I thanked him and sat down in one of the armchairs, feeling much the same as I had when I’d been called into the headmaster’s office at school. The big clock ticked off the seconds with an unusually heavy tread, as if it were driving a rivet with each tick.

We have under consideration here an attempt at a new cozy mystery franchise, and it’s not a bad one at all. The Ten Commandments of Murder is sort of blend of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Nero Wolfe, with a nice, well-integrated infusion of Christian morality. Utterly unbelievable, but plenty of fun.

Alfred More, our Watson/Hastings/Goodwin here, is at the time of the story (1903) a feckless young idler, the younger son of a Pennsylvania steel magnate. The company is run by his brother Jonathan, with whom Alfred lives. Every April, according to established family tradition, they host a dinner party at their mansion on Long Island for family and family friends. Alfred looks forward to seeing Violet, a young woman he’s been in love with since childhood. But that also means seeing her insufferable husband, Nathan Gale, who is vulgarly rich and delights in offending people. The party also includes the family doctor and a “progressive” clergyman and his family.

Nathan Gale loses no time in making himself odious to everyone. At one point he insults his wife Violet, and Alfred our narrator is incensed enough to say he’d like to kill him. That will come back to bite him when he hears a noise in the nighttime and enters Gale’s room, finding him shot dead. In the honorable tradition of stupid mystery characters since forever, he sees a gun on the floor and picks it up, to be found that way by the others.

What follows passes belief, but is highly suitable for a cozy mystery. The intelligent police detective who comes to investigate does not believe Alfred guilty (I was never sure why), and instead suggests that he engage the services of Mr. Malachi Burke, a former policeman and brilliant consulting detective. Burke turns out to be a huge, unkempt (think W. B. Yeats), aging Irishman who walks with a cane and quickly takes charge. He enlists Alfred to assist him (!) and explains his approach to crime solving, based on his personal list of the “Ten Commandments of Murder” (he also frequently refers to the real biblical commandments, and he’s deadly serious about it).

All the rest goes as expected. Malachi Burke discerns secrets, sees through lies, and ultimately identifies the real murderer.

It was all very satisfactory. The writing was good too (though the author has occasional trouble with homophone confusion).

But all things considered, I greatly enjoyed The Ten Commandments of Murder, and look forward to the next installment in the series.