Logic Games: Q.E.D. vol. 42-43 by Motohiro Katou

The first story from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 42, "Escher Hotel," brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to the titular hotel, "designed based on the paintings of the artist M.C. Escher," during its grand opening ceremony – hosted by its rich owner, Elie Silver. A hotel entirely based and modeled after the "mathematically-inspired artwork" by my homeboy Dutch artist Maurits Escher. So the hotel is full with seemingly impossible architecture and artwork like a Penrose Staircase.

However, the opening of the clifftop Escher Hotel makes it direct competitor to the once popular Takadai Hotel directly below it. Kurozumi Ryozaburo, an influential prefecture council member, is the owner of the Takadai Hotel and likes to throw his weight around by acting like a mobster. He even has a goon following him around posing as his secretary to goon arm people who annoy his boss. So he's not happy about a hotel opening directly above his. Not to mention he has a shady history with the place. Decades ago, there was an artist's studio where the Escher Hotel stands and Ryozaburo had been fighting with the artist over spring water. That conflicted ended with the artist going to prison for apparently trying to kill Ryozaburo. And he's right there at the opening ceremony when a murder is discovered.

The body of Aohara Shuji, a newspaper reporter, is found lying on the Penrose Staircase with a noose around his neck knotted tightly to the handrail, but how did the murderer placed the body in such an inaccessible, impossible place – which had to be done in five minutes or less ("...corpse wasn't here when we looked the first time"). Not to mention that the staircase is only a miniature ("it'll break if you jump"). So how did the body end up on the staircase? This story really is a howdunit as the who-and why are fairly obvious, but the how-was-it-done angle makes for a very neat, well-done and imaginative variation on the locked room mystery. However, I'm still not entirely sure whether it counts as an impossible crime or only a borderline impossible crime. You can make a case for both, "viewed from a certain angle," but suppose that's in keeping with the Escher theme of the story. One last thing worth mentioning is Sou Touma confronting the murderer made for a decidedly nontraditional ending ("good luck!") that should have been used more often in traditional detective fiction. So a pretty good story overall!

The second story of vol. 42, "Logic Tower," is a weird one and probably would have been a bit more appreciative had I been familiar with a series like Liar Game.

Anyway, the story concerns a new processor system developed by a former, overworked employee, Mia Field, of Lindell Corp. She quit her job and plans to go overseas, but informs several people she's hidden the designs somewhere. And whoever can find it, can claim it. The place turns out to be an old, abandoned casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is scheduled to be demolished in mere hours ("dynamite has been installed in the entire building"). One of the people asked Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to help him find the hidden designs. Sou Touma recognizes the challenge as a logic puzzle as Mia gave contradictory clues to the various participants, "that thing is not in the odd numbered floors" and "that thing is not in the even numbered floors," but knows there must be logic and reason to those contradictory hints. Something that reduces the space, spread out over 48 floors and nearly 1000 rooms, to a single location. Not necessarily a bad or even a dull story. Just one that failed to grab me in any way.

The first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 43, "Investigation," takes a delightfully unconventional approach to telling an ultra-conventional whodunit. Azumaya Kouichiro, director of a pharmaceutical company, is killed with a bolt from a crossbow-like weapon at his private residence and the police arrest one of his employees, Nishijin Akira – only person in the house without an alibi. Nishijin Akira maintains that's innocent and his lawyer, Shiradai Masayoshi, decides to take an unconventional approach to breakdown the other alibis. A televised reconstruction of the day of the murder staged at the scene of the crime. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara are two of the participants to play parts of the people who were present at the time of the murder, which has been written down in a scenario/instructions by the lawyer. And the objective is simple. Try to find a hole in the scenario big enough to get to victim's private room without being seen and topple of the kekeshi doll (i.e. victim). Anyone "who manages to tip over this doll is most likely the suspect."

Befitting a classically-styled whodunit, there are several floor plans of the house and the position of the suspects at various times. However, the reconstruction failed to establish the innocence of the only suspect, but Sou Touma's part anchored him to a single room and gave him plenty of time to do a bit of woolgathering. The solution he arrives at reveals a clever, daring piece of risk management and planning on the part of the murderer, but not a perfect plan. Touma destroys it by demonstrating reality doesn't always conform to someone's expectations, which revealed a fatal flaw in the plot. Very well done in both presentation and execution easily making it the best story from these two volumes.

"Ginger the Salesman" is the last story from vol. 43 and feared it would be a repeat of "Logic Tower" as it's essentially another "liar's game" type of story, but developed into an unexpected interesting story. Ginger Garage is the central character of the story who worked his way up from a teenage street vendor to a first-rate salesman ("your speaking skills are god-given..."). Ginger crosses path with Sou Touma when the latter is asked by an old teacher, currently hospitalized, to take his place as a consultant on an investment project for a large bank ("every time you refuse, my leg hurts more... aaah, so much pain..."). This project concerns a start up company that wants to bring tourism to space. They claim to have developed a spaceship capable of "making the journey in two hours" and stay there for two minutes in zero gravity, before coming back down to Earth. Rudolf-1 is still in its trial phase and the Universal Frontier Company needs funding to get their business off the ground. Sou Touma has to talk with the company's consultant, Ginger, but it's blatantly obvious there's something dodgy about their already dubious claims.

Nevertheless, they give a demonstration to Sou Touma and numerous witnesses showing Rudolf-1 can really reach space. Something that should be impossible to fake, but Touma appears skeptical. And not without reason. I think this part of the plot and its solution comes very close to that type of impossible crime rarely observed in the wild, "Impossible Technology." The observed flight of the Rudolf-1 is only background dressing to Ginger's backstory and the reason why he appeared to have lost his touch as the smooth, silver-tongued salesman. So an unexpectedly interesting and decent little character-puzzle to close out this volume.

I really enjoyed "Escher Hotel," thought "Investigation" was excellent and "Ginger the Salesman" surprisingly decent. Only "Logic Tower" came up short, but three out of four is not bad. So expect the next review before too long, because I can finish the series in four reviews. I aim to have this series wrapped up by July. Mark your calendars!

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

The traditional, Golden Age-style detective story has seen a tremendous resurgence over the past ten years spurred on by the fortunate concurrence of the reprint renaissance gaining full momentum with the outbreak of the translation wave – which occurred a decade ago this year. A confluence of discovery, and rediscovery, leading to a rebirth of the classically-styled, fair play detective novel. Not to mention a locked room revival that came as a byproduct of the reprint renaissance and translation wave. Happy little accidents, indeed!

So times have definitely changed over the past twenty years, particularly the last ten, which even gave rise to a strong, independent scene of traditional and borderline experimental impossible crime experts. After all, a rising tide lifts up all ships.

I'm still flinchy when it comes to modern detective fiction presented as clever, hilarious send-ups of the Golden Age country house whodunit or clever, hilarious modern reinterpretations of the classic British mysteries. More often that not, they aren't clever (e.g. Catherine Aird's The Stately Home Murder, 1969) nor hilarious (e.g. Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, 2006). At their worst, they trot out old, dusty tropes and cliches presented as clever, subversive takes on the "surprise" solution (the butler did it by way of a secret passage). Like I said on a previous review, I've been tricked too many times with false promises of contemporary, Golden Age-style mysteries not to be flinchy – hence why I was skeptical about today's subject. Nearly everyone raved about Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Australian stand-up comedian Benjamin Stevenson upon its release, but the packaging and presentation was cause for hesitation.

