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Yesterday, I posted a summary overview of
the worst mysteries endured this year and the most inferior examples answer why
detectives can be held in such low regard, but today I'll be gushing and
talking pompously, like a ranting Napoleon atop a hobbyhorse, on the ingenious
mysteries I enjoyed reading in 2013. The detective stories that were the
seven-percent solution to my Sherlock Holmes.
You can expect an over representation of everyone's
favorite trope, "The Locked Room Mystery," but I like to believe the divergence
of styles, sub-genres and international character shows a balanced, in-depth list
with an overlapping theme.
Now, without further ado, the List of
Best Mysteries Read in 2013:
The "Moth" Murder (1931) by Lynton Blow
The
first of merely two mystery novels by Lynton Blow, but as enthusiastic an
endeavor in the field of detective fiction as the Wright brothers conquering
the skies in 1903. Except that The "Moth" Murder takes off
when the blazing remains of a light aircraft plunges from the sky and a
post-mortem on the charred pilot reveals an inexplicable bullet wound. These
are, however, the first of a train carriage of complications, but Blow holds a
firm grip on all the plot threads and understands these kind of complex detective stories gain credibility by including Murphy's Law in the
equation. The only letdown is that there's an old trick at the heart of the
mystery.
Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) by M.P.O. Books
A
figure head of the Dutch criminal underworld, Fred Duijster, is brutally
slaughtered in his tightly secured, fortress-like home. The windows were
covered with steel shutters and the grounds around the house are monitored with
motion sensors that trigger overhead lights, back and front, and cameras – and
they captured only one person entering and leaving the home at the time of the
murder. But is he guilty? It's an impossible crime story in the same vein (and
quality) as Marcia Muller's The Tree of Death (1983) and Herbert
Resnicow's The Gold Solution (1983).
Painted for the Kill (1943) by Lucy Cores
A
comedic mystery lampooning the daily workload of a prestigious beauty salon,
The House of Lais, a popular haunt for women inhabiting the upper crust of New
York, but the place is run like a (awkwardly pre-dated) parody on the Stalinist
shadow of Big Brother from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
I guess it's a hallmark of good comedy if you're jokes gain traction over time.
However, Cores took a break from satirizing everyone, and everything, to
construct a satisfying plot around the death of a valued customer of Lais.
Clever and funny.
The Poison Oracle (1974) by Peter Dickinson
Now
here's a tale that would've bought Sheherazade another reprieve from the
executioner's sword, if the King had faltered after the One Thousand and One
previous nights. A tale of the imaginary sultanate of Q'Kut. A strip of land in
cloud-cuckoo land where the Arab rulers share a special bond with the native
Marshmen, an isolated tribe with their own unique language, reaffirmed every
year in a verbal treaty, "The Bond," which is an epic song telling the history
of the Marshmen and the Bond. Dickinson builds a completely new civilization with
a history, language, social structure, political system and used as a framework
for a first-rate detective story – involving a pre-verbal chimpanzee, skyjacked
airliner and an impossible poisoning in the Sultan's private zoo. Undoubtedly,
one of the richest mysteries I have read this year.
Nightshade (2006) by Paul Doherty
A historical mystery novel set in 1304
and centers around the affairs of the perfidious Lord Scrope, whose district
has fallen in disorder after ordering the massacre of an entire religious sect,
but King Edward I has dispatched Sir Hugh Corbett and Ranulf to restore His
Majesty's Rule to the region. However, upon their arrival, they learn matters
have worsened with the arrival of a mysterious bowman. In order to protect
himself, Scrope erected a sealed structure, a reclusorium, on the Island
of Swans, which is encircled by an icy moat and guards posted on the opposite
banks – all to no avail. Locked doors and shuttered windows failed to keep his
murderer out and Doherty comes up with a better solution than he usually does
for his impossible premises. Not ground breaking, but not bad either.
Vultures in the Sky (1935) by Todd Downing
A previous mystery novel I read by
Downing, The Cat Screams (1934), ended in disappointment, after the plot
failed to live up to its own premise, but there are more than enough redeeming
qualities to be found in its successor. Downing's series character, Hugh
Rennert of the United States Treasury Department, Custom Services, takes charge
of a train bound for Mexico City when one of the passengers dies while passing
through a tunnel and Rennert doesn't entertain the idea that the bad air in the
tunnel did him in. The plot rattles along at a nice, steady pace and the
exploration of the local culture gives the book its authentic touch. This is
not a cheat Christie knock-off.
