The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

I previously reviewed P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), second and third novel in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, which makes The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) the next logical stop – being the first in the series. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, set in 1928, begins when an unusual telegram is delivered at the Juniper Gentleman's Club addressed to Anty.

The telegram reads, "COME AT ONCE -(STOP)- UNCLE SEB. DEAD -(STOP)- DEFENESTRATED BY UNSEEN HAND -(STOP)- FIDDLES." Fiddles is the nickname of an old college chum, Fairfax Canterfell. Anty has fond memories of the summer holidays he spend with Fiddles at Canterfell Hall and the surrounding countryside of East Sussex. So welcomes an opportunity to go back and help out his friend.

After all, Anty enjoys a modest reputation in his social circle as something of problem solver, "the Alexander to their Gordian knots," but this is the first time he has been asked to help out with a mysterious death. A locked room murder, no less! The victim is Fiddle's uncle, Sebastian Canterfell, who was thrown out of the second-story window of his study located in the ancient tower of the estate ("...designed and built to resist the Norman hordes"). So, beside the open window, the only other way in, or out, is a heavy oak door that was locked on the inside with the key stuck in the lock. Sebastian Canterfell was overheard arguing with someone and another saw him being ejected from the open window. But when they battered down the door, the study was empty!

Canterfell apparently being flung out of the window of an otherwise empty and locked room is not the only complication. There's a rumored codicil to the will of Major Canterfell, family patriarch and elderly father of Sebastian, who "takes insidious pleasure in neither confirming nor denying its existence." A painting impossibly disappears from the conservatory right under everyone's noses. One moment it's there, the next it's gone. Fiddles falls in love with a house guest of his aunt and "he takes on the speech, demeanour and facial expression of one who's been hit on the back of the head with a cricket bat" every time he looks at Rosalind Pierpoint – before getting into much more serious trouble. Inspector Ivor Wittersham arrests him halfway through the story on suspicion of having murdered his uncle following Anty's explanation of the locked room-trick.

Anty has to play dual roles, fairy godmother and amateur sleuth, which is part of the fun of this book and series. Before returning to the plot, I should note that the first thing to recommend about this series are the humorous characters and dialogue placing it alongside the comedic mysteries of Leo Bruce, R.T. Campbell and Edmund Crispin. I guess the comedy is the reason why the series is advertised as "locked room cozies," but the cozy label is doing the series a disservice. They're substantially better plotted than the cozies with pastel covers with cute animals sitting next to bags of yarn or standing in front of a bakery or candy shop. And actually funny once you get acclimated to Anty's personality. I agree with Kate's review that the comedic highlight of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is Anty recalling the time he made up a parlor game, "Quite Right, Milord," to hide from his mother how drunk his father was at the time. It was a roaring success. The plot themselves have a distinct touch of absurdity, which is probably why they tend to be uneven in quality... judging by the first three novels.

The locked room murder of Sebastian Canterfell is a case in point. The idea behind the locked room-trick is hilariously clever, buzzing with originality and very subtly clued – perhaps too subtly clued for it to be fully effective. I think those clues would have been strengthened and made the solution a whole lot fairer had the reader been told up front (ROT13) gung gur xrl unq orra tyhrq vagb cynpr. Which should not have given too much away as the locked room-trick was revealed halfway through anyway. It would have given the reader an opportunity to roughly work out the trick for themselves. Not to mention that that piece of information particularly would have nicely complimented the bizarre clue of (ROT13) gur cbgngb fghpx va gur fcrnxvat ghor. Still a really fun idea for a locked room murder and surprised something similar hasn't been used before to eject someone from an empty, sealed room. There's also the seemingly impossible disappearance of the painting and a second locked room murder, a faked suicide, but both impossibilities are fairly minor plot-threads with simple solutions.

So the strength of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is in the overall plot, but the devil is in the details there as well. Fitzsimmons is not a mystery writer you'll catch red-handed being dull or boring, but the finer plot-details aren't always executed with the same rigor as his Golden Age counterparts. That can be frustrating as they're so close to the genuine article and honestly leaves me in two minds, which is why I want to tackle The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) next before deciding to get Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022), The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). They're cheap enough as ebooks to continue. So, for now, a recommendation as very entertaining pastiches/parodies of the Golden Age detective story.

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) by Roger Ormerod

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) is a standalone mystery published at the tail-end of Roger Ormerod's quarter-of-a-century run as a writer of varied, original and sadly overlooked crime and detective fiction – retiring after two more novels in 1999. Ormerod greatest contribution to the genre is finding a way to successfully integrate the fairly clued, Golden Age puzzle plots with the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and the then emerging police procedural. They're not merely traditional detective novels with modern trappings. A variety of personalized tropes makes them distinctly Ormerodian detective novels.

Ormerod's third-to-last novel lost none of the vitality of his work from the 1970s, '80s and early '90s. On the contrary! The Seven Razors of Ockam is one of his most striking and entertaining mysteries to date, but notably different in tone from what came before. Ormerod probably knew his writing career was drawing to a close and decided to have some fun with this one. Ditching the tone and trappings of the crime novel to tell a bonkers, pulp-style mystery thriller that could have been plucked from the pages of James Ronald or Gerald Verner yarn.

The backdrop, really the main "character," of The Seven Razors of Ockam is the fictitious steel manufacturing town of Ockam. Not to be confused with the other Ockam in Surrey. The town, famous for its Ockam Steel, has a long history of steel and arms manufacturing dating back to ancient times, when rival barons would travel to Ockam to have their troops equipped with Ockam weaponry – only "to meet later in order to slaughter each other in distant parts." So "nobody attacked Ockam" and the place developed an independent spirit and populations with "the mercurial sense of fairness and decency that arose from several hundred years of carefully balanced neutrality." That sense of fairness is what helped kick everything off.

Bert "Slasher" Harris, the incumbent mayor of Ockam, is asked to draw the prizes for a raffle held to get the hospital a new dialysis machine. The prize closet is well-stocked with the two top prizes being a Ford Escort and a BMW motorcycle, but also include a typewriter, a Sony Walkman and a new kitchen layout. So an easy enough, routine gig for a mayor, however, Slasher Harris decides to call the winners in reverse order. The first two names drawn think they have won the first and second prize, instead of the sixth and seventh consolation prizes. Pretty soon, the confusion turned into a riot as the crowd was ready to tear their mayor to pieces, wrecking the old Town Hall and burned down the Slasher Harris Stand at Cutters' football field. Graffiti began to appear all over town, mocking the mayor and threatening the prize winners, but of more concern is the theft of one of the town's treasures. A case with a set of seven classic open razors each engraved with a day of the week.