I honestly forgot it existed until John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, returned from hiatus in January and recommended Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone as "the best one" with "a couple of impossible crimes." Yeah, it's embarrassing how easy it really is to reel me in. The promise of a couple of impossible crimes usually does the trick.

Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is the first entry in the Ernest Cunningham series, which currently counts three novels comprising of Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024). The titles in combination with their covers immediately pushes them in the cozy corner of the genre, but John Norris turned out to be correct when he called them puzzling, engaging meta-mysteries – both honoring and spoofing the fair play principles of the traditional detective story ("Knox would have me drawn and quartered..."). That still sounds a bit cozy adjacent. Regardless of its traditional trappings and narrative, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is a dark, gritty crime novel with all the plot-complexity of a classic mystery. There are, however, no impossible crimes or locked room murders.

Ernest Cunningham is a writer who writes books on how to write a book and something of an expert on crime-and detective fiction. Cunningham is also the narrator who promises the reader to be a reliable narrator, contrary to the customary reliable narrator, but "not competent." Everything he tells is the truth or what he believed the truth to be at the time. Cunningham regularly addresses the reader or foreshadow what's to come like referring in the opening to the chapters where the readers can expect the "gory details" or acknowledging "there is only one plot-hole you could drive a truck through." There are layers and double meanings to everything. Cunningham's narrative recounting the events gives this otherwise dark, modern crime tale its classical whodunit structure festooned with clues and red herrings.

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone takes place during the Cunningham family reunion at the remote Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat, which sounds conventional enough, but everyone in Cunningham's family has killed someone. Some of his relatives, "the high achievers," killed more than once. So the family is well-known to the police and media, especially after the murder Ernest's brother is serving time for. Three years previously, Michael turned up at Ernest's doorstep with a bag of money and a dying man in the backseat. Michael asks him to help bury the man and Ernest complies at first, but witnesses something wishing he hadn't and turned him to the police – even testifying against him. That betrayal turned their mother, Audrey, against Ernest. Her current husband and their stepfather, Marcelo Garcia, who's a lawyer and defended Michael in court. It only got him a three year sentence.

So the family comes back together for a reunion and greet Michael back a free man at the Sky Lodge, which honestly would have been enough to fuel the entire as the unraveling of the family's backstory demonstrates. Not only the various, individual backstories giving the book its title, but the overarching backstory in how the killing three years ago is connected to the death of Ernest and Michael's father. A small-time criminal who died in a shootout with the police decades ago. Neither the murder three years ago nor the shootout are quite what they seem as everything obfuscated by layers of lies, misunderstanding and misconceptions. All wrapped up as meta-mystery penned by someone who understands how to gracefully lie through your teeth without uttering a single untrue word. A talent that separated the likes of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Christianna Brand from their contemporaries.

Normally, a crime novel or even a more traditionally-styled detective story focusing entirely on backstories is a huge red flag, as it rarely bodes well for the quality of the plot, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone simply turned the collection of backstories into the various, interconnected pieces of an intricately-designed, fairly clued puzzle plot. Impressively, it recreated the traditional whodunit without dragging out bodies-in-libraries or subversively secret passages, but the sordid, downright reprehensible crimes not often associated with the good, old-fashioned whodunit. So peeling away the layers surrounding the Cunningham family secrets alone would have been a compelling modern take on the classic mystery novel, but it's not just the past throwing up questions and mysteries. The reunion is interrupted when the unidentified body of a man, an outsider, is found under mysterious circumstances. A death that could be the handiwork of an active serial killer, "The Black Tongue," who already made three victims by employing a very unusual, terrifying murder method.

This only touches a fraction of the deeply rooted, widely branched family plot buried at the core of Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone streaked through with thrills and a couple of close calls. There was, in fact, so much going on I became skeptical how Stevenson intended to pull all the twisted, intertwined plot-threads together in such a way that had my fellow detective aficionados raving. Well, I suppose my fears were put aside when Ernest turned to the reader to give a list of all the clues, "to keep Ronald Knox happy," he used to put every piece in place. So everyone still alive gathers in the library where Ernest explains everything. Admittedly, there's a lot to explain and unpack, technically and emotionally, which slows down the pace a little. But absolutely necessary to digest everything properly. One, or two, things stretched things a little (ROT13: gur zvpebqbgf nxn “fcl fuvg”), but nothing detrimental to the plot, story or characters. I rather have a plot that's a little over indulgent in some places than threadbare. I really liked who the murderer turned out to be. I certainly had my suspicions against that person, but not that. Very, very cheeky!

So it can be said Stevenson succeeded Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone in creating a genuine, character-driven modernization of the plot-oriented Golden Age detective story, but I like to see it as a long overdue continuation of the traditional, fair play detective story. There have been glimpses over the decades of what the Golden Age detective story could have turned into had it not been slowly snuffed out during the post-WWII decades, which were often short-lived or somewhat hidden, but it looks like its time has finally come. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone comes recommended as not only a superb detective novel, but as another step towards that Second Golden Age. I very much look forward to Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023), which is going to be short-tracked to the top of the big pile.

Murder at the Open Air Museum (1954) by Ine van Etten

It's been awhile since I poked around the vague, difficult to pin down "classical period" of the Dutch detective story, which can be roughly placed between the late 1940s and early to mid '60s, but the detective story is not highly regarded in my country – especially homegrown detective fiction. They were dismissed by critics and rarely, if ever, reprinted or studied and written about. You can find biographical information on their authors and bibliography, or two, but that's pretty much it. So trying to find good, Dutch-language detective novels and obtaining copies can be like trying to find your way through a maze blindfolded. So it often comes down to pure guesswork and sheer luck.

I had some serendipitous finds over the years. Most notably, Ton Vervoort's Inspector Floris Jansen series with the Ellery Queen-inspired Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) and Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964) as the series high notes. I was also pleasantly surprised by De moord op het sloependek (The Murder on the Boat Deck, 1941) by the pseudonymous "Vanno," A.R. Brent's Voorzichtig behandelen (Handle with Care, 1948), C. Buddingh's Vrijwel op slag (Almost Instantly, 1953) and W.H. van Eemlandt's take on the British humdrum mystery, Kogels bij het dessert (Dessert with Bullets, 1954). Unfortunately, I stumbled across many more that were either disappointing or complete stinkers. These far from inspiring works include A. Rootheart's Onrust op Raubrakken (Unrest at Raubrakken, 1935) F. van Overvoorde's Moorden in Maastricht (Murders in Maastricht, 1937), Bob van Oyen's Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953), Martin Mons' Het huis met de poppen (The House with the Dolls, 1955), Dick A. van Ruler's Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963), B.J. Kleymens' In de greep van de kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965) and K. Abma's De hond was executeur (The Dog Was Executor, 1973).

So blind picking one of these obscure, forever out-of-print Dutch detective novels is always a gamble, but it's been long enough to take another shot in the dark. Some of you actually enjoyed the reviews of these mostly forgotten Dutch mysteries. I had something on the big pile perfectly fitting the description of obscure, forever out-of-print detective novel.

