calvez was noticed by two excellent books featuring murders in locked room. It offers us three beautiful enigmas of insoluble type in the line of "There were four at table" JD Carr. Three variations on the same theme poisoning during a meal. How did they manage assassins introduce poison when they had no opportunity to do so? And three solutions are original and very possible. But that's not all. It's not just these three riddles there anything that goes around, everything that makes the flesh of the novel and there, honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised by the richness of the writing, by erudition shown by the author in various fields. We guess a lot of research. And then there are winks as any fan of puzzle novels should appreciate. Example page 125: "I understand better why the mystery novel is published anymore. What editor would take the risk of publishing books that, at best, would be classified in the catégirie intellectual masturbation ..." or on page 143: "Discovering that his beloved amused puzzles do it, the intellectual game was falling into disuse in favor of the screenplay ease ..." And there are many others. My little phrases like that, I love it! In conclusion: Hélène Calvez makes us rediscover the mystery novel through more modern stories, more active. The mystery novel is not dead! And that's good!
