The mysterious entity known only as A. Carver really is living the dream, constructing byzantine impossible crime puzzles which have caught the attention of fans of the subgenre, and putting out so far four novels and now a collection of shorter stories, Death in 13 Rooms [ss] (2026)
TomCat brought this collection to my attention, and Carver’s output to date is remarkably willing to tackle the impossible crime head-on, so, with the shorter form a notoriously tricksy beast to handle, let’s see how this mysterious mystery-wrangler fares in bringing rich imagination to shorter arcs. Quite by chance, I’ll be reviewing at least three collections of impossible crimes in this month’s Adventures in Self-Publishing, so this would appear to be the form of choice at present.
Intriguingly, too, these stores are included in the volume in the order they were written, so it’ll be interesting to see what lessons Carver might have learned along the way.
There’s a lot going on in ‘The Hunting Room’, with family dynamics, some confusing relational geography (the floorplan did not help me understand the layout of the building) and an impossible shooting in which the man believed responsible swears that neither he nor anyone else was in the locked room the bullet was fired from.
The writing here is a little callow — you can’t tell someone is handsome if they’re lying face down on the ground — but once the interminable bickering is out of the way the solution has an Ed Hoch sort of air about it. It doesn’t convince me as a real world operation, but in Carver’s heightened settings it just about passes muster. Frankly, not a bad effort if it’s Carver’s first ever short story.
‘The Knife in the Devil’s Throat’ sees a school group rescued from a flooded cave, only for the teacher to have been murdered — their throat slit — and no knife in evidence. Oh, and everyone was under sedation at the time, so could not have been conscious to kill the teacher and then do up the zip on his wetsuit to hide the wound.
It’s a compact problem, perhaps a little long in the telling, but good in its essential, simple details. The trick of the vanishing knife will either delight or infuriate…well, no, that’s not true: I sort of shrugged and went ‘Yeah, okay’, so that option is available to you as well.
A killer attacks a research scientist, slashing at their head before cutting their throat, the whole thing caught on a CCTV which takes a photo ever second…and presents no sight of the killer as the man is attacked. Lovely to see ‘Where the Crows Gather’ utilising modern(ish) technology, and lovely too that the impossibility has nothing to do with the camera being switched off or alternate footage substituted, etc.
Again, we’re in a slightly heightened universe and so the solution makes a kind of sense, but would the [spoiler redacted] be quick enough? Sure, why not? I’ve accepted far less likely explanations, and any Australians reading this story will certainly be able to tell of a parallel case they either experienced or heard about.
Given that both Hoch and Death in Paradise (2011-present) have given up murders at polling stations, I was interested to see what Carver would add to this mini subgenre with ‘Vote for Murder’. This sees two politicians standing for an election, and one of them shot through the head while casting his vote and alone in the booth…
I’m not sure about this one, not just because the method seems a little blunt but also because I don’t really understand the motive. Carver’s been good at tying those considerations in so far, and this is the first time I don’t really get it…but, hey, we’re all allowed the odd slip now and then.
A man in found dead in his potting shed with the door sealed by string wrapped around two hooks to hold the door closed — an homage, maybe? — in ‘The Second Problem of the Potting Shed’, and it’s pleasingly novel to follow Cornelia Crow through this from a disinterested third-person POV (I especially liked her being characterised as “a woman of advanced years and miserable temperament”).
This is fun, with the little neighbourhood well-drawn, and the method amusingly well-clued right from the off. Benefits from being slightly shorter than the stories that preceded it, too, so that things nip along at a good pace and we don’t get too bogged down in too many details. Nicely done.
“A girl had taken a smiling selfie on top of a dangerous old tower in the woods somewhere, and promptly fallen to her death. A few days and exploitative news articles later, and a second girl had done the same thing” — is this ‘The Suicide Selfie Curse’?
With echoes of The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) and The Demon of Dartmoor (1993) this struggled at times to find any new space in this idea. I liked the commentary on modern media and how everyone seems to be obsessed with selfies, but for my tastes the solution to this — despite a clever identity misdirection — would have benefitted from less waiting. Maybe I just felt the length because this was so much longer than the preceding story, however.
The background for ‘Shadows of the Solitary Man’ is intriguing: Cornelia is potentially going to buy the manuscript of Hake Talbot‘s rumoured third novel, but the possessor is shot dead before she arrives — the killer apparently vanishing into the ether after the murder.
I liked this, even if I did see through the essential principle of the how (hint: I’ve talked about the key concept here). What’s very good indeed, however, is the reason for creating the impossible crime in the first place; Carver writes well about the need for the impossibility — accidental though it was — and it’s a great examination of purpose in this subgenre. Given that people can lose track of why in the rush to explain how, I appreciated this a lot.
