A favorite mystery

A post at the Facebook group "Golden Age Detection" (a private group, you would have to join to read) enthuses about one of my favorite mysteries:

...[I]gnore the movie read the book.

Anthony Gethryn, MacDonald's sleuth is typical and old school but still fascinates. He is English in the way that I like to think of the English of that era. He suits my imagination. I love how he thinks, how he reacts, how he adores his wife, how he is always the smartest person in the room, and how he's filthy rich enough to indulge whatever whim he has but doesn't overdo it. I also love that he can be brave and ruthless. He has no fault. My kind of guy. ....

(Gethryn shows up in my second favorite mystery thriller too, by the way. MacDonald's The Nursemaid Who Disappeared aka Warrant For X.)

Don't know how else to say it: the plot of The List of Adrian Messenger (and has there ever been a better title for a thriller? Well, besides The 39 Steps, that is.) is brilliant. ....

Behind the scenes mass murder on the grandest of scales. A pitiless killer who almost gets away with a cunningly contrived plan if not for a small list of names handed over to a friend by a researching writer who never realizes his own danger — I think he regards the thing as an intellectual exercise. The dreadful audacity of the killer is dazzling if not mind-numbing.

The ending is as ruthlessly efficient as it has to be. ....

My enthusiasm for Philip MacDonald knows no boundaries. Give his work a look, and see what you think. ....

I agree. I also agree that Warrant for X is almost as good. The illustration is of my copy.