The Author is Dead (2022) by A. Carver

The Author is Dead (2022) is an independently published locked room mystery novel by a pseudonymous author, "A. Carver," which is described as "a fair play mystery novel uniting the detective revivals of Robin Stevens and Anthony Horowitz with impossible crimes worthy of John Dickson Carr and Christianna Brand" – structured like a Japanese shin honkaku mystery. Carver's The Author is Dead is a Western take on shin honkaku novels like Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987), Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017) and The Kindaichi Case Files series. The mysterious author undeniably succeeded in laying out an elaborately designed, maze-like plot that paid homage to the traditional detective story of the past and present. That playful, meta-like fun also makes the story tricky to discuss without spoiling any of the fun. So have to gloss over a lot of details, including most of the impossibilities. Let's dig in! 

Alex Corby is a teenage girl nearing her twenties and has been devoted fan of Adam Carver's Castles in the Sky series ever since she was a child. Castles in the Sky is "a quartet of young adult mystery thrillers set in Gothic times" and eerie castles where "baffling murders occurred with probability-defying frequency" in a "parade of ever more unfathomable locked-room mysteries." Alex has been active on a fansite, Besieging Heaven, since she was twelve under the username "RedRidingBlood."

The long-awaited, eagerly anticipated conclusion to the series has recently been published to the predictable complaints of hardcore fans that "the finale wasn't a patch on the preceding volumes," but nothing to put a dent into the astronomical sales. So the author decided to throw a private party at his house on the Scottish coast, Carver's Rest, to celebrate both his birthday and the smash of the Castles in the Sky tetralogy. Carver's Rest is not an ordinary house, but a self-designed dream house resembling a medieval castle complete with a drawbridge, "only way in or out," which turns the place into an island – a dream destination to any die-hard fan of the series. Alex won a members-only contest through the fansite and arrives horrendously late during a cold, snowy night when most of the party has already retired to their rooms.

This is the first part of the story that requires glossing over as Alex "felt a little like the heroine of Castles in the Sky on that fateful night" and stumbles across an "impossible crime that had vanished in the night." What, exactly, that impossibility comprises of is something for you to discover, but can reveal it's the first of four locked room mysteries in which the culprit turned the crime scene into a "taped-shut tomb." These locked room problems are an homage to Carter Dickson's He Wouldn't Kill Patience (1944) and Clayton Rawson's 1948 short story "From Another World" ("Carr and Rawson both wrote taped rooms; even challenged each other to do it, actually..."), which all have new and very different solutions to the tape-sealed rooms. Since the locked room vanished without a trace, Alex decided to keep it to herself the next morning when she meets the other attendees. The professionals and her fellow fans.

Firstly, there's Adam Carver's literary agent, Maria Bole, and his illustrator, Quinn Shillerdyce, who had "so richly furnished Castles in the Sky with his portrait-style art and characteristic oil-painting covers." Franny Smythe is the creator of the Humble Mom Reviews blog and "a high-profile supporter" of the series who's always first to get a review-copy. Secondly, there's the fan-section headed by the admin of the fansite, Vi Malik ("SiegeMasterV"), who created Besieging Heaven shortly after the publication of the first novel, Death in the Walls. Colin West ("DaVinciCorpse") is the fan community's "chief supplier of gothy fanart" and Yva Dysart ("BardOfDeathY") writes the fanfiction to his fanart as well as providing the story with plenty of false-solutions. "Corvus Crown" is the community's "theorist extraordinaire," of whom nothing is known, but "had solved the central mystery of Hand at the Threshold from only its synopsis" and "deduced the entire plot of A Coffin Nail Creaks from a pre-release preview chapter." Crown's vision of what the final, long-delayed volume might look like was realised by Colin and Yva "as the infamous fan-novel The Fourth Wall Crumbles." Lastly, there's the host's wife, Victoria Carver, who's neither in the publishing business nor a fan.

