Shadow on the Wall (1934)
My review:
'We're only seeing shadows. But there's hell at work.'
Absolutely top-notch, both as a detective story and as a novel. It is an exposé of society: fashion, the theatre, drugs, gossip, politics, hypocrisy, "vice, envy, hatred and malice"; and of the warped and vengeful people who represent different facets and sins of a crooked society, concerned with a "persistent effort to destroy reputation; recurring use of man's relations with women; handling of dope; thread of sheer cruelty". As well as being a well-written novel, it is also a first-class detective story: the murders (and there are plenty of them) are ingeniously committed and equally ingeniously solved by Mr. Fortune, who is in fine form. Bailey's misdirection and use of red herrings is first-class: the reader is given the clues, both physical and psychological, on nearly every page (indeed, this has to be one of the most clue-filled detective stories I have ever read), yet he fails to reach the right solution. Everything a detective story should be.