Back in December 2015 I read and reviewed Matt Ingwalson’s first two self-published Owl and Raccoon novellas and, impressed with their quality, undertook what has since become my Adventures in Self-Publishing in which I work through impossible crime fiction following a non-trad route to its audience.

This month I’ll be reviewing four more self-published works in my Tuesday posts, and it’s a particular excitement to me that James Scott Byrnside’s second novel, The Opening Night Murders (2019), will be the first title reviewed.  Excitement because not only was his debut Goodnight Irene (2018), in which P.I.s Rowan Manory and Walter Williams get caught up in all manner of impossible happenings at a house party taking place during a torrential rainstorm, somewhat magnificent, but because The Opening Night Murders — which sees an apparently impossible murder committed in front of 200 witness on-stage at a theatre — continues that promise and…well, more about that on Tuesday.

To further stoke your interest, here’s an interview I conducted with Byrnside via email regarding his own writing process, the appeal of impossible crimes, the difficulties in clewing, and all manner of other stuff besides.  It runs to about 5,000 words — I was having a lot of fun — but you’re safe from spoilers for either book (a few details of Irene are mentioned, but nothing too heavy), and there’s even a hint of what’s to come in Book 3.  And so, without further ado…

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You have said on your blog that reading The Red House Mystery (1922) by A.A. Milne lead you to the works of Christianna Brand, to whom you dedicated your first novel, Goodnight Irene (2018). How long ago do you reckon that was? And was this your first experience with classic detective fiction, or had you read much prior to Milne?

It was January of 2017. While surfing YouTube, I came upon a recording of TRHM and was unusually touched by the dedication to his father.  Seeing how old the book was, I knew it had to be in the public domain, so I stopped listening and downloaded a pdf. It was the first time I had read for pleasure in over ten years. I’ll always be grateful to Milne for that.

I had a brief dalliance with detective fiction In high school — some Christie and Doyle. However, my primary connection with detectives was through cinema. It didn’t matter how good or bad the film. If a detective gathered the suspects into a room and explained who did it, I would watch. I also quite enjoyed seeing The Mousetrap on a junior high field trip.

So was this rediscovery of detective fiction as an adult that spurred you on to write?  Or did you always have an itching to write something and the pieces suddenly fell into place once you’d seen what the genre could do?

Oh, definitely the latter. I had written screenplays, plays, and short stories before.  What the genre gave me, more than anything, was purpose. To fool the audience is the name of the game. Theme, character, messaging — they come after the purpose of the plot, and that’s a beautiful thing.

Detective fiction relies on the author playing the game correctly. How many ways are there to present a locked-room murder?  Twenty.  And they’ve all been done to death. So how is it that some nobody like me can write one into my first novel and fool anyone? Details. Playing the game correctly. It’s like magic. Mysteries will never die — just a bit of effort will rejuvenate the most tired cliche.

I’ve said before that telling a detective story is like telling a joke — if you get to the punchline but omit a key detail, the joke’s not funny, in the same way that revealing a solution without declaring the clues is massively unsatisfying.  And both become harder to genuinely surprise the audience with on account of their ubiquity.  You say it just requires a bit of effort, so where does the majority of that effort go in your writing?  Do you come up with a great piece of misdirection first and try to turn that into the workings of a crime, or do you typically start with a crime and then work out how to direct away from it?

I always start with the main murder. (I’m sure there are great novels about missing jewels, but I have no interest in reading them — nothing creates tension quite like an unknown killer.)  Once I have the murder figured, it’s pretty easy to cast suspicion to other characters.  The double meaning action (say a character is furious that food was spilled — perfectly natural — because he had poisoned it — hidden murderous intentions) isn’t too much trouble to think of; a lot of this comes when the characters are built: their personalities usually shape what you can get away with in terms of misdirection.

Motive is a great tool. As you know, The plot of The Opening Night Murders hinges on motive. Most people have plenty of reasons to commit murder, they just don’t do it. Conversely, how often have you read about a real-life murder committed for the stupidest reason? This is where misdirection can be really impressive.  Carr was fantastic at it.  The motive is told in an offhand way that makes it seem minor.  In the end, we find out it was the murderer’s obsession.  I love that technique.  The killer in Crooked House (1949) by Agatha Christie makes sense as a killer and as an obsessive.  Both scenarios fit him/her.

