I’d promised TomCat that I’d attempt to find a quality modern locked room mystery this week, but the book I was going to look at — Lord Darcyverse continuation novel Ten Little Wizards (1988) by Michael Kurland — has (miraculously…?) vanished. So instead, here’s a revival of another occasional series: a selective pick through some self-published impossible crime stories in search of the gold that doubtless exists there somewhere.
Untouchable (2016) is the first in a series that currently runs to five volumes featuring newly-relocated Detective Sergeant Blake Harte. Abandoning the bustle of Manchester following the end of a relationship, he finds himself in the quaint Heartbeat-esque surrounds of Harmschapel just in time for a seemingly impossible murder to occur: a man locked alone in a secure shed (abandon every hope, all ye who seek gaps in the walls), a shot rings out, and the door is opened to reveal a fresh corpse. CCTV shows no-one nearby except someone who is provably innocent, so who- and howdunnit?
Now, I can’t deny that this has flaws. It is, especially in the resolution of its impossible murder, a problematic piece of work. But there’s also something quite promising at the heart of this that I have to confess has me more interested in Innes’ other self-published novellas than I feel I should be. In many ways, Innes is clearly feeling his way as a writer here — most of the framing here is rather heavy on familiarity (we open with Harte lost down county lanes in search of his new home, and have the whole “he wakes up in the morning and bangs his head on the low ceiling” routine), and his grammar is a little distracting at times — but there is also some wonderfully dry humour, like prising information from a reluctant interview subject being akin to “trying to ask a teenager to do the washing up”, or the following when Blake meets his superior for the first time:
“Inspector Royale.” The man said, shaking Blake’s hand. “Welcome aboard. Found the place alright, then?”
“Sir.” Replied Blake. He had never understood why anyone asked that question to people standing right in front of them.
Oh, yeah, we should address the dialogue attribution thing, just for disclosure. Where in the middle of action the dialogue is typically ended with a comma and then a lower case attribution, Innes tends to put a full stop as if starting a new sentence. So, that second paragraph above should begin:
“Sir,” replied Blake. He had never…
I don’t love this, but at least his dialogue sounds like words that real people would say to each other, so it’s not super distracting once you get used to it. And I really do think Innes deserves some extra credit for telling his story in as efficient a way as possible — this novella is (you’re informed at the start) 33,000 words, and Innes ain’t hanging around just to pad his word-count. You get backstory, new house, flirty landlady, new colleagues (a suitably diverse bunch), murder, investigation, a few personal asides, resolution, and then…
Well, we’ll come to “and then” in due course.
The murder and the investigation are, for my money, reasonably well-handled, and hit a few grace notes for the enthusiast. We get the good old “investigator fancies the chief suspect” motif (and the suspect fancies him right back…), since Harrison Baxter is under suspicion for the murder of his abusive boyfriend, and a moderate puzzle element creeps into the setup as things progress, with a couple of nice little reversals come the ending that show a slightly tighter plot than might have been expected and bode well for future instalments. It’s all hewn out of the sort of things people would do, and plays well off the different tensions within both the Baxter household and the team of investigators trying to unpick it all. Sure, it’s not James Ellroy, but you’ve definitely read worse attempts at this.
No mud shall be slung today.
The Invisible Event 
JJ,
I took a brief look at Robert Innes books – great covers. From your review, I detect the author may have missed a key issue of engrossing the readers’ mental participation in solving the crime, a point worthy of deep study on my part.
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Yeah, some really good work has gone into the presentation of these — the covers and the chapter headings all look superb. He’s not got the clewing quite down, but at the same time he’s done something interesting and difficult enough, and with enough talent in some key areas, to make this an interesting start for me. I’ll defintely have a look at the next one, and if there’s progress made there I’ll probably continue. Someone committing to this in novella form is actually a good sign — not trying to over-reach himself with a full narrative first time out, and all that. Here’s hoping…
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Well, you’ve sold me on trying this one, at least. Character sways me more than plot so if an author takes care of those properly I can forgive a fair bit, especially on a first attempt.
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It won’t break the bank, and it won’t take up too much of your time, so go right ahead. I’d love to hear another opinion on this, to be honest!
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This one does sound interesting, even if it is flawed. Hopefully the author knocks it out of the park with the next one!
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…or the one after that, the one after that, or even the one after that!
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I only recently got a copy of Blyton’s The Mystery of the Invisible Thief and now you dump this recommendation in my lap. Well, it has been added to my wish list. I hope you can live with yourself.
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I gotta say, I don’t think you’ll go for this at all. Perhaps allow me to read a bit further in the series to see if there’s anything that would fall more into your sphere. This, I believe, would infuriate you beyond all measure…
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Not much to say about your take on this book. I do not read self-published fiction (99% of it is in eBook format and I don’t own an eReader), though this review almost tempts me to breakdown and invest in a Kindle just so I can read it. But I felt it necessary to leave some oracular comments on your future posts.
I predict that you will absolutely hate TEN LITTLE WIZARDS. Very sloppy solutions, utter disregard for fundamental fair play plotting rules, among other infuriating flaws. Perhaps it’s best that you misplaced your copy. Or that it disappeared into the Cloud if it’s a digital book. I reviewed the book in great detail on my blog. So maybe not a post to read prior to your locating your copy.