G.B.M. van Etten-Sjoukes cut her teeth as an author on novels for older, teenage girls and young women, known today as Young Adult fiction, during the 1940s – decided to try her chances in a detective story competition organized by A.W. Bruna & Zoon. Van Etten submitted De moord in het openluchtmuseum (Murder at the Open Air Museum, 1954) and won the first prize, which got the book published (as by "Ine van Etten") in the "Boek van de Maand" series with a cover illustration by Dick Bruna. Murder at the Open Air Museum was then promptly forgotten, never reprinted and Van Etten's short-lived success wasn't quite the incentive needed to write a second detective novel. So you can see why the Dutch variation of the Anglo-American detective story never really got going, except for a few short-lived bursts or individual breakouts. And, to show this review can go both ways, Van Oyen's abysmal Murder, Afterwards won the third-place prize in the 1953 edition of the same competition that had 166 submissions. I've pre(r)ambled on long enough.

So is Van Etten's Murder at the Open Air Museum a long-lost masterpiece, another dud that completely missed the mark or simply an average, but competent, piece of detective fiction? Time to find out!

Murder at the Open Air Museum begins with a prologue in which two dozen soft, lilac envelopes are sent out all over the country, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Utrecht, carrying invitations for an overdue family reunion. An invitation for day in Arnhem beginning with meeting in a cafe, a visit to the open air museum and dinner at the sprawling country estate of Aunt Emilie Warner. Who could have known the family reunion would "create opportunities for murder, blackmail and more murder."

Since the cast of characters is not exactly a small, tightly-drawn circle of suspects, I won't go over the whole cast of characters. Just know that the family is represented in practically every layer of the social strata from a no-good blackmailer, struggling widow, overworked office worker and a poor artist to an art critic, a mayor and a filmstar – who flew over to visit his widowed sister. There are two salient points to this edition of the family reunion. Firstly, the previous reunion ended in a fight over the inheritance of the family patriarch, Great-uncle Karel, who was notoriously "stubborn, spiteful and very difficult to get along with." And very finicky when it came to his heirs. Great-uncle Karel had changed his will several times, but the last version made Aunt Emilie the primary beneficiary. Secondly, the person who had been whispering in his ear to blacken his cousins names was Albert van der Baan. So there's some bitterness among the various branches towards cousin Albert. It doesn't help Albert has a childish love for publicly embarrassing people with practical jokes and annoying gags. When he turns up at the reunion, Albert immediately digs into his bag of practical jokes to embarrass several relatives at the cafe. Some begin to gleefully fantasy and speaking of murdering their loathsome cousin, "we are banding together in a union to exterminate Albert van der Baan, right Willemien?" ("you're joining us, right?"). Fortunately, Albert appears to have left the reunion during their trip to the museum.

However, they only notice Albert has gone missing when they arrive at Aunt Emilie estate for dinner and everyone is relieved, until the police arrives to interrupt their meal. Albert's body was found crammed into a bedstee (box bed) of a Veluwe farmhouse at the museum. Someone cracked his skull with a copper beddepan (bedpan) and delayed the discovery by placing a "VERBODEN TOEGANG" ("DO NOT ENTER") sign at the door. I should mention here for non-Dutch readers that the titular museum is the Nederlands Openluchtmuseum, a cultural historical museum, which shows how people lived and worked over the centuries. It has replicas of old Dutch houses, farms, shops, huts etc.

So the first-half of Murder at the Open Air Museum appears routine enough with a setup suggesting Van Etten was going to style her first mystery novel after the British Crime Queens, but the handling of the investigation has unmistakable features of the police procedural. The investigation is in the hands of Inspector Peter Schoten, but since everyone involved live all over the country, it's not a one-man show. Schoten has to delegate a lot of work to his subordinates and work together with the police of other cities like Inspector Kindelman of the Rotterdam Police (I wonder if Lucien de Klerck has heard of him). The investigation during the first-half consists of mapping everyone's movement at the museum, tracking down witnesses to corroborate their statements and generally trying to whittle down the number of suspects – while fishing for a potential motive. So it almost reads like a proto-police procedural which made it a bit surprising when Van Etten seemed to interject an actual amateur sleuth into the case.

I know what most of you're saying: "but Tom, those meddlesome nuisances are as common as the common cold and all over the genre." Not really in this country and suspect the holds true for other nearby countries like Germany and Denmark. A nosy, busybody with too many questions wouldn't be indulged or tolerated for very long. That why Dutch detective novels, particularly those in a more or less traditional mold, tend to have professionals as investigators who are both in a position to ask questions and expect an answer. So police inspectors, private detectives or lawyers. Maybe even a doctor or clergyman at a stretch. If you read my previous Dutch detective reviews, past and present, you probably noticed the lead characters are nearly always policemen. Someone who doesn't fit the bill of a typical, professional Dutch detective character is a twentysome, third-year sociography student named Johannes "Joop" Verkoren de Zwart – who's lively, sociable and rarely at a lost for words. Behind his indifferent attitude and chatter "lies a remarkably sharp mind."

It was Joop who discovered Albert's body together with the gatekeeper when looking for his lost walking stick and that's how he comes into contact with Inspector Schoten. Joop starts working his charm on Schoten, "do you ever read detective stories... in which the clever amateur always sees more than the police." So against better judgment and protocol, Joop gets to participate in the investigation and not without consequences. This throws the second-half of this orderly, procedural detective story in complete disarray. Not because of the promised second murder. That one is still a few chapters ahead, however, an unusual death by poisoning during a lecture is cleverly-linked to the first murder by both the suspects in audience and an unexpected, equally unusual murder weapon/method. But describing anything pass this point would be crossing into spoiler territory.

So how does Van Etten's Murder at the Open Air measure up as a detective novel and can stand comparison to its American and British counterparts? Just as a Dutch detective novel, it certainly is a cut above most of the 1950s titles I've read for two clear reasons. Most of the pre-1960s titles suffer from old-fashioned, stilted use of language and archaic spelling, which is not a problem at all and suppose her background in writing for teenagers helped to keep Murder at the Open Air readable for a today's readers. It feels much closer to the works of later mystery writers like Ton Vervoort and Cor Docter. More importantly, it has a consistent plot with substance and a solution that holds together. I know that sounds like the basic requirement for any detective story, but refer you to the previously mentioned reviews of Van Oyen's Afterwards, Murder or Van Ruler's Murder of a Negative to remind everyone that's not always a guaranteed in this country.

Murder at the Open Air Museum is not without its fair share of imperfections and shortcomings. I can see how most non-Dutch readers would likely find the characterization a bit lacking compared to her British counterparts, clueing not as sharp and the plot becoming a little workmanlike towards the end, but perhaps its biggest drawback is leaving a couple of potentially good ideas underdeveloped. For example, the fantastic scenery of the museum is just that, scenery, while the second murder could have been developed into a much more meatier howdunit – which could have been used to turn it into an inverted mystery during its closing stages.

