77 North (2023) by D.L. Marshall

Last year, I did my best Herodotus impression and wrote up "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century: A Brief Historic Overview of the First Twenty (Some) Years" tracking the changes of everyone's favorite subgenre over the past two decades – evolving into something of a revival. A revival whose seeds were planted by the reprint renaissance and translation wave, which started showing fruit towards the end of the last decade. So far, the harvest has been plentiful and growing.

Just in the past year, locked room and impossible crime fans were treated to James Scott Byrnside's Monkey See, Monkey Murder (2023), A. Carver's The Christmas Miracle Crimes (2023), Anne van Doorn's Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023) and Tom Mead's The Murder Wheel (2023). J.L. Blackhurst's Three Card Murder (2023) and Gigi Pandian's Under Lock & Skeleton Key (2022) and The Raven Thief (2023) are currently residing on the big pile. One of the more intriguing takes today on the traditional detective story and locked room mysteries comes from D.L. Marshall's John Tyler series.

Marshall smashed together the action-packed, 1980s movie thrillers and weaves deceivingly intricate plots throughout the gunfights, standoffs, hand-to-hand combat and betrayals. No matter where on the planet Tyles finds himself, the morally ambiguous mercenary is always confronted with killers who execute their victims under apparently inexplicable circumstances. Anthrax Island (2021) brings Tyler to the post-apocalyptic Gruinard Island contaminated with deadly anthrax spores where the first murder is committed in the locked and watched radio room. Black Run (2021) takes place on an old, rusty Soviet era transport ship filled with modern-day pirates, smugglers and assassins as Tyler's cargo (a prisoner) is knifed to death inside the sealed tank of the ship. Steve, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, called the series "the lovechild of Alistair Maclean and John Dickson Carr." While the impossible crime took a backseat in the second novel, it was still a cracking good read. And looked forward to the third title.

77 North (2023) concludes, what's hopefully, the initial trilogy and wraps up all the ongoing storylines and plot-threads in an unrelenting, action-packed survival thriller – a very clever plot lurking underneath it all. The ending suggests 77 North is not going to be Tyler's last appearance ("one last job"), but a lot happens between the opening and closing pages. Like a lot.

John Tyler is "dead in the eyes of the world" and so has the freedom to move around to extract revenge on the people responsible for killing his older brother, Justin. Tyler takes his bloody vengeance on a world tour as he goes from Rio and the coast of Croatia to Amsterdam to pick off a group of ex-special forces turned private military ("real close-knit team"), which was bound to get him noticed. Tyler is trapped by the man who helped him to die and stay dead. And he needs him to a job. There's a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Golubev, who has setup shop in one of the roughest, most inhospitable parts of Siberia. Somewhere deep into the Arctic Circle, Severnaya Zemlya, stands a Cold War era "hotel" where the KGB experimented with ESP, astral projection and telekinesis. So remote enough to conduct some shady, downright illegal business deals and sales, but Golubev attracted the attention of certain people when he got his hands on a small amount of bioweapons. Normally, those people are not interested in obsolete Soviet weapons, but they are interested in Golubev's bioweapons expert, Professor Balakin, who wants to get out. Professor Balakin is wiling to trade the name of "a Russian double-agent well-placed within NATO" in exchange for a white picket fence in the United States. Only they hit a snag. One of the two agents sent out there was killed under mysterious circumstances. Somehow, the professor knew John Tyler is alive, because he secretly requested Tyler to get him out of there.

This barely touches on all the intricate details, characters and plot-threads of the story's opening pages as Tyler takes the place of the dead undercover agent to get the intel and protect the second agent, Dr. Carr – a legit bioweapons expert. They went to the Arctic hotel undercover of checking out the goods on behalf of General Kayembe, dictator of the central African country Nambutu, who also happens to be a friend of Tyler. So no problem to go down there as the general's man on the ground, but getting to the hotel is an ordeal and sets the tone for the rest of the story. Tyler has to battle both the unforgiving climate ("the Arctic Circle wants you dead, and will try at any opportunity") and creeping, disappearing shape fleeting across the ice shooting at him and leaving behind a burned body. That's just before arriving at the isolated hotel of a Russian arms dealer with a private army who's hosting a who's who of terrorists, cartel members, killers and "probably just a few shady fuckers who wanted big guns."

First of all, the settings is one of the strongest and most attractive part of this mystery-thriller series. John Tyler can be placed in settings and circumstances in a setting that would be off-limits for a "normal" amateur detective or police inspector. For example, I can't imagine Carver's Alex Corby and Cornelia Crow setting foot on Gruinard Island or Byrnside's Rowan Manory getting a fee big enough to board the Tiburon. 77 North does not disappoint in that regard. The place is like a decaying time capsule of the 1970s with portraits of Brezhnev hanging askew on half-collapsed walls with peeling, mustard-yellow wallpaper where Golubev conducts his business. Strewn with relics of the period ("Urbexers or eBay profiteers would have a field day with the kitsch"). But the place also has a "destroyed wing." Decades ago, experiments where carried out there involving psychic and paranormal phenomena to create super soldiers, but one experiment reputedly lead to a deadly fire destroying half the building. This ruined section is sealed off from the rest of the building by a huge steel door ("the kind you'd see on a ship or submarine"). Underneath the old hotel is a nuclear bunker from the Cold War "designed to withstand a two megaton nuclear strike nearby." And with a history like that, the place acquired a ghostly resident. They call the ghost the White Demon or Pozharnyy, "Fire Man," who stalks its dilapidated corridors as a harbinger of doom, death and burned corpses. Great stuff!

