Author: JJ

#408: Quick Curtain (1934) by Alan Melville

/ JJ / 29 Comments

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In German there is schadenfreude, pleasure at the misfortune of others, which I believe is the intended response to Richard Hull’s Murder of My Aunt (1934).  I’m sorry to say that in reading it I experienced more the Spanish vergüenza ajena, that toe-curling horror of watching someone make a prat of themselves, and not in any sort of a good way.  But in order to (hopefully) prove that I’m not a humourless prig I’ve opted for another light, funny mystery with Alan Melville’s Quick Curtain (1934), having enjoyed but not really retained much of the similarly-republished Death of Anton (1936) from the British Library.

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#405: The 8 Mansion Murders (1989) by Takemaru Abiko [trans. Ho-Ling Wong 2018]

/ JJ / 57 Comments

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Before we get onto the book itself, it’s worth mentioning that this is the twenty-ninth publication from Locked Room International.  Under the stewardship of John Pugmire, we’ve been brought a wonderful mix of classic and modern impossible crime novels and short stories from all corners of the globe, and — given the standard of their recent output — it certainly seems that the best is far from past.  I anticipate a great many excellent, obscure, and previously-untranslated works coming our way in the years ahead thanks to LRI, and I wanted to take a moment to recognise the work that goes into making this happen.

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#404: Little Fictions – The Impossibilities of Ellery Queen: ‘The Black Ledger’, a.k.a. ‘The Mysterious Black Ledger’ (1952) and ‘Diamonds in Paradise’ (1954)

/ JJ / 36 Comments

QBI & QF

To finish off this month looking at some of the impossible crime short stories of Ellery Queen — which started without an impossibility, went verbosely downhill, and then improved significantly — I’m again looking at two stories since both are pretty darn short.  And so…

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#402: The Affair of the Bottled Deuce (1958) by Harry Stephen Keeler

/ JJ / 11 Comments

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Emboldened by the experience of The Rynox Mystery (1930) by Philip MacDonald from last week — an author with whom I started poorly and have come to really enjoy — I turn to Harry Stephen Keeler. The only other Keeler I’ve read to date was…fine, and I’ve been admittedly reluctant to begin this despite its locked room murder being why I bought it in the first place.  The superb introduction from Francis M. Nevins explains how and why this was unpublished in Keeler’s lifetime and only came into public being through Keelerite Fender Tucker’s Ramble House imprint in 2005.  As you gather from my rating, I’m of the opinion the public would’ve coped perfectly fine without it.

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#400: The Rynox Mystery (1930) by Philip MacDonald

/ JJ / 27 Comments

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Well, who’d’ve thought it, eh?  Philip MacDonald first featured in my reading life in 1-star ignominy, and here he is not just beating all-comers to feature my 400th blog post, but doing so with a book that I — against my better judgement, nature, and previous standards — unabashedly loved with every fibre of my being.  Quite the turnaround, and part of why I persevere with intially-disappointing authors.  Just to clear something up from the off: no, I would not classify this as an impossible crime, despite its inclusion on the Ronald Lacourbe list being what brought it to my attention in the first place, but that’s hardly the first time this has happened….

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