Murder at the Open Air Museum is not a flawless gem, but Van Etten produced a fairly competent, spirited first stab at the detective story showing she had the right idea, but lacked the experience. But had she continued, Murder at the Open Air Museum could have been to Van Etten what Death in High Heels (1941) was to Christianna Brand or The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20) to Agatha Christie. The first, tentative steps towards writing a genre classic like a Green for Danger (1944) or Death on the Nile (1937). Somewhere in the vast, all-encompassing everything of the multiverse, Van Etten would have gone on to become the Christianna Brand of the Low Countries with the Dutch detective story actually taking off during the 1950s and following a similar route as the British or Japanese genre. Instead I am stuck here in this shitty Berenstain universe with you lot.

Anyway, to cut this meandering mess shot, I quite enjoyed this less than perfect, second-string diamond-in-the-rough.

Note for the curious: I know this has gone on long enough and initially wanted to delete this part, but decided to keep it in. Some of you also enjoy my occasional brilliant, but completely wrong armchair solutions. During the first-half, I puzzled together a fun and entirely incorrect solution which was obliterated by the second-half. So the opening chapters established Albert took a childish joy in embarrassing people with party store pranks and practical jokes. I reasoned Albert could easily have hidden himself inside the box bed, drawn the curtains and jump out to scare one of his relatives, which would not have been out-of-character for him. But mistakenly jumped out when Joop was examining the farmhouse, perhaps handling the antique bedpan to take a closer look. Joop, in a reflex, hit the figure who jumped out at him with the bedpan and unintentionally killed Albert. So what appeared to be deliberate family murder really is an accidental killing by an outsider with no direct link to the victim or apparent motive. And perhaps inserted himself into the investigation to divert suspicion (setting up a delaying tactic first and then help to find the body earlier than seemingly intended) or trying to prevent someone getting wrongly arrested. It's something I can see a Dutch mystery writer do in an attempt to rub some realism/normalcy into a British-style detective story, which would have perfectly fitted the first-half. But the second-half tossed my armchair solution into the dustbin. I'm done now.

Strange Pictures (2022) by Uketsu

I noted in the 2024 roundup post, "Murder in Retrospect," Pushkin Vertigo had begun to expand their catalog of Japanese detective translations beyond the lavishly-plotted, grandiose honkaku and shin honkaku locked room mysteries – starting with the publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi kakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960). A police procedural originally published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction, however, the breaking down of two cast-iron alibis is done with all the ingenuity of the classic detective story.

Somewhat of a departure from what readers have come to expect from the Japanese detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo, Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji, but comments on my review called The Black Swan Mystery one of their best translations to date. I can't entirely disagree. The Black Swan Mystery is a 1960s police procedural with the heart of a Golden Age detective novel and the social issues playing out the background enhanced the overall story. Pushkin Vertigo has a few other intriguing, non-impossible crime translations lined-up for this year like Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-loop mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995) and Taku Ashibe's classically-styled family whodunit Oomarike satusjin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021). I was most intrigued of all when Pushkin Vertigo announced the forthcoming translations of Uketsu's "strange novels."

"Uketsu" is the pseudonym of a popular, Japanese horror Youtuber who has nearly two million subscribers and his debut novel, Henna e (Strange Pictures, 2022), sold over three million copies, but the person behind this success remains a mystery – hidden behind a white mask, black bodysuit and voice changer. I didn't know what, exactly, to expect from Strange Pictures except that it appeared to bring the visual medium to the printed page. But was it a proper detective, a hybrid mystery, horror masking itself as a detective story or something completely different? I decided to not probe it too much and find out when its published. A good decision as Strange Pictures gives you a different experience than your average detective or crime novel.

Strange Pictures is a collection of four, interconnected short stories each centering on the hidden or obscured meaning behind a drawing, or series of drawings, but the book has a ton of additional illustrations, diagrams, timetables and even the odd floor plan. So richly illustrated you can almost call it wordy picture book.

This collection of linked stories begins with a short, untitled prologue in which a professor lectures on the revealing nature of pictures and drawings into the inner works of the artist. She shows the drawing of a child who had been involved in a murder case to illustrate her point and explain why the child is "now living happily as a mother." This analysis pretty much serves as the framework for the bigger picture behind the overarching story.

The first of these linked mysteries, "The Old Woman's Prayer," takes place in 2014 and reads like a 2000s-era creepy internet story. Shuhei Sasaki, a student and member of his university's paranormal club, learns about an innocently-looking, dormant blog – called "Oh No, Not Raku." A blog filled with the "empty silliness that was the hallmark of your average daily diary." Someone going by the handle "Raku" started blogging about his daily life in 2008 and discovering his wife, "Yuki," is pregnant. So the blog prattled on for months, before taking a tragic turn and the blog became inactive in 2009. Three years later, Raku returned with a last, cryptically-worded update about finally having figured out the secret of those numbered pictures. The pictures in questions were drawn by Yuki depicting, what she called, "visions of the future." The solution to what happened behind the scenes is locked away inside those drawings.

Yuki's strange, cryptic drawings aren't the only illustrations adorning this story. There's a screenshot of the blog (yes, I tried the address, but nothing) and a ton of other pictures to illustrate ideas/solutions. So it definitely sets the tone for the rest of the book and provides some answers, but the open ending leaves the reader hanging. However, not without reason!

The second story, "The Smudged Room," takes a more grounded approach with an apparently small, unimportant domestic problem. Naomi Konno is asked by a teacher if anything unusual or scary had happened at home, because her five-year-old Yuta drew a strange picture in class. At first glance, it looks like a typical child's drawing showing him and his mother standing next to their apartment building. But the room in the middle of the top floor was "covered with a large grey scribble." The room where they lived. So nothing worrying enough to fuel some domestic suspense, but then a mysterious man begins to stalk the two and Yuta disappears one night from their apartment. And figuring out the meaning behind the smodged room is the key to finding him. This story also closes with an open end, but you can already see the bigger picture of the overarching narrative taking shape. The next two stories bring everything together with the next one, unsurprisingly, becoming my favorite part of Strange Pictures.

"The Art Teacher's Final Drawing" is an out, and out, shin honkaku detective story, but in the tradition of Ayukawa's previously mentioned The Black Swan Mystery. So no locked rooms or other types of impossible crimes, but unbreakable alibis, a gruesomely ingenious murder method and one of the few genuinely classic examples of the dying message.

In 1992, the horribly mutilated body of Yoshiharu Miura, an art teacher, was discovered on the side of "Mt K—in L—Prefucture," where he had planned to stay for an overnight camping trip – whoever killed him took his food and sleeping bag. But why not his other supplies? And why the overkill? Miura had been stabbed numerous times and beaten over two hundred times! So the police assumed the murderer had a very personal motive behind it and they come up with three potential suspects, but two have alibis and only suspicions against the third. So the case goes unsolved for three years, until a veteran reporter and young, eager newshound pick up the trail again and try to retrace everyone's steps. But central to their investigation is the victim's dying message. A drawing of the mountain scenery on the back of a receipt which poses two questions: message hidden in the drawing and how he could have composes such a dying message under, let's say, less than ideal circumstances. But the murderer from three years ago returns. And leaves behind another human-shaped, battered mess along the hiking trail. Just the solutions to the murders and how it folds the gruesome murder method, alibi-trick and dying message together with the identity of the murderer is enough to make it a first-rate shin honkaku mystery, but, more importantly, is how these murders fit into this interconnected web of strange pictures.

