A man seeing an old photograph of an unremarkable street scene on the cover of a book and being struck by an overpowering reaction of uncertain origin doesn’t sound like a promising start to an impossible crime novel. However, it turns out that such an opinion is simply a sign of your lack of inventiveness, as Paul Halter can spin one hell of a tale from just that. Well, okay, not just that, as there’s also the notorious Acid Bath Murderer going around destroying the remains of murder victims by pouring acid on them – and John Braid, our photo-phobic protagonist, is curiously unwilling to tell his young, trusting and rather new wife what he gets up to every day when he leaves the house. And he’s rather keen on not letting his briefcase out of his sight…
Of course, Halter then complicates things further by throwing in a parallel narrative set some years previously in which the wife of a wealthy resident of a down-at-heel London suburb is murdered, tracing the impact of that murder upon the woman’s husband and children. Clearly the two stories must be related, but how? And who is responsible for the deaths in each thread?
Of all Halter’s novels translated into English by John Pugmire in his Locked Room International undertaking – and I’ve read every single one, so have now terrifyingly run out of Halter – this is easily the most melon-twisting. About four or five chapters in it suddenly occurred to me what he was doing, the trick he was trying to pull, and so I kept an eye out for the tell-tale details that reinforced this conviction. He thought he could pull one over on his readers time and again, but I had his measure and was ready for him this time. Then it turned out that that wasn’t at all what he was doing, that he was in fact busy doing something completely different, and while I’m still not convinced how fully successful it was I have to admit that I can’t get it out of my head now I’ve finished the book. It is, in many ways, quite the most unusual puzzle plot I may have ever read, but it fits together with a beauty and a complexity that is reinforced near-perfectly at almost every stage.
Each thread contains its own impossibility, one of which is a trifle mundane and the other of which is simply marvellous. The disappointing one is, while a touch minor, still perfectly reinforced within its own narrative – it is well-motivated, well-reasoned, fits in with several established facts and ideas and crucially works when the end is reached and you’re free to examine everything retrospectively. The stronger of the two is exceptionally well-worked, and takes on a greater complexity and cleverness when assessed back-to-front and put in the appropriate context…and still neither of this has any direct bearing on the identity of the Acid Bath Murderer or (arguably) the troubling image that started the whole shebang off.
The further you get into the narrative, the more tightly the two strands begin to helix around each other, and as it starts to get more and more difficult to separate them out you have to pay due deference to Halter in how they are resolved, and what the link between them turns out to be. Psychics, hypnotism, mysterious deaths, suspicious spouses, attentive neighbours, and John Braid’s increasingly paranoid behaviour are all ironed out to reveal a tapestry that may have the odd rogue thread, but the nature of what Halter is doing deserves thunderous applause. There is one development that won’t fool anyone who has read more than a couple of his books, but having that one near-certainty to cling to (it is revealed with a purposeful lack of fanfare at about the three-quarter mark) helped anchor me in the storm.
Is it a good book, though, or is it simply an accomplished piece of narrative? Honestly, I still don’t know. It will live on in my head for a long time, and I’m itching to reread it again – I’ll try to come back to it within a year – and there are few enough books these days that incite such reactions, given the jaded nature of this reader’s soul. It may remain a question for perpetuity, but presently I love how it has rattled me out of a bit of a funk even if it may inspire rather more in the way of fulmination in others. I remain a massive fan of Halter’s, however, and am eternally grateful to John Pugmire for his superlative work in bringing the French maestro to those of us too feckless to learn French. So, y’know what? Five stars it is.