Carr has plied some exquisite misdirection over the years — my personal favourite is the questions to be asked after the show in The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939). Equally he’s guilty of some heinously unfair behaviour, such as telling an out-and-out lie in the prologue of one of his books — presumably to direct you away from a murderer he may have felt too easy to spot.

I may play with narrative misdirection a bit in the next book. It feels a bit unfair, but as long as I’m not lying — I remember watching Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950) and feeling betrayed because he presented a flashback that didn’t happen — I figure I’m okay.  I would never write narration that isn’t true, but let’s just say I’ll be changing up misdirection techniques in the future.

On the subject of misdirection, have you ever removed a clue or the mention of some point because you felt it wasn’t obfuscating enough, or because it made things too obvious? That desire to be fully honest must wrestle sometimes with the desire to still baffle your readers as much as possible…

It’s the other way around. I always feel like the mystery is too easy to solve. Only after reading a draft, again and again, can I see that there isn’t enough for the reader to go on, and I have to weave more clues in. It never seems that way while I’m writing though. Because I’ve gone through the plot so many times, the clues appear to me as if they’ve been highlighted. In Goodnight Irene, that clue about Tellum’s thumb being bitten — God, I thought the game was over. Things were a little better in The Opening Night Murders. I think chapter one is chock-full of clues. Of course, the reader won’t know what they mean and half of them will be forgotten, but part of the mystery is all there.

Sometimes the exact phrasing will give away too much. Just one tiny example: In Goodnight Irene, Lasciva lamented that his nephew played cricket instead of baseball and that a left-handed hitter could make a lot of money in America. Later, Manory remarked to Williams that Charles signed with the wrong hand. Talk about force-feeding the reader! I ended up eliminating the clue altogether and just producing it as an example of Manory’s detective skill. It was enough that he threw away Charles’ signature without looking at it. The moment became one more confounding element to the madness pile.

It’s funny you mention that, because as soon as it came up I was immediately thinking “Ooop, hang on — this is going to be relevant at some point!” because I don’t think a detective fiction author has ever made a point about what hand someone does something with, or on which lapel they wear a brooch, without it playing into the solution in some meaningful way. 

One more thing about clueing. You mentioned on your podcast about the thrill of correctly deducing some of the mystery, and how a good mystery will clue you into some correct conclusions while still baffling you as to the grand scheme. With The Opening Night Murders, I really wanted to make the reader feel smart about the wrong things.  I presented a few false conclusions and gave (what I considered) well-hidden clues pointing to those blind alleys. In my perfect world, the reader will read the conclusion with a smug, knowing grin that slowly disappears. They were right about the wrong thing. I’m sure there’ll be somebody out there who deduces everything perfectly, though. (I look forward to your derisive comments!)

See, I get caught out by the stuff that I know I’m supposed to be looking at, but which catches me unawares: the chewing gum that Manory finds under the Lasciva’s desk in Goodnight Irene, for instance — that threw me completely.  It’s this gorgeous study, beautiful furniture, everyone there would treat it with respect…the sudden, unexpected oddness of gum under the desk really brought me up short and left me scrambling for an explanation.  Equally, that short scene in The Opening Night Murders — “Hey, genius” — had me desperate to fit it in somewhere to no avail.

Conversely, then, have you ever devised a clue that you just don’t think can be communicated accurately enough to include fairly?  I’m thinking of the way small elements of Evil Under the Sun (1941) by Agatha Christie or The Blushing Monkey (1953) by Roman McDougald rely on smell…which the reader simply can’t know. The written word inevitably has its limitations, I’m just wondering if that’s been a problem for you yet.

The only difficulties I have along these lines are of the head hopping variety.  I write third person limited narration, where the golden rule is usually to put the “camera” over one person’s shoulder, and have it remain there while occasionally going into that one character’s inner monologue. For clueish thoughts in the suspect’s heads, this presents severe limitations.  So many times, I’ve wanted to go inside other characters’ heads within a scene. I end up doing it anyway, but far less than in the various draft stages. One use in The Opening Night Murders is the image Edward has in chapter 5. I wanted to cast a bit of suspicion on him and I didn’t feel like dialogue would quite capture how he saw the scene.

I know this isn’t about your question, but while I’m on this track — the biggest problem with POV is with the impossible crime itself. Sure, you can have the murder happen before the book starts, but that’s not fun. The reader wants to be there, to see multiple angles. In TONM, I go onstage, backstage, and in the seats just to give a more complete view. In my third book, I had plans to do it in three parts with part one being first person. I quickly scrapped it. I need a full view of that murder. In the barn, from the window, and out in the snow. First person would take that away. And quite frankly, third person limited isn’t doing what I want either. This is why I’m insistent on head hopping at the right times.  Point of view gives me much more trouble than sensory clues!

