LoveReading Says
Locked room mysteries, as created by Edgar Allen Poe and made popular by Agatha Christie, are a classic for a reason. Someone winds up dead in a remote location and the murderer must be one of the people there. But who? And why?
The Man on the Endless Stair by Chris Barkley is a locked-room mystery with a twist. The remote location is a Scottish island accessible only by water (the ferry runs only a few days a week), the victim is successful novelist Malcolm Furnivall, and the suspects are those who he called together: family members, neighbours, staff, his solicitor and Euan, his protégé.
Malcolm Furnivall made his fortune in a series of beloved books, and he has summoned his family and others, certain that something terrible will happen to him. He announces that Euan will be in charge of finishing his final book. Soon after, Malcolm is brutally murdered, with the manuscript nowhere to be found. Euan searches for the killer and the manuscript, knowing that his future career will be dictated by finding both.
The mansion Malcolm built is suitably creepy, and a character in itself, but also contains a number of puzzles, secret tunnels and mysteries. Like all good locked-room mysteries, this novel has red herrings galore and family secrets, where anyone can be a plausible suspect.
This literary mystery is filled with elaborate descriptions of the mansion and the island. In the end, it takes a turn into the metaphysical– where time and space are not linear– making it a unique mystery within the genre.
Maureen Stapleton
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The Man on the Endless Stair Synopsis
When troubled but talented young author Euan meets decorated novelist Malcolm Furnivall, he feels his luck has finally changed. Malcolm takes Euan as a protégé, vouching for him in the rarefied literary scene in the 1950s. But lately, Malcolm has not been himself. Consumed by his work, he cuts an increasingly isolated figure and has become convinced that something terrible will befall him. He summons his loved ones to his secluded island in the Hebrides and – to everyone's surprise – entrusts Euan with the task of completing his masterpiece.
Malcolm's suspicions soon prove well-founded; he is discovered brutally murdered in his study, and his invaluable unfinished novel has vanished. Cut off from the mainland, with the killer on the loose and the island's inhabitants circling, Euan feels both his mentor's legacy and his only chance at greatness slipping away. He must venture deep into Malcolm's labyrinthine mansion to find the manuscript before it falls into the wrong hands.
But what he doesn't yet know is that the closer he comes to solving the mystery, the tighter he will bind himself to a fate sealed in time . . .
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781846976896 |
| Publication date: |
7th August 2025 |
| Author: |
Chris Barkley |
| Publisher: |
Polygon an imprint of Birlinn Ltd |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
352 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Crime and Mystery
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| Other Genres: |
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About Chris Barkley
Chris Barkley was appointed Writer in Residence by the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2022. He won the Oxford University Kellogg Writing Competition in 2021, as well as the Bedford International Writing Prize. He has been shortlisted for the Cambridge Short Story Prize and has had prose published in TSS, National Flash Fiction, Darling Axe, and the Writers of the Future 35th anthology. He lives in Edinburgh.
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