AudioBookFest: Podcast for Everyone

The Riddle of the 5:28", and find it far more of a straightforward mystery tale than I had imagined. It is not at all campy in tone, the Prince works closely and normally with Scotland Yard, and a fair play impossible crime story is spun out, entertainingly if somewhat implausibly in solution. There are signs of trying to appeal to a (male) juvenile audience in the stories: the Prince employs a Cockney lad as an assistant, he being a character with whom boys might identify; the prose tries to create a thrilling tone, complete with dramatic climaxes; and there is a great deal of attention paid to trains, automobiles and other machinery, something that boys of all ages love. By contrast there is a great deal of grown up romance, including a villainous character who engages in adulterous affairs. The tone of the story over all matches that of Arthur B. Reeve's Craig Kennedy stories, with its stalwart, highly intelligent hero; a cast of characters involved in the corrupter aspects of the era's high life and all under suspicion, with the characters all assembled at the end for the revelation of the guilty party by the detective; the emphasis on dramatic writing; the focus on technology and machinery; and a setting more of public life than of pure domesticity