You wait months for a Ticking Clock Against Which to Discover the Real Killer Before an Innocent Person is Wrongfully Executed thriller, and then two come along in the same week.
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With the superb British Library Crime Classics range having recently published its one hundredth title, and with doubtless many more books still in its future, the time seems ripe to revisit one of its most exciting reprints, It Walks by Night (1930) the novel-length debut of John Dickson Carr and his first sleuth, Henri Bencolin.
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I hadn’t intended Phantom Lady (1942) to be my next Cornell Woolrich read — that was going to be a revisit of the short story collection Nightwebs (1971) which so underwhelmed me and put me off Woolrich for two decades, only for me to fall in love with the man’s work recently — but, after his own glowing review of this title, I don’t think Ben at The Green Capsule would have forgiven me if I’d gone anywhere else. And, honestly, I’m having such a blast with Woolrich’s nightmarescapes that I was probably going to enjoy whatever I read…but, woo, can I ever see why he wanted me to read this one. So, attempting to avoid nudges, winks, and spoilers that might mar your enjoyment, here goes…
I don’t know for sure where I first heard of Grieve for the Past (1963) by Stanton Forbes, but I’m willing to believe it was John’s enthusiastic write-up at Pretty Sinister. And I can well see the reasons for his enthusiasm: when you’ve read as widely in the genre as he has, something a little out of the ordinary is bound to appeal.
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It’s been ten months since I last caught up with Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews, so how does new author Nick West — a nom de plume of Kin Platt — apply himself here, in the first of his two entries in The Three Investigators series?
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For someone who wishes there was more ambition displayed in the modern impossible crime novel, I prove hard to please when Gallic maestro of the impossible Paul Halter stretches his wings into his more enterprising undertakings. I can’t shake the feeling that I rated The Man Who Loved Clouds (1999, tr. 2018) a little too harshly, and maybe in a couple of years I’ll feel that The Mask of the Vampire (2014, tr. 2022) deserves more than the three stars I’m giving it. Because, see, there is a lot of ambition here, and I want to celebrate the complexity of Halter’s intentions and achievements…but, I dunno, something just holds me back.
“I have a profound admiration for Rhino…he’s indeed a credit to Mereworth — an example to us all. The school has turned out some fine men in its time, but none finer and with a more distinguished record than Rhino Garstang. No wonder the boys look up to him!”
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My memory of The Sign of Four (1890), the second story to feature Sherlock Holmes from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle, was that it offered little of interest or consequence, and stood rather as a footnote in the canon than a core text. And, rereading it for this post, I’ve come to realise that this impression is both quite right and very wrong indeed.
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Of the multitudinous ways that Vultures in the Sky (1935) by Todd Downing is boring, perhaps the most irritating is the incessant padding between plot points that drags out discoveries or turn the Lantern of Suspicion upon someone so palpably innocent of any blame that you have to wonder if the author thought anyone would be paying attention. Eight people on the last train through Mexico before a workers’ strike hits should be a real cauldron of a setting, full of slow-building tension and — if clever misdirection among the tiny cast cannot be achieved — at least some doubt as to who the killer might be. It’s almost impressive how Downing fails on both counts.
Sometimes I buy a book and, for no good reason at all, it ends up sinking to the bottom of the heap. Over time, I forget what motivated me to buy it in the first place, and the desire to find out is overwhelmed by other, more arresting excitements. And so Tuesdays this month will be given over to these long-gestating reads.
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The Invisible Event 