The nuclear bunker underneath the hotel naturally becomes the scene for a locked room murder. Tyler is alone with two other people in the sealed bunker when one of them is burned to death, inside a locked section of the bunker, but the relatively small, hermetically bunker had been searched top to bottom – offering no hiding place or escape route for the murderer. And no source of ignition. No our mercenary has a problem with the ruthless arms dealer.

I'm not going to attempt to give you an idea about what happens next as this is only a mere fraction of what goes down during the first half of the story, which is interspersed with flashbacks to Tyler's first time on the job back in 1999 when he joined his brother in Nambutu. And everything is connected to everything.

77 North is first and foremost an first-rate thriller, as intricate as it's exciting, rarely letting up its relentless pace. So while a mystery-thriller, of sorts, it's not a tale of detection or deduction, because the punishing pace and pile-on of incidents, twists and turns simply won't allow for it. However, you're strongly advised to pay attention as the keen eyed armchair detective can pick up enough clues and hints to get a long way towards the correct solution. On top of that, Marshall wonderfully used the melee of the action thriller for some good, old-fashioned trickery and misdirection in a way that would difficult to pull-off in a garden variety murder case. More importantly, this series perfectly demonstrates why having a sound plot and some historical genre awareness is a rock-solid foundation for the characters and story to stand on (*). After all, if this series had been about Tyler simply shooting his way to the final chapter, I would never have bothered with it nor would the series have stood out from the raft of other action-oriented thrillers. Now they are something more than just action-thrillers or locked room mysteries. I suspect genre scholars and locked room fans of the future will look back with great interest to these first three John Tyler novels.

Hopefully, Tyler has enough fuel left in the tank to take on future assignments as I feel the series has not yet ran its course. So much more can be done with those specialized, usually off-limits settings. Something like a black site prison in some jungle outpost where prisoners are killed in locked and guarded cells or a prequel novel with Justin Tyler set during the Yugoslav Wars to give his younger brother a breather. Until then, the Tyler Trilogy comes highly recommended as a truly new and radically different take on the traditional locked room mystery.

*: see my review and comments on Pierre Siniac's Un assassin, ça va, ça vient (Death on Bastille Day, 1981).

Archery and Alibis: "Greenshaw's Folly" (1956) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's short story collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960) reposed on last month's festive to-be-read pile, but didn't get around to it and moved to the 2024 pile – together with the British Library Crime Classics Christmas-themed anthologies. There is, however, one short story from The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding I wanted to get to before the end of this year. A short story I've not read before!

"Greenshaw's Folly" originally appeared in the November 3, 1956, publication of Star Weekly, reprinted in the March, 1957, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding. This short story has a bit of complicated backstory. In 1954, Christie wrote a Hercule Poirot novella, "Greenshore Folly," to help raise funds for her local church, but she decided to rework the novella into Dead Man's Folly (1956). "Greenshaw's Folly," featuring Miss Marple, was written as a replacement for the Hercule Poirot novella. That originally novella was eventually published in a 2014 hardcover edition (Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, 1954). But the Miss Marple short story has an entirely different plot.

The story begins with the author Raymond West ("his books dealt bleakly with the sordid side of life") taking the well-known literary critic, Horace Bindler, to see a place known as Greenshaw's Folly. Bindler's hobby is collecting photographs of architectural monstrosities and Greenshaw's Folly certainly fits the bill. A sprawling, rambling miss-mash of styles erected in the 1800s costing the original Greenshaw a small fortune and "either went bankrupt or the next thing to it" ("hence the name, Greenshaw's Folly"), but a Greenshaw still lives there. The old, very eccentric Miss Katherine Greenshaw. While looking around and snapping pictures, Miss Greenshaw asks West and Bindler to witness her new will. A new will favoring her housekeeper, Mrs. Cresswell. She also tells them in passing she wishes to see her grandfather's old diaries published and West recommends someone to work on the diaries, Louisa Oxley.

So every day, Louisa reports to Raymond West and his aunt, Miss Jane Marple, what's happening at Greenshaw's Folly ("tomorrow another instalment of this thrilling serial"). Miss Marple is very puzzled about one of Miss Greenshaw's remarks, "if you want to know the time, ask a policeman," drawing a comparison to a certain Mr. Naysmith – who kept bees and liked to fool people ("...sometimes it led to trouble"). But everyone at the table "decided that dear Aunt Jane was perhaps getting a little bit disconnected in her old age," until the murder happened.

Louisa Oxley is working in the library, on the first floor, she hears a scream from the garden and sees Miss Greenshaw staggering towards the house with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of her breast. She can't go down to help, because someone had locked her in. Mrs. Cresswell is locked inside an adjacent room. So they have to wait for the police to arrive to begin their hunt for the murderer, but the three suspects, nephew, gardener and housekeeper, who have a motive also possess perfectly acceptable alibis. So it's up to Miss Marple to play ("...murder, dear Raymond, isn't a game") armchair detective and explain who killed Miss Greenshaw. But is it any good?

"Greenshaw's Folly" has been called "a genuine tale of pure mystery" and I agree for the most part, but it was written after Christie had produced her last great detective novel (After the Funeral, 1954) and right before the steady decline in quality. In this short story, you can see some of Christie's strengths has already began to wane as she recycled and patched together a ton of old ideas and tricks. However, the Agatha Christie of the 1930s and '40s was waning, en route to the Swinging Sixties, but not entirely gone as she certainly didn't phone it in. Christie's treatment of those old ideas and tricks felt fresh and even somewhat original in how they were presented and put to excellent use. It perhaps needed to be slightly longer to be fully effective, but, in every other regard, a good, solidly-plotted detective story from Christie's last strong period.

A note for the curious: "Greenshaw's Folly" is listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but it's not an impossible crime story. It's a classic alibi-breaker closer to Christopher Bush than John Dickson Carr.

