"He's
making a list, checking it twice
Gonna
find out who's naughty or nice."
- Santa
Claus is Coming to Town
Once
again, a year has come and gone! So that means the time has come to
officially close this year of blogging with my traditional best-and
worst-of list of the past twelve months, which is are now six in
total. Actually, there are seven of them, but that's because my best
and worst of 2013 were done as separate blog-posts. I came across
enough clunkers that year that a separate list was in order, but why
not precede this new end-of-the-year list with a quick rundown of
precious best-lists. You know, to pad out this blog-post as much as
possible.
THE
BEST/WORST OF 2011-2015:
So,
here is without further ado, the best and worst of 2016.
THE
BEST MYSTERIES READ IN 2016:
So
far, this has to be one of my favorite mystery novels about that "trio of lads," which employed a host of classical
plot-devices: a hidden object puzzle, a locked room problem and even
a dying message. All of this made for a surprisingly cerebral, but
rewarding, entry in this series of juvenile mystery and adventure
stories.
Koto
Pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989) by Alice
Arisugawa
The
latest translation from one of our very own, Ho-Ling
Wong, who brought one of the landmark novels of Japan's
neo-orthodox era (shin honkaku) to the English-speaking world.
And it has all the hallmarks of the classic mystery novel: an
isolated island, where a treasure has been hidden by the previous
owner, which leads to a double murder inside a locked bedroom and
several additional deaths – one of them involving an obliterated
dying message! A handsomely and expertly dressed plate of
puzzle-clues, hidden treasure and impossible crimes. What's there not
to like?
A
deceptively quaint village mystery, concerning the poisoning by
arsenic of a retired electrical engineer, who dies a painful and
messy death, but, as one would expects from the author, this is not
entirely an ordinary whodunit. One that puts a great deal of emphasis
on the characterization and psychology of the cast of characters.
However, there's also a EQ-style "Challenge to the Readers"
towards the end of the book, which asks several pertinent questions
and asks the reader if they think the story contained a "Dominant
Clue." If only more modern, character-and psychology driven
crime-writers were like Berkeley!
The
seventh and penultimate novel in the wonderful Sgt. Beef series and
this time the client of the former village constable, now a
consulting detective, is none other than his personal and
long-suffering biographer, Lionel Townsend – whose aunt has been
poisoned with a fatal dose of morphine. Sgt. Beef tackles the case
with his accustomed enthusiasm, boorishness and an alarming shortage
of tact. But, as usual, Beef comes out on top and ties this case
together with an, apparently, unconnected murder of a hated
publisher. Neck and Neck is simply another solid example as to
why I love this series so much.
I
had to add this one on its strength as an original
howdunit/impossible crime novel: Sir Wilfred Saxonby bribed a train
guard with a one-pound note to find him a first-class carriage he
could have to himself and locked him into it, but when the guard
returns all he finds is a body in the supposedly secure carriage. The
method to accomplished this is very involved and perhaps not entirely
practical, but it's as inventive as it's original.
I
re-read this splendid novel for the blogosphere's commemoration of
Carr's 110th birthday, organized by "JJ,"
which is, to my never-ending bafflement, completely overlooked –
even by the aficionados of the locked room master. Granted, the book
is an odd one, a hodgepodge of sub-genres, but was surprisingly
successful as a hybrid crime-novel. First of all, the story is a
historical one and takes place in Napoleonic France, during the
planned invasion of England, but a seemingly invisible agent is
bumping off the Emperor's sentries in plain sight. However, the
impossible crimes are not allowed to dominate the plot. It's as much
a dashing tale of adventure and espionage as one of crime and
detection.
John
Dickson Carr, or "Carter Dickson," is primarily known as the
undisputed master of the locked room mystery, but he was also one of
the early pioneers of the historical detective novel and within this
sub-genre he also experimented with a very peculiar kind of hybrid
novel – namely time-slip novels. He wrote three of them: The
Devil in Velvet (1951), Fire,
Burn! (1957) and this one, which flings two people back to
the Regency Era in 1795. All they have is a bleary recollection of a
murder that happened more than a hundred years into the future.
