#625: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo [ss] (2019) by Steve Levi

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020 / JJ / 23 Comments

A lot of impossible crime novels published these days have, let’s face it, about enough impossible crime content for a short story. So a short story collection seems like a sensible thing to try, right? Even one that does put ‘short stories’ on its cover and then call itself “a novel” on the back. Right?

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#624: Bob’s Yer Uncle – Locked Room Murders Supplement (2019) ed. Brian Skupin

January 25, 2020January 24, 2020 / JJ / 25 Comments

The reprinting of Robert Adey’s Locked Room Murders (2nd ed., 1991) at the end of 2018 was a delightful turn-up for those of us who had been dreaming of owning that reference bible. And once the excitement settled, I’m sure more than a few people started thinking “Hey, they should really do another one of these…”.

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#622: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Phantom Ragdoll (2019) by DWaM

January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 / JJ / 12 Comments

The joy of self-publishing must be the freedom to live or die solely on your own efforts. There’s most likely no-one looking over your shoulder to advise you, and while that may be the key factor that ruins a lot of SP fiction, if you can get it right on your own I imagine it’s rather thrilling.

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#619: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Royal Baths Murder (2019) by J.R. Ellis

January 14, 2020January 12, 2020 / JJ / 6 Comments

It had been my intention to read one of J.R. Ellis’ earlier Yorkshire-set impossible crime novels after reading his third, The Murder at Redmire Hall (2018), last year. But then he released a fourth and, well, the best laid plans…

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#616: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Touch (2018) by Robert Innes

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 / JJ / 11 Comments

My exploration of self-published impossible crime fiction, which would itself have been impossible prior to the growth of the ebook market, continues apace — there are at present 21 books in my AiSP TBR alone. So let’s get on with it…

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#611: The Seventh Hypothesis (1991) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 2012]

December 26, 2019December 25, 2019 / JJ / 24 Comments

Aaah, Christmas; time to drop into the comforting arms of the ones we know and love. I tried to mix things up a bit this year, starting two Christmas mysteries to review this week…but neither really worked for me, and so I’m following my own advice and adding another pre-blogging Paul Halter title to my archives. I distinctly remembered The Seventh Hypothesis (1991, tr. 2012) to be a doozy, with less of a focus on the impossibilities — though we get two in quick succession — and more attention drawn to a complex switchback of mellifluous plotting…so how’d it stand up to a second look? Rather well, as it turns out.

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#608: Ghost House (1940) by Norman Berrow

December 19, 2019December 18, 2019 / JJ / 5 Comments

Norman Berrow seems to flourish under the eye of the eldritch. Impossible hoof-marks in the snow mystery The Footprints of Satan (1950) is widely seen — correctly, in my opinion and experience to date — as his strongest work, and Ghost House (1940) is another atmosphere-drenched invocation of supernatural terror. Evidently Berrow himself was either extremely taken with the book or extremely disappointed in it, since he rewrote some of the plot, changed the names of the characters, and reissued the book in 1979. I’ll get to v2.0 last of all, since I’m now reading Berrow chronologically, but for now let’s look at the original.

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