Paul Halter reviews on The Invisible Event; all translations by John Pugmire unless stated
Featuring Dr. Alan Twist and Archibald Hurst:
The Fourth Door (1987) [trans. 1999]
Death Invites You (1988) [trans. 2015]
The Madman’s Room (1990) [trans. 2017]
The Seventh Hypothesis (1991) [trans. 2012]
The Tiger’s Head (1991) [trans. 2013]
The Demon of Dartmoor (1993) [trans. 2012]
The Picture from the Past (1995) [trans. 2014]
The Vampire Tree (1996) [trans. 2016]
The Siren’s Call (1998) [trans. 2023]
The Man Who Loved Clouds (1999) [trans. 2018]
Penelope’s Web (2001) [trans. 2021]
Featuring Owen Burns and Achilles Stock:
The Lord of Misrule (1994) [trans. 2006]
The Seven Wonders of Crime (1997) [trans. 2005]
The Phantom Passage (2005) [trans. 2015]
The Mask of the Vampire (2014) [trans. 2022]
The Gold Watch (2019) [trans. 2019]
Standalones:
The Crimson Fog (1988) [trans. 2013]
The Invisible Circle (1996) [trans. 2014]
Collected short stories:
The Night of the Wolf (2000) [trans. 2004 w’ Adey]
Individual short stories [* = collected in the anthology The Helm of Hades (2019)]:
‘Nausicaa’s Ball’ (2004) [trans. 2008 w’ Adey]*
‘The Robber’s Grave’ (2007) [trans. 2007 w’ Adey]*
‘The Gong of Doom’ (2010) [trans. 2010]*
‘The Man with the Face of Clay’ (2011) [trans. 2012]*
‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (2014) [trans. 2014]*
‘The Wolf of Fenrir’ (2014) [trans. 2015]*
‘The Scarecrow’s Revenge’ (2015) [trans. 2016]*
‘The Fires of Hell’ (2016) [trans. 2016]*
‘The Yellow Book’ (2017) [trans. 2017]*
‘The Helm of Hades’ (2019) [trans. 2019]*
‘The Celestial Thief’ (2021) [trans. 2021]
‘The Wendigo’s Spell’ (2023) [trans. 2023]
The Invisible Event 
I was disappointed with the explanation for the very strong emotion caused in John Braid by the picture and found it unsatisfying. For this reason, I rate it as 4 star.
My review is available at Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1326711254
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Yeah, I know what you mean, Santosh, and even Halter himself goes some way to agreeing with you in the final line of the book. To be honest, I was wondering how it was going to be resolved, and actually thought Halter was about to drop another final line twist on us as I got closer to the end…and, well, he may of course have done so, just in a different way to what I had suddenly anticipated (no spoilers for anyone else!). It’s still a brilliantly unconventional book, however, and deserves to be read for the massively clever way it goes about its plotting.
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A coincidence. I have just started Satellite People by Hans Olav Lahlum ! It is dedicated to Agatha Christie.
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Ha, what are the chances?! Have you read The Human Flies?
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No.
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I already own Satellite People, so we shall have to wait for me to read that before we can properly compare notes, then. Hope you enjoy it!
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I have only read one Halter, in an Italian translation, and while appreciated the ingenuity and Golden Age enthusiasm, I was much less keen on the characterisation and the rather cruel way he seemed to dispatch his victims. I am a massif fan of this genre of course, and adore Carr, but must read a bit more Halter – at the moment, I am on the fence …
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It’s a tricky one, because in something like The Fourth Door, The Seven Wonders of Crime or The Demon of Dartmoor (which may not be what you’ve read, I just pick them as examples) his characters are rather indistinct – bearing in mind that I’m also reading it in translation, and a different translation to boot. Something like The Crimson Fog, The Seventh Hypothesis or the forthcoming Death Invites You there’s undeniably more of a character focus…but as with everything it’s all down to what one is looking for.
What I particularly enjoy about him is that he knows his genre inside-out and is finding new places to step; DIY contains a solution that ultimately has been seen elsewhere, but the way he embellishes it on the way to the answer shows a tremendous creativity as you say. That’s what I take away from Halter, because to my taste there’s nowehere near enough of that kind of thing going on in the genre at the moment. Happy to provide some pushing if you’re looking for material to help decide which side of that fence to fall…!
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The only one I read is this one, which i think is THE BLOODY MATCH in English? https://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/the-bloody-match-by-paul-halter-2001/
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Yeah, that’s not available in English yet but it does sound VERY Halter. Detection often takes a bit of a back seat, though for sheer construction he’s probably unbeatable at present.
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Thanks for the review, and I’m encouraged that you enjoyed it so much – my copy is still sitting on the shelf. How might ‘The Picture from the Past’ affect your top 5 ranking for Halter novels – if it does at all…?
