Boundary Reached: Q.E.D. vol. 50 by Motohiro Katou

I started reading Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. in 2018 and over the years, despite some prolonged hiatuses and ill-fated restarts, it not only became one of my favorite manga mystery series, but one of my favorite detective series in general – regardless of medium or form. A new kind of traditional detective story for the 21st century and should have finished it years ago, because you would think the locked downs from a few years ago would have helped. But no. Well, I promised to have this series done, dusted and in the books before summertime rolls around. And here we are with time to spare.

Fittingly, I'll end this run how it started with a single review of the last volume. The last two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 50 present not only a return to form, but feel like a return to the stories from the earlier volumes with one subtle little difference. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara look slightly older than they were at the beginning of the series.

The first story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Observation," draws on Sou Touma's time as a teenage prodigy at MIT where he met another young genius, Sally Blythe. Years later, she has become the head of a company manufacturing instruments for observational experiments, "Blythe Inc. is pretty famous," but her company is being targeted by, what can only be called, an invisible enemy – who carries out seemingly impossible acts of sabotage globally. Providing the story with some recognizable and famous backdrops. First stop is the Large Hadron Collider, on the border between France and Switzerland, where an unknown intruder switched switched off the flow of liquid helium forcing a shut down. However, the intruder was caught on the CCTV and surrounded by two groups guards inside the circular tunnel. When the two groups bumped into each other, the intruder simply had vanished without a trace! A second and similar act of sabotage occurred at the Mauna Kea Observatories, in Hawaii, where the cooling process was interrupted during an observational experiment. But how did the culprit managed to tamper with equipment that had been securely locked and sealed away for ten days? The saboteur strikes again at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan by placing radioactive radium ore beside an underground detector.

Sally Blythe turns to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to not only help figure out how the culprit managed to sabotage their experiments, but who's behind it all and why. So we get a nicely-layered, intelligently plotted detective story and human touch to the characterization. Not black and white or shades of gray as exemplified by the ending, which is neither a happy ending nor a depressingly dark conclusion. Just something human under less than ordinary circumstances. I really enjoyed the various impossible situations perhaps showing the influence of MORI Hiroshi and novels like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996).

I think most of you already have a pretty good idea how the saboteur disappeared from the LHC. You would be particle partially correct, however, Katou pleasantly elaborated on that basic idea to create something more fitted for its special setting. The locked room-trick at the Mauna Kea Observatories is far more original, but not easily solvable for your average armchair detective. Even with a devious hint to its solution being dropped in your lap. Despite it being somewhat of a specialized locked room, I really liked it and appreciated its novelty. The sabotage at the Kamioka Observatory is not really a locked room problem, but serves another well-done purpose to the overall plot. So an all-round excellent opener to the final volume!

The second and last story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Escape," reads like a season finale adding thrills as frills to a good, old-fashioned and cleverly contrived locked room mystery.

"Escape" opens with a flashback, "16 years ago," to a warehouse used by an unnamed child as a secret hideout to read his favorite adventure series, Adventures of Brave, the Knight, but, one day, an intruder enters the barn – casually stringing up a body before leaving. This intruder leaves the barn locked from the inside with a padlock. The child disappears from the barn just as mysteriously, but not before taking the ring from the hanging body. So the police at the time are confronted with what appears to be a suicide inside a locked barn. So the case grew cold and was forgotten, until Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara receive an anonymous request and money to organize an Escape Room game. A game organized for the benefit of a small party made up of an ex-policeman, a fortune teller, a food sales executive, a mangaka (manga author) and a part timer.

All five received a personal invitation to take part in the game with an opportunity to win one million yen, but the mini-puzzles prove to be too cerebral for the participants. Suspicion rises when items like an old ring and a copy of Adventures of Brave, the Knight turn up in the game. And, eventually, the game becomes a dangerous one as they find themselves locked inside the labyrinth with a time bomb counting down the minutes they have left to escape. Even though it has been done before, the reason behind staging the escape game is still very clever indeed and wonderfully presented/executed through the escape game setup.