The complete, not exactly comforting picture emerges in the fourth and final story, "The Bird, Safe in the Tree," which connects the prologue and the previously three stories in a way that's both deeply satisfying and disturbing. Not merely a play on that old, tired cliché of the horror genre, "humans are the REAL monsters," but on their cruel, uncanny knack to create monsters. Strange Pictures is eerily effective in how each drawing, in each succeeding story, gradually reveals the whole tragic, sordid mess connecting all the characters and pictures. Something that makes Strange Picture very difficult, if not impossible, to pigeonhole. It's both a traditionally-plotted detective story and entirely in line with the darkly modern, character-driven crime novels told partially in pictures, diagrams and timetables. I was tempted to draw a comparison with Shichiri Nakayama's Tsuioku no nocturn (Nocturne of Remembrance, 2013), but perhaps Strange Pictures is best described as a darker, grislier take on the puzzles-with-a-heart stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series.

Either way, I found Uketsu's Strange Pictures to be an engrossing, original take on both the traditionally-plotted detective story and the darker, character-driven crime novels of today. A different way to tell either and still something fans of both can appreciate. I sure did! Very much look forward to the sequel later this year.

A note for the curious: I only found out after finishing the book Strange Pictures got multiple translations including Dutch. If I had known a Dutch translation was available, I would probably have been tempted to pick it over the English translation. Anyway, I included the cover of the Dutch translation, Vreemde tekeningen (Strange Drawings).

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

In 2020, P.J. Fitzsimmons debuted his series of humorous, lighthearted historical locked room “cozies” about the bantering, snooping idler-about-town Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly – who's ever ready with a funny quip or unhelpful comment. I was aware of the series since The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) was published, but the series description "cozies" made me hesitant to give it a try. I've been tricked before!

I decided last December the season was appropriate enough to take a risk on a Christmas-themed locked room cozy, even it turned out the plot lacked any kind of substance. So picked up The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021), second title in the Anty Boisjoly series, which proved to be a pleasant surprise. Leo Bruce meets Jonathan Creek plotted around a handful of impossible crimes and inexplicable situations. It has everything from a murderer who leaves no footprints in the snow and ghostly visitations to the theft of the church's weather vane. The solutions are neither routine nor uninspired. I immediately added the first and third title to the big pile.

So anyone who's not a willfully, chronologically-challenged dipstick would have peddled back and started The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, but the third novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), has a premise I found hard to ignore – not merely for its alluring locked room premise. Detective stories plotted around the classic tontine scheme tend to be good or at least a ton of fun. I always enjoy them!

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine begins at the Juniper Gentleman's Club, in Mayfair, where Anty gives his condolences to his fellow clubman, Tristian "Lager" Tenpenny, who recently lost his Uncle Ratcliffe and Cousin Hadley. Ratcliffe Tenpenny and Hadley Tenpenny were two elderly relatives and "rival beneficiaries" in "the vast, unfathomable wealth of the Tenpenny Tontine." A tontine that was established in 1825 and has been accumulating a fortune over the course of more than a century, but it's going to be dissolved upon the death of either Ratcliffe or Hadley. And the whole pile goes to the last survivor. Ratcliffe and Hadley "shared" a house, Wedge Hedge Square, which was cut in half. One half was for Ratcliffe and Lager and the other half for Hadley and Lager's cousin, Victoria. Another part "remained neutral ground" for receiving guests and shouting matches ("this was very much a house divided").

Ratcliffe and Hadley apparently decided to take matters into their own hands and settle the whole thing in a good, old-fashioned duel. They appear to have locked themselves into the reading room and barricaded the doors by slipping a candle stick through the handles. When they're inside, they take a shot at each other with dueling pistols with troublesome results. They both end up "lifelessly slumped into their wood and wicker wheelchairs" dead of gunshot wounds to the heart. So the problem starts out not as a double murder in a locked room, but a question as to whom dead first? If there's a despite over the legal claim, the court could award the whole lot to the crown instead of one of the heirs, Lager or Victoria. Lager asks Anty to do "that thing you do" and see if he can discover who died had first.

It doesn't take Anty long to turn a simple, uncomplicated case of an illegal duel with two fatalities into a full-blown locked room murder. Not the last, seemingly impossible murder, to take place in that room. A third murder sees the room barricaded with a chair with the added complication that the murderer appears to have left the room without leaving bloody footprints all over the place. I'll return to the locked rooms in moment.

Just like the previous novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine very much is a continuation of the comedy mysteries and genre parodies of Leo Bruce, R.T. Campbell and Edmund Crispin. A story full of eccentric characters, witty dialogue and scenes in which two collide head on. I particular enjoyed the lot of character who turned up for this one. Like the family lawyer, Chauncey "Chancy" Proctor, who hails from a long line of "notoriously inept solicitors" known and dutifully maintained "the appallingly low standard of advice and care the firm had been offering its clients for generations" – not wholly unsuccessfully either. There's a maid who pilfers umbrellas and walking sticks and the crowd at the Swashbuckling Society with their glorious tales of adventure, daring-does and crooked duels, but the best character and hero of the book is Hadley's "wire-haired havoc on four legs." A Scots Terrier variably-named Satan, Lucifer, Diabolus, etc., who has it in for employees of His Majesty's Postal Service. He's the reason why they haven't had a letter-box delivery for months as the postman usually pushes their letters into the hedge, before fleeing in terror. But the devil gets to help Anty solve the case. So he really is the hero good boy of the story.

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is a very amusing, highly readable and lighthearted mystery that's over before you notice it. I breezed through it at a leisurely pace. It therefore pains me to to say that the story, plot-wise, is not a patch on its predecessor. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning admirably balanced the lighthearted comedy with clever plotting and the locked room-tricks had some creativity behind them. I found that a bit lacking here with overall plot aiming for short term effect with the long term consequences causing the case to become muddled, which can work, but it didn't feel like it really held together here. Not convincingly. For example, the supposed duel in the locked room (SPOILER/ROT13) bayl jbexf orpnhfr ab nhgbcfl vf rire zragvbarq, cerfhznoyl abg cresbezrq, orpnhfr vg jbhyq erirny bar zna unq orra yrtvgvzngryl fubg naq gur bgure bar unq qvrq sebz n fgno jbhaq erfrzoyvat n thafubg jbhaq sebz n qhryvat cvfgby. The other locked room murder is fine, if you don't expect anything fancy from the solution, but it probably would have worked better had the room not been barricaded. Just the problem of the murderer crossing "the pool of blood between the body and the door" without leaving bloody footprints would have been good enough considering its solution.

So still enjoyed the hell out of it, but definitely expected more from the plot and its pair of locked room murders after the previous one. I was also a little disappointed. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning has earned this series enough credit to not immediately abandon it. Every series has its dips. You can expect reviews of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) in the near future. Hopefully, they provide me with ample reason to move to the fantastic sounding The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). That first title is not misspelled with one of my redundant typos and the second one sounds like a long-lost episode from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? So don't let me down Fitzsimmons!

A note for the curious: I still intend to do an addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century," an excuse to talk about impossible crimes thinly disguised as a historical overview, to focus on the developments from the 2015 to 2025 period. I want to make it either the last post of this year or the first one of next year. Yeah, adorably optimistic and another thinly disguised excuse to sink into another locked room study. So expect a noticeable uptick this year of locked room reviews from the 2015/25 period and the 2000s in general.

