I'd actually give it 2 stars but it was free from Amazon's Classic book collection and anything free is extra good. :) ( )

Pretty good whodunit but... the lengthy expositions on guns and their features really slowed the pace at times. I suppose if I were a gun collector (I'm not) and had some clue about the various features of guns (I don't) then it might have been more interesting. Instead, I found myself skimming those parts. Had Piper stuck with the story/mystery, this would likely have been a 3.5 star read for me.

Oh, and everyone has a 'gun room' in their house? Really? Even for the time it was written, this seems like a rather dated concept. ( )

The mystery is all right, the details of historical guns worked in with not too much enthusiasm, and there's probably a great roman a clef in the science-fiction-and-antiques couple.

What stuck in my mind was the hero's secret semantic science. I haven't looked up if it actually existed, but it sounds a lot like ever so many systems since, all beloved of a subset of nerds. It introduces itself as a method of not deceiving oneself and turns up later, sullen, as a tool for deceiving others. ( )

It's a good story - mystery - in itself, but if you're a Piper fan it's a must-read. Several of the characters in the story have characteristics of Piper himself (there's an antique gun expert and an SF writer for two) and you get the feeling that some of the dialog is autobiographical. ( )