 

 

The solution to the locked room murder from 16 years ago deserves a special mention, because the trick offers something entirely new when it comes to impossible crimes in padlocked rooms or buildings. I'm sure I mentioned this somewhere before, quite recently, but the reason why padlocked rooms are even rarer than "taped tombs" is because padlocks are too unreliable, and too limited, for a proper locked room mystery. They're wide open to being picked, replaced or swapped around. So you won't find much scope or depth in the trickery in the, what, half a dozen known examples. That makes the locked room-trick here so refreshing and surprising, because it found a new way to get out of padlocked room.

I should also note here Touma has very little to do here, except help setting up the escape room and act as an impartial observer as the plot unfolds itself. Typical for this series to give its protagonist a passive role in its closing act. Nothing to detract from this splendid and fun locked room thriller. So, overall, a very strong volume to end this series on. Somewhat of an open ending, perhaps, to the series and characters, but this is, of course, not the end of the road for Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara – both of whom will return in Q.E.D. iff. I look forward to digging into that series, but first have to begin slapping together part two of "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25." I'll probably take a palate cleanser before returning to C.M.B. and starting on Q.E.D. iff, which might even include a return to The Kindaichi Case Files. Stay tuned!

The Garston Murder Case (1930) by H.C. Bailey

H.C. Bailey was part of the first badge of British Golden Age mystery writers who made his name during the 1920s with a series of longish short stories, featuring his famous series-detective Reginald "Reggie" Fortune, before making transitioning to novel-length mysteries in 1930 – publishing his last novel two decades later (Shrouded Death, 1950). Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976) notes that Bailey's Reggie Fortune was "perhaps the most popular sleuth in England between the World Wars" and influenced S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance. Although not everyone's a fan of Vance mimicking Reggie Fortune's speech habits.

I've sampled a smattering of Bailey's detective fiction over the years. Rue Morgue Press reprints of the excellent Shadow on the Wall (1934) and Black Land, White Land (1937) prompted me to hunt down a copy of the superb The Sullen Sky Mystery (1935), but interest began to wane after the messy The Great Game (1939) and the serviceable The Bishop's Crime (1940). Sort of forgot about Bailey until a copy of the first Joshua Clunk novel, The Garston Murder Case (1930), recently came my way. Bailey's first novel-length mystery introducing his other detective. So high time to return to one of the OG greats of the British Golden Age detective story.

Bailey's most well-known detective is often linked to the foppish, upper class dilettantes like Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey, which is not an association that has always benefited Reggie Fortune. I guess the relative obscure status of his secondary series-detective, Joshua Clunk, is why "the crooks' solicitor" is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Anthony Gilbert's Arthur Crook and Craig Rice's John J. Malone. A cunning hypocrite who sucks sweets, hums hymns and preaches every Sunday at his own established place of worship, Gospel Hall – while Mrs. Clunk played the harmonium. Behind the pious mask, Clunk "knew more of what was going on underground than any man in London" and the police believed "he was up to the neck in most of it." And not afraid to get his hands dirty. So, while far less likable than either Crook or Malone, I actually remember Clunk clearer than the plot of The Sullen Sky Mystery. The Garston Murder Case convinced me Clunk ought to be much better known to detective fans today.

The Garston Murder Case starts with introducing the reader to Joshua Clunk and several small, but different, incidents eventually coming together at Bradstock Abbey. Ancestral home of Henry Garstons, the first Lord Croyland and head of the iron and steel giant Garstons & Garstons ("anything from a needle to a battleship").

Firstly, Clunk is visited by the son of an old client, Anthony "Tony" Wisberry, who's father mysteriously disappeared without a trace twenty years ago. Clunk took care of his mother's financial interest and, when she passed away, Tony found papers from his father indicating he had completed a then new process for making hard steel from vanadium, right before he disappeared. Coincidentally, the formula is exactly the same as the one Garstons & Garstons began to use and now Tony wants answers from Lord Croyland. Clunk tries to dissuade him, "great firms don't murder inventors," they "prefer to swindle 'em" ("...easy and legal"), but Tony is determined to get the truth. Secondly, a Miss Morrow has her room at the Victoria Hotel burglarized and the thief took away a jewelry case, but the case contained more than just jewelry. It contained personal letters from her long-dead fiance, Alfred Garston, who drowned decades ago and she's been perpetual mourning ever since – fluttering between hotels years round. Inspector Gunn and Superintendent Bell arrest a well-known hotel thief resulting in some amusing courtroom scenes in which Clunk gets his client off at the expense of poor Bell. Lastly. May Dean, a young nurse, is engaged by her old school friend and Lord Croyland's secretary, Gladys Hurst, to look after Lord Croyland's elderly mother. A job that's not as easy as it looks and Miss Morrow often comes to mourn Alfred with Mrs. Garston. As we say in my country, klinkt gezellig. :)

