While I wasn’t entirely sure what the focus of this blog would be when I started it — I knew there would be impossible crimes, but had no idea otherwise — I’d have been surprised if you told me I’d end up doing so much reading of and writing about mysteries for 9 to 12 year-olds.
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I recently lamented that I don’t really do much in the way of think-pieces on The Invisible Event any more, and some of you in the comments were like ‘Yeah, so do them again, then, idiot’. So here goes.
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“I stood staring about the room, and the first disadvantage of living in a basement apartment occurred to me. Jumping from a window would bring no release”. The much-missed Rue Morgue Press reprinted only four Jeff and Haila Troy novels from husband-and-wife team Kelley Roos. The Frightened Stiff (1942), the third, opens magnificently and wastes barely a word right up to THE END, so let me say this now: someone needs to reprint this series. Not a few selected titles as we’d likely get from the (excellent) American Mystery Classics range, but the whole kit and caboodle. Sure, some will be better than others, but I refuse to believe that they don’t deserve rediscovery.
Though Jay Otto is “less than three feet high…his proportions were almost exactly the same as those of a full-sized man; his head was not too large for his body; his arms and legs were proportionately the right length”. The man is also a gifted mime, proving quite the hit at the opening night of Jake Justus’s new nightclub, the Casino. Which means it’s a blow for Jay and Jake alike when this “big midget” is found hanged in the wardrobe in his dressing room from a rope made of eleven mismatched stockings. And it’s even more of a blow for Jake, his wife Helene, and their lawyer friend John J. Malone when Jay’s body vanishes after they hide it to protect the reputation of the night spot.
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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One final go around for US TV’s modern take on Sherlock Holmes, with Jonny Lee Miller filling the detective’s shoes and Lucy Liu giving us a Watson who’s on something approaching an equal footing with our resident genius.
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Eking out these recommended episodes of Elementary, having found a lot of joy in Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) solving mysteries in modern day New York, I’m amazed and mildly distressed to have reached the penultimate season already. What am I going to watch when I’m done?
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Five more recommended episodes of Elementary, in which Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) solve mysteries in modern day New York. Are we really up to season 5 already? Man, they grow up so fast.
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“Now you take this guy who was killed New Year’s Eve. If he was gonna be killed, why couldn’t he have had his passport on him, or a driver’s license, or even a calling card? No. Not a damn thing. So I have to go to all the trouble of finding out who he was. When I do find out, then what? More trouble.” Homicide Captain Daniel von Flanagan has a point, as there’s also the matter of the dead man staggering into a bar where lawyer John J. Malone was drowning his sorrows and croaking out “Malone!” before expiring on the floor, added to Malone’s insistence that he’d never seen the man before. And what of the key numbered 114 the man slipped to Malone…a key that was apparently stolen from the lawyer only moments later?
This second entry in Marthe Jocelyn’s Aggie Morton series — featuring juvenile sleuths inspired by both Agatha Christie and her arguably most famous creation Hercule Poirot — contains much of the charm that made the series opener stand out, but also falls down in ways that leave me a little underwhelmed.
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The Invisible Event 