Q.E.D. X-MAS/NEW YEAR SPECIAL: "Christmas Eve Eve" (vol. 24) and "The Drama Murder Case" (One-Shot Special)

Back in March, I reviewed Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 24 and springtime was either too late or too early to fully enjoy the seasonally-themed first story of the volume, "Christmas Eve Eve" – promising to revisit it in December. I intended to do this Q.E.D. XMAS Special earlier in the month, but plans rarely follow the plan on this blog. There's still a day, or so, left to tidy up some odds and ends before closing the book on 2024.

I definitely enjoyed "Christmas Eve Eve" a lot more the second time around. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara take a part-time job at a karaoke bar to earn extra money to buy Christmas presents, but they end up playing Santa's Little Helpers in gumshoes helping to clear up some little, everyday problems and minor crimes plaguing the people working at the karaoke bar.

Hagio Youko is the owner of the karaoke bar and a friend of Kana Mizuhara, who are both professional wrestling fans, but she currently breaking up with her boyfriend and manager, Tokunaga Tsutomu. Youko's friends had seen Tsutomu on a date with another woman and they overheard discussing marriage. Tsutomu flatly denies the accusation, but who's right? Iguchi Yuzou is another, older part-timer who had been released from his old job after the company downsized and took a part-time job at the karaoke bar to buy his son a video game for Christmas. And then his wallet disappears. Presumably stolen. So has that anything to do with other strange incidents? At the time, there are only eight groups of customers, but nine rooms are occupied and the ones in charge of registrations at the counter are Youko and another part-time college student, Fujimura Misataka – who both deny responsibility for having made a possible mistake. There are muddy shoe prints on the office floor apparently belonging to someone who came in from the outside. So are there trespassers and thieves sneaking through karaoke bar lifting wallets and leaving muddy prints?

So while all relatively minor problems and small incidents, tensions and tempers begin to flare as they begin to pile on. Just when everybody begins to lose their minds and yelling at each other, Sou Touma returns from handing out flyers as Santa Claus (see pic below). And immediately is pushed to play armchair detective to clear up the whole mess. One by one, Touma explains all the incidents ensuring everyone can go home happy to celebrate Christmas with their loved one.

 

 

"Christmas Eve Eve" is one of those very light, character-driven slice-of-life mysteries perfectly suitable for a Christmas-themed story. Not the best or most memorable story in the series, but nice enough for what it is.

The second story I decided to discuss in this Q.E.D. special twofer is "The Drama Murder Case," a special one-shot story to commemorate the TV drama, which I had been warned about was going to be a really weird story. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara film "a thorough report on the behind the scenes happenings for a TV drama" on behalf of the Sakisaka High School Broadcasting Club. During the backstage tour, they find the body of the chief producer, Arakawa Noriichirou, under utterly bizarre circumstances. Arakawa Noriichirou is wearing a bald wig, helmet and a traditionally hakama holding a comb and an old-fashioned, matchlock rifle hanging around his neck. And he had been strangled to death with the strap on the rifle. Even stranger is that all the suspects share exactly the same motive as the victim loved to make atrocious, overly elaborate puns. The kind of bad puns that land with all the impact of a crossbow bolt smacking into your eardrums.

Believe it or not, the solution is even more ridiculous and far-fetched, but suppose that was the intention. Just an amusing, quick little one-shot not meant to be taken seriously nor to be considered official canon. And, to be fair, some of the fun and humor was definitely lost in translation. I'm sure "The Drama Murder Case' is funnier in Ja-pun-ese. ;)

So that rounds out 2023. I wish you all a very happy, healthy 2024 and hope to see you all back in January!

At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof (1937) by Zoë Johnson

Zoë Johnson was a British author of only two detective novels, At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof (1937) and Mourning After (1939), but then she stopped writing and disappeared into obscurity as her "books fell out of print and were forgotten" – until a few years ago. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, reviewed the book in 2021, "made me grin in admiration," ending with a wish to see it reprinted. Moonstone Press got the hint and reissued Johnson's long-forgotten mystery novel just two years later.

John Norris warned in his review "Johnson has dared to flout the tacit and written rules of detective fiction" with "a solution that defies all those conventions." In principle, I've no problem with breaking the rules or upturning conventions, but it comes with a big but. I'm with Anthony Boucher that the rules of the detective story can be broken, twisted and subverted, but, to do it successfully, it requires a mystery writer who understands and respects them in the first place. Zoë Johnson seems to have been a knowledgeable mystery fan first and author second as she pokes fun at everything from Conan Doyle, Edgar Wallace and the British village mysteries of the 1930s to the fictitious detective in all their guises. So a very amusing and imaginative rule breaker, but a tricky one to discuss. Let's give it a shot.

Larcombe is a small fishing village, "off the beaten track," standing at the head of a lonely promontory and pretty much isolated by a valley, moor, cliffs and devious, ill-kept country lanes. The Clove and Hoof is the local pub where the villages and fishermen come to drink, share stories and gossip. The arrival of a big, red-faced man in Larcombe opens the door to rampant speculation, "there'd never been such a hubbub over one topic since 1918," because the Stranger is rumored to be a detective from London – a detective who seemed to have a special interest in the unlikable vicar. So everyone expected to wake up one morning to the news Rev. Ernest Pratt had been hauled away in chains, but not that he had been found shot at the bottom of a cliff. And the Stranger is nowhere to be found. Inspector Percy Blutton is tasked with finding the vicar's murderer among the strange, colorful and eccentric villagers and fishermen who frequent the The Clove and Hoof.