Nearly a month later, on a Monday, the first prize winner is attacked in a parking lot by someone wearing a ski-mask and wielding an open razor. A razor that had Monday engraved on it. However, the assailant is unsuccessful, but Tuesday's victim is not so fortunate ("the attack was savage, sir"). Detective Inspector Tomkins is tasked with putting a stop to this razor wielding maniac apparently slashing through the prizewinners of the raffle.

Like I said, The Seven Razors of Ockam is redolent of the pulp mysteries of yesteryear with killer menacing and thinning out a group of people, but the comparisons only go as far as the setup. After the second attack, Ormerod simply refuses to follow the obvious plot patterns expected from such a pulp-style mystery and goes off-script. So, going into the second-half, the story enters a calm before the storm resumes phase, which admittedly slackens the pace a little. There's not much to tell or describe about this part of the book, except for a curious little anecdote told by the town clerk to the mayor that would have made for an interesting (historical) subplot. In the 1950s, the town had another "one of those crazy murderers on the loose," but "one used a shotgun, though, and he couldn't aim straight to save his life" – targeting the sons of the members of a secretive club. An anecdote that comes with the hushed up solution, however, the motive is quite novel. Just imagine what a writer like Paul Halter would have done with such a story? I think a historically retelling of the 1950s serial killing case intertwined with the present day case would have shored up the whole novel and given the whole story that Ormerodian as shotgun killings was one of his personalized tropes. Something that's notably missing from The Seven Razors of Ockam.

So how does The Seven Razors of Ockam stack up? Ormerod obviously wanted to have fun with this one and therefore lacks the usual plot machinations and complexities of the previous novels. No perfect alibis (Time to Kill, 1974), galore of false solutions (More Dead Than Alive, 1980), locked room slayings (When the Old Man Died, 1991) or delivering a rug-puller of an ending (Face Value, 1983). For example, the murderer becomes more, and more, evident as the story progresses. Even without the wonderful, somewhat surrealistic clue of the tissue paper. While less complicated, densely-plotted than previous novels, Ormerod makes that up by delivering one of his most readable and striking novels. And more humorous in tone than when presenting his detective fiction as serious crime novels or police procedurals. Particular the opening chapters detailing the run-up to the raffle, its immediately aftermath and the Ockamites helped to make The Seven Razors of Ockam a fun, '90s rendition of the pulp-style mystery thrillers from the '30s and '40s.

It's the Numbers That Count: Q.E.D. vol. 44-46 by Motohiro Katou

I ended the review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 42-43 with the plan to have this series wrapped before July, which can be done at the current rate in four twofer reviews, but alluded to similar plans and intentions before – rarely panned as originally intended. Going by past results, it probably would have meant a review of vol. 50 wouldn't have materialized until January or February 2026. I'm going to step up with two threefer reviews this month, review vol. 50 next month and tidy it all up with part two to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25." After that, I'll turn my attention to Motohiro's C.M.B. series interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. I've not forgotten about that recommendation of the archery-themed murder case from The Gordian Knot series. So that concludes these household notes, unto to the review!

The first, of two, stories from Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 44, "Tuba and Grave," brings back the three disaster magnets of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club, Enari "Queen" Himeko, Nagaie "Holmes" Koroku and Morito "Mulder" Orisato.

This time, they caused a minor uproar when mistaking a sleeping drunk, on a park bench, for a victim of foul play with their wildly incorrect deductions ("the suspect is possibly an alien, because we didn't find footprints"). So the "absolute imbeciles" get reprimanded, loose access to their club room for a week and warned their club will be disbanded if they get involved in another incident. Before long, those three find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when they witness an actual murder: a man being strangled behind a building and his body dragged into an abandoned factory. They decide to call-in an anonymous tip and the police turns up with the man they recognize as the killer to open the factory, which searched top from bottom starting with a suspicious looking case – containing a tuba. A second, obvious place is what looks like a makeshift grave, but only contained a visually pleasing arranged collection of garbage. Props to the police detective for clearing away the junk to continue digging. No evidence of a body or crime was discovered.

So where could the body have been hidden when the police "turned the entire place upside down and didn't find a thing?" The detective club, once again, turn to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to bail them out, but Touma tells them the police will figure it out without their help ("...make sure that you behave and get the club back"). His advice falls on deaf ears as the club goes ahead with their own investigation and Mizuhara doing some legwork in the background, until Touma reappears to reveal what really happened at the factory. Touma's solution to the problem turns, what appeared to be an impossible disappearance of a corpse, into a Columbo-style breakdown of the murderer's alibi and ends up hanging him with his own incriminating words.

So a really excellent and entertaining story. Loved the cheekiness of the method even though (ROT13) vg'f abg n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel ng nyy, ohg nppvqragnyyl nccrnerq gb or bar qhr gb gur qrgrpgvir pyho'f vagresrerapr. Gur zheqrere bayl jnagrq gb evt hc na nyvov. By the way, I'm starting to develop a soft spot of the Detective Club. They're absolutely useless idiots, but they mean well.

The second story from vol. 44, "Questions," is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart that are scattered across this series. Touma receives a cryptic invitation to a getaway at a luxurious villa. The invitation is a card with the word "QUESTION" on the front and Fermat's Last Theorem on the inside. And he was not the only one to receive an invitation. Several people going through a divorce have gathered at the villa with similar, cryptically-worded invitations. What follows is basically a cross between a treasure hunt and personal journey's of rediscovery. Touma primarily functions as a sideline oracle giving mini-lectures on mathematics, history of mathematical ideas and "an ever-expanding universe of numbers" ("...didn't understand a thing...").

A decent, if not particular memorable, entry in the series and Katou has done better puzzles-with-a-heart stories before. However, the ending admittedly made for a nice finishing touch to this character-driven story.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 45, "Venus," is a somewhat off-beat whodunit. Himichi Sayaka, a second year college student, is arrested on suspicion of having killed her ex-boyfriend, Mizushima Takuya – a third year student. Mizushima Takuya was found beaten to death in his apartment with door and windows securely locked from the inside, however, Himichi Sayaka has a spare key. She was seen near the apartment at the time of the murder and a bloodied baseball bat was discovered behind her own home. They had been fighting over money he owed her. So the prosecution can prove means, motive and opportunity, but the prosecutor has her doubts and asks Touma to see if he can spot a frame job. Mizuhara remains perplexed important people keep asking Touma for help ("but... this guy is still in high school"). If she has been framed for murder, the crime becomes an impossible one.

This story is, strangely enough, interspersed with comic-y vignettes in which a Venusian space girl, named Serge, teaches a talking raccoon in dungarees about the solar system. I really liked the one panel blending the retelling of how the murder was discovered with a floor plan of the crime scene. Some artistic touches that helped to make it stand out and cushion two notable short comings: a murderer who suspiciously stands out and a surprisingly routine locked room-trick for this series. That being said, the conclusion is solid enough with Touma eliminating all but one of the suspects before trapping them with their own words ("...something only the murderer could have known..."). A fair effort.

