#337: Foreign Bodies [ss] (2017) ed. Martin Edwards

January 18, 2018January 10, 2026 / JJ / 24 Comments

Had you asserted back in 2014 that the republication of two forgotten crime novels would lay the foundation for one of the most celebrated series of GAD reissues in modern times, well, people would have laughed. And yet the British Library Crime Classics collection, under the stewardship of Martin Edwards and Rob Davies, is now over 50 books deep and gathering momentum for another exciting year. And it’s a sure sign of the hale condition of the series that, far from simply reissuing books, they’re now branching out into original translations with this collection of overseas tales. In the words of Ira Gershwin, who’s got the last laugh now?

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#319: A Call to Arms – ‘The Running Dead’ (1985) by Soji Shimada [trans. Ho-Ling Wong & John Pugmire 2017]

December 2, 2017July 13, 2020 / JJ / 19 Comments

Given that an overwhelming majority of modern crime writing really isn’t my thing, it’s always lovely to see Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine publish some short fiction for me to get excited about, like a new Paul Halter story or, as in the current November/December 2017 issue, something from Japanese master Soji Shimada (I’ll Westernise his name herein, since that’s what I’ve done previously).

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#307: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 5

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017 / JJ / 7 Comments

Here we are at the final week of Locked Room International’s The Realm of the Impossible, with me working through in non-anthologised order to instead group them culture-by-culture.

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#306: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – The Real Life Impossibilities

October 28, 2017December 28, 2018 / JJ / 14 Comments

This coming Tuesday sees the final instalment in my month-long look at Locked Room International’s multi-national impossible crime short story collection, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to address an oversight Puzzle Doctor, TomCat, and I have all been guilty of: the 12 real-life cases also contained within.

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#304: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 4

October 24, 2017December 28, 2018 / JJ / 23 Comments

You know the drill by now, and if not, where have you been? Locked Room International put out this 430-page collection of obscureness and rarities in impossible crime fiction from the world over, and I’ve been going through it sort of continent-by-continent (not really, though, it’s much looser than that).

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#301: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 3

October 17, 2017December 28, 2018 / JJ / 16 Comments

The world tour that is Locked Room International’s newest impossible crime story collection continues, with me picking out stories by their approximate geographical groupings to explore the themes they raise. Elsewhere we have:

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#299: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 2

October 10, 2017December 28, 2018 / JJ / 23 Comments

And so we return to the multi-national short story impossibility-fest that is The Realm of the Impossible from Locked Room International. Once again, I’m taking a different selection of stories each week by approximate geographical grouping and comparing and contrasting the themes and approaches.

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#296: The Realm of the Impossible [ss] (2017) eds. John Pugmire and Brian Skupin – Week 1

October 3, 2017December 28, 2018 / JJ / 15 Comments

As discussed previously, Tuesdays here on The Invisible Event will now pursue a particular theme each month, and throughout October I shall be looking at the new, multi-national short story collection The Realm of the Impossible (2017) from Locked Room International.

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#270: The Madman’s Room (1990) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 2017]

August 3, 2017June 8, 2021 / JJ / 56 Comments

Reader, brace yourself for a shock: I — the man who curated an online celebration of Paul Halter’s 60th birthday last year — loved The Madman’s Room. Given the hue and stripe of originality Halter has brought to the impossible crime genre (The Demon of Dartmoor, The Lord of Misrule, and The Invisible Circle, among others, all contain what surely must be original resolutions to the inexplicable), it’s no surprise to find him resolving the mysteries herein as inventively as he does. What I especially enjoyed was the simplicity brought to the answers, particularly the way he occludes that simplicity so smartly so that you look back on come the end and go “Oh, hell, how did I miss that?”.

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#259: ‘The Yellow Book’ (2017) by Paul Halter [trans. John Pugmire 2017] and Categorising No Footprints Murders

July 4, 2017February 26, 2019 / JJ / 71 Comments

Of late, I have found myself surrounded by invisible men. Entirely fictional, of course, but there have been a lot of them: shooting someone in an empty room in You’ll Die Laughing (1945) by Bruce Elliott, disappearing into darkness in I’ll Grind Their Bones (1936) by Theodore Roscoe, vanishing from rooms and beaches in Thursday’s forthcoming Wilders Walk Away (1948) by Herbert Brean, performing miracle appearances and disappearances as I reread Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot…everywhere I look, people are vanishing.

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