Today is the tenth Bodies from the Library Conference, at which, until other considerations intervened, I was due to present on the topic of inverted mysteries. And you can bet I would at some point have talked about Six Against the Yard (1936), in which six crime writers put their ‘perfect murder’ on paper and ex-CID man Superintendent Cornish picked holes in their plans.
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Like The Serial Killers’ Club (2006) by Jeff Povey and the Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004-15) series by Jeff Lindsay, Joanna Wallace’s debut You’d Look Better as a Ghost (2023) takes on the challenge of seeing the world through a serial killer’s eyes. Wallace, though, takes the far harder route of not trying to justify her killer’s murderous urges by having them only kill ‘bad people’, and instead invites you to spend nearly 400 pages with Claire, who is unhinged enough to murder a man who accidentally emailed her incorrect information, and who blithely admits that she “like[s] to peel the skin off queue-jumpers”. It shouldn’t work. But, thanks in no small way to some pitch-black humour, boy, does it.
Another Tuesday in June, another book which has lingered on my TBR, and, coincidentally, another impossible crime. So, does Murder Most Ingenious (1962) by Kip Chase live up to its own self-confident billing? Sort of.
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You don’t write as much as Edward D. Hoch without hitting the bull’s-eye a few times, so I’m finally doing what I should have done all along and starting the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series from the beginning, with this first collection, Diagnosis: Impossible (2000), a tranche of 12 stories initially published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine between 1974 and 1978.
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I’m not entirely sure where Casual Slaughters (1935) by James Quince first came to my attention, but it might have been this list of 150 largely very good detective novels, compiled by Curtis Evans back in 2010. And since Curtis and I recently agreed about The Dead Man’s Knock (1958) by John Dickson Carr, and since Oreon Books recently reprinted Casual Slaughters and I bought a copy while visiting at the excellent Bodies in the Bookshop in Cambridge, well, the time seemed ripe to pull it out of my TBR to see how I fare. And, as if I needed more convincing, Quince’s title is from Hamlet, this blog takes its name from Hamlet…seriously, could the universe be aligning more?
Another book, bought because I understood it to contain an impossible crime, which has been left lingering on my TBR because it’s a later entry in a series I’ve not otherwise read. More than that, this is a continuation novel, so not even by the series’ original author.
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I have an undeniable fondness for the work of Edgar Allan Poe, having looked at his tales of ratiocination on this blog as well as written a novel inspired by one of his most famous stories. So Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013), a collection of stories edited by Paul Kane and Charles Prepolec purporting to extend the career of Poe’s unfathomably influential detective C. Auguste Dupin, was certainly an intriguing find.
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Not to split hairs, but if you receive an anonymous note on the 1st June telling you that you have thirteen days to live, the person threatening your life is going to kill you on 14th June, not the 13th. Either way, the wealthy George Hayling waits the best part of a week, receiving one note a day along similar lines — including a threat to poison his dog, which is duly carried out — before consulting the police. As luck would have it, he’s ushered into the office of Chief Inspector Floyd just as that worthy is completing a discussion with the esteemed Sir Arthur Sinclair, and something about Hayling’s case piques Sinclair’s interest. Only, with so little time remaining, can Sinclair keep the man alive?
Tuesdays this month will once again be dedicated to digging books out of my TBR pile that have lingered unloved and are likely to remain so without drastic intervention. First up, Mind Over Magic (2009) by William Rabkin, a tie-in novel from the TV show Psych (2006-14), which I’ve left unread because I figured I should watch the show first. But then I read it anyway; wow, I’m so ungovernable.
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Given the state of limerence in which I exist when it comes to the impossible crime in fiction, it was with great excitement that I received a copy About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932) by Anthony Abbot, which has not one but two entries in Adey.
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The Invisible Event 