The second story in vol. 45, "First Love," can be read as an improvement on the previous story. Koba Tomotoshi is pretty average, second year student at Sakisaka High School. And to his very great surprise, Nitobe Rena asked him one day to be her boyfriend.

Nitobe Rena is the beautiful, popular girl at school and their relationship painted a target on his back. Something happened some time later when he took her back to his house and barely inside, they hear a thump coming from the balcony. What they find on the balcony is the body of a fellow student wrapped inside a bag. So how did the body end up on the balcony? It couldn't be a bizarre suicide, because the apartment is on the seventh floor of a twelve floor building and the body would have landed on an upper apartment balcony. Since this incident, Nitobe's parents have forbidden to see Koba. In desperation, he turns to the teenage genius and classroom detective of his school. Touma is currently engaged on, what they call, the Rakugo Artist Case. Mizuhara gets to play detective, collect evidence and contribute a pretty solid false-solution to the story. I had the most fun with this story playing armchair detective. I had a good idea about the who and why, but was stumped by the how. Something I should have figured out, but somehow missed entirely. Yes, I can be very dense at times, but well played regardless!

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 46, "Broken Heart," is the Rakugo Artist Case and is one of those stolen money stories Katou has done before, but this one has a neat and original wrinkle on the classic locked room situation. The setting of the story is the comedy theater Shitamachi where the princely sum of five million yen is stolen from the senior Rakugo artist, Tsubakiya Kamekichi, who brought the money along for safekeeping. And to ensure its safety during the performance, the money was locked inside a wallet with padlock secured to the handle of a steel ornamental jar. Only to discover later that evening the stacks of bills had somehow been replaced with blank paper! So how was the money taken from the locked wallet? The locked wallet-trick is only a relative small part of this character piece with its theatrical backdrop and backstory of young, aspiring actress/comedian/narrator, but just loved the visual imagery of the locked wallet hanging on a jar.

You don't find that many impossible crime novels or even short stories fiddling around with padlocks, because you have to ignore the fact they're not all that reliable and easily picked open. Suppose the same holds true for this story and the possibility alone should have made the person watching over the jar the primary suspect. Just going with the story, Katou demonstrated yet again you can achieve great effects with relatively simple, straight forward tricks. Loved it!

For those sick and tired of me droning on about locked rooms and alibis, the next story is for you. "Pilgrimage" is probably the darkest, most disturbing story this series has told and has Touma reconstructing a long-forgotten, deeply buried secret dating back to the Second World War. The story begins in the present with Uchibori Koyuki, a proof reader, finding an unpublished manuscript written by her late father, Shoichiro, who was a non-fiction writer. Manuscript is titled Pilgrim and has three handwritten notes on the cover, "rejected," "coincidence?" and "intentional?" Why was it rejected and shelved? She shows the manuscript to Touma and he found the subject matter more interesting than the reason why it was rejected. Pilgrim tells the tragic story from the early 1940s of a serial robber who accidentally killed one of his victims, a young newlywed woman, which forced him to flee the country. Yamai Seimei was eventually captured in Hanoi, Vietnam, ensuring "the bastard will get the death penalty." Usui Shigeru, victim's husband, travels to Hanoi under wartime circumstances, but halfway through he decides to continue the journey to Hanoi on foot – about a 1000 km journey. Two months later, Usui Shigeru arrives at the court in Hanoi and asks the court to spare his wife killer by commuting his death sentence to a prison sentence. But why? More importantly, why was it not enough to save the killer from death? And, of course, the reason is also why the manuscript remained unpublished.

A very dark, disturbing reason. Not that you would get that impression from the description, so far, because “"Pilgrimage" starts out with a human touch of Chestertonian wonder. A man forgiving and sparing the life of his wife's murderer following a mysterious, self-imposed pilgrimage and the wonder what he could have experienced during those two months. Only for it to turn in a terrifying, pitch-black and nightmarish horror plucked from the pages of an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Or, in this case, Edogawa Rampo. Bravo!

So, on a whole, not a bad collection of stories covering these three volumes. "Tuba and Grave," "First Love" and "Pilgrimage" are the obvious standouts and personally liked "Broken Heart" for its locked wallet mystery. Only "Question" and "Venus" trailed behind, but even they had their moments. Far from disappointed and look forward to the next three volumes, which you can expect before too long.

Give Me Death (1934) by Isabel Briggs Myers

Last year, Chosho Publishing reprinted Murder Yet to Come (1929/30) and Give Me Death (1934) by the co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Isabel Briggs Myers, whose debut earned her a controversial $7500 cash prize in a writing contest – originally won by Ellery Queen's The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). A decision that was overturned when the organizer, New McClure's Magazine, folded and absorbed into a women's magazine called The Smart Set.

Between her first and last novel, Briggs Myers worked on a three-act stage play, "Death Calls for Margin" (1931), starring her two detective characters, Peter Jerningham and John MacAndrew. Not much can be found online about "Death Calls for Margin," except for a notice from the April 21, 1931, publication of the Swarthmore Phoenix offering a tantalizing glimpse. "Death Calls for Margin" takes place in Philadelphia "just after the stock market crash" with "two of the same characters in Mrs. Myers' book making their reappearance." Another scrap of information (PDF) reveals Myers was part of the original cast ("Author Convincing in One of Leading Roles") and a copyright notice describes it "a murder mystery in 8 acts." Possibly the play has a longer and shortened version intended for smaller venues. Would love to take a look at it!

Three years later, Briggs Myers published her second, and last, novel-length mystery novel. While obscure and practically unknown today, Give Me Death continues to be dogged by controversy and some interesting, but mixed, reactions.

Curt Evans reviewed Give Me Death, back in 2012, praising its "exceptional virtues" ("...pulling off some Christie-Carr level slight of hand...") and noting Briggs Myers was a better writer, trickier plotter and better at creating characters than S.S. van Dine – on whom she modeled her detective novels. Curt also pointed out the book has a notable failing likely to run some readers today the wrong way. This notable failing has been hanging around the book like a millstone as Stephen Pierce chimed in on the comments saying Give Me Death "is already kind of an in-joke on the Honkaku Discord, mostly just referred to as the racist book" based on a spoiler from her Wikipedia page. I thought that was too hasty a dismissal. Only for Scott to enter the comments with a book report admitting "the whodunit and reversal at end were clever," but the "over the top histrionics that trigger the events ridiculous" leaving a bad taste. Add to this a contemporary review calling Give Me Death the very best in then recent mystery fiction and became more than a little curious. Curious enough to snatch up the reprint.

Give Me Death is once again narrated by John MacAndrew, "Mac" for short, who's the personal secretary and occasional Watson to famous playwright and sometimes amateur detective, Peter Jerningham. The story finds them putting the finishing touches to the manuscript of Jerningham's latest stage play when they receive two visitors.