P.S. Thanks for recommending the Ingwalson novellas – just got them off Amazon. 🙂
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Oh, lummy, now you’re asking. I probably have a different top five now from back when I made those recommendations (though The Phantom Passage and The Tiger’s Head remain very high). Let me go back and check and I’ll get back to you.
Hope you enjoy the Ingwalsons. A bit different, and very enjoyable fun for what they’ve set out to do.
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This makes me feel very tempted to read ‘Tiger’s Head’ sooner than later – possibly even this weekend…! But I’ve just started on one of Punshon’s later novels, and will probably just about manage to cram in one of Ingwalson’s novellas – before the new Dean Street Press reprints of Robin Forsythe’s novels make their way into my Kindle early next week…
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Bah, no rush. When there’s that much choice the only real answer is to slow down so you’re able to enjoy it all.
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Another great review and Paul Halter is definitely an author I am going to read in 2016. I meant to ask yo have you finished reading The Human Flies yet? And if so what did you make of it?
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I have indeed finished The Human Flies. As to what I thought…well, I mean, it’s next week’s review. It’s not like I do previews or anything… 😛
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Sorry I didn’t realise that was next week’s book (I’ve been reading your post in wordpress reader). I shall wait with bated breath until next Wednesday.
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Ah, this book. Decent all around, though the explanation for the picture was just “Huh?” The final digression on the “men in black” also confused me, but eh, I’m an idiot, what else is new? 😛 I’m also slightly smug that I was able to figure out the reason for the existence of the past narrative, which is odd, as the last time Halter pulled that trick, it ended up ticking me off.
I actually think that this book is, from a Watsonian perspective, over-clued. But that’s a spoiler. 😉
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Yeah, I had a completely different – though, may I say, actually rather ingenious – explanation for the past narrative, and that was what I was convinced I’d tumbled to early on. Alas, not to be, though maybe I could write that book myself one day…!
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This read like a better version of The Gold Watch (its incomparable impossibility aside) with the succinct chapters alternating between two time periods. Mainly because I thought the strength of the two narratives here were relatively on par, where in the aforementioned story the strand set in the present was much weaker than the one set in the past.
Don’t know about you but I thought the revelation of the main character’s secret, and the motivations behind the impossible disappearance, served to retrospectively lend a mildly comical, lighthearted character to the whole thing, which is in contract to the bleaker tone of some of Halter’s other works.
The locked room in the past was quite nifty even if ROT-13 V dhrfgvba ubj ybat gur phycevg pbhyq ernyvfgvpnyyl fhfgnva gur vyyhfvba bs orvat n pbecfr. Jung vs gur cbfgzna unq qrpvqrq gb ybbx sbe n chyfr ryfrjurer vafgrnq bs gur vpl unaq? Be unq ur abg orra fdhrnzvfu naq xrcg ba fghqlvat gur ivpgvzf yvsryrff rkcerffvba sbe na vaqrsvavgr crevbq bs gvzr orsber zbivat ba gb vairfgvtngr gur ohvyqvat? Jbhyq gur phycevg gura pnir haqre gur fpehgval naq pbecfr (frr jung V qvq gurer?). /ROT-13. Still, points for cleverness and originality.
Overall, just a yard or two off of his finest work, but the hook and the structure helps it stand apart and grants it its own identity.
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There’s a weirdness to this one that I thoroughly enjoy — I don’t think many authors writing at this time would have taken the risk with the modern day narrarive that Halter does (and I know it irritates as often as it delights).
I feel there’s an extra savage twist possible at the end, and perhaps he shied away from that on account of how weird and wonderful he’d made it to that point, but either way it’s still a lot of fun, and a real litmus test for one’s Halter reading: if this works for you, youll find merit in the overwhelming majority of his thus-far translated works.
So, onwards!
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I only have another five translations to go before I’m fully up to date with Halter. Unfortunately they each occupy the dingy space inhabited by his less celebrated and therefore probably less dazzling work, perhaps with a single exception. They are The Man Who Loved Clouds, The Crimson Fog, The Vampire Tree, The White Lady and Penelope’s Web. Its the latter I’m keenest to get to, but alas I might have to give it the role of carrot i.e. my reward for working my way through the others, agonising as that might occasionally prove. Heres hoping I find flashes of his trademark brilliance in each to expedite the journey.
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