Rare J.M. Barrie play published this week

NEW YORK — As mysteries go, “The Reconstruction of the Crime’’ is especially light, a stage farce billed as one “Sensational Scene’’ in which a man identified only as “The Victim’’ asks the audience to help find the culprit.

J.M. Barrie, the co-creator, was known for playing to the crowd.

Published this week in The Strand Magazine, a quarterly that has unearthed obscure works by John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others, “The Reconstruction of the Crime’’ is a collaboration between Barrie and his friend and fellow man of letters E.V. Lucas, believed written during the First World War and rarely seen since.