One of these visitors is young Stephen Darneil, of the Darneil dynasty, who looks like a corpse and came to Jerningham for help, because his father is dying with a bullet in his brain – which poses an unusual problem. Gordon Darneil, head of the Prudential Trust, has an impeccable reputation, personally and professionally. His bank "had proceeded on its conservative way unshaken by crash or panic," because it "had nothing to apologize for." There appears to have been no reason why a perfectly healthy, financially secure and morally upstanding man looking forward to the marriage of his two children suddenly decide to pick up a gun to shoot himself. Stephen believes his father shot himself and the idea frightens him, which is why asked Jerningham to either hush it up or find a different answer. However, the physical evidence irrefutably points towards suicide with the investigation quickly turning on the question what, or whom, drove him to take his own life.

They know Gordon Darneil received some kind of disturbing news or unsettling information, which completely changed his mood and ended in suicide. Gordon Darneil is not the last of his family to do the same upon learning that dark, dreadful secret.So the premise of Give Me Death has a wrinkle of originality in setting up 1930s detective novel investigating a suicide rather than a murder and "Chapter XI: The Last Motive" even has a short lecture on suicide motives – listing all the reasons from A to K. Briggs Myers honestly tried to deliver on the premise with twisty ending. Something that might have worked had it not been for everything between the opening and closing chapters.

Firstly, there's that dark, all-consuming dreadful secret driving the Darneils to an early grave. Conceptually, the premise works with an idea, a hazardous information, which in 1934 was ahead of its time. Not what generally passes for dangerous information in crime fiction, but something like a domestic version of Roko's Basilisk. It could have made for something truly special had the secret not been so ridiculous to the point where it aged into a parody. I mean, they eventually find a letter from Gordon divulging the dreaded secret and honest to God opens with this dryly stated, unintentionally hilarious line (SPOILER/ROT13), “vg unf orra cebirq gb zr orlbaq ubcr bs dhrfgvba gung gurer vf va zl irvaf n fgenva bs Arteb oybbq.” That line caught me off guard and just cackled like a long-lost demented relative of the Darneils, holy shit! Secondly, the incredibly annoying, over the top histrionics of the Darneils to this secret, but that even turned into a parody of itself. As if the secret had activated the self-destruct mode on a bunch of Manchurian candidates. Like a Monty Python sketch! Thirdly, Jerningham doesn't shine at all as a detective here. On the contrary.

Brigg Myers tried to pull everything together by the end and there's a rather brilliant line, hidden somewhere in this mess, doubling as a tell-tale clue, but it's too little too late. Not to mention that the convoluted twisting and turnings of the plot happen so late into the proceedings, it's simply hasn't enough room nor time to make it work effectively. So everything to make a good, even original, detective story were present, but the executions of those ideas ended up being a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Give Me Death closed the book on Briggs Myers stint as a detective novelist, but would have liked to see if she could have rebounded. I noted in the review of Murder Yet to Come how it reminded me of the work of two other female Van Dinean mystery writers, namely Harriette Ashbrook and "Roger Scarlett" (Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page), who also started out as Van Dinean imitators – e.g. Ashbrook's The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) and Scarlett's The Beacon Hill Murders (1930). Ashbrook would go on to originate a now worn-out, but then startling new, trope in The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) and Scarlett's final novel, In the First Degree (1933), severed itself from its Van Dinean roots. You can see elements of both in Give Me Death in trying to do something different within the Van Dinean detective story. Yes, it was poorly conceived, poorly done, poorly executed, aged poorly and many today would argue it was done in poor taste. I'm just curious if she could have rebounded from it and at least returned to the level of her first novel. But as it stands, I agree with Scott that Murder Yet to Come is the superior detective novel and the one for which Briggs Myers should be remembered. So don't let the not undeserved reputation of Give Me Death dissuade you from reading it.

The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks (2022) by Danro Kamosaki

So I was perusing the blog-posts and reviews from the previous two, three months when I noticed it had been about that long since I came across a good, hefty locked room or impossible crime novel – going back to late February. That substantially-plotted impossible crime novel in question was Danro Kamosaki's Misshitsu ougon jidai no satsujin – Yuko no yakata to muttsu no trick (Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms – The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, 2022). You can't always pick a winner beforehand, but sometimes you can steer a bit in the right direction. When I say steering a bit in the right direction, I mean going for the blindingly obvious.

Danro Kamosaki's Misshitsu kyouran jidai no satsujin – Zekkai no katou to nanatsu no trick (Murder in the Age of Locked Room Mania – The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks, 2022) is the second entry in the "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series translated by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmmiicnana." Like its title suggests, it has even more locked room murders than the impossible crime extravaganza that's The House of Snow and the Six Tricks.

The premise of this series is basically a glimpse of what feels like my home universe/native timeline. A real-life locked room murder lead to the murderer being acquitted, "proof of non-resolution of a locked room is equivalent to proof of absence from the of a crime," which "was the same as acquitting a suspect with a perfect alibi" – not without consequences. The number of people murdered in locked rooms increased at an alarming rate alongside new kind of professionals and professions. There are specialized detectives tackling cases that can't be explained by one of the well-known tricks in the Ministry of Justice's Locked Room Classification List and appraisal companies who examine houses for secret passages and other nooks or crannies with ultrasound and x-rays. In the criminal underworld, "hitmen who specialized in locked room murders" ("they were called locked room agents") who for the right price would end their targets in a perfectly locked room. Not to be overlooked is the Tower of Dawn, a religious cult, dedicated to worshiping the scenes of locked room murders.

So that's background of The House of Snow and the Six Tricks in which 17-year-old high school student Kasumi Kuzushiro is dragged by Yozuki Asahina to house of a celebrated, but dead, mystery writer. A house that would soon host a series of grisly, seemingly impossible murders and reunion with an old school friend, Shitsuri Mitsumura, who has a knack for solving complicated puzzles. Particularly locked room puzzles.

The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks follows a similar setup, except for the opening pages. A notorious, nameless assassin-for-hire, known as "The Living Locked Room Library," receives an assignment to wipe out an entire group with one particular condition – eliminate the targets inside a locked room. One of the targets is a reclusive business tycoon, Aoi Otomigawara. She lives on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean known as Wire Mesh Island. A solitary island that was once the home of the last living Golden Age mystery writer, Richard Moore, who died in 2010 aged 111. Yes, Moore's name is a Case Closed/Detective Conan reference. Anyway, Wire Mesh Island, formerly known as Full Moon Island, is encircled by a high wire mesh fence and the only gap, or entrance, is the gate at the dock which is under camera surveillance. Everything that happen to pass over the island is monitored by cameras on top of the fence pointing straight upwards. So a island tailored to the backdrop of a good, old-fashioned whodunit with its fortress-like appearance and dotted with strange, custom-made cottages. Even before Otomigawara took it over, the island was the scene of two impossible murders that became known as the "Decapitation Chamber of Wire Mesh Island" and “One of Japan's Four Great Locked Rooms."

