Four people are discovered sitting around a table as if at a dinner party, each with only a glass in front of them. Three of the four have been poisoned into a catatonic state and the fourth has been murdered by being run through with a narrow blade. Of the three who remain alive, one has two bottles of poison in their bag, one has the workings of an alarm clock in their pocket, and the third is carrying four pocket watches in various pockets about their person. At this point you are three chapters into the eighth Sir Henry Merrivale novel written by John Dickson Carr under his Carter Dickson byline and we haven’t even touched upon the revelation that greets you at the end of that chapter…suffice to say, boy are you in for a ride!#93: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – America from the Outside: The Traveller’s Perspective in The Sharkskin Book (1941) by Harry Stephen Keeler
This week, for my actual final post for the Tuesday Night Bloggers on the subject of travel (I was, er, premature in predicting the number of days in May last week…), I was going to look at another book entirely. But in reading The Sharkskin Book by Harry Stephen Keeler – chief loon of the sanatorium that is Ramble House – I was struck by something rather more nebulous that I’m going to try to explore here: the sense of dislocation one can experience when separated from familiar trappings.
Continue reading
#92: Character v Plot
So here’s a starting point that doesn’t belong on a blog about crime fiction between 1920 and 1959 with frequent diversions into apparent impossibilities: I freakin’ love Batman. The whole Bruce Wayne/Batman duality in almost any form is an absolute joy to me – I’m not going to geek out here over the many, many years I’ve spent reading the comics nor the sundry disappointments of the various cinematic fusterclucks (I’m looking daggers at you, Schumacher…Burton, you’re borderline), and shall instead make the following observation: the second I heard Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced, I’d practically bought my ticket on the fact of it being a new Batman incarnation.
Continue reading
#91: The Moai Island Puzzle (1989) by Alice Arisugawa [trans. Ho-Ling Wong 2016]
Disclosure: I proof-read this book for Locked Room International in March 2016
Children, incarnations of The Doctor, phases of the moon…generally I try not to play favourites. But if I had to pick one crime fiction conceit above all others it would undoubtedly be a group of people on an island getting killed off one by one. Sure, isolate them in some ancestral mansion via thunderstorm or on a train via unexpected snow and the effect is arguably the same, but there’s something about the island in itself that renders the idea all the more thrilling to my senses. And so this Japanese island-set puzzle, the second collaboration between Locked Room International’s John Pugmire and translator and crime fiction blogger Ho-Ling Wong after last year’s excellent The Decagon House Murders, would be just what the doctor ordered if the medical profession ever thought of prescribing books for those of us with the thrill of fictional murder in our hearts.
Continue reading
#90: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – Running Around with the Circus in Leo Bruce’s Case with Four Clowns (1939)
“If a man’s mind be wandering,” said Francis Bacon, “let him study the mathematics”. Well, the mathematics take up an unreasonably large amount of my time as it is, and for me nothing helps my wandering mind quite like classic detective fiction. So, with 2016 having been an underwhelming year in books so far, and coming back off a 2 month hiatus with my hand injury, I’m keen to get a bit of enthusiasm back into my reading. Hence I shall spend the next little while focussing on the sure-fire hits in my collection: expect much Max Afford, Leo Bruce, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Paul Halter and others, as well as some classic locked room nonplussing, in the weeks to come while I try to reorient myself within my chosen enthusiasm.
The Invisible Event 