Mansion Mysteries

#1335: The Man Who Slept All Day (1942) by Craig Rice [a.p.a. by Michael Venning]

/ JJ / 6 Comments


Reading her novels chronologically, I’m moved to declare that 1942 was a big year for Craig Rice. Prior to then, she had written five fast-moving, wildly inventive mysteries featuring wisecracking lawyer John J. Malone and Jake and Helene Justus, but 1942 saw Rice diversify with (not necessarily in this order) a Malone novel in The Big Midget Murders (1942) that ramped up plot complexity, The Sunday Pigeon Murders (1942) taking on a new setting with a more dim-bulb presence at its core, atmosphere overwhelming the slow-moving Telefair (1942) and now, with The Man Who Slept All Day (1942), long character-work taking over from plot mechanics so that you really do care about the people involved. That noise you hear is the stretching of some wings.

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#1329: The Greene Murder Case (1928) by S.S. van Dine

/ JJ / 20 Comments


Having curbed the slaughter in his first two books, S.S. van Dine’s early promise that The Greene Murder Case (1928) is “the first complete and unedited history of the Greene holocaust” certainly sets you up for carnage galore. And the book offers this and more: a veritable cornucopia of almost everything the detective novel should have, as if, having learnt from his opening brace, Van Dine was keen to cram in just about every trick, revelation, and reversal1 he could possibly envisage. And yet, for all its trappings, the book does suffer from the same problem as its predecessors in that the killer is blindingly obvious, and no amount of telling me otherwise will change my mind.

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#1293: The Whistling Hangman (1937) by Baynard Kendrick

/ JJ / 3 Comments


One of my favourite discoveries of recent years has been the character of Captain Duncan Maclain, the blind protagonist of a baker’s dozen of books by Baynard Kendrick. Having enjoyed The Odor of Violets (1941) and Blind Man’s Bluff (1943) as part of the American Mystery Classics range, I’ve been keeping an eye out for other books in the series, and got very lucky stumbling into a copy of The Whistling Hangman (1937) that was so severely beaten it must have owed money to six different loan sharks. And this was an especially exciting find as the novel has been praised by TomCat, apparently featuring some more ingenious impossible deaths in a large New York hotel…and, yeah, largely lives up to its billing.

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#1278: The Labyrinth House Murders (1988) by Yukito Ayatsuji [trans. Ho-Ling Wong 2024]

/ JJ / 8 Comments


Even before the sad death of John Pugmire, who brought us much in the way of foreign language impossible crime novels through Locked Room International, Pushkin Vertigo had started some heavy lifting in supplying us with ingenious puzzle plots from the other side of the language barrier. They’re not all bangers, of course, but the commitment Pushkin have shown, and continue to show if the raft of upcoming titles on their slate is anything to go by, is heartening for those of us who love a complex problem rigorously exploited. And The Labyrinth House Murders (1988) by Yukito Ayatsuji, recently translated by the talented Ho-Ling Wong, is certainly that.

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#1258: “This is getting serious…” – The Game’s Afoot in Clue (1985) [Scr. & Dir. Jonathan Lynn]

/ JJ / 11 Comments

Given the voracity with which Hollywood will seize upon almost any existing intellectual property — video game! card game! product placement! sequel to product placement! spin-off from sequel to product placement! — and make it into a probably disappointing movie, it’s amazing that Clue (1985), based on one of the dullest board games in existence, turned out as well as it did.

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#1204: Minor Felonies – The Swifts (2023) by Beth Lincoln

/ JJ / 2 Comments

On the day that a child is born into the ancient, vast Swift clan, the family Dictionary is placed before the new mother and, with her eyes closed, she opens it and runs her finger down the page until it settles “on the word and definition that would become her child’s name”. What Beth Lincoln chooses to do with this intriguing idea in her debut The Swifts (2023) is…a little confused.

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