Meanwhile, they have to survive in a time that's very different from
their own and even having knowledge about the future can prove
hazardous small-talk.
One
of Doherty's grandest historical narratives, as well as one of his
richest impossible crime novels, which takes place during the Sack of
Thebes by Alexander the Great. As the once great city is reduces to a
smoldering, ash-covered heap of rubble, Alexander has several
missions: he wants to possess the Iron Crown of Oedipus, but this
treasure is safely stored away in a holy shrine and the path to it
has several (deadly) obstacles. So taking it will take some
ingenuity. However, there's also the problem of an army general who
was flung from the open window of a locked and guarded tower room
when no murderer could've been physically present. Finally, the
whispered rumors are making their round through the smoke-filled
streets of the sacked city that the ghost of Oedipus has returned, a
blood-encrusted club in hand, which coincide with a series of
baffling murders of Macedonian soldiers – who were taken two, three
or more at a time by complete surprise.
One
of trickiest titles on this list and for more than one reason. The
plot revolves around Betty Shapley, "the belle of the village,"
who has three admirers vying from her attention and affection. But
one of them dies under circumstances that are as gruesome as they're
baffling: a single blow had obliterated part of his face and his body
was found inside a burning car. I've no doubt that the cause of death
will make some readers growl in disbelief, but the subsequent action
on the part of the murderer is what makes this a (minor) classic. As
this person said towards the end, "a chance like that only
happens once in a lifetime" and "I made full use of it."
A genuine original piece of work!
Anthony "Algernon" Vereker's high-spirited friend, Manuel Ricardo,
manages to convince the gentleman-painter to accompany him on
pleasure cruise aboard a luxury ocean liner, but this turns into a
busman's holiday when the body of a woman is found on D-deck. The
dearly departed is Mrs. Mesado, wife of an Argentinean meatpacking
millionaire, who was suffering from a very weak heart. There are,
however, some questionable aspect about her sudden death: one of them
is that the hands beneath her leather gloves were badly cut and
bruised. It's a clever and audacious treatment of a classic
plot-device, which turned out to be most extreme example of
Forsythe's tendency to fool around with bodies in his stories and
create baffling mysteries out of the circumstances in which they were
discovered.
The
fifth and last detective novel from the Vereker series and concerns
John Thurlow, who is a skeptic where the paranormal is concerned, but
is tolerant and open-minded towards his niece, Eileen – an ardent
devotee and practitioner of spiritualism. During an experimental
séance, they both hear ghostly music that cannot be accounted for
and not long there after her scientific-minded uncle disappears. But
the disappearance is only a short-lived mystery. The following
morning his body is found, alongside that of another man, on a
stretch of wasteland: one of them was battered to death and the other
one had been shot. However, physical evidence precluded the
possibility that they murdered each other.
As
said before, Forsythe knew how to weave a complex plot around the
circumstances in which a body (or bodies) were found and this is a
good example of that!
Admittedly,
this one is not as clever or tricky as some of Forsythe's series
novels, however, therefore it's not any less fascinating. On the
contrary! The book can be described as a character-driven crime-novel
masquerading as a Robinsonade (i.e. shipwreck fiction). A handful of
shipwreck survivors make it to the beaches of an island resembling a
picture of heaven, but the place is entirely devoid of the luxuries
and comforts of modern, early twentieth century life. So with a ship,
perhaps, a decade removed from their shores they decide to start
building a new life there, but they're soon confronted with the
unnerving presence of an "armed unknown" on the island. A
genuine isolated island mystery!
A
surprisingly clever piece of work by an author who was, during her
lifetime, somewhat of a throwback to an earlier period of the genre,
but this is a pure, Golden Age-style mystery novel. The plot revolves
around the shooting of Sir John Burslem, a well-known and race-horse
owner, who was killed on the eve of a highly anticipated horse race.
