A man standing in a queue for a theatre is stabbed with a stiletto, but by the time he collapses, there's no sign of the murderer.

Some of this felt a bit dated. E.g.

• Idly he considered the type of man it would be. No thorough Englishman used such a weapon If he used steel at all he took a razor and cut a person's throat - this stereotyping of the English Gentleman is a bit like the sort of thing in the chocolate detective thing.
• This was a crime that had been planned with an ingenuity and executed with a subtlety that was foreign to an Englishman's habit of thought. The very feminity of it proclaimed the dago, or at the very least one used to dago habits of life - yikes!
• Here and there a line of gay motley child's clothes danced and ballooned with the breeze in a necklace of coloured laughter - nice

I couldn't work out if ending was - as it seems on the face of it - a cop out let down. Because the writing is pretty good, and so I wonder if I've missed something. Or maybe she's just saying that this is what happens in real life: answers are messy and accidental, not perfectly arranged and satisfying.

Good writing though.

Completed : 09-Feb-2018