Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our October/November buddy read of There's a Reason for Everything . Book 21 in the Bobby Owen series first published in 1946.

With a slow gesture of one lifted hand, Bobby pointed. There, in a space between the prostrate stag and posturing goddess, was a human leg, a twisted, motionless leg in a strained, unnatural position.

Bobby Owen, now Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire, finds himself taking part in a ghost hunt at legendary haunted mansion Nonpareil. What he discovers is the very real corpse of a paranormal investigator. It seems that among the phantoms there are fakes – but will that end up including a priceless painting by Vermeer?

This one sounds good for Halloween!

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

I've finished this now, and after a great start found it increasingly boring. I think this will be the last Bobby Owen book I read, as I just find I'm not enjoying this series much any more.

I quite enjoyed it - though the young lovers were incredibly annoying, and I felt that Bobby got the argument about the twins wrong. Frank and Frankie could have been fraternal twins, but still looked remarkably similar (like Sebastian and Viola ...).

The Hon Marmaduke was an interesting addition - but why wasn't he in the Forces - or at least doing some useful warwork? (Same for the young male lover ...)

Great point about the war work, Rosina, and the same would have applied to Frank, so I think the authorities might have been doing some checking up on whether he existed!

It was said that Frank had been discharged from the army as medically unfit - obviously not true, but at least it served as an explanation.

Ah yes, thanks, I'd forgotten that. Then again I couldn't really keep track of the plot!

Rosina wrote: "I quite enjoyed it - though the young lovers were incredibly annoying, and I felt that Bobby got the argument about the twins wrong. Frank and Frankie could have been fraternal twins, but still loo..."

Ah, but someone, probably the "uncle", kept saying they were identical twins. Originally, until the wig became obvious, I wondered if the science of the time knew identical twins could not be different sexes. Someone actually asked a friend of mine who had boy / girl twins if they were identical. A conversation stopper that was answered politely. And yes, they could look very much alike without being identical, so not sure that was a valid clue.

I got a bit lost in the explanation but wasn't too concerned as I had the general gist. Thought of the Detective Club rules when the Door twins were introduced.

In general, I enjoy Bobby's musings, Olive's outlook, and the WW2 setting of these books. I find the story, characters and setting engaging enough to continue the series, at least until I run out of easily available books.

P.S. I agree those young lovers were worse than annoying and I admired Bobby's restraint.

If you do get two remarkably similar-looking twins then it's sort of short hand to refer to them as identical: no one could possibly think that a brother and sister were identical in every respect!

What with the identical triplets in A Night of Errors, the Detective Club rules seem to have been truly breached this month.

The web says ;- Female and male identical twins
Sometimes identical twins can be assigned the sex of male and female at birth. These twins start off as identical males with XY sex chromosomes. But shortly after the egg divides, a genetic mutation called Turner syndrome occurs, leaving one twin with the chromosomes X0.