And this has immediate consequences on the race. The explanation is
satisfying and pulled off with a twist on an old trick, which is only
marred by a last-minute confession by the murderer. However, that can
be forgiven in this case.
An
inverted mystery novel with a twist and one that would have received
the nodding approval of Pat
McGerr. The story is told from the perspective Edward Powell, a
haughty and repugnant character, who is bound by his grandmother's
will to his meddlesome aunt. She loves to berate him and play tricks
on him. So these clashing personalities live in a cold war-state and
this convinced Edward that his aunt had to go, but that's easily said
than done and his murderous endeavors are constantly thwarted by
Murphy's Law – which makes for deserved classic on the list of
Haycroft-Queen
Cornerstones of Detective Fiction.
A
pair of police officers witness how a speeding car ignores a traffic
light and smashes into a delivery van, which is a good cause to write
a stiff ticket, but when they check the backseat of the car they make
a gruesome discovery – a naked body of woman. She was a client of
the driver, a former newspaper reporter turned press-agent, but he's
unable to convince the authorities of his innocence. So, within a
year, he finds himself as a convicted lady-killer on Death Row and
does what every sensible mind would do in his situation: write a
screwy will in favor of a homicide detective. Luckily, this situation
inspires Miss Hildegarde Withers to stick her nose where it
definitely doesn't belong. A solid entry in a great series!
A
late, late entry in the series, but tells of a time when Dame
Beatrice was still Mrs. Bradley and the storytelling is laced with
nostalgia. The setting is a rapidly changing village and commented at
the time that it reads as if the genre itself reminiscing about the
childhood days it spent in the many quaint villages that stud the
English countryside. You can read the description of the changing in
village, from the opening chapter, as an allegory to the changes the
genre underwent after World War II. However, the book itself looks
back on a simpler time, when such place could still host a murder or
two, which is told in manner that's vintage Mitchell – which even
has a pair of children acting as part-time narrators. It's a fond,
but also sad, reminiscence of the genre when the detective story was
allowed to dream and imagine. Or offer adventure to everyone who
would dare seek it.
This
is generally considered to be one of Punshon's best detective novels
and the book, which is really a Mitchellian crime-fantasy, offers a
splendid, magical and labyrinthine plot that includes a wild variety
of plot-ingredients: a secret recipe for "the most scrumptious
chocolates that ever were," a little girl who prefers to
company of the animals in the forest, a missing hermit-cum-herbalist
and several missing pieces of art. One of them being the titular
candelabra.
Punshon
had a knack for crafting complex, multilayered plots and manipulating
the various strands of the plot with the trained, nimble fingers of
puppeteer, but this just might be the knottiest one of all his
detective stories – which skillfully navigates through a maze of
plot-threads without getting lost in them. Some of these plot-threads
concerns a murdered paranormal investigator and a ghostly bloodstain
that vanished from a haunted room! A mysterious gunshot that was
heard in the nearby forest and the unidentified remains of a murdered
man in a canal. A man who has disappeared after a quarrel with his
uncle and a young woman who may have been a witness of something.
And, somehow, all of this tied in with a long-lost masterpiece by
Vermeer.
The
thirty-fifth and final entry in this long-running series, which saw a
once humble police-constable, named Bobby Owen, climb to the rank of
Commander of Scotland Yard. His last recorded case brings him to the
remnants of his childhood and interferes in what is, essentially, a
family affair. The household of his cousin, Myra, has been marked by
her husband obsessing over African magic and is currently dominated
by a faux medium, which culminates in an impossible stabbing during a
séance inside a locked tower room. It has been accurately described
as a charmingly introspective novel that ended the series on a
high-note.
A
rather slow-paced detective story that earned its spot on this list
for trying to be an original and the book did not entirely fail in
that attempt: Dr. Richard Mawsley of Harley Street seems to have
injected himself with a fatal dose of strychnine, but murder,
suicide or an accident are eliminated as possible answers. So it is
up to Dr. Lancelot Priestley to find a fourth alternative to fill in
questions surrounding the death of the specialist.