Otomigawara is hosting a "Locked Room Trick Game" on the island and invites a number of experts like a Youtube detective, a singer-song writer detective, a Tower of Dawn executive and a former judge. Kasumi Kuzushiro, Yozuki Asahina and Shitsuri Mitsumura are also present. Similar to the first novel, Kuzushiro didn't expect to find Mitsumura among the guests. Furthermore, there are two butlers, a chef, a doctor and a woman, Emiri Sotodomari, who claims to be a 1000-year-old vampire camping on the island. The first locked room problem to solve is part of the game and won't go into the game rules, because the game is abandoned when the real murders begin. A lottery picks the player who gets to be the culprit and has to stage a locked room murder somewhere in the mansion for the others to solve with the victim being a large, stuffed polar bear. This also mirrors the first novel in which the first problem under investigation was the stabbing of a doll inside a perfectly sealed room.

This first locked room "murder" of the plushy is not terribly relevant to the plot of this story, however, something tells me it might be very relevant to the main storyline of the series (ROT13: "V'yy unir lbh xabj V'z dhvgr cebhq bs gung gevpx"). When the first real murder is discovered, things really begin to kick off. Note that the Chapter 4 is already titled "Too Many Locked Rooms."

So where to even begin? There are seven locked room murders and a problem of these impossible crime extravaganzas is maintaining a balance between quantity and quality. The House of Snow and the Six Tricks managed to keep a fairly decent, overall balance with only two, out of six, locked room-tricks being less than impressive – even if they were mostly excises in technical prowess. The locked room-tricks in The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks can certainly be deemed technical, Kamosaki found some wildly unrealistic imaginative ways to put them to use. And, more than once, the locked room-tricks ventured into being entirely original. You really, really need to have an unhealthy love for locked room mysteries to go along with all of them. Even I had to draw the line at one of them. But I'll get back to that one.

The second locked room is the first that stands out, a stabbing in a locked and bolted cottage, which has a bonkers way to do the job, but rather conventional compared to what comes next. The cottage where previous victims were decapitated claims a third victim and the solution is brilliantly original, fantastically nightmarish and unbelievably impractical. Loved it! While the trickery is borderline insane, I think these two impossible crimes could have easily carried a whole novel by themselves. That only makes three impossible murders with the next, another stabbing in a locked basement room, offers both a simple and elegant false-solution and correct solution – both very good, solid locked room-tricks. However, I don't think the correct solution would work (ROT13) orpnhfr, fheryl, gur plyvaqre bs gur qbbe uvatr vf abg jrvtug rabhtu sbe gur cva gb whfg qebc jura gur vpr unf zrygrq. Vg'f gbb gvtug n svg sbe gur cva gb or “nssrpgrq ol tenivgl naq snyyf vagb gur plyvaqre,” evtug? Lbh unir gb sbepr vg vagb cynpr. Much better is the trick used to leave body in yet another cottage with the door securely locked by a key card and the only two key cards lying right next to the victim. I remember coming across one, or two, locked rooms involving key cards in Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, but Kamosaki came up with a grand idea. So another one that easily could fueled an entire story by itself. Great stuff!

However, the impossibility involving the disappearance of a prisoner and appearance of a body inside a strange architectural structure called the Tower of Heaven. I actually liked the intricate setup as the impossibility didn't concern the lockedness of the tower, but how the key was securely tucked away in a nesting doll of locked rooms. The "key was in a different locked room, whose key was in a locked safe, whose key was in another locked room." And the safe requires five keys, "each of which is being kept by a separate person." This premise filled me with hope as I initially feared the bizarre, cross-shaped tower was really a giant mechanical toy and rotated to flip around the rooms with the prisoner and body to make it appear like an inexplicable disappearance/appearance. Amazingly, the actual solution somehow turned out to be even more preposterous than a pirouetting, cross-shaped tower. Something so ridiculously, it's impossible to suspend your disbelieve and go along for the ride. Not just because it sounds and probably looks ridiculous.

If you go for such an overly complicated and involved trick, you should at least be shown why it could have only been done in that specific way. I mean, (ROT13) vs lbh trg gur xrl bhg sne rabhtu gb unaqyr vg, jul abg fvzcyl znxr na vzcerffvba be phg bss gur fgrz naq ernggnpu vg yngre? Gur bgure ybpxrq ebbz-gevpxf nyernql gblrq nebhaq jvgu zrgnyf naq nyybl znavchyngvba. The various murders in the locked cottages also require the reader to suspend their disbelieve, especially the decapitation cottage-trick, but they gave a reason – demonstrating the cottages were practically sealed. And, in comparison, their tricks have a degree of believability the nesting doll-trick simply lacked. So only one out of seven locked room murders missed the mark. Not a bad score.

And then there's the seventh locked room murder. An impossible murder, once again, flipping the script on the whole story. Not one I'll soon forget! It does everything right what the nesting doll-trick did wrong with not many pages left to go.

Similar to its predecessor, The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is mostly about picking apart ingeniously-contrived, original locked room-tricks littered with diagrams and floor plans. Well, mostly. I would be doing Kamosaki a disservice not to mention how immensely satisfying it was to see how (ROT13) gur raqvat ybbcrq onpx gb gur bcravat. An unexpected artistic touch from a plot-mechanic like Kamosaki. Not to mention one plot-thread turned out to be a demonstration how to cheat fairly. Well played, Kamosaki! Well played. This, of course, comes at the expense of characterization and a weakly handled motive ("I'm the sort of person who doesn't bother reading the motivation scenes in mystery novels"). Even the only meaningful characterization, between Kuzushiro and Mitsumura, is dominated by trying to find a solution to the murder that started the locked room boom. If you're like me, hopelessly addicted to impossible crime fiction, The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is another extremely well done, must-read love letter to the locked room mystery improving on The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks is and upping the ante. Hopefully, I'll get an opportunity to read the third and apparently best novel in the series. From what I understand, it has a classic village setting for a series of eight locked room murders and mysteries.

Only question remains unanswered: how did I end up with you lot in this shitty Berenstain universe? I could have been the Hercule Poirot to this version of Japan! Oh... and I wanted to highlight this little fellow from the cover.

 

 

Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope (2025) by P. Dieudonné

Recently, the small independent Dutch publisher E-Pulp released the twelfth novel in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de stille hoop (Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope, 2025), which begins with introducing a kaleidoscopic jumble of plot-threads – apparently unconnected. The opening chapter finds De Klerck arguing with Commissioner De Froideville over a two-year old, still unsolved and open missing persons case.

