Seventeen scenarios of skulduggery, stealing, and slaughter in the British Library Crime Classics range, all centred on London, the finest city on god’s green Earth, and selected by the ne plus ultra of classic crime appreciation, Martin Edwards.
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For the restraint alone in not calling this dog-as-detective story an ‘im-paw-sible crime’, this 14th entry in the Sebastian (Super Sleuth) series by Mary Blount Christian deserves checking out.
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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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Having fared wonderfully with Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers (and Dog), and faring as I am less well with the first three so-called ‘R’ Mysteries I’ve read so far, I was intrigued to see mentioned online that one of the Secret Seven novels was more of a clue-based mystery than its brethren…and so to the appropriately(?)-named Secret Seven Mystery (1957) does my attention turn.
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Once again, now for a third time, I have been misled by these House of Stratus editions about the nature of a book by R. Austin Freeman. The cover of When Rogue’s Fall Out, a.k.a. Dr. Thorndyke’s Discovery (1932) promises “Three Books in One, starring Dr. Thorndyke”, leading me to surmise that these were three novellas. Not so. As it happens, Book 1 – The Three Rogues, Book 2 – Inspector Badger Deceased, and Book 3 – The Missing Collector are simply parts of one novel-length story, and I approached the end of The Three Rogues very confused about the apparent lack of impending conclusion and the distinct absence of Thorndyke from its pages.
Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, where murder and magic mingle in an alternate-history Europe, being a closed set, I had never really thought to consider the gaps between them before now.
Continue readingA gap of six years followed Randall Garrett’s sole Lord Darcy novel Too Many Magicians (1967) before he returned to the universe. Was that time well-spent in creating another strong fusion of mystery, magic, and murder?
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When young Frank Conway returns to his hotel on the edge of the South Downs one evening in a distracted frame of mind, none of the other denizens of the Fernbank think much of it. His request for an audience with various people are rejected in the rush for dinner and when, over that same meal, Conway dies in an agonising and protracted manner, many of the people present begin to regret their thoughtlessness. Conway’s final movements then fall under the remit of local man Inspector Baines, and, with the dead man’s sister also in attendance, two parallel investigations are run…but which will bear fruit first? And how does the sighting of a ghastly half man, half monster on the Downs tie into events?
More magic, mummery, and misdirection from Randall Garrett’s alternate history Europe, and this time a bit of an impossible crime thrown in to boot. Not that he makes much of that element.
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I first encountered James Yaffe via his story ‘The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms’ (1945), but have heard much about his ‘Mom’ stories, in which a police officer’s mother “is usually able to solve over the dinner table crimes that keep the police running around in circles for weeks”. So I was delighted to acquire the complete collection of those tales.
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The Invisible Event 