Impossible Crimes
#504: Little Fictions – ‘The Helm of Hades’ (2019) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 2019] + Ranking the Translated Short Stories
Who doesn’t love a list? No-one who matters, that’s who. And since I’ve now read all twenty of the translated short stories of Paul Halter it seems inevitable that I should have my own preferences laid out for everyone to disagree with.
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#503: The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 9.1: Laying Down the Laws – The Van Dine Twenty
There’s joy in your heart, a spring in your step, a tune in your soul — could it be that The Men Who Explain Miracles are here with another episode of their universally listened-to-by-some-people podcast?
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#502: The Door Between (1937) by Ellery Queen
Brad has threatened to drum me out of the GAD Club Members’ Bar for my lack of kow-towing to the work of Ellery Queen. In fairness, I really rather enjoyed Halfway House (1936), but here I am fighting for my rights. And I think he’s timed this deliberately, being well aware that The Door Between (1937) was up next for me, because Gordon’s beer is Eva MacClure, the heroine who finds herself at the centre of an impossible murder plot, one of the most frustrating perspective characters I’ve yet encountered. Goodness, she makes one positively ache for the company of Noel Wells from The Saltmarsh Murders (1932) by Gladys Mitchell.
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#501: Little Fictions – The Uncollected Paul Halter: ‘The Wolf of Fenrir’ (2014) and ‘The Scarecrow’s Revenge’ (2015) [trans. John Pugmire 2015/2016]
Right, here we go: the final two Paul Halter stories from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine previously unreviewed on this blog. Oh, hang on a minute, what am I going to do next Tuesday…?
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#500: Making an Entrance to Remember via The Fourth Door (1987) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 1999]
I am reliably informed by the product page on Amazon that I purchased the Kindle edition of The Fourth Door (1987, tr. 1999) — the first Paul Halter novel I ever read — on 19th May 2013. After nearly 6 years, 14 novels, 19 short stories, and 30 blog posts that included a celebration of his 60th birthday I’m going back to the beginning to see where it all began.
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#498: Little Fictions – The Uncollected Paul Halter: ‘The Gong of Doom’ (2010) and ‘The Man With the Face of Clay’ (2011) [trans. John Pugmire 2010/2012]
With Paul Halter’s debut novel The Fourth Door (1987) being the subject of my 500th post this coming weekend, it’s time to dive into two more of his short stories from the pages of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
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#495: Little Fictions – The Uncollected Paul Halter: ‘Nausicaa’s Ball’ (2004) and ‘The Robber’s Grave’ (2007) [trans. John Pugmire & Robert Adey 2008/2007]
My five-hundredth post approacheth — a reread and re-evaluation of The Fourth Door (1987), the debut novel of M. Paul Halter, of whom I am quite the fan — and so Tuesdays in February will focus on the six translated Halter stories featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that have yet to be collected into a second English-language anthology.
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#494: Spoiler Warning – Coming in April: Tantei Gakuen Q/Detective School Q: ‘The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case’ (2003)
If last week’s spoiler-heavy post on Mr. Priestley’s Problem, a.k.a. The Amateur Crime by Anthony Berkeley seemed rather like an invite to a party for which you did not possess the necessary shoes to get past the bouncers, well, TomCat is here to even up the balance a bit…
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#492: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Where’s the Beef? (2014) by Deb Pines