There were footprints and marks at the crime scene indicating the vicar had struggled with two, possibly three men and one of them must have had a wooden leg. And there's only one man in Larcombe with a wooden leg, Captain John-Thomas Ridd. A true character, "like an illustrated joke in Punch," who has "a wooden leg, a black patch over his left eye and his dress was cut in an out-moded, sea-faring mould." Ridd is very popular with the locals and the odd summer visitor entertaining them at the Clove and Hoof with tall tales of "Sea Serpents, pirates, treasure-trove, sharks, smugglers, octopuses and duels with cutlasses." Ridd is not the only local oddity. Lionel Gedling is an old eccentric curmudgeon and nervous recluse who lives in a big, rundown house with his servant, Costigan. Old Sebastian Hannabus runs a small antique shop and jack-of-all-trades from trapping rabbits and taxidermy to repairing clocks and relieving the British healthcare system ("...he'd pull out a bad tooth for sixpence"). Dick Bowle is the aging, bedridden tobacconist who wears a bowler hat even in bed to cover his bald head. Bert Yeo is the mountainous, immovable owner of the Clove and Hoof, but a sudden change has come over him ever since the Stranger arrived and mysteriously disappeared.

Finally, there's the best and most memorable character, Christian Peascod. An artist, poet, lover and self-appointed amateur detective who has studied "the works of Bailey, Doyle, Van Dine, Roger East, Freeman, Wills and Croft, and the Misses Sayers and Christie" – combined with a training in Speculative Philosophy at Oxford. Just like John noted in his review, Peascod dominates whenever he appears and a shame he's likely a one-and-done deal. A list of potential suspects and witnesses comprising of characters escaped from the pages of Lewis Carroll or J.M. Berry story is not the only complication for Inspector Blutton. A poison pen writer is sending out threatening letters in blue water color like they are birthday party invitations ("the real Penny Dreadful touch, what?"), while simultaneously someone is pulling a string of bizarre pranks with dead fish, air guns and a metronome. When a severed head is dragged from a pool, the Chief Constable calls in Scotland Yard. That brings in the third detective, Detective-Sergeant Plumper. A very promising, up-and-coming officer who's "somewhat unorthodox in manner and method." So quite the opposite of the much more plodding Blutton.

So, conventionally-sounding enough, but, after this point, At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof starts to live a life of its own away from the beaten track. And impossible to discuss the plot any further. But there are one, or two, things that deserve to be highlighted.

Firstly, I enjoy the case-for-three-detectives structure and always find it a pleasure to come across one, especially from this period of time. The best examples are Ronald A. Knox's The Three Taps (1927), Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) and the fairly recently translated La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932) by Michel Herbert & Eugène Wyl. All take a satirical approach, one way or another, to lampoon the detective story, the detective character or both, but it gives room to something criminally underused to this day. Namely rival detectives. A good, well-drawn rival detective can liven up a detective story more than padding out the murderer's bodycount. So having three detectives is a party, but these case-for-three-detectives novels also tend to be excellent detective stories in their own right making them so much more than just parodies. Now the solution is where Johnson differs a little from Bruce and Knox, but more on that in a minute. Secondly, while the second-half of the novel is better read than discussed, it should be noted it's littered with great and memorable scenes. Such as the siege of Old Barton "throughout the ghostly hours of early morning" or the press descending on the village with their screaming headlines ("Hell Let Loose in Quaint Village," "Work of Secret Society?" "Who Next?") and sensational write-ups ("this quaint picture-village has become a ghastly charnel-house"). Just fun from start to finish. What about the ending, you ask?

In the hands of a less talented writer, At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof would have fallen flat on its face at the end. Something that should have been deadly dull as it brazenly thumbs its nose at the rules and conventions of the day, but Johnson got away with it based on nothing more than barefaced cheek, a ton of charm and being relentlessly entertaining throughout. Johnson intended to have some fun and she even got a plot purist, like myself, to go along with it. No mean feat! So I'll keep my fingers crossed Moonstone Press gets an opportunity to reprint Mourning After next.

A note for the curious: I was wondering where Zoë Johnson fits on the family tree of mystery writers. It's tempting to pigeonhole her with the British satirists like Bruce or Edmund Crispin, but, based solely on this novel, Johnson had a radically different approach to the traditional detective story. So maybe Johnson was something of an isolated phenomenon like the incomparable Gladys Mitchell, but then it struck me. At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof reads like one of E.R. Punshon's own unorthodox detective novels, e.g. Diabolic Candelabra (1942) and The Conqueror Inn (1943). Just an afterthought. Anyway, I'll probably pick something light and short to close out the year.

Murder in Retrospect: The Best and Worst of 2023

 

 

Since 2020, these years roundups acquired a depressing undertone and I'm afraid this year is no exception as Rupert Heath, of Dean Street Press, died on March 6 of heart failure – aged only 54. Curt Evans announced the news on his blog, "Death of a Publisher," before an official email confirmed DSP was getting shut down. Only the last five scheduled Moray Dalton reprints were published in April, but Heath and DSP left behind an indelible mark on the genre and gave the reprint renaissance the momentum it needed back in 2015.

John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, had to dial it back his publications due to health issues and Black Heath stopped altogether in February. Black Heath was not exactly a quality publisher, but sometimes reissued some interesting novels and authors like Harriette Ashbrook, Nicholas Brady and James Quince. On the upside, Moonstone Press is planning to reprint James Ronald and Pushkin Vertigo is going to add a lot more Japanese titles to their catalog in 2024. Starting with Akimitsu Takagi's Noumen satsujin jiken (The Noh Mask Murder, 1949) and Seishi Yokomizo's Akuma no temari uta (The Little Sparrow Murders, 1957/59) coming in the first-half of next year Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960) and Yukito Ayatsuji's Meirokan no satsujin (The Labyrinth House Murders, 1988) coming towards the end of the year. The BBB is currently serializing MORI Hiroshi's Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), which should be available as a complete ebook sometime early next year. This comes in addition to more vintage reprints and anthologies from the British Library and American Mystery Classics on top of brand new novels from Anne van Doorn, P. Dieudonné, Tom Mead and, hopefully, James Scott Byrnside and A. Carver. So not too bad, if you share my taste in detective fictions.

