Author: JJ
#551: The White Cockatoo (1934) by M.G. Eberhart
Sometimes quality and taste do not overlap. For instance, I have every reason to believe that The White Cockatoo (1934) by Mignon G. Eberhart is a very good book, but given that it veers far more heavily into the suspense/HIBK/EIRF schools of writing rather than anything qualifing as detection it’s not especially to my taste. It’s well- (if perhaps a little over-) written, has some good atmosphere, and introduces in the eponymous bird Pucci an unusual twist that enlivens the eventual resolution…but amidst all the mysterious happenings — sinister hotelier, sinister guests, sinister wind, sinister banging shutters, sinister everything — it’s just a bit too bland for my palate.
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#550: Little Fictions – Curiosities from Adey: ‘The Phantom Killer’ (1946) and ‘The Impossible Crime’ (1946) by Nigel Morland, A Play-Along-at-Home Experiment
Something a little different this week, potential threats of legal action notwithstanding.
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#549: This Post No Longer Exists
#548: The Seventh Guest (1935) by Gaston Boca [trans. John Pugmire 2018]
The recent, very exciting publication of the brand new Paul Halter novel The Gold Watch (2019, tr. 2019) served to remind me that I still hadn’t read Locked Room International’s previous publication, a translation of Les Invités de Minuit (1935) by Gaston Boca. This is by my reckoning the sixteenth title from the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of 99 excellent impossible crime stories that John Pugmire has brought into English, and his tireless promotion of these books across the language barrier is a continued source of joy for those of us who lament the dearth of great impossible crime fiction being written these days. Pugmire always has something up his sleeve.
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#547: Little Fictions – Curiosities from Adey: ‘The Hiding Place’, a.k.a. ‘As If by Magic’ (1961) and ‘The Invisible Poison’ (1961) by Julian Symons
Another month of me taking advantage of the wonderful resource that is the British Library to investigate stories from Robert Adey’s Locked Room Murders (1992) — and we begin with an author I was very eager to read further after recently encountering him for the first time: Mr. Julian Symons.
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#546: The 10 Types of Impossible Crime – Categories and Titles from Our Talk at Bodies from the Library 2019
After being on something of an enforced hiatus for a little while, The Men Who Explain Miracles, the occasional podcast run by Dan from The Reader is Warned and myself, returned yesterday for a live show at the Bodies from the Library Conference 2019 at the British Library.
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#545: The Case of the Inconstant Suicides – Mystery in Room 913, a.k.a. The Room with Something Wrong (1938) by Cornell Woolrich
Today is the fifth Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library where, at approximately 16:40 this afternoon, after the intelligent people have had their say, Dan and I shall take to the stage to discuss impossible crimes in fiction.
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#544: Murder by Matchlight (1945) by E.C.R. Lorac
Back when E.C.R. Lorac was a semi-forgotten also-ran, I snapped up this Dover Press reissue before I figured the book would vanish into oblivion, hoping I’d smartly acquired an obscure gem. Skip forward a mere couple of years and the British Library Crime Classics series continues its exemplary work in reviving a wide range of authors and texts, and Murder by Matchlight (1945) has been dragged from its dusty and semi-overlooked corner into the full glare of publicity. Goddamn it, there goes half my retirement plan; oh, well, fingers crossed that the bottom doesn’t fall out of the fidget spinner market any time soon…
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#543: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Flatline (2018) by Robert Innes
The Invisible Event 