#33: The Killing Needle (1871) by Henry Cauvin [trans. John Pugmire 2014]
It is difficult to believe that Arthur Conan Doyle ever intended for his Sherlock Holmes stories to be as influential as they have proven to be. Not only are we still churning out variations on his characters in print and on radio, television and film but such is the fascination with his detective that something published before Conan Doyle even put pen to paper can achieve retrospective interest because of the similarities between the two. And so Locked Room International published this translation of Henry Cauvin’s debut novel The Killing Needle, wherein a skeleton-thin genius master of disguise who shuns social norms, declares “In my case, the brain dominates everything and is continually boiling over. This fire is eating me up and doesn’t leave a moment’s peace. The mind! The mind is a vulture that’s eating me alive” and takes opium (though in this case “to help me get some much-needed sleep”) has his adventures in crime-solving related by a doctor who becomes his confidant after being introduced by a mutual friend …yeah, okay, that’s a lot of overlap right there.
#32: The Impossible Crimes of Sherlock Holmes – I: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Since I can’t quite go the Full Sherlock – he’s out of my era, after all – I thought I could at least have a look at the three Arthur Conan Doyle-penned short stories that comprise the (official) entirety of his impossible crimes: ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, and ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ (I’m excluding novella The Valley of Fear because it’s not technically an impossible crime, and remains a mystery for all of about six lines). It’s also a lovely excuse to get some of Sidney Paget’s gorgeous illustrations out for airing, too, and I don’t think anyone is going to mind that. So, first up going chronologically, is my least favourite of these three: nonsense-fest ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’.
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#31: Mycroft Holmes (2015) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse
Things are going a bit Holmesian here at The Invisible Event for the next week or so: a post every other day on something Sherlock-oriented. Why? For the simple reason that I feel like doing it. I should probably wait for the BBC special at Christmas to theme it up a bit more, but Christmas is a busy time and so I’m doing it now instead.
I wouldn’t call myself die-hard Sherlockian enough to immediately sign of up for anything produced in that universe – material enough to consume more than one lifetime – but the character and context retain so much potential that I will dip in where I believe someone might do something worth checking out. The reference-filling short stories written by Adrian Conan Doyle both with and without the help of John Dickson Carr, the entertaining Professor Moriarty books by Michael Kurland, the tales by short story specialist Ed Hoch, Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell books, Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary, and Anthony Horowitz’s Holmes pastiche The House of Silk and universe-widening Moriarty (among others like Colin Dexter’s sole Holmes story ‘A Case of Mis-Identity’) all testify to the presence of life in the old dog yet, and Arthur Porges wrote a couple of pastiches I’d like to track down, so there’s still more to try.
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#30: The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (1981) by Soji Shimada [trans. Ross & Shika Mackenzie 2004]
Some families have all the luck – take the Khardashians, for example, who are universally blessed with charm, intelligence and talent – whereas some miss out altogether. Into this second category would definitely fall the Umezawa clan: not only is patriarch Heikichi found battered to death in his locked art studio, his eldest daughter is then found murdered a few months later and, following that, his six other daughters, step-daughters and nieces all disappear simultaneously and their dismembered bodies are discovered at various intervals buried in different locations around Japan. Then it turns out that Heikichi Umezawa had written a document outlining his intention to do exactly this to these women, with methods of murder and disposal based on their zodiac signs, so the mystery of who could have carried out his nefarious scheme raises its ugly head and remains unsolved for decades…
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#29: The spurns that patient merit of th’unworthy takes: To complete or not to complete?
I will probably put this very poorly, so bear with me.
I am an Agatha Christie fan. I am also, you may have noticed, a fan of John Dickson Carr, and of Edmund Crispin, Leo Bruce, Rupert Penny, Kelley Roos, and Constance & Gwenyth Little. What these detective fiction writers have in common is two-fold: firstly they are all dead, so their output is now a fixed and known quantity, and secondly it is my express intention to read everything they ever published in the crime fiction sphere. In some cases this may not be achievable – though with the recent increase in GA reprints it’s to be hoped that these will be picked up before too long – but I intend to give it my best shot nonetheless.
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#28: Dirty Little Reading Habits
I’ve picked this up from Cleopatra Loves Books who in turn cites the following motivation:
I saw this fun post on Finding Time To Write, a great blog full of Marina’s poems, fantastic places to read as well as considered reviews. In turn Marina found this tag on the blog 50 a Year. I couldn’t resist sharing my reading rituals, honed over decades, with you all.
It’s always fun to hear/read what other people get up to, so in the grand tradition of My Blog Name in Books I thought I’d give this a go before editing my next crime-centric post:
Do you have a certain place at home for reading?
Very deliberately not; it’s something I love being able to just drop into at any particular time, and the idea of having to be sat in a special chair or surrounded by particular things seems antithetical to that.
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#27: The Crooked Hinge (1938) by John Dickson Carr – A Triple-Decker Review
The heart of John Dickson Carr’s The Crooked Hinge – previously voted the fourth-best impossible crime of all time – is this: a man standing alone at the edge of a pond surrounded by sand has his throat slit, and the two witnesses who had him in their sight both swear no-one was anywhere near him at the time. It is, of course, impossible. But then the incidence of that which cannot be done is the bailiwick of Dr. Gideon Fell… Something a little different this week, as two venerable gentlemen of the blogosphere – Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, and Sergio of Tipping My Fedora – have kindly agreed to allow me to append my thoughts to their own joint review of this title from last year by way of providing some alternative perspectives on what is a hotly-debated topic: just how classic is The Crooked Hinge?
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#26: British Library Crime Classics republishing Murder of a Lady (1931) by Anthony Wynne!
I don’t really do news, but am very excited to learn that one of the forthcoming titles the British Library will be including in its increasingly excellent Crime Classics collection is Anthony Wynne’s 1931 impossible crime novel Murder of a Lady (a.k.a. The Silver Scale Mystery). It’s a locked room of some repute, and has been preposterously hard to find for many a year now – I’ve not read it myself, and so am doubly excited that it’s being brought back. Everyone’s favourite rainforest-named internet retailer has the following synopsis:
Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom – but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue to the culprit is a silver fish’s scale, left on the floor next to Mary’s body. Inspector Dundas is dispatched to Duchlan to investigate the case. The Gregor family and their servants are quick – perhaps too quick – to explain that Mary was a kind and charitable woman. Dundas uncovers a more complex truth, and the cruel character of the dead woman continues to pervade the house after her death. Soon further deaths, equally impossible, occur, and the atmosphere grows ever darker. Superstitious locals believe that fish creatures from the nearby waters are responsible; but luckily for Inspector Dundas, the gifted amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey is on the scene, and unravels a more logical solution to this most fiendish of plots.Anthony Wynne wrote some of the best locked-room mysteries from the golden age of British crime fiction.This cunningly plotted novel – one of Wynne’s finest – has never been reprinted since 1931, and is long overdue for rediscovery.
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