This year, I played genre historian and put together "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century: A Brief Historic Overview of the First Twenty (Some) Years." I also tried my hands several top 10 lists, but always try to go for an unusual theme and unexpected picks. Such as a "Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels," "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25" and "Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated."

Before we hand over another year to the history books, it's time for the yearly roundup of best, and worst, detective novels and short stories encountered in 2023 and what a mess this list threatened to become – coming close to scrapping it altogether. I finally managed to tidy everything up, but had to whittle down the list considerably and cutting the likes of Norman Berrow and Philip Kerr. However, I think the list is now presentable and a little different from previous years. The locked room and impossible crime story is, as to be expected, very well represented, but a surprising amount of rereads made the list this year. No wonder I was struggling to find titles for the worst-of section. I revisited a lot of old favorites this year without really noticing. Another trend worth pointing out is the growing number of detective novels, published in the past five years, that make the cut. A second Golden Age really is in the air!

So, with all of that out of the way, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2024. Now let's go down the list in chronological order.

 

THE BEST DETECTIVE NOVELS:

House of Fear (1916) by Wadsworth Camp

A surprisingly good, if somewhat dated, detective from the dawn of the Golden Age and the grandfather of the ever popular theatrical mystery novel. The setting is dark, decaying theater reputedly haunted by the ghost of an actor who died on stage and his phantom cat. First rate stuff for 1916!

 

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20) by Agatha Christie (a reread)

Christie's debut is a diamond-in-the-rough, lacking only in subtlety and polish, but bubbled with ideas and promise for the future. One of the better debuts in the genre!

 

The Wrong Letter (1926) by Walter S. Masterman

Another surprisingly good debut and a better than average 1920s locked room mystery with a solution that was somewhat innovative for the time. There were a couple of other novel from the period playing with similar ideas, which showed the genre was moving away from the Doylean era.

 

Death Walks in Eastrepps (1931) by Francis Beeding

A vintage mystery-thriller that holds up today, even if the passage of time dulled the twist at the end. In every other way, it's an excellent, early serial killer novel showing the effects such an individual can have on a small community.

 

La nuit du 12 au 13 (The Night of the 12th-13th, 1931) by S.A. Steeman

Steeman was a mystery novelist with a ton of original ideas that fueled the French detective story during the 1930s. This is easily the best Steeman novel I've read and another sign the detective story had entered its Golden Age.

 

The Hanging Captain (1932) by Henry Wade

Wade is one of those once famous, but now underappreciated and often overlooked Golden Age mystery writers, but he was a mystery novelist of the first rank. The Hanging Captain has all his skill and talent on display. More importantly, it earned extra points in my book for indulging in the criminally underused trope of the rivaling detectives.

 

Five to Five (1934) by D. Erskine Muir

A rock solid detective novel applying the skill of the mystery novelist to a sordid, real-life crime and showing what could have happened if a competent inspector had been in charge of the Oscar Slater Case.

 

Thou Shell of Death (1936) by Nicholas Blake (a reread)

So much better than I remembered and remembering bits and pieces of solution, I could only sit back and admire how Blake rigged up a grand deception. As good as the best from his better remembered contemporaries.

 

Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce (a reread)

One of my all-time favorite detective novels! Simultaneously being a hilarious parody and perceptive pastiche of the genre crammed with rivaling detectives, false-solutions and faked alibis. A gem from the Golden Age!

 

The Whistling Hangman (1937) by Baynard Kendrick (a reread)

One of my two favorite titles from this strange series standing on the borderlands between comics, pulps and the traditional detective story. In this novel, the blind Captain Duncan Maclain tackles two impossible murders at a New York residential hotels. Deserves to be reprinted!

 

Curtain (c. 1940/75) by Agatha Christie (a reread)

The last of the Hercule Poirot novels, written during the Second World War in case the worst happened, but the book so much more than the series nest egg. A serial killer story bringing a sickly, wheelchair-bound Poirot back the scene of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and pitted against subtle sadist who perfected the art of murder. A grand farewell performance from the most celebrated mystery writer and her famous creation!

 

You'll Die Laughing (1945) by Bruce Elliott

A short, fast-paced and imaginative pulp-style locked room minor and a minor classic of the form, back in print since 2006, but continues to fly under everyone's radar.

 

Subject—Murder (1945) by Clifford Witting

A classic of the British World War II mystery novel with a long prelude, a comedy drama ending in tragedy, but when it happens, it happens with the harsh, brutal justice of the Dark Ages and all the ingenuity of the Golden Age.

 

Suddenly at His Residence (1946) by Christianna Brand (a reread)

This is perhaps Brand's most conventional take on the detective story, apparently ticking all the boxes, but underneath the clichés and tropes is a first-rate mystery that can be tested against the best by Carr and Christie. Amazingly, it's not even her second or third best novel nor even the fourth or fifth! Brand simply was one of the best!

 

The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949) by Hampton Stone

A better than average second-stringer, or mid-tier, detective novel. Solidly plotted with a good solution complimented and strengthened by a motive arising from a very specific set of circumstances. Perhaps not the best title on this list, but I enjoyed it.

 

Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (The Devil's Flute Murders, 1951/53) by Seishi Yokomizo

The latest translation from Yokomizo's famous Kosuke Kindaichi series by Pushkin Vertigo presenting a human tragedy as a detective story, a locked room murder included, in which the truth comes at a hefty prize. I eagerly look forward to the next translation coming next year.

