Miles Burton was one of the pen names used by Cecil John Street, a founder member of the Detection Club, famed bastion of fair-play Golden Age Crime writers. Street was not very interested in motive. His focus was on method, and this is very apparent in Death in the Tunnel (first published in 1936).
A prosperous and eminently respectable businessman, Sir Wilfred Saxonby, is shot to death in a locked first-class railway car. It looks like a clear case of suicide, but Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard wants to make sure.
Arnold is a man driven by facts. But he sometimes consults with her friend Desmond Merrion, an amateur criminologist whose deductions are based purely on imagination. The two complement each other. For most of the book every apparent solution they come up with carries with it insuperable difficulties. Merrion's theories become more and more convoluted, and he changes theories readily. As it turns out, the murder is such an elaborate scheme, with layer upon layer of deception, that Merrion's imaginative approach is more than justified.
This type of wholly cerebral puzzle was more popular in the past than now. Which explains why Street's work has recently been mainly of interest to aficionados. I frankly prefer more emphasis on motive and character in my vintage mysteries. But I found this book interesting as an example of the Golden Age puzzle mystery. The introduction is excellent at putting novel and author in context of the history of crime fiction.
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