Frits Kieviet, "a habitual burglar," disappeared two years ago following the unsuccessful burglary of the home of an imminent university lecturer, Professor Rudolphi. The professor reported to the police nothing had been stolen, but rumors reached De Klerck claiming a valuable collection of antique coins was stolen from Professor Rudolphi's house in Ridderkerk. According to the rumors, two more people were involved in the burglary: a now dead call-girl named "NightQueenie" and her then boyfriend, Jules Olijhoek, who supposedly framed Kieviet. And not without consequences. Several dubious looking tough guys came looking for him at his regular bar, after which he disappeared without a trace. Worryingly, it suggests the respectable Professor Rudolphi is "a formidable criminal who wants to prevent his mask from falling at all costs." However, the case is in the hands of another district and De Klerck is not permitted to reopen the case or bother the influential Rudolphi ("...a friend of a friend").

The rumors regarding the burglary and collection of coins emanated from Kieviet's regular pub, 't Zotte Zwaantje, whose owner, Lowie, asks De Klerck's assistance when one of his regulars, Kjell van Boekel, dropped out of sight without a word – even turning his phone off. Inspectors De Klerck and Klaver don't have very long to give this problem their full attention, because next they're confronted with the central puzzle of the story.

A patrolling policeman found a young, soaking wet and dying man with pieces of duct tape still stuck to his face and clothes. The victim turns out to be a student, Casper Stokkentreeff, who recently got in trouble with the police for stalking his ex-girlfriend following a sudden breakup. Why was he held captive and tortured for days? Why didn't the doorbell cameras show him trying to get help? Why did he use his last breath to mumble something about building a bridge or bridge builders? A colleague of De Klerck's remarks that the murders he gets to investigate rarely resemble a simple crossword picture, but tend to be complicated cryptograms. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope certainly is no exception.

I mentioned in previous reviews how this series built on the formula of the Dutch politieroman as imagined by A.C. Baantjer rather than being another imitation. Such as loosening up the formula to allow more freedom to play around with the plots, which received some much needed plot complexity. So the series not only featured the customary bizarre, multiple murders, but also sported locked room mysteries, dying messages and unbreakable alibis. But also what can be called what-happened mysteries like Rechercheur De Klerck en het duistere web (Inspector De Klerck and the Dark Web, 2022) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023). A non-traditional puzzle in which a jumble of confusing crimes, incidents and people need to be put in the correct order or sequence to create a complete and coherent picture of the truth. Not always easy to do, but Dieudonné pulled it off before (see Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death). Regrettably, I can't say the same for the latest entry in the series.

I know Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope isn't intended as a traditional, fair play whodunit presented as a politieroman, but, even as a what-happened, it would have been nice to have had a shot at it – prevented by some information being dropped relatively late into the story. Important enough information to reduce every attempt preceding it to blindly groping around the dark. Same goes for, what turned out to be, the undecipherable dying message. I gave away my best impression of an armchair oracle trying to come up with a logical interpretation for those last, cryptic gurgled words. Maybe the policeman misheard him, but what sounds like "brug bouwen" (building a bridge)? Je moeder verbouwen (renovating your mom)? Surely, he couldn't have used his last breath to ask the policeman to tell his killer he was going to renovate his mom. So, as you can see, I did some serious work for nothing. That would not have been half as bad had the ending been good, but the plot felt as jumbled after the explanation as before and murderer's identity plus motive was underwhelming. I honestly would have been more impressed had Frits Kieviet pulled out as the off-page, but ever present, murderer. That really bugs me.

This series isn't a collection modern, five-star masterpieces of detective fiction posing as Dutch police procedural, but the quality is admirably maintained throughout the previous novels and why I've been fanboying about it for the past five years. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope completely missed the mark, for me at least. As pleasantly written as the previous novels, but the plot is uncharacteristically messy. That's the drawback for Golden Age detective fans of following a new series, you can't cherry pick the best titles. I'm sure Dieudonné back to his old tricks for the thirteenth De Klerck novels. Fingers crossed it will be titled Rechercheur De Klerck en de dertien katten (Inspector De Klerck and the Thirteen Cats).

Note for the curious: Well, rather a question. I ended the review of Rechercheur De Klerck en de status in moord (Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder, 2024) promising to do “Hit List” ranking the first twelve titles in the series. I know the series is untranslated and not accessible to most readers of this blog, which is why they never generate much discussion. Only exception, for obvious reasons, is the third title, Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020). So... wanted to know if anyone's actually interested for top 12 of this series?

The Curse of the Reckaviles (1927) by Walter S. Masterman

Walter S. Masterman was among the early British pulp writers who diligently worked on keeping the shelves of the lending libraries stocked with popular fiction running the gamut from horror, supernatural and science-fiction to thriller and detective novels – every subgenre in between. Masterman's twenty-six novels often embraced the more fantastical and outré elements of the pulps. So his Chief Inspector Arthur Sinclair, of Scotland Yard, has an incredibly strange career for a Golden Age detective character. Sinclair first appeared in a conventional locked room mystery, The Wrong Letter (1926), but would go to encounter strange creatures and lost races on faraway adventures.

I read The Wrong Letter last year on the recommendation of Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included it in his "A Locked Room Library: One Hundred Recommended Books." Jim has been fascinated with Masterman's work for years and reviewed a dozen of the Ramble House reprints. The Wrong Letter is not bad and, where genre history is concerned, not entirely without interest. Just not a great detective novel or classic locked room mystery. Overall decent enough to not ignore the second title in the series. That second novel is a bit strange when compared to its predecessor.

If The Wrong Letter looked towards the detective story's future, The Curse of the Reckaviles (1927) returned to its past. It's a pure imitation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle divided in two section like A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Valley of Fear (1914).

The first-half of The Curse of the Reckaviles, "Book I: The Curse," begins with Jack and Ena Sefton, brother and sister, who lost their father and "were left to face the world alone" with barely a penny to their name – nor a roof over their head. A school friend of Ena offers them the use of a summer bungalow at Portham-on-Sea on the South Coast. A so-called "bungalow town" that had sprung up when a speculative builder struck a deal with the current Lord Reckavile to bypass the town council and pesky inspectors. The bungalow town is now largely abandoned and bordered up, until the summer season, which only added to the already gloomy mood of Jack and Ena. Not to mention "the gruesome crime which had fallen on the village," the impossible murder of Lord Reckavile at his desolate, largely empty castle.

The butler of the castle, Giles, and the village constable, John Brown, overheard an angry quarrel, "never, never, only over my dead body," between Lord Reckavile and an unknown visitor in the library. Only the door is locked. When they hear the sound of a blow and "a horrible cry," they break down the door to find Lord Reckavile's body with a knife between his ribs. And nobody else! The door was locked and the key is missing, but Giles and Brown were standing outside the library listening at the door. The windows were fastened on the inside and "no trap doors or secret panels that can be found." So the vanishing murderer revives old stories of the Reckavile Curse in the village, while others believe there's madness in the family ("...they are probably nearer the truth").

