Impossible Crimes
#545: The Case of the Inconstant Suicides – Mystery in Room 913, a.k.a. The Room with Something Wrong (1938) by Cornell Woolrich
Today is the fifth Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library where, at approximately 16:40 this afternoon, after the intelligent people have had their say, Dan and I shall take to the stage to discuss impossible crimes in fiction.
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#543: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Flatline (2018) by Robert Innes
Prior to reading Robert Innes’ work I honestly did believe that there was quality content out there in this non-trad route (and I was right) but after more than a few low quality samples of this stream — a fair portion of which I opted not to write about on this blog, since it seemed self-defeating to my intended aim — I remained less optimistic about finding it.
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#540: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Boy Who Played Rama [ss] (2017) by Sharath Komarraju
In my experience, self-published impossible crime fiction doesn’t produce much in the way of short story collections.
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#537: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Murder at Redmire Hall (2018) by J.R. Ellis
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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#536: The Futile Alibis – These Daisies Told: The Casebook of Professor Ulysses Price Middlebie [ss] (1962-75) by Arthur Porges
The work of Arthur Porges in the field of impossible and baffling crimes carries a salutary lesson: do not mess with mathematicians.
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#534: Adventures in Self-Publishing – The Opening Night Murders (2019) by James Scott Byrnside
I started 2019 on The Invisible Event by sharing the wonderful news that Goodnight Irene (2018) by James Scott Byrnside was a modern impossible crime novel we had legitimate reason to get excited about. And, excitingly, the end of that book promised a follow-up — titled Nemesis at the time — in 2019. And, one title-change later, no doubt on account of some has-been getting there first, here we are.
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#533: “Magicians have an advantage; they never have to reveal the trick” – An Interview with James Scott Byrnside
Back in December 2015 I read and reviewed Matt Ingwalson’s first two self-published Owl and Raccoon novellas and, impressed with their quality, undertook what has since become my Adventures in Self-Publishing in which I work through impossible crime fiction following a non-trad route to its audience.
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#532: Murder Among the Angells (1932) by Roger Scarlett
TomCat has been urging me to read this fourth novel from Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page’s ‘Roger Scarlett’ nom de plume for a while now, not least on account of our shared enthusiasm for impossible crimes. But I’m a stickler for my Ways and so have worked my way to it chronologically, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing the first three novels improve in style, scope, scheme, and substance from book to book. Here again, then, is another murder amidst a tightly-packed coterie of suspects in one of Boston’s mansions, with again enough cross-purposes, desires, and hidden intentions to make any one of them a killer…so whodunnit?
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#530: Serving Up a, uhm, Verger’s, er, Breakfast – The Montague Egg Stories of Dorothy L. Sayers (1933-36)
The Invisible Event 