So the first-half of The Garston Murder Case is, plot-wise, a bit slow moving as Bailey has to introduce the various characters and plot pieces, but never bores or drags. Bailey knows how to write characters and how to make them talk which especially allows Clunk to shine in all his hypocritical glory. And establish him as a character as well as his relationship with Superintended Bell. Who warns Inspector Gunn "when Josh Clunk starts giving evidence anything may turn up—except the truth." Clunk comes through true to form, not only in the first-half. Around the halfway mark, Bradstock Abbey becomes the scene of murder when old Mrs. Garston is throttled during the night. And a village constable on patrol in the neighborhood is killed the same night.

Throughout the double murder investigation, Clunk is an ever persistent presence in the background of the case who's constantly giving lectures, sermons, hums hyms or tut-tut-tuting Bell's "unfortunate distrust" in him – distracting the superintedent from the obvious truth. So the characterization and storytelling is topnotch, but what about the plot? The Garston Murder Case reads like a parody, or serious satire, of the Gothic novel. Bailey even provided a secret passage to go with its turn-of-the-century trappings, but treated and handled with all the skill and ingenuity of the 1930s Golden Age detective story. Notably the identity of the well-hidden, well-clued murderer is a minor technical achievement. Something several mystery writers tried before, and since then, but recall only a handful of successes. Bailey came incredible close to having one such success story on his hands with The Garston Murder Case, had the solution not been so obvious. The plot is technically sound and more than fairly clued, but, by the halfway mark, it's pretty clear from which direction the wind is blowing. So seasoned armchair detectives won't be fooled for very long, however, it's competently executed inside a pleasingly readable story introducing one of the most odious, but strangely compelling, anti-heroes from this period of the genre. Clunk's part in The Garston Murder Case alone makes me want to hunt down one of his out-of-print cases or give The Sullen Sky Mystery another look. So... to be continued.

Memory Fail: Q.E.D. vol. 47-49 by Motohiro Katou

The first, of two, stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Sun is Still Blazing," takes place at a secret and highly secured NSA research on a remote, isolated island near Indonesia – where an important file with research data went missing. And ended up destroyed. Only problem is that the research facility is tightly secured and closely scrutinized suggesting an inside job.

Was it the somewhat eccentric head researcher and "world-renowned expert in math and logic," Kurt Gidel? Or one of three members of his research staff, Carlos Balma, Walter Chapman and Judith Grey? Considering the stolen and destroyed data included sensitive, classified information, it was decided to hold an internal investigation in order to close the case as soon as possible. Sou Touma was asked to act as an independent investigator with Kana Mizuhara tagging along to the remote Indonesian island.

The theft of the file is something of an impossible crime. It apparently went missing in the meeting room, tightly secured, where Gidel and his staff gather to discuss ideas and work out problems on a blackboard. Gidel was sitting next to the backboard to listen to his staff members and judge their ideas, while the file rested on the blackboard's ledge. During their last meeting, the black book file was somehow swapped with a dummy file, miraculously smuggled out of the institute and destroyed – even though everyone was thoroughly searched. Another complication to the case is Gidel himself. A genius who only wanted "to sit back and relax at a beautiful island" to solve complicated math problems from a beach chair. He also provides a couple of confusing false-solutions and asks Touma if they were useful. Kana is ready to throttle him when answering, "yes, it was." What's most surprising is how simple, unvarnished and straight forward this story. No grand tricks. Touma's chain of deductions simply answers the three main questions: how was the file swapped, how was it stolen and whodunit with even the equally simple and unvarnished motive being a clue to the culprit's identity. A simple, straightforward, but good and effective little detective story.

