The Mystery of Mr. E

The Story

Twin brothers John and George Danes call themselves ‘The Generalists’, and do all sorts of strange jobs for all kinds of peculiar people. They’re about to set off to their next mysterious assignment at Idlewyld House (with no idea what job they’ve been hired to do there) when a strange man knocks at their door. This stranger knows that John and George are on their way to Idlewyld House, but he won’t say how he knows. When asked who he is, he says only, ‘I am the murderer’, and then he disappears.

Arriving at Idlewyld House, the Danes twins ask their host, Peter Landrigan — son of the late Harriet Landrigan, the most beloved and bestselling romantic novelist of all time — if he has invited them there to solve a murder. Peter Landrigan assures them that nothing of the sort has happened. Then one of the other guests is found dead at the foot of the stairs…

The Mystery of Mr. E had two sources of inspiration. One was Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which made a huge impression on me when I first saw it. I came away buzzing and inspired, determined to write a Mousetrap of my own. Minutes later, I had an idea I loved for what I thought of as an inverted murder mystery: a man, a stranger, turns up at the home of a detective and says only four words: I am the murderer. He then disappears without offering any clues to his identity, and the detective’s job is to find the murder that ‘goes with’ that murderer.

My second source of inspiration was a school play version of Romeo and Juliet starring my daughter. The music and drama teachers had very sensibly decided to perk it up by turning it into a musical. It was absolutely brilliant, and it made me realise that the times I had been Definitely Not At All Bored at the theatre had all, without exception, contained either a baffling murder mystery or some brilliant, memorable songs.