Right, the dust has settled on The Problem of the Wire Cage, so it’s time to pick another book to get all spoilerful over. There’s no mystery here, that book has been picked and its title is in the title of this post, but allow me a paragraph break otherwise I have no idea how I’ll work one in.
So, yes. It gives me great pleasure to announce that Aidan — who blogs at a frankly astonishingly prodigious rate over at Mysteries Ahoy! — has consented to join me this time around, and we’ll be picking apart the soon-to-be-republished [due February 8th], until-now-rare-as-hen’s-teeth (even Rhode scholar Puzzle Doctor hasn’t read it…) impossible crime novel Invisible Weapons (1938) from one-man-four-names-eight-million-books-machine Cecil Street/John Rhode/Miles Burton/Cecil Waye.
This was published under his Rhode pseudonym and is being reissued by HarperCollins as part of their Crime Club imprint, the lovely people who have brought us much Philip MacDonald, Freeman Wills Crofts, Anthony Berkeley and many, many others in recent years (hell, recent months). Here’s a brief bit of the synopsis:
The murder of old Mr Fransham while washing his hands in his niece’s cloakroom was one of the most astounding problems that ever confronted Scotland Yard. Not only was there a policeman in the house at the time, but there was an ugly wound in the victim’s forehead and nothing in the locked room that could have inflicted it.
The Invisible Event 
That cover always makes me chuckle- the man just looks like such a frustrated hamster!
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I know what you mean, and I’m delighted they’re reissued with these original covers — there’s a real charm to them for all their oddness.
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To me, he looks a lot like Prince Philip. 😮
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Or someone listening to Prince Philip, at any rate…
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I like to imagine he is eating an enormous invisible corn on the cob which he will no doubt bludgeon someone to death with at some point in the story…
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Whoa, dude, save the spoilers for later… :O
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One of the fingers on his right hand is either broken, triple jointed or an intelligent worm called Stanislaus (leap of logic, what leap of logic?).
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I think you’ve leapt well beyond the bounds of logic there…
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Actually, never mind, when I look at the gigantic version of the picture it’s just two fingers blended together. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility of intelligent worms.
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Interesting choice, given that (I guess) you haven’t read it yet…
My non-spoiler review will be up in a week or so, so I’ll let you know what I think then
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Yeah, no, we’ve not read it — waiting for the reissue first. But it’ll be interesting to tackle a Rhode, and he’s a big noise in GAD circles so it feels about time to dig down into him a little deeper…
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True, but I’ve yet to read one of his that’s close to an impossible crime. Going to be an interesting one…
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Yes, this is actually an impossible crime novel. Perhaps it is why JJ selected it !
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Actually, it wasn’t I who picked it…
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Well, that’s definitely why JJ selected it. But other of Street’s books that have been described in some circles as “impossible crimes” – Death In The Tunnel – have really been more “ludicrously difficult crimes” with the method revealed quite early on. I’ll see – very soon – how well this one fits the genre.
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Well, that is why I stated that it is actually an impossible crime novel ! (I have read it.)
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Even with your 5 and a half hour head start that’s fast reading!
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That was quick reading, given the re-release was only out yesterday. I was presuming that you were classifying it from the blurb. My apologies.
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Well, I was able to get the book five and half hours ahead of you. 🙂
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So you’re…from the future?
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Amazon says this book will not be released until June 5. Might not it be better to schedule reviewing it for June when more people will be able to read it ?
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You raise, Jim, a very good point I had not considered — namely, that the Poisoned Pen Press US release is probably not the same as the British Library UK publication date. Dammit, that’s what I get for trying to be current… 🙂
US-folk, whaddaya say? Would you rather we delay until July so’s all y’all can pitch in on this one, too? Seems polite, right?
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Looks to me like Collins Crime Club is the publisher on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans and Canadians (like me) can order it through BookDepository and receive it in a little over a week after the UK publication date.
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Well, I mean, that sounds superb (and, yeah, sorry, I meant Collins not Poison Pen/BL — too much going on at the moment…) but I’d hate to presume on behalf of my Stateside brethren.
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Delaying the event would definitely spoil things. Eh? Eh?
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