Second story of Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Slope," is surprisingly a Kana Mizuhara-centric story hearkening back to her middle school days when she stood for a bullied classmate, Utagawa Aki. She returned to their first middle school reunion having become a promising young model with rising profile, but she always wanted to know why Kana trusted her unconditionally. Particularly during an embarrassing incident when a stolen video game was found in her desk. Kana was the only one believed in her innocence and stuck up for her, which saved her neck with the teacher. But why? Kana can't remember why she believed her. When Kana goes with a few other old classmates to her apartment an envelope with household money disappears, possibly mislaid by accident. But a thorough search of place turns up exactly nothing.

Kana calls Touma for help and advises her to search the apartment again, but, this time, she has to "search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately" – not simply gotten lost or misplaced. Finding the missing money raises more questions than answers. However, the missing money is only a vehicle to tell Utagawa's backstory and why Kana believed her. A decent enough story, but not nearly as good or memorable as that other Kana Mizuhara-centric story, "Summer Time Capsule," from vol. 26. So, on a whole, these two stories aren't standouts of the series, but put together, they form a pretty solid volume.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 48, "The Representative," begins with a police report of a
break-in at an empty house. When the police came to investigate, they discovered a bizarre scene: the body of man, partially wrapped in tarp, lying in the middle of a room next to an unfinished, half-dug hole in the floor. The victim is Kabuto Shigeki, a representative for authors, who worked for the Orange Copyright Agency. His most well-known client is a reclusive, bestselling author, Semi Ichika, whose Crater Bungee sold over a million copies. Kabuto Shigeki was about to receive the finished manuscript for his next book. Orange Copyright Agency, pressured by his publisher, is eager to get their hands on the manuscript, but Ichika is notoriously difficult to work with. And dislikes most of their staff members ("I tried too hard to impress him..."). So the new, young and completely inexperienced Tento Seiko gets to job of trying to handle and appease Ichika. She's friends with Mizuhara and Sou Touma eventually follows to "solve this series of unfortunate events," but not before another body is added to the tally.

"The Representative" is a really good detective story, nearly an inverted mystery, but there's a pleasing, craftily applied a nearly invisible layer to the whodunit. So to truly solve this story, the armchair detective has to find answer to all the questions. From the murky motive and behavior of the author to the condition in which the first victim was discovered. A possible contender to be included in part two "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D."

The next story, "Fahya's Drawing Book," is undoubtedly a crime/detective story of today's age. It centers on a poor Moroccan child, Fahya, who's teenage cousin, Hamdan, has heard their uncle made a lot of money working in Spain and wants to join him – boarding a ship to smuggle him and others into Europe. Fahya's joins him as a stowaway, where she witnesses a murder from her hiding place, before the ship runs into the coast guard. That confrontation quickly dissolves into a shoot out killing seventeen people aboard the ship, but Fahya an Hamdan made it to the shore. Fahya disappearing from her home and the smuggling vessel has not gone unnoticed.

Alan Blade, the CEO of Alansoft, last appeared in "Disaster Man's Wedding" (vol. 34) when he got married to his secretary, Ellie, who founded a joined charity as part of their wedding gift. They wanted to provide a poor child from Africa with a scholarship to guarantee them an education and Ellie picked (surprise, surprise) Fahya. Alan brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara into the case to help find the little girl, but they're not the only ones looking for her. So an interesting enough premise for modern mystery, but nothing truly interesting emerges from it and feels more like a curiosity than anything else. Although I doubt that was the intention considering it tackles human trafficking, missing children and a shoot out on a boat with nearly twenty casualties. I was especially reminded of, what's perhaps, Edward D. Hoch's worst short story, "The Starkworth Atrocity" (1998), which tried to do something similar with even less impressive results. Sadly, this volume ends with one of the weakest stories in the series.