Moving way from plot, one of the things I’ve especially enjoyed about these books — quite apart from you smuggling some infernally smart impossibilities right under my nose — is the relationship between Manory and Williams. I can see how two detectives might help with the point of view issue you mention above, as not only are they able to split up and cover more ground, but also people might let slip in Williams’ company something they may guard a little more closely from Manory. But in terms of the pure relationship — the easy badinage, the concern they clearly have for each other — does writing that make a nice break from trying to obscure clues and forward the plot, or is capturing them equally as brow-furrowing?

‘A nice break’ is a good way to put it. In one sense, they’re already pre-written. If they’re in a room together, discussing the case or shooting the shit, the scene writes itself. That’s something I have to guard against (along with them getting metaphysical — realizing they are in a murder mystery and commenting on it). It wasn’t my plan to continue with them in the second book. However, it is tremendously appealing to keep the same detectives. It speeds the writing up, the reader automatically becomes more involved in the story (they aren’t asking, “Who are these people?”), and the incremental changes of a longer series allow for some profound sense of character to build rather naturally.

I didn’t want to have an idiotic Watson. They need each other. Williams is not our lens into the mystery. He is Manory’s lens into the world, just as Manory is Williams’ lens into detection. That’s where a lot of their camaraderie comes from. I never got the sense that Poirot needed Hastings, and that bothered me. Yes, they were friends, but it almost seemed masochistic at times. Manory and Williams are truly equal in a sense.

In Manory and Williams’ interactions I get a tingle or two of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin — is that deliberate, or am I imagining things?

For sure, but there are a lot of duos they take after. The good-natured exasperation of friendly opposites has a long history. I’d say Williams is a relative of Goodwin. Manory is more alien. The genius detective is often portrayed as otherworldly. I wanted to push it a bit further. I think, in the end, he’s just terribly disappointed with people. One other thing about him, he’s often wrong. That was really important to me. I didn’t want to write the kind of detective who guesses it right away and then works towards it, keeping the solution to himself the whole time

So, given his slightly ‘alien’ nature — the verbosity and precision in the way in talks in particular — was the decision to make Manory incurably ill motivated by a desire to humanise him? Or was it just to guarantee that you wouldn’t get stuck writing him for 25 years?

There are 3 reasons.

1. I’ve gotta make trouble for the protagonist. I love Philo Vance and Hercule Poirot, but do you ever get the sense they’re really in any danger? Those scenes in the forest (from Irene) and later in the passage were meant to be harrowing. He’s got to struggle and be vulnerable. I ‘attacked’ his heart and nervous system.

2. It’s my version of a character arc. In Irene, he triumphs. The final summation ‘restores’ his health. In TONM, it’s a different time and no solving of any case is going to help him. This was due to the time frame: The Roaring Twenties vs the Great Depression. Indeed, an argument could be made that TONM is less fun than Irene. I would dispute that, but I’d understand. It’s certainly a more pessimistic novel.

3. I’m the same as everyone else. I struggle with getting older, and that’s going to come out in my characters. Also, like Manory, I’ve always felt older than I am. I remember liking old music in grade school (primary). Most of the filmmakers, writers, and musicians I love are dead. When Christine tells Manory that he looks older and he thanks her, that’s only half sarcastic. His illness/aging has, in some way, always been with him.

You mentioned above that you hadn’t originally intended to write The Opening Night Murders with Manory and Williams, and you’ve said elsewhere that you wouldn’t want to write the same detective characters for too long.  Having put in the effort on all these fronts to create sympathetic and capable core characters, the allure would surely be to stick with them so that you’re freed up to concentrate on plot — so what about that doesn’t appeal to you?

Freeing myself to concentrate on the plot is appealing. The problem with these detectives is they don’t surprise me any more. I know exactly what Manory and Williams will do — always. Also, familiarity makes me lazy. There was an early draft that actually contained the phrase, INSERT WILLIAMS GAG HERE. Eventually, that kind of stuff is going to bite me in the ass. So many of the twists and turns in the latest book came from creating the characters. Timothy is a great example. He wasn’t much of a personality at first, but then the plot required him to do certain things. Well, what kind of character would do those things? I discovered him. That leads to creativity.

