Impossible Crimes
Norman Berrow writes great policemen. His other characters are very good — he has Agatha Christie’s ability to give you an archetype plus enough to be quietly, subtly powerful — but his policemen are superb. After reading three later Berrows featuring Inspector Lancelot Carolus Smith and his lackeys, I’m leaping back to Berrow’s second novel here, and well before the halfway point I was lamenting the fact that this seems to be the only case calling on Superintendent Mellish, Inspector Sennet, and the delightfully earnest Constable Ensor. They take a standard Country House Mystery and transform it through their cheek, cleverness, and camaraderie into something that feels like the start of a very promising career indeed. Alas, not to be.#202: First Lines of First Impossible Crimes – The Answers!
If you still wish to pit your wits against my “From which novel is this the first line?” quiz of debut impossibilties, do not click to read more as the answers are below. But you probably figured that from the title of the post, eh? All the detective fiction is rubbing off on you…
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#200: Celebrating 100 Impossible Crimes with Paul Halter’s The Vampire Tree (1996) [trans. John Pugmire 2016]
This, my 200th post on this blog, will also be the 100th to be tagged with the subject ‘Impossible Crimes‘ and — since my very first was a review of Paul Halter’s The Phantom Passage — I thought I’d hold this milestone to look at the most recent Halter translation from John Pugmire’s Locked Room International, which goes by the English title The Vampire Tree. I will probably do this at some length, though without mentioning specifics past the 25% mark, and with a brief mention of only one slight spoiler, signposted in advance. So, let’s get into it…
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#199: A Quantum Murder (1994) by Peter F. Hamilton
Respected, iconoclastic patriarch of an isolated group found murdered in his bedroom one night when no-one else could have entered the house? Check. All members of the household cleared from complicity in his murder? Check. Amateur detective-cum-paladin called in against his will to investigate? Check. Cantankerous police riled by this effrontery in spite of the obvious specialised knowledge this amateur brings? Check. Honestly, Peter F. Hamilton wrote such a classic detective yarn with A Quantum Murder, it’s almost a surprise to find it on the SF shelves. But when your genius amateur is also a fully-functioning enhanced psychic empath I suppose you’re not really in Agatha Christie territory any more…
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#198: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – The First Lines of First Impossible Crimes…
The ab ovo examination of my reading in these Tuesday Night Bloggers posts over the last few weeks has been very enjoyable, but let’s move on to something else for the end of the month: you’re tired, it’s doubtless dark and/or cold outside if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, and now you’re even more miserable thinking about the wall-to-wall sunshine and free drinks doubtless being doled out in the Southern Hemisphere. And the last thing you really want is me being all uncouth about stuff and my life and things.
So, for distraction, a quiz!
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#196: The Department of Queer Complaints [ss] (1940) by Carter Dickson
Department D3 of Scotland Yard houses the gargantuan form of Colonel March, investigator of the absurd and apparently impossible whose “mind is so obvious that he hits it every time”. It’s a shame March never got a novel of his own, because he has a lovely and direct way of dealing with the problems brought to him, but then he’s not exactly dissimilar to the Gideon Fell chap about whom Carter Dickson wrote so much under his real name of John Dickson Carr. So, yup, it’s impossibilities ahoy as we go through ten cases of the inexplicable thoroughly laid to rest by Carr’s own brand of chicanery and misdirection; it’s true: life is good to us sometimes, and we just gotta enjoy it when it happens…
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#195: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – My First Five Impossible Crimes…
Much like being stuck with that one relative who wishes to recount every event of note from their life regardless of how interested you appear, my reminiscing about the beginnings of my detective fiction reading continues. This week, with my oft-mentioned fondness for an impossible crime, I’m going to attempt to recall the first few, faltering steps I made into the subgenre. So, let’s see now…
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#194: Spoiler Warning 1 – The Ten Teacups, a.k.a. The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) by Carter Dickson
In what I’m hoping will be the first of a semi-occasional series — look, I’ve made a special header image for it and everything — we are here today to discuss the 1937 impossible crime novel The Ten Teacups, published in the U.S.A. as The Peacock Feather Murders, from John Dickson Carr under his Carter Dickson nom de plume. Puzzle Doctor, wrangler of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, kindly agreed to reread this one and then exchange some thoughts on aspects of the precise details and workings of the book, and the results of our efforts are below. Suffice to say, if you click to read more of this, there are guaranteed massive spoilers from this point on; don’t say I didn’t warn you…
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#193: Sailor, Take Warning! (1944) by Kelley Roos
Sometimes you just have to bite a bullet: following the exceptionally sad loss of the Rue Morgue Press, this is the final Jeff and Haila Troy novel currently available, but, well, let’s enjoy it, eh? Audrey and William Roos did such a great job with so many aspects of the writing in these first four books — the dialogue is genuinely funny, the plots mostly move at a great pace, the mysteries are intriguing, and third book The Frightened Stiff is a genuine genre classic for all time — that we shouldn’t get too weighed down with lamenting their unavailability. Common sense will prevail, they’re too good to let go out of print for any length of time, and this won’t be the last we see of the Troys. Right?
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#191: Five to Try – My Favourite Jonathan Creek Episodes
Once upon a time he was fully justified in looking this smug…
The Invisible Event 