Regrettably, Q.E.D. vol. 49 is rather weak on a whole, but the first story, "Unrelated Cases," has its moments. Stanley Lau and Sammy Chow are the leaders of two opposing criminal organizations who have decided to meet at a dinner in Hong Kong, but the place is shot up and their bodyguards immediately form a human shield around the two mob bosses. Someone, somehow, shot Sammy Chow through the heart while surrounded by his bodyguards. The shot came from a deserted, dead end alleyway. Some time later in Japan, Tomashino Kyohei, a college student, is roped by his criminally optimistic friend, Sasaki Tatsuoka, to take some money from his workplace to help them along. When the arrive on the 21st floor of a dark, empty building, they discover Lau and his men torturing and killing a man. They managed to escape from the building, but now they have band of gangsters after them. Tomashino Kyohei's younger brother, Haruhiko, asks his school friends, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara, to help them out.

I said this story has it's moments and there are exactly two. Firstly, the impossible shooting of Sammy Chow in Hong Kong. It's a fine demonstration of the advantages a visual medium like manga (comics) has over prose when dealing with locked room murders, impossible crimes and complicated tricks, because it's just fun to see the murder being carried out during the flashback – fun enough to almost overlook how preposterous the trick really is. I think the trick would have worked better in a less risky, more controlled environment like a theatrical stage or movie set. Secondly, the final confrontation between Touma and Lau. Hardboiled brains, indeed! So not the best story in the series, nor anywhere near the bottom.

"Love Story" closes out Q.E.D. vol. 49 and is another heart-shaped, character-driven puzzles, but not an especially memorable one and struggled to remember anything about it as soon as I finished it. The main gist of the story is an unfinished, 45-year-old movie shot by the movie club of a private college starring a college student who's spitting image of Kana Mizuhara. How very Gosho Aoyama of you, Katou. Nearly half a century, two of the since then married, now elderly club members bump into Kana and the urge is immediately there to finish the movie. Only for the man to die of a heart attack while editing the movie. And he leaves behind some questions. This one just didn't capture my attention. Katou has done these human puzzle stories better before.

So an unfortunate weak ending to the penultimate volume in the series. Even more unfortunate, the overall quality of these three volumes is fairly weak. Only good two stories are "The Sun is Still Blazing" and "The Representative." "The Slope" is a fairly decent character piece and "Unrelated Cases" has, as said before, its moments. But the same can't be said of "Fahya's Drawing Book" or "Love Story." Let's hope I can end this series on an optimistic note with the coming review of Q.E.D. vol. 50.

Fear Stalks the Village (1932) by Ethel Lina White

Ethel Lina White was a British writer from Abergavenny, Wales, who started out writing short stories and mainstream novels, before not unsuccessfully trying her hands at crime fiction with Some Must Watch (1933) and The Wheel Spins (1936) earning her some lasting fame – which were both turned into popular movies. The Wheel Spins was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes. So her work tends to be linked to the atmospheric, character-driven suspense mysteries of American writers like Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mignon G. Eberhart and Mabel Seeley. Robert Adey even listed two of White's novels in Locked Room Murders (1991).

So you would think White's contributions to the impossible crime genre was going to be my first stop, but have been rather curious about one of her lesser-known, non-impossible crime mystery novels.

Last year, the British Library reprinted White's Fear Stalks the Village (1932) as part of their ongoing Crime Classics series. Martin Edwards wrote a short, but insightful, introduction describing the book as an early example of the poison pen letter depicting "the slow, remorseless destruction of bonds of trust and affection between the villagers" – complimented by "a pleasing slow-burn puzzle." I've read some good things about Fear Stalks the Village and the reprint was favorably received, which made the top 10 of the 2024 Reprint of the Year Award. It certainly is one of the most striking of the 1930s village mysteries.

The village in question is a remote, out of the way place with no railway connection, but the flower gardens, honeysuckle-twined lanes, cobbled streets lined with Tudor cottages makes it a small slice of heaven. It's said that "even Death seldom knocked at its doors, for the natives resented the mere idea of dying in such a delightful place." So a place where visitors become residents over time, but a snake has slithered into this garden paradise. A snake of the venomous variety who spreads its poison through anonymous letters.

