I am a fan of a good crossover mystery, in which the tenets of crime and detection are placed into a science fiction/Fantasy milieu. So when I heard of a collection called The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction [ss] (1979), you’re darn tootin’ it was only a matter of time before I got to it.
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A collection of short stories, each part of an overall arc, My Grandfather, the Master Detective (2023) by Masateru Konishi is yet another intriguing Japanese mystery carried over into English by Louise Heal Kawai for our enjoyment.
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A second anthology of impossible crimes from the British Library Crime Classics range, As If by Magic [ss] (2025) is another genre-spanning collection from editor and Detection Club President Martin Edwards that does much to highlight the depth and breadth of classic crime and detective fiction.
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Christmas is done for another year, and so my mind turns to the summer holidays and the possibilities of Europe. Yeah, it’s early to be planning this sort of thing, but I like to be prepared. And so naturally it is the British Library’s collection Continental Crimes [ss] (2017) that I crack open for research
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Lest we forget, I was not enamoured of Lyndsay Faye’s Sherlock Holmes novel Dust and Shadow (2009), but her characterisation was strong, people seem to rate her pastiches, and Holmes arguably finds his firmest feet in the short stories. And so to Faye’s anthology of Holmes stories The Whole Art of Detection [ss] (2017) do we turn today.
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I stumbled over the Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) collection, in which thirteen authors offer wildly varying alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes, when searching for more criminous tales by Jonathan Maberry, one of the highlights of the C. Auguste Dupin-extending collection Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013).
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After five novels of seemingly impossible crimes explained away with seemingly inexhaustible ingenuity, James Scott Byrnside tackles the far harder shorter form in his latest book, It’s About Impossible Crime (2025), which gives us five stories featuring his most frequent protagonists, Chicago P.I.s Rowan Manory and Walter Williams.
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Seventeen scenarios of skulduggery, stealing, and slaughter in the British Library Crime Classics range, all centred on London, the finest city on god’s green Earth, and selected by the ne plus ultra of classic crime appreciation, Martin Edwards.
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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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The Invisible Event 