Ättestupan (Deadly Reunion, 1975) by Jan Ekström
With a nickname like "the Swedish John Dickson Carr," it was bound to attract my attention and I wasn't
disappointed, but, stylistically, the book stands closer to Ross MacDonald and
Christianna Brand. The problem here finds it roots in the three warring
branches of ninety-year-old Aunt Charlotte Lethander's family and summons them
all in a last ditch effort to reconsolidate them before passing away – which
ends in a tragic murder/suicide. One of her relatives was shot and the murderer
was gassed to death in a locked bedroom. The brooding atmosphere and hidden
(family) secrets is still today typical for Scandinavian crime fiction, but the
classically styled plot and clever impossible crime makes it a noteworthy entry
in the annals of locked room mysteries.
The Con Job (2013) by Matt Forbeck
The first tie-in novel continuing the
cancelled TV-series Leverage, set during the third season, and the plot
would've been a perfect basis for an actual episode. Nathan Ford's crew goes
after a disreputable art dealer who has been targeting old comic-book artists,
which brings them to Comic-Con and a galore of shenanigans in an attempt to
thwart the dealer from robbing Alec Hardison's heroes blind.
La Septième Hypothèse (The Seventh Hypothesis, 1991) by Paul Halter
More than once, I found something to
nitpick about in a Paul Halter story and I blame the glowing comments preceding
the long-awaited translations, which unfairly drew comparisons with John
Dickson Carr and G.K. Chesterton. On the other hand, this particular title can
be logged into evidence to back up their claim: the plot is triumphant in
reviving the "Baghdad-on-the-Thames" atmosphere of a long-gone London. Plague
doctors are seen roaming the streets by moonlight, a deadly duel of wits
between a genius playwright and a gifted actor and one or two impossible
disappearances. What's not to like?
Moord in de trein (Murder on the Train, 1925) by
Herman Heijermans & A.M. de Jong
A
dark, twisted gem of a story stained with the irony of history (see review) and
opens with Satan visiting three of the characters, but the only thing the rich
banker, the ambitious writer and the hotel-rat have in common is a ticket for
the D-train to Paris. Nathan Marius Duporc, Inspecteur of the Amsterdamse
Centrale Recherche, one of the passengers, has to wrench apart a
surprisingly good and Carrian murder plot.
77 Sunset Strip (1959) by Roy Huggins
A curious, but well-done, TV tie-in novel
composed of three short stories with bridging material predating the television
adaptation, based on these original pulp stories, but the kicker is that private
eye Stuart Bailey is confronted with trio of crimes of the impossible variety.
It's a fast-paced montage of three cases pitting a street-wise, smart talking
detective against a few actual brain crackers and the structure is remarkably
similar to Bill Pronzini's Scattershot (1981), which strung three,
separate (impossible!) cases for the Nameless Detective in one of his most
Hellish weeks at work.
At the Villa Rose (1910) A.E.W. Mason
A story clearly foreshadowing the Golden
Age of Mysteries and The Great Detectives After Sherlock Holmes and his
imitators, which was accompanied with the publication of G.K. Chesterton's The
Innocence of Father Brown (1910), but Mason's contribution was casting a
mold for a certain type of Great Detective. Inspector Hanaud of the Sûreté
reflects such famous sleuths as Hercule Poirot and Sir Henry Merrivale (or they
reflect him), but the problem is certainly up-to-date for the time it was
written in. All in all, a classic I should've read before 2013.
De Amsterdamse koffermoord (The Amsterdam Suitcase Murder,
1979) by Seicho Matsumoto
This is a collection of Dutch
translations consisting of a single novelette and three additional short
stories, but the main showpiece is the novella-length Amusuterudamu-unga satsuyin-jiken (The Amsterdam Canal Murder
Case, 1969) and was originally published in the weekly Shukan Asahi.
The plot was based on the premise of an actual, unsolved murder case and one
that captured the eye of the press in both Europe and Japan. Read the review
for more details.
Killer's Wedge (1959) by Ed McBain
A perfect introduction to Ed McBain and
my first meeting with the illustrious 87th Precinct, in which the Squad Room
suffers from a mild case of breach of security when Virginia Dodge barges in
with a handgun and plants a bottle of nitroglycerine on a desk. Dodge demands
to see Detective Steve Carella, but he's out on another case that stands in the
stark contrast with the hostage situation at the precinct. Carella is looking
into the death of a business tycoon at his family mansion, where he apparently
hanged himself in a windowless room with the only door dead-bolted on the
inside. You get a hostage, cat-and-mouse thriller and a classic locked room
mystery for the price of one!
