#1249: Nine Times Nine (1940) by Anthony Boucher [a.p.a. by H.H. Holmes]

Nine Times Nine

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“A man is shot in a room from which, apparently, no one could have made an exit. Now what’s the first rational possibility that strikes you?”.  It is the shooting of Wolfe Harrigan which Detective Lieutenant Terrence Marshall must solve: rationalist and exposure of religious chicanery Harrigan having apparently been shot by Ahasver, the yellow robe-wearing, centuries-old Wandering Jew who leads the Children of Light church in Los Angeles…and was on stage at the time of said shooting. And when the “rankly fantastic notion of a secret passageway” in Harrigan’s study is dismissed, what possible explanation can there be? Men don’t just vanish into thin air…

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#1238: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #25: Murder at the Castle (2021) by David Safier [trans. Jamie Bulloch 2024]

Perhaps there’s a charm imbued here by being slightly separated from too direct an experience of the career of former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel; the porcine indiscretions of David Cameron, for example, don’t exactly compel him as a kooky amateur sleuth.

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#1237: Death Croons the Blues (1934) by James Ronald

Death Croons the Blues

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The recent publication of the tenth and eleventh volumes of James Ronald’s stories of crime and detection by Moonstone Press turned my mind back to the opportunity to read one of his novels that would have been out of my means due to financial or acquisitional circumstances prior to 2024.  And so Death Croons the Blues (1934), a second outing for newspaperman Julian Mendoza, into whose boarding house an inept sneak thief stumbles having just discovered a dead woman in the flat they were burgling nearby. When the victim turns out to be nightclub chanteuse Adele Valée, Mendoza’s journalistic tendencies kick into overdrive as he attempts to find the killer.

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#1233: Hemlock Bay (2024) by Martin Edwards

Hemlock Bay

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“My New Year’s resolution is to murder a man I’ve never met” — thus does Basil Palmer lay out his intentions at the very start of his journal in Hemlock Bay (2024) by Martin Edwards, bringing to mind the openings of classic-era touchstones Malice Aforethought (1931) by Francis Iles and The Beast Must Die (1938) by Nicholas Blake. Louis Carson, the man Palmer seeks to avenge himself on, appears to have entered into a business partnership in the Northern resort of Hemlock Bay, and so, assuming a false identity, it is there that Palmer heads. Little does he know, various other parties are also descending upon Hemlock Bay, and some of them also have murder in their hearts.

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#1211: The Benson Murder Case (1926) by S.S. van Dine

Benson Murder Case

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Apparently, you either love Philo Vance — dilettante, bon vivant, sleuth — or you wish to give him the much-vaunted “kick in the pance”.  I, having read his sixth investigation The Kennel Murder Case (1933) some ten-plus years ago, don’t remember having any opinion on the man at all, so when the American Mystery Classics range put out its usual high-quality version of The Benson Murder Case (1926), debut of Vance and author S.S. van Dine alike, an opportunity was to be seized. And so, encouraged by some comments made to me at the recent Bodies from the Library conference, here we are. And it all went rather well, don’t’cha’know.

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#1208: The Dead Friend Project (2024) by Joanna Wallace

Dead Friend Project

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It’s been nearly a year since Beth’s friend Charlotte died, struck down by a car one October evening while out training for a marathon. Finally beginning to emerge from her cocoon of grief at both the loss of her friend and the following-hard-upon ending of her marriage to Rowan, and having been kept busy by the three young children she is now co-parenting, Beth starts to realise that some of the details about the night Charlotte died don’t add up. And so, seizing this newfound purpose, she begins to investigate what happened, running into odd behaviour, contradictory details, and plenty of unwilling witnesses along the way.

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#1202: The Piccadilly Murder (1929) by Anthony Berkeley

Piccadilly Murder Penguin

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As has recently been remarked elsewhere, the superb modern raft of Golden Age reprints has been very kind to Anthony Berkeley. The form’s arch Innovator-in-Chief has seen some excellent titles brought back to public availability — The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Murder in the Basement (1932), Jumping Jenny (1933) — and one, in The Wintringham Mystery, a.k.a. Cicely Disappears (1927), rescued from the sort of obscurity that had reduced its existence almost to rumour. Still yet to see the light of day, however, is The Piccadilly Murder (1929), so a reread seemed due to see if it really was as good as I remember. And, yes, it very nearly is — except in one key regard, in which it’s even better.

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#1186: A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (2024) by Andrew Hunter Murray

Beginners Guide to Breaking and Entering

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Shirley Ballas. Richard Coles. Susie Dent. Richard Osman. Robert Rinder.  These days, if you want to publish a crime novel, it clearly helps to be a UK media personality.  And why not?  Publishing’s an uncertain business, and an existing following should hopefully convert into sales — good luck to them, I say. Add to the above journalist, podcaster, TV-version-of-his-podcaster Andrew Hunter Murray, whose third novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (2024), finds him crossing into the sort of genre territory that captures my attention. And while not perhaps leaning as hard into logical reasoning as I’d prefer, there’s much here to enjoy.

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#1180: The Devil’s Flute Murders (1953) by Seishi Yokomizo [trans. Jim Rion 2023]

Devil's Flute Murders

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After what felt like a run of fairly light reading, I found myself in the mood for something a little denser, and boy does The Devil’s Flute Murders (1953), the fifth title by Seishi Yokomizo to be published in English by Pushkin Vertigo, deliver on that front. We start with a mass poisoning in a jewellery store, then move onto the disappearance of a member of the nobility who turns up dead…only for his family to doubt his demise and pull amateur genius detective Kosuke Kindaichi into a superbly atmospheric divining ceremony that culminates in a gruesome locked room murder. Yup, the opening third of this book is, pleasingly, something of a whirligig.

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#1169: A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat Attempt #22: Murder by Candlelight (2024) by Faith Martin

I really rather enjoyed Faith Martin’s impossible crime novel The Castle Mystery (2019) when I read it back in 2019, so stumbling over a new hardback by her at my local library — and learning that Murder by Candlelight (2024) features a murdered body discovered in a sealed room — was a very pleasant surprise.

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