Lord Edgware Dies (1933) by Agatha Christie

Last year, I revisited one of Agatha Christie's lesser-known, sometimes unjustly overlooked detective novels, Peril at End House (1932), because the plot turns on a craftily camouflaged motive rather than a well-hidden murderer or a cleverly contrived alibi – making it a whydunit. Nick Fuller pointed out in the comments "by that light, Lord Edgware Dies—another where the murderer stands out—might then be a howdunit." That just handed me an excuse to toss Lord Edgware Dies (1933) on the reread pile.

Before tackling the book, I need to point out Lord Edgware Dies is preceded by Peril at End House and followed by Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Three novels each plotted around one of the big three questions of the detective story, who (MotOE), why (PaEH) and how (LED). Has anyone noticed this patterned link between these three Hercule Poirot mysteries before? Murder on the Orient Express usually gets lumped together with Death in the Clouds (1935) and Death on the Nile (1937) as Christie's murder-on-land-sea-and-air themed mysteries, but liked the who-why-how pattern between these three successive novels a lot more. A bit meta-ish. But then again, that perception might be a side effect of an increased dose of shin honkaku mysteries over the past few years. Anyway...

Lord Edgware Dies, alternatively published as Thirteen at Dinner, begins with Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings at a London theater where they spot a very famous face in the audience, Lady Edgware – better known to the world as Miss Jane Wilkinson. A young American actress currently enjoying success in London who had married the wealthy, slightly eccentric Lord Edgware three years previously. A choice she has come to regret. Jane Wilkinson intends to marry the Duke of Merton, but her husband refuses a divorce and "stands in the way of these romantic dreams." So she approaches Poirot asking him to try and pursued her husband to give her a divorce or she'll have to bump him off herself. She repeats several times before a number of witnesses she's considering to kill her husband. One of them remarks she's quite capable of committing murder, but "she hasn't any brains" as "her idea of a murder would be to drive up in a taxi, sail in under her own name and shoot."

Poirot wouldn't normally touch a divorce case, but now he has become intrigued and welcomes the opportunity to study Lord Edgware at close quarters. However, Lord Edgware informs Poirot he had agreed to a divorce months ago. He wrote and told her so, but the letter mailed to her Hollywood address never arrived ("extremely curious"). Poirot has the feeling there's still something to the affair which now appears to have taken care of itself.

Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard, arrives at Poirot's doorstep the following morning with the news Lord Edgware was killed at his house in Regent Gate. Stabbed with surgical precision in the neck and murderer appears to be his wife. Jane Wilkinson went to the house in a taxi, announced herself at the door as Lady Edgware and sailed pass the butler to see her husband. Ten minutes later, the butler heard the front door close shut and the maid discovered the body the following morning. But her motive no longer holds up. More importantly, she can present an alibi as incontestable as the constitution of her homeland. So they have look elsewhere for suspects, but those pesky alibis, bodies and complications are found around every corner. Sort of...

Lord Edgware Dies is a howdunit, not a whodunit, in which the murderer's identity becomes apparent long before the final chapter rolls around. Apparent to everyone except the characters. This time, it's not just Hastings who's as dense as a lead-lined brick wall and it really is the story's only real problem. So let's get that out of the way first, before moving on the positives.

The plot that's setup is better suited for an inverted mystery, however, the inverted mystery doesn't really fit Hercule Poirot and the only way to make it work is to dumb him down a bit to the point where Poirot is as baffled by the whole thing as Hastings – until he overhears a chance remark in a crowd. It has been remarked that the credibility problem here lies with the alibi-trick, but thought it more unbelievable Poirot (SPOILER/ROT13) qvqa'g guvax vg fhfcvpvbhf gung gur bar crefba va Ybaqba jub pna qb n cvgpu-cresrpg vzvgngvba bs gur zheqrere qvrq gur fnzr qnl nf Ybeq Rqtjner sebz na nccnerag bireqbfr, abe gung gur vzcrefbangvba pbhyq unir orra qbar ba gur nyvov raq bs gur zheqre. Something that could to the story's advantage had it been inverted, cat-and-mouse style mystery/battle-of-wits between detective and murderer. How the story's structured and presented, you have to go along with it and ignore the obvious.

So where the plot and some of its finer details are concerned, Lord Edgware Dies is the very definition of a second-string detective novel, but not one devoid of qualities of its own.

Having now reread Peril at End House and Lord Edgware Dies, they clearly represent a period in Christie's career when the training wheels were coming off. Christie not only knew then what she could do with the detective story, as she showed in her graduation project known as Murder on the Orient Express, but had now the confidence to wield them. One of her most admirable and endearing qualities is on full display here. A talented or even merely a good, competent mystery writer can lie through their teeth without uttering a single untrue word. Very few of her contemporaries could match her when it comes to simultaneously rubbing the truth in your face and pulling the wool over your eyes. To quote Poirot "facts that are concealed acquire a suspicious importance," while "facts that are frankly revealed tend to be regarded as less important than they really are." Lord Edgware Dies is not the best nor most successfully executed example of this talent, she did it with all the bravado and brazenness that would distinguish her best-known, most celebrated 1930s mysteries – a decade she punctuated with the publication of And Then There Were None (1939). After Lord Edgware Dies, Christie became the Agatha Christie we remember today. There's something else worth pointing out.

Last year, I compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" and seriously considered including Christie as a surprise entry or honorable mention. Not because she was in dire of reprints or had a reputation that needed a public overhaul, but because Christie wasn't an isolated phenomena. She took inspiration as much from her contemporaries as the other way round. Just compare The A.B.C. Murders (1936) to Anthony Berkeley's The Silk Stocking Murders (1928) or Sad Cypress (1940) to Dorothy L. Sayers' Strong Poison (1930). So having more of her contemporaries back in print gives more depth to her own work. For example, I kept thinking of Christopher Bush as Lord Edgware Dies is exactly the kind of detective novels he always tried to write with varying degrees of success. It has everything you often find in his work. A cast of characters filled with theatrical people. A handful of alibis with one of them potentially being fabricated, channel crossing alibi between France and alibi. A closely-linked pair of murders in the story's opening stages. So imagine Bush quite enjoyed and perhaps took inspiration from it.

I'm pretty sure Leo Bruce took inspiration from Lord Edgware Dies for M. Amer Picon ("Papa Picon") from Case for Three Detectives (1936). One of my favorite lines from that book comes when Sgt. Beef is complaining about the three titular amateur sleuths "with their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-screams-come-from" ("why they try to make it complicated"). Bruce was echoing Hasting's explaining to Japp how Poirot "always been fond of having things difficult" and "a straightforward case is never good enough for him," which is why Hastings believes Poirot always tries to make a case more difficult – especially when the solution comes out too easily. Sounds like Papa Picon.

So, in summation, Lord Edgware Dies is certainly not one of Christie's triumphs when it comes to plotting and you shouldn't think too deeply about the alibi-trick, but it's bravado and confidence in the shaky, less than perfect plot makes up for a lot. A mixed bag, to be sure, but an enjoyable and not wholly unimportant one. With the next novel, Christie really took off to become the embodiment of the Golden Age detective novel.

