Reviews
#308: The D.A. Holds a Candle (1938) by Erle Stanley Gardner
After the disappointment of last week, I should dive straight back in to another dense impossibility and to hell with any lingering doubts. But, well, my meretricious moods find me yearning for a little comfort reading, and so it’s back to Doug Selby and the gang. Here we find newly-elected D.A. Selby and Sheriff Rex Brandon contending with obstreperous reporters, influential businessmen, political opportunism, and a host of tangled stories and motives when trying to unpick the riddle of a dead body found bearing a note that states the intention of the possessor to have killed someone else…but no second body to back up the claim. And hold onto your hats, because that’s not the only thing that doesn’t add up.
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#307: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 5
Here we are at the final week of Locked Room International’s The Realm of the Impossible, with me working through in non-anthologised order to instead group them culture-by-culture.
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#306: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – The Real Life Impossibilities
This coming Tuesday sees the final instalment in my month-long look at Locked Room International’s multi-national impossible crime short story collection, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to address an oversight Puzzle Doctor, TomCat, and I have all been guilty of: the 12 real-life cases also contained within.
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#305: Murder in the Red Chamber (2004) by Ashibe Taku [trans. Tyran C. Grillo 2012]
It’s been quite some time since I looked at a really meaty impossible crime novel here on The Invisible Event, and a recent sweep through some Eastern treasures thanks to Locked Room International’s The Realm of the Impossible whetted my appetite for something from that culture. This “Western crime fiction based on a Chinese classic” — that being Dream of the Red Chamber (1791), which itself runs to multiple volumes and several thousand pages — seemed tailor-made, then. A powerful dynasty, multitudinous impossibilities, and a dose of historical context sounded perfect; so I’m a little sorry to report that it didn’t quite work for me. Go ahead, roll your eyes if you like; I’ll explain below.
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#304: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 4
You know the drill by now, and if not, where have you been? Locked Room International put out this 430-page collection of obscureness and rarities in impossible crime fiction from the world over, and I’ve been going through it sort of continent-by-continent (not really, though, it’s much looser than that).
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#302: The Long Divorce (1951) by Edmund Crispin
Never let it be said that I’m a stubborn man. Well, okay, no, not that so much, but only a short while ago I was owning up to the shame that I’d probably never read this book and yet here I am — following reassurances from no less authorities than Nick Fuller and TomCat — reviewing, and so presumably having read, it. Here’s the heart-in-my-hands moment: Crispin wrote 4½ great books, then a terrible one, then this one, then another terrible one, and this was the only one I’d not read. But it’s bracketed by two books so awful that I’d wipe them out of existence, so my fears were, I feel, well-founded. And you want to know what I thought, right? Were my reservations borne out? Who was right? Ohmygod the tension…well, let’s get into it.
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#301: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 3
The world tour that is Locked Room International’s newest impossible crime story collection continues, with me picking out stories by their approximate geographical groupings to explore the themes they raise. Elsewhere we have:
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#300: The Lucky Policeman (1938) by Rupert Penny
A man prone to bouts of lunacy escapes in unusual circumstances from the private sanatorium where he is a resident, and shortly thereafter a series of murders are committed, the left shoe removed from each victim…well, you join the dots. And yet, can it really be that simple? Ordinary GAD rules say no, but this is Rupert Penny, puzzle-maker par excellence, and thus such easy prehension could be both a feint and the actual intended explanation. So Scotland Yard’s Chief-Inspector Edward Beale is dispatched and brings amateur hanger-on Tony Purdon and Sergeant ‘Horsey’ Matthews with him, a crime-solving triumvirate likely to have even Inspector Joseph French quailing jealously at their ability to unpick complex schemes.
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#299: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 2
