Reviews

#1215: The Dark Angel (1930) by James Ronald

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Dark Angel

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There were, I think, few people more excited than me when it was announced that Moonstone Press would be republishing the complete mystery fiction of James Ronald. I’ve been adding to my existing posts with quick reviews of the novellas and short stories included in earlier volumes, but fifth volume The Dark Angel (1930) marks the first time that I’m reading a new-to-me James Ronald novel, one that I would in all probability have had no opportunity to experience but for the excellent collaboration of Moonstone and Chris Verner. And a selfless old lady receiving a demand to pay £5,000 (£400,000 in today’s money) is exactly the sort of pulpy setup Ronald could doubtless spin to entertaining ends.

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#1213: The Noh Mask Murder (1949) by Akimitsu Takagi [trans. Jesse Kirkwood 2024]

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Noh Mask Murder

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With their gloomy house in isolated woodland, overlooking a dreary bay and containing a mask from Japanese Noh theatre that is rumoured to carry a curse, it’s frankly amazing that no-one in the Chizui family — “[r]iven by mutual suspicion, hatred and a sheer failure to understand one another…” — has been found murdered in a locked room before. Thankfully, hard upon the return of Hiroyuki Ishikari to the area, ostensible head of the family Taijiro is found thus slain, and mystery fan Akimitsu Takagi is on hand to help dig to the bottom of the tangled skein that will see yet more of the clan wiped out in the days that follows. Though how much use he’ll be is up for debate.

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#1212: “Can you imagine anyone believing a story like that?” – Three’s a Crowd in Dial M for Murder (1954) [Scr. Frederick Knott; Dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

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The inverted mystery has been tickling my brain recently, and I got to thinking that I’d very much like to rewatch Alfred Hitchock’s Rope (1948). But the closest thing I could find on the various platforms available to me — without shelling out any money, you understand, which must be saved for essentials like books and coffee — was the similarly-inverted Dial M for Murder (1954), which I last watched before the need to shave had descended upon me. So, well, why not?

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#1211: The Benson Murder Case (1926) by S.S. van Dine

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Benson Murder Case

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Apparently, you either love Philo Vance — dilettante, bon vivant, sleuth — or you wish to give him the much-vaunted “kick in the pance”.  I, having read his sixth investigation The Kennel Murder Case (1933) some ten-plus years ago, don’t remember having any opinion on the man at all, so when the American Mystery Classics range put out its usual high-quality version of The Benson Murder Case (1926), debut of Vance and author S.S. van Dine alike, an opportunity was to be seized. And so, encouraged by some comments made to me at the recent Bodies from the Library conference, here we are. And it all went rather well, don’t’cha’know.

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#1208: The Dead Friend Project (2024) by Joanna Wallace

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Dead Friend Project

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It’s been nearly a year since Beth’s friend Charlotte died, struck down by a car one October evening while out training for a marathon. Finally beginning to emerge from her cocoon of grief at both the loss of her friend and the following-hard-upon ending of her marriage to Rowan, and having been kept busy by the three young children she is now co-parenting, Beth starts to realise that some of the details about the night Charlotte died don’t add up. And so, seizing this newfound purpose, she begins to investigate what happened, running into odd behaviour, contradictory details, and plenty of unwilling witnesses along the way.

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#1206: “You haven’t got any evidence and can’t get it…” – The Department of Dead Ends [ss] (1949) by Roy Vickers

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It is my understanding that more than one collection of Roy Vickers’ inverted mystery stories have been put out under the title The Department of Dead Ends, but also that this The Department of Dead Ends (1949) is the first time it was done, with ten stories telling of ingenious murderers and the miniscule oversights that eventually caught them, thanks to the elephantine memory of that eponymous division.

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#1205: Close to Death (2024) by Anthony Horowitz

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Close to Death

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Having, at the end of previous book The Twist of a Knife (2022), signed up to relating at least three more cases following around ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne, Anthony Horowitz faces a problem: interesting murders are not determined by publishing deadlines. So, with a contractual obligation looming and no death on the horizon, Anthony asks Hawthorne for details of a past case, and Hawthorne obliges by slowly feeding him notes on the murder of Giles Kenworthy in Richmond some five years previously. Can Anthony make this format of mystery work for him? And is there an appropriate amount of peril in an investigation already signed, sealed, and delivered well before his involvement?

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#1202: The Piccadilly Murder (1929) by Anthony Berkeley

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Piccadilly Murder Penguin

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As has recently been remarked elsewhere, the superb modern raft of Golden Age reprints has been very kind to Anthony Berkeley. The form’s arch Innovator-in-Chief has seen some excellent titles brought back to public availability — The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Murder in the Basement (1932), Jumping Jenny (1933) — and one, in The Wintringham Mystery, a.k.a. Cicely Disappears (1927), rescued from the sort of obscurity that had reduced its existence almost to rumour. Still yet to see the light of day, however, is The Piccadilly Murder (1929), so a reread seemed due to see if it really was as good as I remember. And, yes, it very nearly is — except in one key regard, in which it’s even better.

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#1199: “There was undoubtedly method in the old boy’s madness…” – The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) by Carter Dickson

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I have in the past referred to The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) — the fifth book to feature Sir Henry ‘H.M.’ Merrivale under John Dickson Carr’s Carter Dickson nom de plume — as an underacknowledged masterpiece in the oeuvre of an author who produced more than his fair share of masterpieces in the genre. So let’s examine that, eh? That sort of claim can’t possibly backfire.

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