#1164: The Traces of Merrilee (1966) by Herbert Brean

February 8, 2024February 27, 2024 / JJ / 13 Comments

Traces of Merrilee

Merrilee Moore, the latest star to bewitch millions from the silver screen, is rumoured to be making a movie about Helen of Troy in Greece after years of being kept on a decidedly ungenerous contract by greedy studio heads. Suffice to say, certain people in the industry feel slightly put out at this turn of events, and might wish ill upon Miss Moore before she ever crosses the Atlantic and gets in front of a camera. And so magazine journalist William Deacon accepts a commission to cross the ocean on the Monmatre and keep an eye on Merrilee, to ensure nothing bad befalls her. First problem…is she even aboard the ship?

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#933: Dead Sure, a.k.a. Collar for the Killer, a.k.a. A Matter of Fact (1956) by Herbert Brean

July 7, 2022February 8, 2024 / JJ / 15 Comments

dead-sure

Herbert Brean is an author whose work is really rather difficult to pigeonhole, and this multi-titled obscurity — I’ll call it Dead Sure (1956), as per my Dell paperback edition — highlights why. From the gentle Americana puzzling of his debut Wilders Walk Away (1948), to the gloomy suspense of The Darker the Night (1949) and the intricate historical imbrications of his masterpiece Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950), we find ourselves now in a sort of Woolrichian nightmare of an honest cop framing an innocent man and attempting to dig himself out before it’s too late…both legally and morally. And yet, even then, there’s more going on here.

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#572: Death in Silhouette (1950) by John Russell Fearn

August 29, 2019August 29, 2019 / JJ / 13 Comments

Part of the fun of this blogging collective with its focus primarily on classic style mysteries is seeing the individual enthusiasms of bloggers and commenters alike assert themselves. To pick just three, I’ve turned into quite the most unexpected fan of Freeman Wills Crofts, Puzzle Doctor is soon to convert us all to the joys of Brian Flynn, and TomCat has derived great pleasure from the works of John Russell Fearn. And it’s nice to share in a joy with someone, so through an uncertain combination of runic alchemy and liturgical dance, I ended up at the conclusion that Death in Silhouette (1950) would be the next Fearn for me to try, and here we are.

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#466: The Traces of Brillhart (1960) by Herbert Brean

November 29, 2018February 8, 2024 / JJ / 8 Comments

Late one night, journalist William Deacon is surprised in his office by an old school friend with an unusual request. Seemingly everywhere Archie Sinclair goes, people are talking about the singer-songwriter Brill Brillhart — the places they met with him, the dinners they’ve had with him, the appearances he’ll be making later that week — which wouldn’t be so weird if Sinclair didn’t have it on such good authority that Brillhart has been dead for the last two months. So, would Deacon be willing to look into it? And Deacon, with misgivings aplenty, agrees, and soon finds that Brillhart is indeed both dead and seemingly everywhere. How can this be possible?

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#213: On Audacity and How to Prepare for It, via John Russell Fearn’s Thy Arm Alone (1947)

March 4, 2017March 4, 2017 / JJ / 27 Comments

Sometimes someone is so taken with a book that you can’t help but stop and take notice yourself. So when TomCat was full of praise for this impossible crime, it hopped up my TBR pile with the effortlessness of a mountain goat on an escalator. I was promised audacity, and I love a bit of authorly audaciousness where an impossible crime is concerned — indeed, the boldness of such schemes as employed in John Dickson Carr’s The Man Who Could not Shudder (1940) or John Saldek’s Invisible Green (1977) make them firm favourites of mine, and if a book of this ilk has chutzpah enough to make TomCat and John Norris sit up and pay attention, then surely you must be onto a good thing.

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