Until
recently, this second and last Algy Lawrence mystery, a sequel to
Whistle
Up the Devil (1952), was easily one of the most obscure and
rare of all collector items in the genre. Smith was unable to secure
a publishing contract for his second detective novel, but a Japanese
took the manuscript home and financed a limited print-run – one
that consisted of a meager one-hundred copies. So the book eluded
some frustrated locked room fanboys over the years! Thankfully, John
Pugmire made the book available to a world-wide audience in 2014
and gave us an opportunity to learn how the apparent straightforward
(on-stage) shooting of an actress was actually a cleverly disguised
impossible crime.
Arguably
one of the most solidly plotted and original entries in the Wolfe
Corpus, which begins with Wolfe and Goodwin being hired by the
representatives of the Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the
National Association of Authors and Dramatis (NAAD) – who put
together a Joint Committee on Plagiarism. Recently, there have been a
serious string of accusations of plagiarism and a large chunk of cash
had to be coughed up to settle these cases, but the accusations have
began to form a suspicious pattern. So far, there had been five cases
and they all seemed to follow a similar script. Wolfe has a short-cut
plan to end this racket, but the brains behind this scheme smells
something is afoot and starts getting rid of some loose ends. As I
said before, this is one of the best in the series.
One
of the downsides of detective stories is that, sometimes, endings do
not entirely deliver on the promise given by their premise, but, in
this instance, a solid first half is followed up by an even better
denouement – one that showed that even detective stories from this
vintage were not devoid of humanity. However, the first half is very
definitely practical police procedure: an aspiring mystery novelist,
Miss Clynes, was found with her head inside a gas-oven and a suicide
note was found. But the police reasons from such clues like a piece
of thread on a tack in the floorboard and a canceled postage stamp
that she was murdered. And the trail leads straight to France. Where
the story takes a quite turn!
The
famous "half-caste" policeman/tracker, Detective-Inspector
Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte of the Queensland Police, is dispatched
to a far-flung, swampy corner of the Australian continent. A spot
where the decayed, lonely mansion of a reputedly cursed family stands
and this spot has, recently, been the scene of two murders – one of
the local butcher and the other of a family member. Upfield wrote a
very strange, but great, homage to the Victorian-era crime and
sensational novels.
THE
WORST MYSTERIES READ IN 2016:
A
book that began promising, describing the daily routine of dairy
farming, but this picturesque opening chapter was disturbed by the
discovery of a dismembered corpse in one of the milk-churns. Sadly,
nothing of remote interest was done with this premise: Desmond
Merrion seems to be a bit omniscient when it comes to separating the
actual clues from the red herrings. And once an unknown "X" is
revealed as the murderer, the story dissolved into a second-rate
thriller.
It
has been pointed out to me that I have been unfair in my condemnation
of the book, because this lurid, grotesque horror novel was never
meant as a legitimate detective novel. Be that as it may, I still
hate this abomination of a story. Even as a horror novel it was
pretty weak.
A
horribly botched attempt at relocating the semi-hardboiled
crime-story, with touches of a legal thriller, courtroom drama and
even hints of western, to the edge of our solar system, but the book
failed on all accounts – even as a science-fiction novel. The plot
is as poorly imagined as the so-called futuristic world it attempted
to conjure up. I mean, Reed described a universe that was colonized
as far as the asteroid belt, which was being mined, but courtroom
photographers still use flashbulbs.
Well,
that's it for 2016! One of the things I only just noticed is how well
the 1950s are represented on this year's list, which is not something
I expected, but there are about seven of them. That decade may
represent the twilight years of the Golden Age, but the genre,
obviously, was not quite dead yet.
Anyhow,
this is probably my last blog-post for 2016. So let me wish every one
of you all the best for 2017 and hope to see back next year.
So,
one day, the grandson of Philip of France would be wearing "the
crown of the Confessor," his
daughter will be Queen of England and "her second son
will be Duke of Gascony." As
to be expected, Edward is not very happy with the situation he found
himself in and this is the point where fiction takes it over from
history.