Bimbos of the Death Sun (1987) by Sharon McCrumb
To quote myself from the original review,
Bimbos of the Death Sun isn't an elaborate and complicated affair,
however, everything came together in the end and made sense. More importantly,
McCrumb turned a new leaf on the timeworn dénouement scene and the
backdrop of a SF-and Fantasy convention made this a memorable read. The 1988
Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original was more than deserved, IMO.
The follow-up to this book, Zombies of the Gene Pool (1992), a very character-driven mystery novel about "The Dead
Sea Scrolls of Science Fiction," shares this place with Bimbos of the Death
Sun. Read them both in 2014, if you haven't done so already.
The Voice of the Corpse (1948) by Max Murray
The village shrew of Inching Round,
Angela Mason Pewsey, passing the time with mentally torturing her neighbors,
sending poison-pen letters and shrieking folk songs, receives her comeuppance
when an unknown assailant strikes her down at the spinning wheel. Pewsey's
black notebook is missing, but, to the bafflement of Mrs. Sim, the local police
prefer to follow the obvious trail of a passing tramp or gypsy. The ending has
an excellent, morally ambiguous twist and goes to show that not all
village-themed mysteries are by definition cozies.
Dead Man's Gift (1941) by Zelda Popkin
An unconventional, but original,
detective story drowning in conventional tropes and added as a counterweight to
G.E. Locke's The Red Cavalier (1922) on my worst-of list, in that's a
good example of how you could play with tradition – such as the closed-circle
of suspects. Here we have the beneficiaries of distant relatives gathering at
the house for the reading of eccentric will, but a freak flood cuts them off
from the outside world and a murder is committed in a submerged staircase.
However, the flood is not just a novel plot device here to keep the house party
stranded and Popkin shows the sometimes dramatic effects the water has on local
residents, but even more important, there's a genuine, clever twist at the end
of the book.
Beyond the Grave (1986) by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller
There aren't many, genuinely well-written
crossovers within the mystery genre. Licensing issues, splitting royalties and
different modus operandi may've prevented more than one writer from
pooling his character with the creation of a friend/colleague. Thankfully,
these obstacles are mere trifles for the husband-and-wife writing team of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, who snatched enough opportunities to foster a
friendship between their respective characters, but the best crossover piece
they collaborated on covered a pair of sleuth a century apart – riding the
waves of the aftershocks of an even older crime. For the true mystery fan,
there's something touching about Elena Oliverez's longing to tell the then
long-dead John Quincannon how the case ended.
The Bughouse Affair (2013) by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller
The first in a new series of full-length
mystery novels chronicling the daily caseload of John Quincannon and Sabine
Carpenter, a couple of private investigators in San Francisco of the 1890s, in
which Pronzini and Muller tie-together the story of two cases and three
detectives into one conclusion. Sabina is following the cocktail route and
torch lit bazaars on the trail of a high profile pickpocket, while Quincannon
is on a stakeout for a burglar and bumps into peculiar character that claims to
be Sherlock Holmes! Oh, and there's a murder in a locked room and the killer
escaped from the house, under surveillance by Quincannon and Mr. Holmes, unseen.
Murdercon (1982) by Richard Purtill
There surfaced a handful of accidental
patterns in my reading this year and these included stories set at SF/Fantasy
or writers convention, discovering impossible crimes Robert Adey missed in his
locked room autobiography and train-mysteries. Purtill ticked two of three
boxes with a detective yarn unwinding at another one of those SF/Fantasy cons,
where a surviving copy of a failed magazine, Kosmo Tales, from the 1930s
becomes the motive for a couple of bizarre, seemingly impossible murders – one
of them apparently committed by Darth Vader.
Cake in the Hat Box (1954) by Arthur W. Upfield
Upfield is one of those rare writers,
alongside H.R.F. Keating and Rex Stout, who could write detective stories you
can read and enjoy without being a mystery fan, because of the gripping
storytelling or the engaging characters – making them stories about detectives
rather than detective stories. In these books, it's the evocative depiction of
the Australian landscape, which is perhaps the best-drawn character in the series,
from the sun blasted Nullarbor Plain to draught stricken cattle ranges. Here
Upfield describes Agar's Lagoon, another dried-up desert settlement, hemmed-in
by a halo of glass bottles and where meteorites streak across the night sky,
but the well-contrived plot explaining the shooting of Constable Stenhouse was
the topping on the cake.
Darkness at Pemberley (1932) by T.H. White
Thanks for the reviews. I shall have to look for some of these books.
ReplyDeleteBarring Ed McBain I haven't read any of the authors in both your best and worst mysteries of 2013. Interesting variety in the mystery fiction you read last year.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read anything by Todd Downing but if Vultures in the Sky is set on board a train I'll have definitely have to read it.
ReplyDelete