The Vanishing Act

A hotel inspector is found dead in a locked room. One unlikely detective is going to have to magic up a solution.

When Barry Holt, short, balding, comprehensively unsuited to a cape and top hat, and entirely happy about all three, arrives at The Beaumont Hotel on the south Devon coast to perform his vanishing cabinet routine, the closest thing to drama he is expecting is the wedding rehearsal. Then a guest in Room Eleven turns up dead behind what everyone agrees is a locked door.

The local police see an impossible crime. Barry, who spends his evenings persuading paying audiences that a sealed cabinet is sealed, sees a magic trick. His wife Helena, called in to fix the hotel's finances, is finding cooked books to match.

As Barry follows the misdirection backwards through Mr Husk's last evening, the wedding party, the clifftop hotel, and the Beaumont family begin to come apart at the seams. When a second attempt is made on a guest's life on the cliff path, Barry understands the illusion is still running. Someone has built an impossibility once. They are quite prepared to build another.

The Vanishing Act is the first Incredible Fontaine Mystery — a clever, character-driven whodunnit perfect for fans of classic British cosy crime and locked-room mysteries.