Impossible Crimes

#363: The Beacon Hill Murders (1930) by Roger Scarlett

/ JJ / 36 Comments

Roger Scarlett 1star filledstar filledstar filledstarsstars
The classic GAD puzzle plot being the complex and obstreperous beast it is, we should not be surprised that sometimes it took two brains to wrestle in into readable shape (under a single name so as to simplify things) — Ellery Queen, Francis Beeding, Kelley Roos, Patrick Quentin, etc.  Now, thanks to the work of Coachwhip and Curtis Evans, we can all add another collaborative nom de plume to our libraries with Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page’s Roger Scarlett and their Boston-set country house conundra.  And, as with their distinguished kin, they prove to have an equally troublesome first swing at this while also showing a huge amount of promise.

Continue reading →

#362: Minor Felonies – The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953) by Bruce Campbell

/ JJ / 21 Comments

Clue of the Phanton Car

An orphaned young man who lives with his red-haired best friend’s family, all the while having adventures…yeah, okay, no, the Harry Potter similarities stop (and indeed, don’t even start — he’s not an orphan, his father’s just away a lot) there.  But it’s interesting to reflect, as these YAGAD novels are making me do, on the format that adventures for younger readers take and how little the classic tropes have needed to change in the intervening decades.

Continue reading →

#360: The Devil Drives (1932) by Virgil Markham

/ JJ / 23 Comments

Devil Drivesstar filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
Someone who venerates plot to the extent I do should not have enjoyed this book as much as I did.  There’s a Nancy Drew-esque dollop of convenience at every turn, and a series of coincidences and sudden realisations that just happen to tie these actions together far more tightly than seems possible at first glance…and I should abominate such quick answers.  But, holy hell, it’s also superbly written, and rich in the pulp sensibilities that resulted in me crowning Jim Thompson one of the four most important male crime writers of all time.  Classicaly constructed it isn’t,  but gloriously entertaining it certainly is.

Continue reading →

#358: Adventures in Self-Publishing – Untouchable (2016) by Robert Innes

/ JJ / 15 Comments

Untouchable

I’d promised TomCat that I’d attempt to find a quality modern locked room mystery this week, but the book I was going to look at — Lord Darcyverse continuation novel Ten Little Wizards (1988) by Michael Kurland — has (miraculously…?) vanished.  So instead, here’s a revival of another occasional series: a selective pick through some self-published impossible crime stories in search of the gold that doubtless exists there somewhere.

Continue reading →

#354: Death in the House of Rain (2006) by Szu-Yen Lin [trans. ibid 2017]

/ JJ / 37 Comments

Death in the House of Rainstar filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
Gather everyone together in a closed, isolated location, then kill ’em off one by one.  Yup, at heart Death in the House of Rain (2006) is simply a marvellous instauration of this most spavined of classic detective fiction framings.  The ingredients are familiar — take a remote mansion of obscure design, a landslide, a rain storm, and ten near-strangers, then add some baffling murders and stir — and this familiarity is invested with the vim and vigour that continues to breathe new life into the possibilities these recurrent trappings allow.  In short, it is superb; chalk up another win for Locked Room International and fans of impossible crimes.

Continue reading →

#343: He Wouldn’t Kill Patience (1944) by Carter Dickson

/ JJ / 53 Comments

HWKPstar filledstar filledstar filledstar filledstars
The result of a challenge between John Dickson Carr and magician-turned-author Clayton Rawson to write a murder in a room whose inaccessibility is assured by paper taped across the inner door jamb, He Wouldn’t Kill Patience (1944) also has GAD brethren in Freeman Wills Crofts’ zoo-set, poisonous-snake-centric Antidote to Venom (1938).  Carr and Rawson take more puzzle-oriented routes, of course, and both happen to feature magicians, but the Reptile House subgenre is off to a good start with these two novels in it.  And since you’re going to ask, in the head-to-head of this and Rawson’s ‘From Another World’ (1948), Carr wins.  Boy, does Carr ever win.

Continue reading →