Some of you who follow this blog and share my fascination for the Japanese detective story can see the resemblance to the previously mentioned The Decagon House Murders and The Kindaichi Case Files. The internet fangroup recalls Seimaru Amagi's third Kindaichi light-novel, Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), which is possibly the first traditional whodunit to use the internet in a meaningful way and centers on an online chat group of mystery fans, the On-Line Lodge – who have a disastrous offline meeting at a sky resort. Just like this story, most of the (main) characters are either teenagers or barely out their teens. I noted in my review of Jim Noy's The Red Death Murders (2022) how much joy it does me to see how the Western and Eastern detective story have interacted over the course of a century. Edogawa Rampo introduced the Western-style to Japan over a century ago, which evolved into the honkaku mysteries of Seishi Yokomizo to eventually give rise to Soji Shimada and the shin honkaku movement in the 1980s. A movement that rejuvenated the genre with its young, college-age detectives, corpse-puzzles, customized architecture and unashamedly embracing all of the genre's tropes to simply have a bit of clever fun. Now those ideas and attitudes are beginning to journey back to the West to help ignite a Second Golden Age. The Author is Dead, The Red Death Murders and certain elements from the work of James Scott Byrnside are only the first sparks. Like you would expect from such a mystery novel, the murders and sealed rooms begin to stack up pretty quickly.

I can't discuss those sealed rooms and impossibilities in depth, because they're either incredibly tricky in presentation or tethered directly to the who-and why. I can lightly touch upon some of them without concentrating on the finer details.

Beginning with the second, no-footprints-in-the-snow impossibility that interestingly employs a tape-sealed door as an obstacle to the outdoors crime scene where the drawbridge and a broadsword is used to go medieval on the poor victim. This impossibility provides the story with very fun false-solution that would require a ball of yarn the size of your cat's wildest daydreams. I'm not saying anything about the third sealed room scenario, but the fourth and last one makes a spirited attempt to present "the fourth murder was a perfect locked-room murder." A room sealed airtight with one door taped shut, the second door locked and the balcony covered with unbroken snow. I really liked the logical paradox at the heart of this trick (you know what when you read it), but have a problem (SPOILER/ROT13) gung gur fbyhgvba nqzvggrq gung "orngvat gur fabj jnf whfg n obahf" naq gur zheqrere jbhyq unq "cebonoyl whfg unir fjrcg gur jubyr onypbal," vs gurer unq orra ab jnl gb trg npebff vg. Naq vg jnf irel pbairavrag ubj gur fgbel nyybjrq gur zheqrere gb pvephzirag guvf bofgnpyr. Vg jbhyq unir orra zber pbaivapvat unq gur zheqrere orra sbeprq gb erzbir gur fabj, juvpu pbhyq unir freirq nf n pyhr gung ng gur gvzr jbhyq abg qrfgeblrq gur ybpxrq ebbz vyyhfvba. N pyhr gung pbhyq unir orra pnzbhsyntrq jvgu n irel yvtug, dhvpx fubjre bs nsgre fabj gung jbhyq yrsg n irel guva fabj ba gur onypbal. Fb vg jbhyq nccrne ba svefg fvtug nf vs gur onypbal unq n pnecrg bs haoebxra fabj, hagvy fbzrbar abgvprf vg'f bayl n guva svyz naq gung cerivbhf fabj zhfg unir orra pyrnerq njnl.

Other than that tiny niggle, the locked room-tricks impressively tackled the seldom tried tape-sealed room scenario with four distinctly different setups and solutions, which not merely carries and gives weight to a routine whodunit plot – which is beautifully tied together with who-and why. Or, as Alex reflects, "the truth was something they had felt would be neither accepted nor understood without the support of a whydunnit and a howdunnit." A pet peeve of mine is how often the motive is treated like an afterthought in detective stories, which I still consider to be an important piece of the puzzle. So it was fun to see it get acknowledged ("you only ever find them out after the criminal's been caught, and it's usually something you couldn't possibly have anticipated") and getting properly treated.

So the story has a strong genre awareness and its playfulness is one of its absolute strong suits. For example, the introduction comes after the third chapter ("please excuse the late appearance") and several more interruptions follow culminating with an audacious Challenge to the Reader. While the other interruptions put Carr's "The Locked Room Lecture" from The Three Coffins (1935) and Ronald A. Knox's "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" to work as clues or red herrings. My only problem is that Knox's rules were a little modernized with the fifth rule being changed to "there must be no stereotypes among the cast," which The Author is Dead broke left and right. Half of the cast of characters are members of a fandom that's active online. And you can tell! Just look at what Jim and I did when we got slightly annoyed at a lazily cobbled-together anthology (the result). We didn't break any stereotypes that day. Before going over a few of the expected drawbacks in this self-published debut, I need to praise a phenomenal piece of misdirection. I spotted the murderer, figured out the first impossibility and had a pretty good idea how the second one could have been rigged as (ROT13) gur pnaqyrf va gur tngrubhfr jrer snveyl zragvbarq naq gura vtaberq hagvy vg jnf rkcynvarq, juvpu vf rabhtu gb znxr zr zvtugl fhfcvpvbhf. Only to have it apparently smashed to pieces in front of my eyes! And the best part is that was done (ROT13) jvgu n cresrpg rknzcyr bs jung V dhnyvsl nf na vzcbffvoyr nyvov.

