#996: The Nine Wrong Answers (1952) by John Dickson Carr

December 1, 2022November 1, 2022 / JJ / 13 Comments

In order to read the full text of The Nine Wrong Answers (1952) by John Dickson Carr you must read the first edition hardcover, as all paperback printings having been reduced by what Carr’s biographer Douglas Greene estimates to be about 15%. And, having now read the condensed text, it’s difficult not to feel that the book could actually be shortened by about another 30% since, in expanding this up from his radio play ‘Will You Make a Bet with Death?’ (1942), Carr has stretched a thin premise now too thin. A lot of the distractions here are simply that: distractions, and the core excellence of the plot is rendered tedious at times when trying to support so many circumlocutions.

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#993: Crook o’ Lune, a.k.a. Shepherd’s Crook (1953) by E.C.R. Lorac

November 24, 2022June 15, 2023 / JJ / 19 Comments

I’ve enjoyed mixed fortunes with the work of E.C.R. Lorac, from the high of The Devil and the C.I.D. (1938) to the low of Murder by Matchlight (1945), and a return to her work has always been on the cards. And so, with the British Library kind enough to send me a review copy of Crook o’ Lune (1953), the eleventh title by Lorac to be reprinted in their august Crime Classics series, we return. There can be no denying that Lorac has been a huge success for the BL, undoubtedly allowing the taking of a risk on some more obscure titles elsewhere, so I knew that there were plenty of others in print for me to read if I enjoyed this one.

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#991: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #20: Lost in Time (2022) by A.G. Riddle

November 19, 2022November 19, 2022 / JJ / 7 Comments

Another modern mystery promising an impossible crime, which I’m reading for my own interest on the pretext that it could pique the interest of the internet’s expert on the subgenre, TomCat, and another crossover mystery in this cause, with crime and SF aspects jostling for position.

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#990: Payment Deferred (1926) by C.S. Forester

November 17, 2022November 9, 2022 / JJ / 23 Comments

It seems almost indecent that someone should have the inspiration to write a book like Payment Deferred (1926) before Anthony Berkeley had conceived of his Francis Iles nom de plume and written Malice Aforethought (1931). And yet there’s something unformed about C.S. Forester’s tale of ill-gotten money, murder, and general moral decay that speaks to the callowness of the undertaking. Land sakes, don’t read this if you’re having a bad week — its unrelenting grimness and domestic horror would dent even the sunniest of dispositions — and avoid it, too, if you want a tight criminous plot with even a sniff of Iles-brand irony. This is dark stuff, unleavened at any stage.

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#987: Death on Gokumon Island (1948) by Seishi Yokomizo [trans. Louise Heal Kawai 2022]

November 10, 2022June 5, 2024 / JJ / 8 Comments

“I don’t want to die. I… I… don’t want to die. I have to get home. My three sisters will be murdered. But… but… I’m done for. Kindaichi-san, please… please go to Gokumon Island in my place…” — thus is Kosuke Kindaichi exhorted by a dying brother in arms as they are demobilised after the end of the Second World War. And so the detective goes to Gokumon Island, meets Chimata Kito’s family, and tries to untangle the maelstrom of violence and confusion that descends upon the island as, sure enough, Chimata’s three sisters Tsukiyo, Yukie, and Hanako are killed one by one. In principle it’s a gripping idea, but in practice it made for me the least interesting of the four Seishi Yokomizo mysteries thus far translated.

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#984: Spill the Jackpot (1941) by A.A. Fair

November 3, 2022October 31, 2022 / JJ / 3 Comments

Two days before her wedding to Philip Whitewell, Corla Burke upped and disappeared from her place of work, leaving behind all her personal property: “she simply vanished into thin air, and hasn’t been heard from since”. Following a slender lead to Las Vegas, the groom-to-almost-was’s father Arthur hires the B. Cool Detective Agency to “find out what happened to Corla, why she disappeared, where she is now”…and so we’re off. And, of course, everything will go to plan for pint-sized investigator Donald Lam and he definitely won’t find himself pursued, beaten up, and accused of murder. No, wait — fry me for an oyster, that’s exactly what happens to him…good lord, however will he get out of this jam?

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#982: “The more improbable they are, the better I like ’em.” – Hag’s Nook (1933) by John Dickson Carr

October 29, 2022October 29, 2022 / JJ / 30 Comments

A (fairly) recent review of Hag’s Nook (1933) by John Dickson Carr at Tangled Yarns added to its (slightly less) recent reprinting by Polygon Books put this first appearance by Dr. Gideon Fell on my Hallowe’en reading list…and here we are. A family curse — “the Starberths die of broken necks” — seems as good a topic as any for this annual celebration of eldritch horrors, so let’s dive back in and see what I make of it some ten or more years after my first read.

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#981: The Twist of a Knife (2022) by Anthony Horowitz

October 27, 2022September 10, 2024 / JJ / 6 Comments

I’m taking my life in my hands reviewing The Twist of a Knife (2022) by Anthony Horowitz, you realise. After all, if I don’t like it, I might end up like Harriet Throsby, the theatre critic for The Times who criticised Horowitz’s play Mindgame and ended up stabbed to death. No, wait, that was fiction…wasn’t it? That’s the plot of The Twist of a Knife. The meta-fictional element of this series, in which Horowitz teams up with ex-D.I. Daniel Hawthorne to solve a series of murders, is loads of fun, but I do catch myself spending the first quarter of each book thinking “Is that a real person? Wait, did that really happen?”. It’s a difficult act to juggle, but Horowitz has mastered it.

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#978: The Dangerfield Talisman (1926) by J.J. Connington

October 20, 2022October 27, 2022 / JJ / 12 Comments

I don’t normally read two books by the same author within at least a few months of each other, but I so enjoyed J.J. Connington’s criminous debut Death at Swaythling Court (1926) back in September that I was honestly champing at the bit to get back to more of his work. The Dangerfield Talisman, then, (1926) is Connington’s follow-up to Swaythling, with a completely new setting, cast, and conundrum. And Connington himself appears to have been equally keen to get to this one, possibly writing it in a mere seven weeks…and, if that was the case, it’s difficult not to wish that he’d spent a little longer over it.

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#975: Death on the Down Beat (1941) by Sebastian Farr

October 13, 2022October 12, 2022 / JJ / 7 Comments

Both versions of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934/1956) contain excellent scenes in which a killer takes aim at their target in the Royal Albert Hall while the music builds ominously. Sebastian Farr’s Death on the Down Beat (1941) utilises the same idea, but transfers it to an orchestral performance of Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben in the fictional northern city of Maningpool and picks up after the killing, asking what would happen if the murder of an unpopular conductor in such circumstances was investigated a weary detective who just wants to get home to his wife and young children and finds himself frustrated at almost every turn by the intrusion by self-important local types.

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