 

The Caves of Steel (1953/54) by Isaac Asimov (a reread)

A masterpiece of the science-fiction and detective genres, but, purely as a detective novel, I consider it to be one of the most important detective novels from the second-half of the previous century. A detective novel for the future demonstrating that even the presence of highly advanced, futuristic is no excuse for a weak or non-existent plotting.

 

The Case of the Dead Man Gone (1961) by Christopher Bush

I had to include a Christopher Bush title and while it has a smudge, or two, it's still miles ahead of what was becoming fashionable at the time. Bush tried and mostly succeeded in preserving the essential of the classical detective story in his sleek, trimmed down 1960s mysteries.

 

The Killing of Katie Steelstock (1980) by Michael Gilbert

A classically-styled, updated take on the quintessential British village mystery in the deceiving guise of what appears to be a fairly typical, 1980s police procedural.

 

Face Value (1983) by Roger Ormerod

This could, arguably, be the best traditionally-styled detective novel produced in the West during the 1980s. A stunningly original and daring mystery novel giving the reader a glimpse of what the Golden Age detective novel could have evolved into had been allowed to develop pass the 1950s.

 

Suishakan no satsujin (The Mill House Murders, 1988) by Yukito Ayatsuji

The eagerly anticipated sequel to Ayatsuji's epoch-making novel, Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987), which superbly weaves complex patterns out of sheer simplicity. Fortunately, the publication of The Labyrinth House Murders is only a few months away!

 

Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996) by MORI Hiroshi

 A seminal novel for the second wave of shin honkaku couching the neo-orthodox plots of the first wave in highly specialized environments or subject matters. In this case, an isolated computer research institute. Not the best detective novel Japan has produced over the past forty years, but still very good and fascinating to compare it to the works of "NisiOisiN" and Motohiro Katou.

 

Crucified (2008) by Michael Slade

An excellent, somewhat gory mystery-thriller in which the archaeological discovery of a lost WWII-era Allied bomber leads to the discovery of a long buried, seemingly impossible murder of the rear gunner. The wreck of a sealed submarine offers a second historical locked room mystery.

 

Gallows Court (2018) by Martin Edwards

A tremendously enjoyable, pulp-style thriller that introduces a retro-Golden Age mystery series, starring Rachel Savernake, from the Nestor of the Golden Age Renaissance, Martin Edwards. You can expect reviews of Mortmain Hall (2020) and Blackstone Fell (2022) next year.

 

Magan no hako no satsujin (Death Within the Evil Eye, 2019) by Masahiro Imamura

I called the first novel in this series a shock to the system and this second novel the calm after the story, but the problem of inescapable prophesy of the future is nothing to sneeze at. Hopefully, we can expect a translation of the third novel sometime next year. Fingers crossed!

 

The Paradise Affair (2021) by Bill Pronzini

Possibly, the final title in the series in which John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter finally tied the marital knot, but work goes on and they end up solving a locked room murder with a dying message in Honolulu, Hawaii. If this is their last recorded case, Pronzini gave them a happy sendoff that retrospectively brightened Beyond the Grave (1986).

 

The English Garden Mystery (2022) by Dan Andriacco

A homage to the mystery writing cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, a.k.a. “Ellery Queen,” covering everything from a subtitle (“A Problem in Deduction”) to the Queenian tropes of the dying message, false-solutions, fallible detective and a challenge to the reader. Andriacco apparently also penned a locked room mystery (Holmes Sweet Holmes, 2012) that I'll get to next year.

 

Monkey See, Monkey Murder (2023) by James Scott Byrnside

The fourth novel in the Rowan Manory series and the first to probe the hardboiled underbelly of a prohibition-era Chicago, but not without throwing the 1920s gumshoe a locked room murder to chew on. What a locked room murder! One of the more bizarre impossible crimes I've come across in a while!

 

The Christmas Miracle Crimes (2023) by A. Carver

Have you ever noticed how many Christmas mysteries only feature Christmas incidentally? Carver noticed and decided to write a genuine Christmas mystery crammed like an overflowing sack of presents with seasonal miracles and magic. I'm sure this one will go down in history as an early highlight of the locked room and impossible crime revival. Carver shows what can be done when building on your genre's rich, stories history instead of dismissing it.

 

Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023) by P. Dieudonné

This series has the deceiving, outward appearance of a Dutch politieroman, which are hardly known for their plot complexity, but Dieudonné fixed that problem. And the newest addition to the series impressively tiptoes across an particularly slippery tightrope of a plot without tripping.

 

Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023) by Anne van Doorn

The first entry in the New York Cops series, written in Dutch, but an English translation is in the works and hopefully it will be published before too long, because the story is excellent. A cleverly constructed locked room mystery set in a modern-day skyscraper and snugly fits into the tradition of S.S. van Dine, Anthony Abbot, Herbert Resnicow and Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. Just penned by a Dutchman!

 

The Murder Wheel (2023) by Tom Mead

A tremendous improvement over Death and the Conjuror (2022) with the third impossibility, a body materializing out of thin air, lives up to his growing reputation as a modern-day champion of the locked room mystery. Although I think Mead has so far shown a far more skilled hand when it comes to crafting and dovetailing intricate, GAD-style whodunits than Carr-like miracle problems. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to see what Mead is going to do with my hobby horse in Cabaret Carnival (2024).

