Reviews
#523: Death in a Million Living Rooms, a.k.a. Die Laughing (1951) by Patricia McGerr
Quite apart from having the best damn title ever, Death in a Million Living Rooms (1951) by Patricia McGerr employs one of my favourite conceits of classic-era detection: the Live On Air Murder. With The Dead Are Blind (1937) by Max Afford, Murder in the Melody (1940) by Norman Berrow, and And Be a Villain (1948) by Rex Stout giving us death on the radio, McGerr turns to the television studio to kill her poor victim live in front of the several million who tune in to Podge and Scottie’s weekly comedy show, with — as in Stout’s take — poison in the sponsor’s drink responsible. That you know it’s coming makes it no less horrible, so whodunnit?
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#520: Seeing is Believing, a.k.a. Cross of Murder (1941) by Carter Dickson
Socialising is difficult, isn’t it? One minute you’re making polite dinner party conversation about jobs with someone you’ve only just met, the next a hypnotist performs a few mesmeric passes and goads a wife into stabbing her husband with a knife everyone knows is fake but which — awks — actually turns out to be real and, oh my god, she’s killed him. We’ve all been there, and we all know how tricky it can be to factor this sort of thing into one’s TripAdvisor rating. An unexpected, impossible murder can dampen the mood somewhat — especially when so many people seem to be operating at cross-purposes — but remember you did say the canapés were lovely…
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#519: Minor Felonies – The Mystery of the Secret Room (1945) by Enid Blyton
My discovery of Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers books simply adds to the problem that is my TBR, because every time I read one of them I want to sit down and read them all. Sure, First World Problems, but it’s crazy to think how excited I am — and my fourth decade, too — about a bunch of books written by the Faraway Tree Lady.
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#518: The Providential Op – Offbeat Criminal Detection in Monk Season 1 (2002)
Running for 125 episodes over eight seasons from 2002 to 2009, the TV series Monk — created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the eponymous OCD-afflicted detective — was something that had drifted into my awareness without me ever really seeing that much of it. Until now… [cue dramatic music]
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#517: Murder in the Family, a.k.a. The Murder in Gay Ladies (1936) by James Ronald
I’m nowhere near Puzzle Doctor/Brian Flynn levels of adoration yet, but there’s a good chance James Ronald could turn out to be one of my very favourite unheralded authors. Sure, he wrote in quite a range of genres — from ‘a family’s struggles in an unfamiliar environment’ to incident-packed impossible crime novels and, presumably, just about anything in between — and the frank unavailability of so many of his books is going to make tracking him down long and, given the spread of genres, at times possibly unrewarding work, but when he’s good, boy is he good. As in the case of the Osborne Family Murder — with ‘family’ being very much the key word here.
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#516: Minor Felonies – The Clue of the Marked Claw (1950) by Bruce Campbell
Man, things were simpler in the 1950s. Back then, the fourth book in a series of juvenile detective adventures could centre around lobster fishing and the series could still run for a further 14 titles. Kids those days, eh?
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#515: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #10: Angel Killer (2014) by Andrew Mayne
The appeal of detective fiction and impossible crime novels for me is their potential for elegance, for taking something that seems utterly baffling and rendering it clear through intelligent deployment of a few key ideas. This achieved peak density during the Golden Age, which is why that era earned that sobriquet, and it feels like it’s been downhill ever since.
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#514: About the Murder of a Startled Lady (1935) by Anthony Abbot
This is another title brought to my attention via the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of one hundred (well, 114) notable impossible crime novels. If I’m honest, I still don’t know what to make of that list — containing as it does some wonderful books that aren’t impossible crimes, some poor books that aren’t impossible crimes, and some thoroughly glorious impossible crimes that would otherwise have passed me by. This one is…fine. While the impossibility isn’t up to much, there’s enough interest in the approach taken to commend it if you can find a copy. Would I put it among the hundred best, however? Er, no…
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#513: Minor Felonies – The Case of the Missing Message (1959) by Charles Spain Verral
The Invisible Event 