So, while certainly an ambitiously written and plotted debut, not everything was done exactly perfect. Firstly, the characters like to stall and take their time to get their point across or go somewhere. I found it amusing when they were outside theorizing and someone remarked they're "still virtually outdoors in the icy cold" and says that "theory will be just as good inside." I remember that was my criticism of a short story by Paul Halter, but it happens throughout the story and becomes particular annoying when they take their time to get to the fourth sealed room. One of the characters casually mentions he might have found another tape-sealed room, which is lost in conversation until Alex remembers the startling announcement. It takes roughly two whole chapters to eventually get into that room. They have a pretty solid reason to get to that room as quickly as possible, because (ROT13) gur cerivbhf frnyrq ebbz fubhyq unir znqr gurz njner bs gur cbffvovyvgl gung gurer zvtug or fbzrbar va gur ebbz jub'f nyvir naq va arrq bs uryc. So their lack of urgency in getting to that room became a little vexing. I'm sure a good editor (Jim?) could trim down or iron that out. Secondly, the book has a three-story floor plan of Carver's Rest, but no floor plans or diagrams for the four locked room-puzzles. Not that diagrams or more floor plans are absolutely necessary, however, they always feel conspicuous by their absence when there's a whole parade of miracle crimes passing by. And there are readers who have trouble picturing such tricks in their mind's eye. My last piece of nitpicking is not so much a flaw as it a limitation.

Carver's The Author is Dead is a mystery reader's detective novel straddling the dividing line between a handful of different periods, styles and subcategories like the Golden Age detective fiction, locked room mysteries, young adult and the Japanese shin honkaku style – particularly resembling its anime-and manga incarnation. So not every single reader is going to fully appreciate, or get, the story as those (specialized) styles and periods don't always have a large, overlapping readership. Someone who decides to pick up the book for its Young Adult template (Enid Blyton gets name checked) would likely find the theorizing and lack of action heavy going, while a reader of Golden Age mysteries is usually not overly familiar with what has been going on in Japan. Such as its anime-and manga versions. When they do, they often find the combination of minors and gruesome murders jarring. So the only readers who'll fully appreciate The Author is Dead are that small collection of batshit basket cases who are so obsessed with locked rooms and impossible crimes, they scour every nook and cranny of the genre to find them. If you have been following this blog, you know what I mean. A sure fire way to lodge your work tightly in the hearts and minds of impossible crime fans, but not every mystery reader is drags a copy of Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) around like a Holy Book or has bookmarked John Pugmire's "A Locked Room Library" ever since it was posted back in 2007.

However, nitpicking aside, I think most will agree the only thing really lacking here is a little bit of trimming and some polish, which is quite an accomplishment for a self-published debuting mystery novelist to the point you can call it prodigious – comparable to Byrnside's Goodnight Irene (2018). There are naturally a couple of flaws and imperfections to be found, but to already have such a tight grasp on a multi-layered, complicated and entangled plot stuffed to the gills with locked room murders, quirky, recognizable characters and meta-clues was a joy to come across in a self-published mystery novel. Hopefully, The Author is Dead won't be the last we'll see from the mysterious "A. Carver."

Even more importantly, my theory of why and how a Second Golden Age is going to take shape is starting to come true. During the late 1990s and 2000s, the internet handed a new and open market place to independent publishers and secondhand book dealers as well as giving easy access to public domain work, which steadily increased the availability of normally hard-to-find or even completely forgotten Golden Age authors and novels. I predicted in the 2000s (wrote about it in 2014) that next would be Renaissance Age of reprints (I was right!) and how that period of rediscovery will come to be seen in the decades ahead as the herald of a Second Golden Age. What I didn't foresaw was the influence of the Japanese detective story, but I'm not complaining. Now we're not yet in the throes of a Second Golden Age. I think we're still in 1912 as the first writers and detective-characters began to emerge from the shadow of Sherlock Holmes, but we're slowly getting there. Mark my words!