THE BEST SHORT STORIES AND SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:

Short Story Collections:

The Name is Malone (1958) by Craig Rice

London's Glory (2015) by Christopher Fowler

The Adventures of the Puzzle Club and Other Stories (2022) by Ellery Queen and Josh Pachter

Short Stories:

"Lars Blom" ("Lars Blom and His Disappearing Gun," 1857/63) by August Blanche

"Le mystére de la chambre verte" ("The Mystery of the Green Room," 1936) by Pierre Véry

"“Who Killed Matthew Corbin?" (1939/40) by John Dickson Carr

"The Name on the Window" (1951) by Edmund Crispin

"Tall Story" (1954) by Margery Allingham

"The Glass Room" (1957) by Morton Wolson (reviewed together with "Tall Story")

"The Locked Roomette" (1990) by William Bankier

"The Burglar Who Dropped In On Elvis" (1990) by Lawrence Block

"The King's Writ" (2017) by Paul Doherty

THE WORST DETECTIVE NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES:

Novels:

The Toledo Dagger (1927) by Robert Brennan

I'm convinced Ronald Knox had a copy of The Toledo Dagger on his desk when he compiled "The Ten Commendmants for Detective Fiction" in 1929. This is the kind of third-rate, bottom-of-the-barrel cliched tripe that could actually damage to the genre had it not been so obscure. Only read it if you're looking for an excuse to be pissed about something.

 

Death Against Venus (1946) by Dana Chambers

Chambers was a better writer than Brennan, but only marginally better as a plotter as this promising story ended up being an unimpressive, tangled mess and not long-forgotten classic I was hoping to find. I suppose they can't all be rediscovered gems or alternative classics.

 

Key Without a Door (1988) by Anthony Lejeune

Another novel that began promising enough with a man in pajamas vanishing from the doorstep of his London home, but turned into a boring, uninspired thriller after only three chapters. Just like with his first novel, Mr. Diabolo (1960), there's a gaping gap between the author's aspirations and delivery.

Short Stories:

"Peacock's Cry" (2016) by Paul Doherty (reviewed together with "The King's Writ")

The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated

This list was originally supposed to be a follow-up to last years "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Detective Novels That Need to Be Reprinted," a lengthy list of reprint suggestions of frustratingly rare, long out-of-print mystery novels, but "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Non-English Detective Novels That Need to be Translated" proved to be trickier than anticipated – limited to what I happen to know is tucked away behind numerous language barriers. So, in order to have given the list a semblance of substance, it would have been mostly French and Japanese mysteries with a handful of Dutch novels in a desperate attempt to conjure up the illusion of variety.

It would have ended up being a poorly done, overwritten copy-paste of Ho-Ling Wong's blog and John Pugmire's "A Locked Room Library." That would have been a cop-out. I hate cop-outs when it comes to detective stories. So what's a hack reviewer to do? Well, I took a hacksaw to the idea, completely butchered it and present whatever remained as one of those blistering original top 10 list. Why ring in the New Year with short, tidy list of suggestions for the future.

I think it actually worked as it didn't become a badly disguised, personal wishlist of locked room mysteries with a greater variety and more depth to the selection. A list covering detective novels from four different continents written in six different languages, but there are some notable absentees. I, too, wish and pray a brave publisher would dare to take on the daunting task of translating Nikaido Reito's complete, multi-volume Jinrojo no kyofu (The Terror of Werewolf Castle, 1996/98), but wanted to give ten choices with a somewhat realistic chance of getting translated. Unfortunately, I don't think "the world's longest classic detective novel" is realistically going to appear in English anytime soon. And, exactly for the opposite reason, I ignored many of the French titles on the previously mentioned "A Locked Room Library." John Pugmire's Locked Room International has that part of my wishlist covered. So it's only a matter of time, before LRI publishes an English translation of Pierre Véry's Les quatre vipères (The Four Vipers, 1934) or Jean Alessandrini's La malédiction de Chéops (The Curse of Cheops, 1989).

So, if you wondered why some obvious choices are absent, now you know. However, I would still like to hear your (local) suggestions. This list is limited to what has come to my attention over the years, but obviously missed a ton of stuff that I'm simply not aware of. If there are enough of them, I can do "The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated, Part 2" with all of your suggestions. Let me know. And with that out of the way, let's go down the list.

 

La notte impossible (The Impossible Night, 1937) by Tito A. Spagnol

In 2019, Locked Room International published a translation of Franco Vailati's Il mistero dell'idrovolante (The Flying Boat Mystery, 1935) and came with a short essay by Igor Longo discussing "The Italian Mystery Novel." Longo briefly goes over the history of the Italian detective story and some of its most successful or important writers. One name standing out is that of screenwriter Tito A. Spagnol, "the fourth ace of the Italian Hand," who was among the Italian mystery writers inspired by S.S. van Dine and Ellery Queen – creating a Van Dinesque detective, Al Gusman. Longo highlighted The Impossible Night as a "novel of murder in a closed mansion with a strong Queenian flavour" and "the only use of this very original trick in novel form." One of the "Italian masterpieces of murder and detection." Despite what the book title suggests, The Impossible Night is not a locked room mystery ("...Gusman solved no impossible cases").

 

Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Killer, 1939) by Pierre Boileau

This is one of the most famous and celebrated of all French roman policiers. Not to mention a classic of the locked room mystery, which strings together half a dozen seemingly impossible murders and disappearances ("...resolved with impeccable fairness by the time of the sixth and final death"). Annoyingly, the novel has this pesky French habit of refusing to speak any other language and has been resisting getting translated for decades. Rumor has it Six crimes sans assassin had been translated, but The Phantom Strikes Six Times remained unpublished. I presume the translation dates from around the same time as the original French publication and that could mean the outbreak of World War II could have been responsible for it getting axed. More recently, John Pugmire attempted to correct that historical oversight, but the current copyright holder apparently refuses to work with print-on-demand publishers. So... ball's in your court, Pushkin Vertigo!