On the other hand I think you may very much enjoy THE DEVIL DRIVES for its impossible crime problem, if not for Markham’s eccentric prose. It’s certainly one of the more ingenious solutions in this subgenre. I don’t think you’ve read the two obscure books (I’ve reviewed both on my blog, but I won’t name them) that have similar plot gimmickry so you won’t have any reference points.
Looking forward to both posts…or at least the Markham one. The Kurland review may never be written unless you recover the book.
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Haha, thanks, John — I enjoyed a couple of Kurland’s short stories for his prose in spite of the plotting flaws, so your assessment of TLW doesn’t exactly shock me. I’d still like to find my (physical) copy and read it, but I’ll come at it with a little more caution than I’d originally intended. Watch this space…or don’t, as it may never turn up.
As to the Markham — I finished it last night and will keep my opinions to myself until I get round to writing them down, but I actually loved the prose and would be especially eager to track down any other Markham novels on that basis alone. He has something of the pulp sensibility that I do really enjoy when it’s pitched in that particular way — not too cheap or exploitative, but merely intent on telling a story in a loose, fun, creative way.
Review on Thursday, of course; hopefully that will give me time to get my ducks in a row.
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I just bought four of these and I wish I had been more selective. This first one is hardly a mystery at all! It read like a mediocre soap opera. You don’t mention that over 95% of the book is about the melodrama of domestic violence that haunts so many of the characters. I detested the platitudes that the characters relied on in their many “emotional” conversations. The whole thing read like a PC lecture to uninformed people who knew nothing about the world of domestic violence. I wonder if Innes had personal experience in this or knows someone involved in a bad relationship. UNTOUCHABLE seemed like what I call a “purge piece” — something a novice creative writer needs to get out of his system before he can move on to mature work. I think this whole series is going to be more about the gay personal life of Blake and will touch on various “hot topics”. At least it was easy to move through speedily. I used to work for a domestic violence hotline and I know everything there is about this horrible world. A lot of the hidden aspects are not even discussed though I did like that all the victims were men, both gay and straight. but I had to skip over all the Lifetime Channel Movie of the Week moments because they were handled so ineptly and naively. Though Innes clearly means well he doesn’t have the maturity to discuss this complex and emotionally volatile topic without resorting to the worst of clichés. The powerful messages he intends to deliver come off trite and ineffectual.
As for the mystery and the solution to the impossibility. Meh. I pegged the culprit immediately. Actually, I preferred P.C. Mattison’s simple solution to the genuine one which was outlandish and fantastical. Something you’d expect in a James Bond movie.
Finally, Innes — like most self-published writers — is in dire need of an editor. Apart from some occasional awkward sentence construction and frequent redundancies, the book is sloppily produced. It’s littered with typos: lots of unclosed quotations marks in dialogue sections, and poor layout that resulted in blank lines and blank pages. You mention in your review the incorrect full stop instead of a comma at the end of a dialogue section, but I am positive it is not a conscious choice. It is an error of poor typing. The comma and the period are next to each other on a standard keyboard and most keyboards have auto capitalization option following full stops. He also doesn’t know that you punctuate addresses with a comma before the person’s name. “Hand me that paper, Matti.” is properly punctuated. Innes types it out “Hand me that paper Matti” without the comma. All similar sentences that are forms of address appear without the comma 99% of the time. Drove me batty! There is also the problem of substituting pronouns for proper names and getting a capital letter to start the pronoun. Throughout the text you see “He” a lot in the middle of a paragraph and not as the first word. I’m sure this is because he wanted to replace “Blake” with “he” but his software automatically capitalized the word he replaced regardless of where the name appeared. So all those “He” appearances make it look as if Blake is the Second Coming of Christ. And “Alright” is not one word. AARGH!! Ever. Even if it appears in dialogue. I don’t care if it appears in Whomever’s Dictionary. It is never to appear as one word in formal writing. My final pet peeve — Blake started too many of his replies to his colleagues with “Well…” This abundance of amateur mistakes infuriated me and made me think a teenager had written the book.
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Oh, it’s a problematic work, I agree, but fairness to Innes, he does improve pretty quickly — the second one is already much more mature in tone (and typing!), and he’s learning very quickly, as the third and forth show.
I don’t disagree that issues with the punctuation can be distracting, and it’s an issue with a lot of self-published work, but at the same time I guess many of us learned how to do this sort of thing in private — without much external scrutiny, before the option of trying one’s hand at this in public existed — and while that in no way excuses sloppiness in these issues (I know you’ll say — and I agree — that perhaps one should learn how to do it before showing it to the world) don’t worry that the others are all like this. As I say, he learns and improves very quickly, and I’m sure when he’s done (this has been, it seems, a long-game ten-part plan, with the tenth and final instalment out soon) I would imagine he’ll go back and address the editorial issues here.
Maybe jump head to Ripples if you have it — the puzzle is a good one, the plot pretty dense, and if you agree that he shows improvement you can go back to Confessional afterwards (though be aware that the killer in book 2 is named in book 3).
I didn’t realise you’d be jumping into these, John — I’m impressed that someone is paying attention to what I write. Hopefully you have a happier time with some of the others and don’t feel I’ve given you a bum steer 🙂
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