Crime-solving couples

#554: The Case of the Solid Key (1941) by Anthony Boucher

/ JJ / 25 Comments

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Several years ago, discovering that the impossible crime novel was a thing, I read Anthony Boucher’s Nine Times Nine (1940), originally published as by H.H. Holmes, and loved it.  I then discovered TomCat’s list of favourite impossible crime novels and was intrigued by the fact that, eschewing the accepted classic that Nine Times Nine is, Boucher’s later, less discussed The Case of the Solid Key (1941) was included there instead (TC, it must be said, is something of an iconoclast…).  More Boucher followed, some of it disappointing, and last year I finally ran to ground a copy of TCotSK in a secondhand bookshop in Philadelphia and — at long, long last — here we go.

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#548: The Seventh Guest (1935) by Gaston Boca [trans. John Pugmire 2018]

/ JJ / 8 Comments

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The recent, very exciting publication of the brand new Paul Halter novel The Gold Watch (2019, tr. 2019) served to remind me that I still hadn’t read Locked Room International’s previous publication, a translation of Les Invités de Minuit (1935) by Gaston Boca.  This is by my reckoning the sixteenth title from the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of 99 excellent impossible crime stories that John Pugmire has brought into English, and his tireless promotion of these books across the language barrier is a continued source of joy for those of us who lament the dearth of great impossible crime fiction being written these days.  Pugmire always has something up his sleeve.

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#537: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Murder at Redmire Hall (2018) by J.R. Ellis

/ JJ / 18 Comments

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When might a self-published novel not be a self-published novel?  That’s the quandary I face with J.R. Ellis’ third book, Murder at Redmire Hall (2018).  See, it’s technically published by Thomas & Mercer, but they’re simply an imprint of Amazon Publishing and the line between what’s different about this and simply uploading it to Amazon oneself gets blurrier the more you look at it.

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#529: Down Among the Dead Men, a.k.a. The Sunken Sailor (1961) by Patricia Moyes

/ JJ / 7 Comments

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I don’t think anyone would doubt that I’m out of my stated era of the Golden Age reviewing a book from 1961, and there isn’t even an impossibility in this one to justify it on those grounds.  But Patricia Moyes’ debut Dead Men Don’t Ski (1959) was clothed in the fashions of GAD, and the series bears further investigation for that alone.  This second novel is afflicted a little by the narrative periphrasis that betokens later-era crime writing — chapter one should be called ‘Here’s the Cast’ and chapter two ‘Sure, I Understand Sailing, But I Don’t Know How to Communicate It (Glossary of Terms)’ — but, once past that, things improve significantly.

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#514: About the Murder of a Startled Lady (1935) by Anthony Abbot

/ JJ / 26 Comments

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This is another title brought to my attention via the Roland Lacourbe-curated list of one hundred (well, 114) notable impossible crime novels.  If I’m honest, I still don’t know what to make of that list — containing as it does some wonderful books that aren’t impossible crimes, some poor books that aren’t impossible crimes, and some thoroughly glorious impossible crimes that would otherwise have passed me by.  This one is…fine.  While the impossibility isn’t up to much, there’s enough interest in the approach taken to commend it if you can find a copy.  Would I put it among the hundred best, however?  Er, no…

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#499: Cat’s Paw (1931) by Roger Scarlett

/ JJ / 19 Comments

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Dear Elderly Patriarchs Who Hold the Purse-Strings and Delight in Making Everyone Jump and Dance on Cue: you’d live a lot longer if you stopped gathering your slavishly pecuniary-minded families around you before announcing a surprise amendment to their financial situations.  Weren’t you supposed to be captains of industry at some point?  Don’t your creators lay it on a bit thick with your business acumen, your cut-and-thrust tactics, and the rapier-like intelligence that resulted in you rising to the top?  Gordon’s beer, man, exercise a little nouse; at least change the will and then tell them…

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