Chief Inspector Sinclair tasks the young Inspector Fletcher to Portham-on-Sea to sort out the mess, which brings him into contact with Jack and Ena. Jack has withdrawn and is gone most of the time, but refuses to say where's going or what's he's doing. A lonely Ena befriends a mysterious gentleman, Mr. Halley, who has secrets of his own. A missing bank manager has been seen in the neighborhood and an apparently abandoned cottage is brightly lit at night. Fletcher even has a brush with the ghost of a long-dead ancestor of Lord Reckavile. A tangle of strange incidents, closely guarded secrets and leads is handled by Fletcher with all the skill and tact of a typical Lestrade, i.e. not very well. Half way through the story, Sinclair returns to gather everyone involved for a dramatic revelation. Not of the murderer, but something else requiring to take a step back into the past.

The second-half of The Curse of the Reckaviles, "Book II: The Reckaviles," retraces the steps of several Reckaviles covering decades and several lifetimes, before ending right back where the first-half ended – which shouldn't be skipped. It's naturally a character piece without much detective interest, however, it's actually better written than the first-half. And it has its moment. I more than enjoyed the Carrian challenge to settle a dispute in a duel ("he drew up the challenge with all the formality of a century ago") and appreciated Walterman tried to breath life in his characters. And think he did a better job than most would probably expect from a pulp writer or the first-half. More importantly, the character piece making up the second-half served an important plot purpose: it made solution acceptable. If the murderer and motive had been revealed at the end of the first-half, the whole thing would have collapsed and few probably would have bothered reading the second-half. Masterman produced (SPOILER/ROT13) n fhecevfvatyl npprcgnoyr rknzcyr bs gur-ohgyre-qvq-vg, orpnhfr bs jub gheaf bhg gb or oruvaq gur ohgyre crefban. Vg qbrfa'g rira oernx gur ehyr gung gur zheqrere zhfg or vagebqhprq rneyl ba va gur fgbel nf ur jnf zragvbarq va gur guveq puncgre.

It helped that the locked room-trick offered something a little different than what was still customary at the time. I don't think it will leave many of you baffled or stumped, but it was nice to see something slightly more elaborate than secret passages, returned keys or basic wire-tricks. That alone places the book above the average 1920s (locked room) mystery novel. Let me remind you The Curse of the Reckaviles was published in the same year as Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927) which is (ROT13) gur jbefg rknzcyr bs gur-ohgyre-qvq-vg pbzcyrgr jvgu n frperg cnffntrjnlf naq frperg gjvaf!

That being said, I have to echo one curiosity Jim pointed out in his review in how Masterman "throws out some casually brilliant ideas" during the first-half anticipating a plot point from a rather well-known detective novel. It's why I didn't discount the possibility that Constable Brown was a bastard Reckavile who was in a position to raise and pass for the ghost of a bearded, long-dead Reckavile for Fletcher. Those casually brilliant ideas all petered out as red herrings.

So, on a whole, The Curse of the Reckaviles ended better than it started, but only recommended as a very well-done homage and imitation of the Doylean detective story from the turn-of-the-century rather than as a Golden Age locked room mystery.

Murder, M.D. (1943) by Miles Burton

If you have read the 2023 post "The Hit List: Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels," you're probably aware of my fascination with detective fiction written, or taking place, during the Second World War – practically a subgenre at this point. There are even a few eerily prophetic mysteries, like Darwin L. Teilhet's The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934) and Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936), but those written between 1939-45 remain the most fascinating. More than those prescient curiosities or the historical reconstructions. The WWII era detective story can easily fill a large, doubly stacked bookcase and half of them are still waiting to be rediscovered. So always keep an eye out for copies or reprints.

I don't recall who, when or where Murder, M.D. (1943) by "Miles Burton" was recommended to me as a noteworthy wartime village mystery. But whoever it was that recommended the book, thank you!

Miles Burton is one of the pseudonyms of the detective story's plot engineer, John Street, who's best known penname is "John Rhode" from his prolific Dr. Lancelot Priestley series. Street belongs to the once unfairly maligned, so-called "humdrum" school prioritizing plotting, particularly technical plots centering on murder methods, impossible crimes and unbreakable alibis, over characterization – appealing to puzzle fiends who want a tricky problem to pick apart. So even among us Golden Age detective fans, not everyone's a fan of Street's purely technical, plot-driven and cleverly contrived mysteries. Whatever its title might suggest, Murder, M.D. is a surprisingly Crime Queenish village mystery focusing more on the characters and storytelling than picking apart an ingeniously horrifying method for murder. The plot is still one of his best!

The backdrop of Murder, M.D. is the now sparsely populated village of Exton Forcett, "so many had left to serve in various capacities elsewhere," which also had to say goodbye to their popular village physician. When the war broke out, Dr. St. John Cecil joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and currently serves in the Middle East. Dr. Cecil arranged for Dr. Kurt Wiegler, a naturalized Austrian, to act as his locum, but the highly opinionated Dr. Wiegler is "constitutionally incapable of keeping his nose out of trouble and other people's affairs." Always threatening "to expose people" or "to inflict some unpleasantness upon them," openly stating he believes ninety percent of the villages suffer from "congenital idiocy" with the other ten percent being "deliberate criminals." So, despite being better than Dr. Cecil, his locum had made himself immensely unpopular as many villagers preferred to go the doctors in the neighboring villages.

Nobody is saddened when Dr. Wiegler's body is discovered on top of a boulder at the bottom of a gravel pit in Gallows Wood. Dr. Wiegler was a passionate birdwatcher and everyone at the scene guessed he had stumbled over the edge, while looking through his binoculars and plunged to his death. The coroner and jury at the inquest agreed with an accidental verdict.

Captain Desmond Merrion, one of the chiefs of the Naval Intelligence, is in the village on a short leave and confides to his host, Sir Mark Corringham, his believe Dr. Wiegler "was, in fact, deliberately murdered" – a fact deduced "on the evidence of a coat button and a couple of pine needles." However, they're more than happy to let sleeping dogs lie and life goes on the village as usual. Only notable things to happen over the following months, besides the war, are the arrivals of the surprising new locum and an unexpected, but very pleased, heir of the late locum. During this time, the new locum begins to suspect everyone in the village knew Dr. Wiegler had been killed, but nobody seemed interested in bringing his killer to justice. That sets up the second murder.