The Unbreakable Discussion on Impossible Alibis

 

Every few years, the topic of alibis and impossible crimes is brought up, "But is it a Locked Room Mystery?," "Impossible Crime and Alibi's" and "On A Defense of the Impossible Alibi Problem and "Doylist" Impossibilities," which were fruitless attempts to try and nail down what constitutes an impossible alibi – everyone had their own ideas and definitions. The line separating a regular, unbreakable alibi from an impossible one remained vague and undefined. So a consensus on the subject was never reached and to outsiders it must have looked like discussions on the detective story's equivalent of Big Foot or UFOs.

The question of impossible alibis was raised again following my review Christianna Brand's Tour de Force (1955) back in November. Tour de Force is a strong fan favorite and the new British Library edition won the 2024 Reprint of the Year. I personally think Brand's London Particular (1952) is more deserving, but Tour de Force is nonetheless a plot-technical marvel in how it constructs and then rips through half a dozen alibis. So understand why the book has its fans, but Brand has written better and disagreed that the alibis amounted to an impossible problem. I tried to explain why they weren't impossible alibis, but my arguments were scoffed at and rejected in the comments. What can you do?

I promised to return to the subject in the new year and dedicate a post to it. I'm not disillusion enough to think this is going to settle the issue, but at least it will give something to refer back to when it's brought up again in the future.

I always thought I had come up with a very easy, crystal clear way to distinguish between an ordinary, manufactured alibi and an impossible alibi – a difference depending on a tiny, devilish detail. An ordinary, non-impossible alibi is created with fabricated or misleading evidence like manipulated clocks, witnesses or paperwork (e.g. train or movie tickets). So an ordinary, non-impossible alibi involves retracing the steps of the murderer/suspects and not uncommonly involves breaking down one, or more, identities which is commonly associated with the Realist School of the Golden Age detective story. Mike Grost writes on his website "faked alibis and misleading trails often turn on a breakdown of identity" with "what seems to be a trail left by two, can really be the work of one" or "one person's trail can really have been left by two people" ("there are many complex variations on this..."). Mystery writers like Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts made their name with rigging up and tearing down such sort of alibis, but no fair minded person would seriously consider them a variation on the impossible crime. But when does it become one?

An impossible alibi, in my opinion, entirely relies on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the deed. Not because the murderer claimed to have been somewhere else, but because their was a hard, physical limitation on the murderer's freedom to move or act. For example, the murderer was imprisoned or undergoing surgery at the time of the murder or a physical handicap apparently keeping them from off the list of suspects. Like a wheelchair bound murderer with the victim lying on the first-floor landing or one-armed killer who found a way to break someone's neck. So the apparent physical restraints alibi the murderer. Not clocks, witnesses or train tickets. The TV series Monk had a couple of the best, modern-day examples of the impossible alibi (e.g. Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect, 2003). This distinction is not merely a personal, arbitrary one, but has some reasoning behind it.

The locked room mystery/impossible crime and the unbreakable/impossible alibi are both subcategories of the good, old-fashioned howdunit in which the focus is not on who committed the crime or why, but how it was done – which today are more commonly referred to as "perfect crime" stories. At it's most basic, the howdunit concerns a puzzling murder method or very thorough disappearances. Two classic examples include Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927) and Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) in addition to the works of R. Austin Freeman and John Rhode. The unbreakable alibi and impossible crime distinguished themselves from the regular howdunit by giving the murderer a seemingly incontestable alibi or make their crimes appear like a complete impossibility. A body inside a tightly locked or guarded room. A lonely trail of footprints ending in the middle of a field of unbroken snow. A ten-ton statue impossibly vanishing within the blink of an eye. You know the variations and they're immediately recognizable to everyone who can tell the difference between a closed circle and locked room.

So assumed applying the same principle of having to present an apparently physical impossibility, in order to weed out the garden variety alibis, made for an easy, tidy and logical answer to the question. But my reasonable take was rejected and dismissed several times. Since then, I've seen books like Bush's Cut Throat (1932) and The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) labeled as impossible alibi/crime novels. I famously overpraised the former and think the latter is a fine, Golden Age detective novel, but both fall squarely in the first category with their (SPOILER/ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. Brilliantly done in both cases, of course, but they're not impossible alibis/crimes.

I'm not a fan of this developing trend of lumping every alibi story, no matter how good or bad they may be, in with the impossible crime story. It simply dilutes, what's otherwise, a distinctive and somewhat unique subgenre/off-shoot by adding an untold amount of novels and short stories to the list. Every detective novel or short story that played around with simple or complicated alibi-trick suddenly becomes an impossible crime story. When nearly everything is an impossible crime, nothing really is an impossible crime. Just a whodunit with extra hurdles.

Why so many insist on counting alibis as impossible crimes without discrimination is a bit baffling to me. I suppose one of the reasons is that there aren't many actual clear cut examples of the physically impossible alibi outside of Monk. There's one rather famous and celebrated classic, but acknowleding it as an impossible alibi counts as a spoiler (ROT13: ntngun puevfgvr'f qrngu ba gur avyr unf n qbhoyr vzcbffvoyr nyvov nf bar bs gur zheqrere'f nccrnef gb or vapncnpvgngrq ol n thafubg jbhaq, juvyr gur bgure vf frqngrq naq thneqrq ol n ahefr). Another problem is that from the few genuine examples some are borderline cases (e.g. Arthur Porges' "Coffee Break," 1964) and, according my definition, the impossible alibi is inextricably-linked to the Birlstone Gambit – casting a character thought to be dead as the killer. One of the detective's story oldest tropes, but not a universally beloved one with more than it's fair share of critics.

So lacking some good, clear cut and non-spoilerish examples, the alibi-tricks from Bush's Cut Throat and The Case of the Missing Minutes might look like impossible alibis because they apply considerable ingenuity to the problem. The kind of tricks you would expect from a first-class locked room mystery, which is why I lavished so much praise on the former. But they still rely on (ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. I simply can't call them impossible crime novels.

Japanese mystery writer Tetsuya Ayukawa described the difference between impossible crime and unbreakable alibi as the former being an alibi in space and the latter as a locked room in time. I believe the important difference between an unbreakable and impossible alibis is the difference between external and internal. The unbreakable alibi depends on outside evidence like witnesses or tempered clocks (external), while the impossible alibi solely depends on the murder's physical state or whereabout (internal). But, once again, very few agree on what, exactly constitutes an impossible alibi.

The fact that this question was raised nearly a decade ago and we're still arguing when a cast-iron alibi becomes an impossible crime is perhaps the best argument against categorizing them as impossible crime. So propose to keep treating them as two separate, distinctly different, subcategories/off-shoots of the howdunit and put this muddied discussion to bed. Well, the comments are open. So you know where to air your grievances.

Check's in the Mail: "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" (1981) by Edward D. Hoch

I finished Edward D. Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne series when Crippen & Landru published its fifth and final collection of short stories, Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018), which gave closure to one of Hoch's most popular and long-running series – running from 1974 to 2008 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. So haven't visited the good doctor for "another small—ah—libation" since then and other Hoch collections beckon for my attention, but there's a short story I wanted to revisit.

