#491: Spoiler Warning 9 – Mr. Priestley’s Problem, a.k.a. The Amateur Crime (1927) by Anthony Berkeley [a.p.a. by A.B. Cox]
Here we go again, with the usual warnings: this post discusses in spoiler-heavy detail elements of the plot of Mr. Priestley’s Problem, a.k.a. The Amateur Crime (1927) by Anthony Berkeley, also published under the name of A.B. Cox.
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#490: It Howls at Night (1937) by Norman Berrow
The detective novel often requests that you, the reader, swallow some fairly difficult concepts in order to fully engage with it — that someone can organically devise the methods of murder and misdirection depicted within, for instance, or that the mechanical solutions sometimes put froward do actually work in the manner described. However, the delightfully creative Norman Berrow, in his werewolf-on-the-prowl novel It Howls at Night (1937), demands of you the greatest degree of forbearance I’ve yet encountered, a hurdle some may struggle to overcome, in requiring you to believe that a man would actually go by the name of ‘Pongo Slazenger’.
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#489: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Patricide (2016) by Kim Ekemar
Another Tuesday, another death in unfathomable circumstances from an author who sought a non-traditional route to press, this time from artist, photographer, and poet Kim Ekemar.
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#488: A Murder is Announced – Case for Eight Detectives in The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) by Stuart Turton
For once, I, on my blog typically concerned with titles from some 60 to 80 years ago, am allowing external factors to influence me here. Not just in looking at a book published during my own lifetime (that happens not infrequently) but one that’s been in the news of late, too.
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#487: The Polferry Riddle, a.k.a. The Choice (1931) by Philip MacDonald
For now, like, the fourth time in my experience — and the second involving a book by Philip MacDonald — the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of 100 excellent impossible crime novels has disgorged a title which is not in any way an impossible crime. I’m still fully capab- (hang on, carry the one…then minus…yup, you’re good) fully capable of enjoying a book which is sans-impossibility, but I find it weird that a list compiled by such eminent heads includes so many books that don’t qualify. The simplicity of MacDonald’s own narratives should be a giveaway anyway, since he’s really not about the complexities or misdirection, sticking more to a simpler, thriller-tinged path.
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#486: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Spotlight (2017) by Robert Innes
Well, c’mon, as if I’m going to do a month of self-published impossible crime fiction posts and not feature Robert Innes. Spotlight (2017) is the fifth of currently nine Blake Harte mysteries, all built around impossible crimes, and this time there are two impossibilities to contend with.
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#485: “What I say is, is it wise or necessary to rake up things?” – Memory as Evidence in Elephants Can Remember (1972) by Agatha Christie
You’ve heard of Elephants Can Remember (1972): it’s the final time Hercule Poirot investigates a case at Agatha Christie’s direction, written in the final stretch of her career when everything she did was awful and without merit. Not even I could find something positive to say about it…could I?
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#484: The D.A. Calls a Turn (1944) by Erle Stanley Gardner
Thanksgiving evening, Sheriff Rex Brandon receives a call from a contrite drunk claiming to have stolen a car, and heads over to pick him up along with D.A. Doug Selby. Arriving too late to prevent an accident in which the man is killed, a chance observation by Selby leads to an identity different to one the man had claimed This in turn brings Brandon and Selby to Carmen Freelman, who had been called away from dinner with her new husband’s family that evening by her boss…who just happens to be the man killed in the crash. So run the first twenty-four pages of The D.A. Calls a Turn (1944) by Erle Stanley Gardner. Strap in for a wild ride…
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#483: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Locked Room Murder (2016) by Nancy McGovern
The Invisible Event 