The setup for ‘The Diaphanous Wall of Jericho’ is enjoyably creative: two vicars sharing a house which is divided down the middle by an electronic signal which will go off if either crosses into the other’s side. So when a dead body is found in a room in the middle of the house, who could possibly have killed it?
There’s an elaborateness to the solution here which reminded me of Tom Mead — it’s a clever idea, and I’m fascinated by the process by which it was devised, but there’s also a physical element to it that I don’t quite buy. Still, the setup is fun, and the physical impossibility of any of the suspects in the house doing the crime is an always-enjoyable conceit, and one that Carver exploits well. Plus, the Christian Bale joke is a good one — excellent work.
Another superbly creative setup greets us in ‘Where Good Intentions Go’, with rival scientists vying to stay in different underwater habitats for the longest time, and murder entering the mix in seemingly-impossible circumstances…unless, that is, the one person who appears guilty is guilty.
This is a great, imaginative, and bafflingly-conceived story that sets up the nature of its impossibility superbly, and then explains it away with a panache that rewards all that work. Carver is to be commended for conceiving of this and, if one element seems a little too convenient — (rot13 for massive spoilers) er-napubevat gur frpbaq cbq nyy nybar naq jvgu n sngny fgno jbhaq jbhyq fheryl or zhpu uneqre guna vg’f znqr gb fbhaq urer — the imagination behind this unusual setup is simply wonderful.
‘The Man Who Read William Brittain’ might be the best-written story in here, achieving as it does a superb mimicry of the Mr. Strang stories. A locked classroom and a mysteriously-appearing message on a blackboard set up this as a very fine piece of pastiche work all round, with the superbly-named Mr. Suss as the detective who untangles it.
The additional epilogue-like final section, then, is…good, but I honestly think this would have been better if Alex and Cornelia never appeared in this, despite the new twist put on proceedings. If Carver wanted a career writing Strang pastiches, such a move would be supported wholeheartedly on this evidence.
For me, ‘The Horrendous Occurrences of Colonel Henry Haunt’ is far too long for the payoff to be worth it. Concerning a man who claims to be over 260 years old and who, in demonstrating the ritual by which he has rejuvenated himself, vanishes from a box within a glass pyramid, this is probably the longest story in the collection so far, and certainly felt like it.
TomCat’s review mentions that this is a take on Hoch’s Simon Ark stories, so there’s a chance you’ll enjoy this more if you’ve read those, and it may be that I didn’t get on with this because I’ve not. But I have a feeling that it’s more due to the creativity on show elsewhere in this collection, and that by Carver’s standards this is pretty transparent stuff and should be easily half the length it is.
Equally long, thought perhaps earning it more with the intriguing setup, ‘Disappearance at Loch Dreich’ sees several friends staying in a series of towers along a river. When the river bursts its banks, the flooding cuts the towers off from each other…and then a mysterious disappearance and a violent death follow in close succession. Except both occurred in towers with the windows bolted on the inside and no easy access.
This is a spin on a couple of fairly classic ideas, but Carver does well here to utilise the unusual setup. And folding in the possibility of a monster, and some of the writing this allows, is a very neat touch. Still a bit too long, but difficult not to enjoy.
Finally, ‘The Tumbling Tower’, in which the possibility of a rare Walter S. Masterman (woo!) novel sees Alex and Cornelia on hand when a man falls from the balcony on his room at the top of a tower, plunging to land on the spikes of the fence below. Of course, the door to the room is locked and the windows are bolted, so there couldn’t possibly be foul play involved. Right?
Again, this feels too long, but if Carver is more comfortbale over this sort of word count — these last three stories are the latest written, remember — I guess my opinion doesn’t matter. Points off for spoiling The Case of the Constant Suicides (1940), and I feel the solution here really would hit better after half as many words. A good ending note, however, with a surprising amount of feeling behind it.
Well, I normally round off reviews of collections with a Top 5, so let’s conform to type:
- ‘Where Good Intentions Go’
- ‘The Man Who Read William Brittain’
- ‘Shadows of the Solitary Man’
- ‘The Second Problem of the Potting Shed’
- ‘Disappearance at Loch Dreich’
I am, then, jealous not only of Carver’s fecundity of ideas, but also the output which has seen four novels and some very creative stories flow from that quarter in seemingly no time at all. I can’t escape the feeling that a little editing would tighten some of these stories up — kill your darlings, dude! — but Carver’s youthful enthusiasm and willingness to explore some odd possibilities is exactly the sot of attitude the impossible crime needs if it’s going to continue to find life in anything besides a series of warmed-over, Victorian-era, hack solutions from non-specialist writers.
And if Carver ever runs out of ideas of the undoable nevertheless done, there’s always a job as a Leonard Strang pastiche writer. A new tranche of those would be almost as exciting as the more successful elements herein.
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Reviews of more self-published impossible crime fiction on The Invisible Event can be found here.