A few years ago, "The Dark One," of A Perfect Locked Room, reviewed Hoch's More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2006) and it reminded me of a particular story that had inexplicably escaped my attention when compiling "The Updated Mammoth List of My Favorite Locked Room Mysteries."

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office," originally published in the June, 1981, issue of EQMM, takes place on October 24, 1929 – a day better known as Black Thursday. While the stock markets began to panic, the small town of Northmont is looking forward that day to the opening own, separate post office away from the general store. The brand new post office, "a pink post office," receives its last lick of fresh paint when the postmistress, Vera Brock, opens its doors for business. Among her first customers is Anson Waters, the town banker, who tells them about the panic down on Wall Street and needs to send his broker "a railroad bearer bond in the amount of ten thousand dollars" ("my broker can cash it at once"). Something everyone in the post office overhears and the registered envelope goes missing without a trace.

Fortunately, Dr. Sam Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens are two of the seven people present at the post office when the envelope disappeared. Dr. Hawthorne states "there are seven of us here, and I can offer seven solutions." The fast moving procession of false-solutions and them getting shot down almost as quickly is one of the highlights of this short story, however, the false-solution serve an even more important purpose than merely entertaining genre savvy detective geeks.

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office" starts out as an Ellery Queen-style "hidden object" puzzle, which is impossible crime adjacent, but Hawthorne knocking down his own false-solutions and eliminating all the suspects turned it into a fully fledged locked room mystery. Next comes the tricky part as the story has to, fittingly enough, deliver an eighth solution to the problem that has to be a little more than good. Hoch more than delivered on not only the story's premise, but on Hawthorne's opening statement that "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" is "unique among all the cases" he helped to solve. A shrewdly clued solution of beautiful simplicity which yet feels satisfying and original, because the trick is tailor-made for this story. A small gem and one of my favorite impossible crime stories from Hoch!

The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) by James Ronald

James Ronald's The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) is the second, somewhat shortish, novel in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 11: The Sealed Room Murder (2024) originally serialized in Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser during the December month of 1931 – published in book form under the title The House of Horror (1935). The editor, Chris Verner, restored the original title as being more suitable for this lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek spoof of writers like Edgar Wallace and Carolyn Wells. A mystery of adventure and romance packing "enough secret passages and hidden doors to satisfy most readers for the rest of their lives."

The spacious house, or rather mansion, is the remote, richly historied Hunter's Keep belonging to a well-known, celebrated gentleman of leisure and thriller writer, Wilmer Basingstoke. A man of mystery who became interested in crime and "plunged into a wholehearted study of crime from every angle."

Basingstoke had acted first as a criminal, "two burglaries he planned and carried out alone were never traced to him," before becoming an amateur detective "running down burglars and handing them over to justice." Getting bored by the whole thing, Basingstoke toyed with the idea to commit a murder, but a timely discovered talent for writing contained his murderous ambitions to the printed page as he became a bestselling thriller author.

The story takes place during a house party thrown to liven up the place. Basingstoke has invited his two nephews, Percy Hyth and John Ridgeway and young niece, Lucy Halperin, who he hasn't seen since they were children. The cousins meet each other for the first time. Philip Lavery and Irma Dering are bored, flirtatious socialites who amused their host with their trivial conversations and "belief that their own silly little world was the centre of the universe." Reverend Cyril Wootton and his brother, Peter Wootton, who's a Scotland Yard detective ("...at present on holiday"). Someone in the first chapter mentions wonders how someone who can write such thrilling yarns can give such dull house parties, but that changes quickly when they hear bell ringing followed by the maid screaming, "the master—'e's dead" – saying she found him dead and covered in blood. But when they go to look, they find an empty room and a bloodstained dagger. Basingstoke's body is nowhere to be found.

However, The Secret of Hunter's Keep is not a locked room mystery about impossibly vanishing corpses. Basingstoke's body is not the only one to disappear under mysterious circumstances, but how the bodies disappeared is not some terrifying, unfathomable mystery. Hunter's Keep is known to be honeycombed with concealed passages, hidden doors, secret staircases and subterranean rooms. While their locations and entrances have been lost to time, someone has started to make use of them. Peter Wootton observes "Hunter's Keep was not one house, but two, and it was the house within the walls that held the secret they were bent on solving." It really does appear as if the main building is merely a front for the rabbit warren of hidden passages, rooms and staircases, but that probably makes it sound better than it actually is.

Ronald was an uneven plotter. For every Murder in the Family (1936) and They Can't Hang Me (1938), you have a Six Were to Die (1932) and Death Croons the Blues (1934), but one thing all have in common is their readability and sometimes surprisingly good characterization. The Secret of Hunter's Keep is no exception to the rule, which makes it better than most pulp mysteries of the time festooned with cliches and secret passages. It honestly little more than a very readable, sometimes amusing pile up of turn-of-the-century cliches and sniping at the thriller novel itself. More on that in moment.

The Secret of Hunter's Keep is not wholly an overly cliched, featureless but readable piece of pulp fiction. It has some points of interest. During his day as an amateur detective, Basingstoke helped Scotland Yard to catch a criminal known as "The Basher." Peter Wootton finds an unread telegram informing Basingstoke that John Albert Green, a.k.a. "The Basher," had escaped that morning from Dartmoor prison. And probably on his way to get his revenge.

Their backstory is told to the reader in the form of two excerpts from one of Basingstoke's novels based on him capturing Green. Yeah, it's blatant padding, but didn't dislike it and the only thing in the book to briefly throw me off my game. For a moment, I feared Ronald was lazily going for a variation on a well-known mystery novel (ROT13: fve neguhe pbana qblyr'f gur inyyrl bs srne, oevrsyl fhfcrpgvat onfvatfgbxr unq xvyyrq gur onfure naq jnf uvqvat, nybat jvgu gur obql, vafvqr gur jnyyf bs gur ubhfr). I'll get back to the solution. Another thing that stood out to me was the introduction of a plagiarism plot thread, when someone comes forward claiming Basingstoke plagiarized his work. How this plot-thread is revealed and eventually resolved is not without interest, perhaps the best handled part of the story, but couldn't escape the feeling Ronald was laughing here at his readers – not with them. I know pulp thrillers brandishing book titles like The Ho-Fong Mystery, The Eye of Cho-Fang and The Chinese Dagger aren't known for their quality writing or careful plotting, not without reason nor undeserving of criticism, but this came across as a politely-worded, but somewhat mean spirited, swipe at everyone who wrote and read them (ROT13: “turfr cybgf nera'g lbhef be zvar, gurl ner pbzzba cebcregl” nf gur npphfre vf pnegrq bss gb gur ybbal ova). No wonder John Norris panned the book in his 2019 review!

Well, there's the ending and solution. While I briefly entertained a slightly different solution, the final twist complete with a Scooby Doo-esque unmasking of the villain is not a rug puller of a surprise. You can see it coming from a mile ahead, but think most people will be irked that the solution (ROT13) jnyxf onpx rirelguvat gung unccrarq cerivbhfyl. Honestly, if I had bought The Secret of Hunter's Keep separately, I would have been a bit disappointed. I got this volume for the reprint of The Sealed Room Murder (1934) with The Secret of Hunter's Keep. So got to enjoy it for what it's. A lighthearted romp poking fun at the country house mystery that's fun enough, if you don't expect a serious detective novel.