I think this second murder is one of the things distinguishing Murder, M.D. as a first-rate Golden Age detective story, because the second murder is not merely a plot-device to reignite interest during the second-half of the book. This second murder is unexpected and shocking with actual weight behind it. While the first murder was a relief to the village, the second murder is not nor is it going to be without consequences. Desmond Merrion is called back by Sir Mark to help out Inspector Arnold in weeding out the murderer. A problem requiring to timetable and map out everyone's movement, because the place where the body was found divides the suspects between the Cecils and the rest. Interestingly, they use blackout time to help piece together the victim's final steps ("however light it may be outside, the blackout has to go up at the time ordained"). So good, old-fashioned and solid detective work. But where Street really exceeded himself is the handling of the solution with a surprisingly well-hidden murderer.

Whether writing as John Rhode, Miles Burton or Cecil Waye, Street was always more interested in the how than who or why. So even in his best detective novels, the murderers and motives tend to be obvious (e.g. The Bloody Tower, 1938). Murder, M.D. is the opposite in what you would expect to the point that it almost seems deliberate. The story and plot has done away with what can be deemed his usual strengths to work and focus on what's generally considered to be greatest weaknesses: characterization, a well-hidden murderer and a good, not so obvious motive. Street delivered on the last two like he was Agatha Christie or Christianna Brand! Impressively, (SPOILER/ROT13) gur zheqrere fubhyq unir orra qbhoyl boivbhf, orpnhfr gung glcr bs punenpgre nyjnlf vaivgrf fhfcvpvba. Nal jevgre pnfgvat n punenpgre yvxr gung va gur ebyr bs zheqrere vf tvivat gurzfryirf n unaqvpnc (trg vg?) sebz gur fgneg. Vg jnfa'g fb boivbhf urer!

The finishing touch is the original, fairly clued motive complemented by Merrion's memorable exposure of the murderer cementing Murder, M.D. as a classic of the Golden Age village mystery and simply Street's very best detective novel read to date. Murder, M.D. deserves to be reprinted as it would be right at home in the British Library Crime Classic series. Until then, I recommend you pick up a copy, if one happens to come your way.

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

I recently read Benjamin Stevenson's genre debut, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022), which perfectly blended the contemporary, character-driven crime novel with the plot complexity and fair play principles of the Golden Age detective story – starring crime fiction expert Ernest Cunningham. A reliable narrator, if there ever was one! This time, the promise to "modernize" the great detective stories of yesteryear without brutally butchering them was fully delivered on to the point where the book read like a modern continuation of the Golden Age traditions. So far from the usual pale, unfunny and cliche-ridden imitations of the Agatha Christie-style country house mysteries of the past. But neither is it a cutesy, sugary sweet cozy, or cozy adjacent, mystery as the book title and cover might suggest. It's as much a modern crime novel as it's a classically-styled detective story. I was incredibly pleased.

I was so pleased with Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, I ordered, received and read Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) post-haste. And it's even better than the first one!

Ernest Cunningham is back from his disastrous, deadly family reunion at the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat and has gone on to write a modestly successful book about his experience, but the experience left him with the lingering symptoms of survivor's guilt and impostor syndrome. He also signed a lucrative publishing contract to write a second, fictional book and took a large advance, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone was a firsthand account of his personal experiences – not complete fiction. Just a little. So without inspiration, Ernest accepts an invitation from the Australian Mystery Writers' Society to attend a crime writing festival aboard the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, the Ghan. A four day tour cutting through the Australian desert with panels, Q&As and sight seeing stops.

The guest of honor and "major drawcard" is the international bestselling author of the Detective Morbund series, Henry McTavish, who's famous creation "is as close to a modern-day Holmes or Poirot as they come" with a dedicated fandom – calling themselves "Morbund's Mongrels." Scottish phenomenon is not the only writer on the card. Alan Royce is a forensic mystery writer who has written eleven books in the Dr. Jane Black series, SF Majors writes psychological thrillers, Jane Fulton wrote a widely acclaimed legal thriller twenty years ago and has been working on the sequel ever since. Wolfgang is a representative of the Australian literary crowd, "shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize," who's only link to the crime genre is "his rhyming verse novel retelling of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood." He reminded me of the characters populating Arthur W. Upfield's An Author Bites the Dust (1948) and enjoyed his confrontation with Ernest during the first panel ("...all you did was copy Capote"). Ernest represents both the debuting and non-fiction categories, because his book is a true-crime memoir, but he brought along his girlfriend Juliette Henderson. The former owner of the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat who had also written a book about the murders that took place there ("her book had sold better than mine"). Naturally, there are some ill-feelings, bruised egos and buried secrets to be shared among the authors eventually leading to a dramatic murder.

Sounds conventional enough, so far, but Ernest takes a hands-on approach to the job of a reliable narrator with a lot of foreshadowing, fourth wall breaking and a bit of teasing. That's why Ernest is "a bit chattier than your usual detective" to ensure no "obvious truths" are concealed from the reader. For example, Ernest tells the reader that he uses the killer's name ("in all its forms") 106 times and gives a tally throughout the story of the name count. And, of course, it not even remotely close to being that easy to find the well-hidden murderer! Stevenson clearly understands that the ability to gracefully lie through your teeth without saying an untrue word is an invaluable tool when it comes to writing and plotting detective stories. It not only makes for an incredibly fun, fairly clued meta-whodunit with a bit of comedy and self-parody, but an engaging cat-and-mouse between armchair detective/reader and narrator. I appreciated the early heads up ("if you're hoping for a locked-room mystery, this isn't it").

 

 

Just like the first book, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect might still strike some as somewhat cozy adjacent, when summarily described, but another thing this series does very well is striking a balance between the classical and modern schools of the genre – which include a few sordid elements you would never come across in a Golden Age mystery. However, it's not merely the more sordid criminal elements making this series a perfect blend of the traditional and modern style, but how the world of today is incorporated into this whodunit. Particularly the plot-thread concerning (SPOILER/ROT13) Jbystnat'f vagrenpgvir neg cebwrpg Gur Qrngu bs Yvgrengher naq ubj vg'f yvaxrq gb nabgure cybg-guernq to reveal something that could only happen in today's world.

I noted in the past how the argument that advancements in technology and forensic science during the second-half of the previous century made the traditional detective story, popular during its first-half, obsolete was demolished by Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54) decades before it was put forward. It simply depends on who's doing the writing and plotting. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect are exactly what I imagined the Grandest Game in the World could have evolved into had it been allowed to co-exist alongside the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and police procedurals. So was even more pleased than with the first book in the series and only the potential of spoilers prevents me from raving rambling on about this richly-plotted gem of a retro-Golden Age mystery, but you probably get the idea by now.

So I don't know what's more appropriate to close out this shoddy review, we're so back or nature is healing? Either way, I'm slightly pissed the third in the series is titled Everyone this Christmas has a Secret (2024) and we're not even halfway through April! I guess Christmas is coming early this year as that one is going to be cleared off the list long before December rolls around.