Now, that’s not to say I’ll never go back to Manory and Williams. I’m looking for ways to write quicker — both books took one year from outline to print, and having the same characters could speed things up. I may get a good idea for a case and use that familiarity to whip up a Manory/Williams manuscript in three months. But these two characters aren’t going to define me. I have other detectives with stories to tell.

I have to ask you about impossible crimes. So far you’ve written an impossible poisoning, an impossible locked room vanishing, an impossible resurrection of sorts, and an impossible death with no apparent cause, and it sounds like your third novel, The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire, will contain a no footprints problem. Are you deliberately working through the various types of impossible crime, or is it just a case of writing what occurs to you?

I write what occurs to me at the time. There’s no grand plan to tick everything off the impossibility checklist. With Irene, I started with the main locked-room impossibility. Instead of asking how I would do that, I asked myself what would lead to that happening. The other impossibilities came quite naturally — and it shows in the simplicity of their solutions. TONM was more of an attempt to top Brand. “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do with a spotlight shining on the stage and no one will be hidden and everyone will see it happen.” Then, of course, came the moment when I said, “Oh fuck. How am I gonna do that?”

The footprint problem is next because Barrington/Vampire is heavily inspired by Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot. I didn’t know that when I was outlining it; once the structure became apparent, I realized that it’s got the same breathless feel to it (hopefully) and the same sense of isolation. I started with the main impossibility, but I’ve got a few others to play with. Variations of the locked room will factor in all the murders.

I imagine the inspiration for these impossibilities comes from a mixture of pure ideas and details gleaned from research. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve found yourself researching in the writing of these books?

Well, that’s the joke, isn’t it? Murder mystery authors and serial killers have very similar browsing histories. I’m not sure exactly what the weirdest thing I’ve ever looked up is, but the one I’ve gone back to again and again is optography. It’s such a delicious idea to me. Talk about a dying message! Unfortunately, I’ve just never been able to bring myself to believe it (I think some experiments were done on a chicken, but the image they got was too blurry). Of course, my game doesn’t require me to be exact with my science. I only need a little bit of reality, enough to make it just barely passable. However I do quite a bit of research about the time. And I look at a lot of old photographs to get inspiration

If you’ve never quite convinced yourself to include optography, is there a darling you have forced yourself to kill — an idea you loved and included, only to have to remove it for whatever reason?

Never a murder. It’s always been dialogue or (more frequently) a scene I included to give flavor or a sense of time and place. In Irene, Rowan’s trip to Morocco was once a botched plot element. I ended up keeping it as a little joke — “I have been to Morocco. Monkeys did not chop off this man’s head with an ax.”

There was a scene in TONM I was quite fond of. It was a dialogue between Manory and a newspaper columnist that took place on the ride to Baraboo. During my research, I read a 1930’s article explaining why the Depression had not caused America to succumb to either far end of the ideologies. “There’s so little talk of revolution from the middle class, the bourgeoisie has to bring it up.  It’s a riot.”  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tie it into the murder plot, and it read like dead weight on the story.

Getting back to the impossibility angle, it struck me that I can’t make myself believe optography, but I can suspend my disbelief for some crazy things. To my mind, there is a pleasure-of-the-presentation/disappointment-of-the-reveal ratio that must be satisfied.  There a fine essay on Carr called Literary Cracksman [written by Tom and Enid Schantz for the introduction of the Carr/Dickson novels published by the Rue Morgue Press] which compares impossible crime fiction with magic. Magicians have an advantage; they never have to reveal the trick. Their work remains in the blissful realm of mystery forever.  Writers have to reveal the trick. The horrible part is, every reveal is disappointing. Think about it, even the brilliant ones you really love are still a let down from the problem that came before it. You just allowed yourself to believe the solution in order to enjoy it. Mastering the pleasure of the presentation will go a long way in allowing me to push the believability of the solution.

I don’t think I can agree with you there — sure, some impossibilities, even most of them, have varying degrees of disappointment in their reveals, but the brilliant ones are brilliant because of how superbly they resolve it all.  Whistle Up the Devil (1953) by Derek Smith, Death of Jezebel (1948) by Christianna Brand, The Reader is Warned (1939) by Carter Dickson, Policeman’s Evidence (1938) by Rupert Penny, Invisible Green (1977) by John Sladek…isn’t it doing these books and authors a huge disservice by essentially putting the intelligence of their reveals down to a sort of self-delusion?