 

Un muerto en la tumba (A Dead Man in the Tomb, 1946) by Rafeal Bernal

I first read of Rafeal Bernal's A Dead Man in the Tomb in The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47 (2009) praising this Mexican detective novel as "the best-characterized, meatiest and funniest whodunit yet produced in Latin America" – complete with "fascinating sidelights on archaeology and politics." The story centers on a murder unearthed in an ancient Mayan tomb at Monte Albán, Oaxaca, solved by the priest Teódulo Batanes. A character modeled after G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. I want a translation of A Dead Man in the Tomb more than any other novel on this list, because I love a good archaeological detective story and a glowing review from Boucher ("a must for connoisseurs") can be taken as a Seal of Quality. Just one more, Pushkin Vertigo!

 

Um crime branco (White Murder, 1950) by “James A. Marcus”

On the GADWiki, you can find an early, short-lived attempt to catalog the classical detective fiction published in non-English speaking countries. Henrique Valle contributed a short piece, "Portuguese GAD," discussing the most important authors who tried their hands at the classical detective story in Portugal. One title that stood out to me is White Murder. The name on the cover is the shared "pseudonym of two cousins with diabolical legal minds" who constructed an amazingly cunning, maze-like plot with "one of the most compelling and convincing pieces of detective reasoning" that could "pass for an excellent GAD British mystery book."

 

Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) by Cor Docter

Cor Docter was a Dutch pulp writer whose prolific output, published under various pseudonyms, were the backbone of the local bookstores and lending libraries throughout the 1950s and '60s – earning the title "Prince of the Lending Libraries." During the early 1970s, Docter wrote three legitimate, classically-styled detective novels respectively tackling the whodunit, impossible crime and dying message. The first novel, Droeve poedel in Delfshaven (Sad Poodle in Delfshaven, 1970) is arguably the best of the three Commissioner Daan Vissering mysteries, but Cold Woman in Kralingen holds a special place in my heart as the first legitimate Dutch-language locked room mystery. More importantly, the locked room situation is completely original in both presentation and solution. Something I've never seen before or since reading Cold Woman in Kralingen. But they really should be translated and published as a complete set.

A note for the curious: Ho-Ling has also reviewed all three Daan Vissering novels (here, here and here).

 

11 mai no trump (The Eleven Cards, 1976) by Tsumao Awasaka

I can easily fill pages, and pages, with Japanese detective novels I would like to see get translated, but, once again, it would just be a copy-paste of Ho-Ling Wong's blog. There is, however, one particular title that has always intrigued me. Tsumao Awasaka's The Eleven Cards immerses the reader in the world of magicians, stage illusions and the art of misdirection with a story-within-a-short-story-collection structure. Ho-Ling called it "an ingeniously plotted mystery novel" and "a showcase of how to properly clue a mystery." Amazingly, The Eleven Cards was only Awasaka's first detective novel. So a translation can't appear (as if by magic) soon enough!

 

Muerte en la costa del rio (Death on the River Bank, 1979) by María Angélica Bosco

María Angélica Bosco, an Argentinian mystery writer, proved with La muerte baja en al ascensor (Death Going Down, 1954) that not every debut is a classic, but some mystery writers need time to improve and mature. One of her later, so far untranslated mysteries sounds rather promising. Death on the River Bank takes place in Colonia, Uruguay, where a group of tourists on a boating holiday become suspects in a shocking murder. A murder case full with twisted alibis, forensic shenanigans and a genuine whodunit pull.

 

Tobie or not Tobie (1980; title is a bilingual pun) by René Réouven

Back in 2011, Patrick, of the now dormant At the Scene of the Crime blog, posted a fascinating review of René Réouven's Tobie or not Tobie. A novel taking "the Biblical Book of Tobit and rewrites it as a mystery" and "even manages to construct the mystery around an impossible crime." While the story takes it time to build everything up, the plot is reportedly solidly constructed with a wonderful solution to the impossible crime and "great wit and originality," stylistically. Patrick called it a veritable masterpiece and from all the untranslated French mysteries, Tobie or not Tobie always impressed as one of the most worthwhile novels to translate.

 

De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) by M.P.O. Books

The Last Chance is the classically-styled, normally British detective novel presented as a Dutch politieroman (police novel) with a dazzling, kaleidoscopic plot and one of those brilliant, all-revealing, but cleverly hidden, tell-tale clues. A high note for the Dutch detective story. Ho-Ling also reviewed The Last Chance ("a recommended read as a fun detective novel that actually delivers") and interestingly compared its story-structure to the "zapping system" in video games. A translation is more than warranted.

 

John Dickson Carr no saishuu teiri (John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem, 2020) by Hajime Tsukatou

Well, it was inevitable another Japanese title would appear on this list, but the problem, once again, was picking just one title from the sea of honkaku and shin honkaku mysteries. So decided to go full fanboy and picked Hajime Tsukatou's John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem, which is set during the 2006 centenary of the master of the locked room mystery and Ho-Ling described a truly fascinating premise – centering on cryptic hints Carr left behind about some real-life, unsolved impossible crimes ("the so-called 1938 East End Spontaneous Combustion Case"). Naturally, there's another impossible murder in the present-day storyline. I would unapologetically fanboy all over a translation of John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem.

 

A special and honorable mentions: I already mentioned the non-English detective fiction page on the GADWiki and one of its four entries is "Japanese Impossible Crime Mysteries" that also includes a list of Taiwanese impossible crime and locked room novels and short stories, which sometimes sound too good to be true. For example, Ji-Cing's Sorcery Delusion (2004), "a story full of black magic," deals with a headless body who's seen walking about and a disappearance from a locked house. Or Ling-Che's short story, "The Haunted Crossroad" (20??), in which a speeding motorcycle and a car "miraculous pass through each other." So much is still out there to keep the translation wave going for many more years to come as we inch closer towards that Second Golden Age.