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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On 18th August 2025, The Invisible Event will have been running for ten years. And while I’m not a big one for introspection — I read books, I write about those books, some people read what I’ve written, rinse, repeat — a decade feels like a notable achievement and so some introspection is going to be had, for today at least.
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It’s true that, by reading a lot of crime and detective fiction and trying to write three posts a week on that subject, I sometimes forget to just enjoy my reading. So thank heavens it’s time for another Alasdair Beckett-King novel, with Sabotage at Sea (2025) being the fourth in the Montgomery Bonbon corpus.
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The Invisible Event 