Three things attracted me to this Award Books  (A145F) paperback. One, it’s An Inner Sanctum Mystery, a series I’ve noticed from time to time due to enjoying the OTR series of the same name. Two, the author. I read his Werewolf of London several years ago and remembered his writing abilities. Three, the price of admission. I bought it for $3 at Robert’s Book Shop in Lincoln City the last time I was there.

This book, and perhaps the series, seems to have little to do with the OTR series. The books are (I believe) original novels, not adaptations of radio shows. Their genre aligns, but other than that, the large header seems to be intended only to leverage the old show for its marketing oomph. However, it does make the books a series and adds to their collectibility.

Detour at Night is unlike anything I’ve read before. It is nearly a novel of digressions, like Dan Brown on steroids. Here, the sidebars are pure unadulterated wordplay. Endore must have been fascinated with language and word origins and their derivations. His prose rambles, but it’s lively and remarkably holds your interest despite pages of inaction. In fact, it takes almost until the halfway point, before we begin to understand what this story is about and why it’s a mystery.

Perhaps that’s why the pull quotes on the cover confine themselves to single words: “Intense” and “Masterly.” The back cover expands with “Off the beaten track” and “Unexpected and dazzling.”

What is it about? Orphaned Frank Willis survives his childhood by burying himself in words and phrases that grow into the beginnings of a career in academia. But his trajectory is derailed when he’s accused of the murder a young woman whom he’d begun courting. The evidence against him is damning, his arrest contingent only on the discovery of her body.

I rate this one at 3-1/2 stars for its originality and entertainment value. As a mystery, I think that range is appropriate as well. Readers who particularly love words and language might want to add another star.