I’m slowly working my way up to the newly-translated Paul Halter novel The Siren’s Call (1998, tr. 2023), but there’s the small matter of these two short stories to deal with first, translated by John Pugmire and drawn here from the pages of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

First, from the September/October 2021 edition, we have ‘The Celestial Thief’ (2021, tr. 2021), which finds Halter’s Victorian dilettante sleuth Owen Burns, having “just joined the septuagenarian club”, on holiday in France where a story of a mysterious vanishing reaches his ears. And this is no mere disapparation from a locked or watched room, but instead the vanishment of all the stars in the heavens — winking out before the eyes of two witnesses, who are so overcome with panic at what they’re (not) seeing that they fail to prevent a friend from being murderously attacked by, presumably, the extra-terrestrial forces responsible.

There’s an ingenious idea at the core of this, but in a way the stars vanishing is too big to be the proper focus, and Burns recalls Sherlock Holmes when he declares that “the more complex a problem appears, the simpler the solution tends to be”. The principle is intelligent, and having two people witness the same thing is achieved well, but that apparent impossibility fades into the background when trying to weave a pattern out of activities that include the mutilation of cattle and the apparent sighting of a flying saucer in the region, never mind the suicide of young woman from the town and that murderous attack upon the man who is, in a way, responsible for the impossible sight the watchers beheld.

Aliens are a tricky subject for writers of rational detective fiction, because having to explain their otherworldly activities can — as in The Case of the Little Green Men (1951) by Mack Reynolds — result in a series of damp squibs going off, or, as in ‘From Another World’ (1948) by Clayton Rawson, utilise some good ideas among a series of underwhelming ones. Halter has the intelligence to suggest one easily pooh-poohed explanation given by Burns’ Watson, Achilles Stock, and manages to find a thread through the madness that makes sense of most of the events, without resorting to cheap trickery or raising issues of how practical some of the events might be. It’s very clever.

What Halter also does, which might not be to the liking of some, is leave some elements unexplained, indeed unaddressed altogether, and I suppose it is up to the reader to determine how relevant they are to the story and how much they might just have been either scene-setting for the overall effect or whether, given the isolated setting, they’re filigree’d additions after the event made up to layer an air of mystery over something which had such an unsuspectedly rational explanation all along. I liked it, but your mileage may vary.

The May/June 2023 edition then brings us up to date with ‘The Wendigo’s Spell’ (2023, tr. 2023), which starts off with what is essentially a reminder of ‘The Oracle of the Dog’ (1926) by G.K. Chesterton and then quickly expands to include stories of the mythical wendigo, “a monster half man and half wolf…the North American equivalent of [the European] werewolf”. I was under the impression — no doubt from Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot — that the wendigo was a flying beast, so I feel like I learned something here, trusting Halter as I do to be correct. No, I’m not going to look it up.

The story sees Dr. Alan Twist visiting a friend, also in France, and being told of the mysterious case of a man who murdered his wife one evening without provocation…a case which becomes all the more baffling when it transpires that a second man also murdered his wife in the same manner at the same time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a great little setup, aided by some strong scene-setting in the opening stages (“…the log fire flickering in the grate, fighting in vain against the chilly air of that late autumn…”), and doubly impressive for how it takes something fairly routine…

“If you look at the bare facts, there’s not much of a mystery…just unbridled jealousy and anger…”

…and spins it into the borderlands of pure madness.

In appreciating the solution, and I do very much appreciate it, I think a certain awareness of Halter’s recent works helps, as he has put more of a foot over the line into metaphysical matters in recent years. ‘The Yellow Book’ (2017, tr. 2017) and The Gold Watch (2019, tr. 2019) have both toyed with the principle raised here, and, while it won’t be to everyone’s liking, I thoroughly enjoyed Halter’s attempt to write what’s almost in the same wheelhouse as The Burning Court (1937) by John Dickson Carr. There’s a real confidence in the blending of genres, supported by the clever stirring in of early details to strengthen the edifice, that speaks of genuine skill rather than lazily reaching for an easy way out of the difficulty he has created.

These two stories together show that, after 35 years as an author, Paul Halter still has some ingenious ideas up his sleeves. The confidence that comes from not needing to tie off every single incident, to leave some of it up in the air without that affecting the essential shape of the core impossibility, is lovely to see, and something I hope he embraces if he has any more fiction in him. Halter’s proven to be divisive with English-language audiences — what author hasn’t? — but if this betokened a new phase in his career, I for one would find that very exciting…

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