


I dunno, I’m starting to think it’s me. For the second time in just over a month — the first being with T.H. White’s Darkness at Pemberley — I’ve read a novel famed for its impossible murder plot and come away going “Well, yeah, but that’s not really an impossible crime, though, is it.” The shooting of millionaire health guru Merlin Broadstone on the fourth floor of his hotel on his exclusive island health farm presents a couple of interesting points, but the fact that he was shot through an open window and that an obvious deduction is ignored for pretty much the entire duration of the case precludes any impossibility in my mind. One perplexing occurrence and the characters failing to consider a particular set of circumstances doesn’t make it an impossible crime. Maybe I’m too narrow-minded, but this doesn’t fly for me.