Dull train ride: Compartment K (Reilly)

Helen Reilly. Compartment K (1955) Three murders, one in New York, one on a Canadian train, and one at a lodge in the Rockies, are tied together by one man’s desperate need for money to satisfy his greedy wife. A complicated plot, characters that are approximately 1.5 D, a style laden with ascriptive adjectives, told through the focus on a young woman who almost loses the man she truly loves. What kept me reading was the puzzle, which I partly solved not because of the clues but because of the vague impressions of the character who done it. The denouement relies heavily on facts which were at best hinted at but not fully disclosed until explained by the redoubtable Inspector McKee, who spent most his time at the other end of a phone line.
     I had tried to read this book several times in the past. I decided I’d better read it all the way through this time. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can claim some kind of success in getting through it. On the other hand, one can hardly claim credit for enduring self-chosen tedium.
     I bought the book second-hand because the first third or so is set on a train. One doesn’t get much of a sense of a train ride, though, mostly because Reilly doesn’t (or can’t) describe anything other than the passengers' clothes, which she details with a fashion-reporter’s eye. The cover misleads: the Canadian train was hauled by diesels, not steam; North American trains don’t have buffers; and the blurb is too complimentary. That it’s from a New Yorker book note is an even greater puzzle than the one McKee solves. Not recommended, except perhaps as a curiosity. *