Back in 2020, as part of my occasional Adventures in Self-Publishing undertaking, I read two stories by Jamie Probin — the novel The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) and the much shorter ‘The Adventure of the Nine Monets’ (2020) — and followed this up a few years later with two of Probin’s further short stories, ‘The Heir Affair’ (2022) and ‘Body of Matter’ (2022).

A recent comment on one of those posts brought to my attention that someone called Jamie Probin had recently had a short story published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, in their prestigious Department of First Stories, and, c’mon, what are the chances it’s not the same guy? Well, it is, the same guy, and the story, an inverted impossible crime tale called ‘Chapter 17: Perroquet Explains’ (2026) is absolutely bloody superb. So let’s dig into it today, to whet your appetite lest you have the chance to track it down yourself.

Told from the first-person perspective of an initially anonymous narrator, this takes the form of the final chapter of a mystery novel, in which the Great Detective — here, Jean-Claude Perroquet, who maybe might possibly bring a certain Belgian to mind — gathers the suspects and holds forth on the events which have preceded what is about to be the Grand Revelation of the killer.

I’ve often wondered when I read mysteries what the murderer is thinking at these moments. When Miss Marple or Dr. Fell is gradually putting all the pieces into their correct place, why does the guilty party just sit there waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall? They must know the detective is never wrong — and even if they initially hope this time might be the exception, they must quickly recognize the picture being assembled in front of them.

The crime under examination is the apparently-impossible murder of two men in a snow-surrounded pavilion at the rear of your Type 4 Country House. One of the men has been poisoned, and the other shot, but difficulties arise in there being no poison in the pavilion and the gun that did the shooting being discovered by the Great Detective’s Tame Policeman under a vase…yet the only footprints around the crime scene are those of the two victims and the maid who discovered them.

You can, of course, cavil at this setup, and Probin does beautifully succinct work in establishing why one man could not have poisoned the other before being shot by his victim. Indeed, given how at least a certain amount of what passes for the impossible crime in modern fiction can fail to consider the alternative explanations that can be put on things, possibly the most brilliant part of this excellent story is how well Probin manages to address and dismiss such alternatives. I had cause to accuse him of prolixity in The Thirteenth Apostle, and, wow, has he absolutely improved since then. Aspiring writers, take note: this is how you set up and explain away a crime’s possible-but-ignorable alternatives.

I always enjoy this part, when Perroquet for some reason explains to his audience the events of the case in great detail, despite the fact they were there and watched all of it happen. It makes sense in books, I suppose, reminding the lazy reader of all the clues they were meant to notice first time, but it was so laughably pointless in the real world. Nevertheless, as a ‘Great Detective’ he was determined to do things properly. We were going to have a summary of the murder and various motives, whether we wanted it or not.

It quickly becomes apparent, however, that this revelation is going to be perceived somewhat differently, because our narrator tells us that they are the killer, and are absolutely convinced that, this time, the Great Detective is going to be led astray.

How that’s possible, and whether it happens, I’ll leave it to you to discover if you’re fortunate enough to track this down. What I will say is that the solution to the murders is absolutely superb, and the smugness of our narrator takes on an especially pleasing aspect once we’re told their identity. Clearly Probin has studied his classic texts, and the derisive comments about the dundering police are magnificently on point…

There would, in time, be a moment during this soliloquy where Inspector Jacobson’s role in the solution was ostensibly acknowledged, but only in some comically inept way — no doubt stumbling into a vase or making some well-meaning but idiotic comment that nevertheless put his friend on the right track. There always was. And everyone seemed fine with this, as though it was a perfectly reasonable notion that the British police force should accept the employment of halfwits…

…and play beautifully into this loving homage and blistering critique of the puzzle mystery’s trappings. Honestly, it puts one in mind of the stronger work of Leo Bruce, and, where meta-aware mysteries are concerned, I can think of no higher praise.

You may be thinking that the setup sounds similar to ‘Chapter the Last: Merriman Explains’ (1951) by Alex Atkinson, last anthologised to my knowledge in The Art of the Impossible [ss] (1990). And you’d be right to a degree, since Atkinson also has his eye on the ridiculous contortions of the puzzle plot. But Probin’s story is definitely superior, not least because it maintains its brilliantly-weighted tone over a far greater word count, but also because this one actually contains and explains an impossible crime and takes much more accurate aim at the tropes: why, for instance, would the killer sit there and let someone who has a faultless record of explaining baffling crimes explain away the events they’ve orchestrated? It’s an excellent question, and, here at least, Probin provides an excellent answer.

I must not veer into prolixity myself, but on this evidence alone Probin is an exciting prospect for future journeys into the impossible, and, honestly, just into the detective story in general. Yes, the majority of what he’s published to date has featured impossible crimes, but when someone produces something of this standard I can’t help but get a little excited about the prospect of simply anything from their pen. It is sincerely to be hoped that this is far from the last we hear of Probin in our little corner of the world, and I avidly await future developments.