I try to keep a weather eye on modern crime fiction publications, mainly so that anything which sounds like it might contain an impossible crime can be tried out in this occasional undertaking where we all pretend that I’m only reading them so I can recommend one to TomCat. But Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss, well, I sort of went looking for this one…

See, I recently loved The Dead Friend Project (2024) by Joanna Wallace and have thoroughly enjoyed the work of Janice Hallett; and since both women are published in the UK by Viper Books, well, might not Viper Books provide more examples of interesting modern crime fiction? So a browse of the Viper Books website seemed in order, and revealed this intriguing blurb which promised both a locked room murder and time travel…so how was I supposed to ignore that?

Ella Manning returns to Black Lake Manor on Vancouver Island, home of tech billionaire — and her ex-fiancé — Lincoln Shan, for the launch of a new technology that Lincoln is keen to unveil in as dramatic a way as possible. Over a hundred guests have been invited to the isolated manor, and the revelation that most of them are, in fact, hard light representations of people who are actually miles away goes down a storm, as Lincoln intends. Then an actual storm hits and severs the data connection, and everyone who wasn’t really there disappears, leaving only a handful of guests isolated in the best classic tradition. The morning after the storm, Lincoln is discovered in his locked office, brutally murdered, clearly by someone in the house. But whodunnit?

Now, hard light is a cool idea — I’ve been waiting for it to turns up in a crime novel since a certain episode of Red Dwarf aired in 1993 — but the one criticism I can level at this book is that Morpuss is, to my liking, perhaps a little too vague about how the technology actually works. Beyond the fact that you wear some tactile gloves and a visor it’s not really clear how the users control their avatars: do you stand in one place and think your hard light self into walking, or do you need to actually move? Realistically this doesn’t matter, and it in no way constitutes a hole in the plotting, but this slight undercooking of a rather key aspect of the plot — it’s no surprise to say that it features quite significantly — left just a couple of questions in my mind, despite being rather clever.

What especially intrigues me, for nerdy genre reasons, is the impossibility. See, that locked office isn’t what makes this an impossible crime novel. Hell — and I don’t mean this as a criticism, I had a great time with this book — I’m not ever sure if this is an impossible crime novel at all. I’ve just tried to explain why and, wow, do I realise now what a superb job Morpuss does of keeping his various strands clear. Essentially…

(…you can imagine me rubbing my temples here as I try to make this concise…)

…Lincoln is seen on the house’s security video entering his study in the company of another person — I’m not going to tell you who, it’s…complicated — and then no-one enters or leaves until Koji, the ostensible Head of Security, enters in the morning and finds the body. Now, the lockedness of the door is no problem, since the electronic lock seals automatically as soon as the door closes, and the apparent vanishing of the other person in the office isn’t necessarily impossible because they might have been a hard light avatar, so would simply be switched off and vanish. Except the avatars are programmed to be unable to cause anyone physical harm. Except this one might have had an A.I. component to its programming so that it could? Or maybe that was a lie?

It’s amazing how clear Morpuss makes all of this, especially while juggling three timelines spanning 200 years and multiple interpersonal relationships of varying degrees of happiness. His idea are thrown out casually, without the need to resort to lecturing, because of course the characters are familiar with the technology and setup and so discuss it on those terms. And I haven’t even gotten to the time travel yet, so let’s stir that into the pot as well.

Okay, so Lincoln and Koji, as well as others around Black Lake Manor at the time of the murder, are members of the Akaht people, who have the ability, once only in their lives, to rewind time six hours. A clever opening conceit sees this deployed and enables Morpuss to bring the reader up to speed on how it works, along with the rules of who does and who doesn’t remember the timeline before the rewind happened. And so, you can guarantee that at some point in Ella’s investigation she will discover more that the killer intends and find herself dumped back in time six hours with no memory of what transpired, and so unknowingly starts all over again…

Morpuss deploys this ingeniously, with the investigation never quite following the same lines each time, so that the reader knows more than Ella but also learns things that are new. Different characters are encountered with each reset, and as the various interviews unspool and the collage of actions and motives pile up, it’s really very impressive how little of the space feels wasted; Morpuss is never merely retreading events Groundhog Day-style for easy laughs or to fill up his page count. Given that Ella goes on to learn things we already know, it’s again fairly amazing how clean and clear this is kept and how important each revelation becomes to the overall picture. And, complete side note, but I love the phrase Morpuss devises to let you know when a reset happens. I’ll not spoil it, it deserves to be encountered in context for maximum effectiveness.

Okay, what else?

As a mystery, this also works reasonably well from a clewing perspective, too. I mean, sure, it’s more thriller than classic detection, but there are a few well-placed clues that should key you in to what’s happening — although one late twist might not quite make sense, not that it comes remotely close to ruining things — and one absolute klaxon of a humdinger that, I’m ashamed to say, I completely overlooked in the rush to turn the pages. And there’s even a moment or two for some commentary on the way we perceive the actions of the wealthy that feels rather more earned than it has any right to:

“I’ve given up half my life for the environment, risked prison to make people see what matters. And here Lincoln was with his billions, someone who could really make a difference, and all he did was pretend.”

Morpuss is to be commended, too, for giving Ella rather more life than anyone at the centre of this melee has a right to. She’s a fairly straightforward character with some pleasingly uncommon reactions to events — I especially enjoyed how she’s aware of the need to appear like she’s had an emotional reaction to her ex-fiancée’s death even thought she feels no particular grief. Incredibly, she’s best understood — I kid you not — in relation to an octopus. Seriously, that final chapter is something else, and is all the more powerful precisely because it seems so unlikely that this SF-mystery-thriller mash-up with time travel at its core could possibly pay off in such an emotionally rich way.

Writing this review had made me realise what an excellent job Guy Morpuss does throwing around a positive swathe of wild ideas, making them grounded and (mostly) comprehensible in a way that feeds his plot and fills out the world of his story with superb clarity. This won’t be to the taste of the classic detection die-hards among you, but damn if this sounds like it’s even slightly your thing then I can almost guarantee that you’re going to find a lot here to enjoy. And I need someone else to read it if only to tell me if it is actually an impossible crime…never before have I been in such a whirl of contradictory conclusions! Mind- and genre-bending stuff in the best way, what a lovely surprise this turned out to be.

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