Miss Decima Asprey, elderly spinster and queen of the village, is the first to receive an anonymous poison pen letter attacking her moral character. She shares it with the village priest and it was supposed to be kept between them, but they were overheard by the parlor maid. And, within a day, it was public knowledge Miss Asprey had received a poison pen letter slandering her character. The first to fall under suspicion is the local writer of schoolboy adventure serials, Miss Julia Corner, who's first garden party of the season ends disastrous when she brings up the anonymous letter. Miss Corner was the first to experience the "social frost" as invitations for tea or garden parties stopped coming, which made the initial fear and suspicion subside – until a second poison pen letter is delivered. Followed by a tragic death and an inquest. So the Reverend Simon Blake calls in his friend, Ignatius Brown, who's "one of the idle rich" and "rather fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes" to do a bit of sleuthing.

Ignatius Brown arrives in the village to witness firsthand how the atmosphere of fear, suspicion and a morbid dread of scandal has on the social fabric of village life. Everyone is suspicious of their own neighbor. Social gatherings come to a grinding halt "as though they knew subconsciously that so long as they did not gather together in numbers they were safe from the herd-instinct to panic at a chance shot." This is slow-burn suspense mystery and Brown is not able to prevent more tragedies from happening as the village continues to unravel, before he can put a stop to the "secret sadist" terrorizing a once nearly fairytale-like village.

However, while there are a number of deaths, White boldly decided to make this 1932 mystery novel completely murderless. Fear Stalks the Village focuses entirely on the poison pen letters and their corrosive effect on not only their recipients, but on the village community as a whole. So this village mystery is more about the salting and poisoning of the social strata of a small, isolated village sparring nobody than the effects of a murder of an individual on a close-knit community. Fear Stalks the Village is something off the beaten path for an early 1930s village mystery, which had only just began to emerge and perhaps the reason why it reads like a book written decades later. Shirley Jackson's short poison pen story, "The Possibility of Evil" (1965), comes to mind. That's also reflected in the ending.

Fear Stalks the Village is, as noted before, a very slow-moving story taking place under lazy summer sun or "flushed in sunset afterglow" as the anonymous letter writer slowly poisons the village – one letter at a time. Something you can only get away with when there's a worthy payoff at the end and White delivered as Brown revealed there was more complexity behind how the poison pen letters started. That earned it a status as an oddly cut gem of the British village mystery. On the other hand, Brown can only prevent further damage and precious little to get justice for the people who took their own life. Whatever the ending suggested, it's unlikely the end of the poison pen letters restored the village to its previous state.

Fear Stalks the Village is one of the most unusual, leisurely-paced, but strangely mesmerizing, mystery thrillers from the British Golden Age. Recommended as something pleasantly different. But let the reader be warned... if you want your detective story to get on with it and present a clearly murdered corpse in the first couple of chapters, you're best advised to give this one a pass.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

Last time, I looked at P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), first in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, which just like The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) proved to be another entertaining send-up of the Golden Age detective story – recalling Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin and P.G. Wodehouse. And better plotted than you would expect from a series labeled "locked room cosies." But the devil is always in the details. The execution of the plot, as a whole, left me in two minds. So decided to immediately move on to the fourth title in the series to see how much priority I should give to Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022), The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023).

Like previously said, Fitzsimmons is not a writer to be caught in the act of being boring and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) is no exception. It reads like a send-up of Paul Halter's Le diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor, 1993) and L'homme qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds, 1999).

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse takes place in 1929 and, similar to the first novel, starts with a telegram delivered to the Juniper Gentleman's Club. A telegram with an ominous warning, "THE CURSE IS ONCE AGAIN UPON THE CARNABY FAMILY-(STOP)-DO NOT RETURN TO HOY-(STOP)-ONLY DEATH AWAITS YOU," addressed to W. Carnaby of the Juniper Club. However, Carnaby is not a member of the club, but "London's finest club steward" who has failed to return from his holiday. Anty decides to launch a rescue campaign and travels with Vickers to the village of Hoy in the Peak District to have at least one question answered, "how is it that Carnaby the club steward's ancestral home is, apparently, a castle?"

Hoy is an ancient place populated with Carnabys, two distinct family lines, divided in two groups, Castle Carnabys and Town Carnabys, of which the first is comprised of the direct descendants of Ranulf Carnaby – whom own Carnaby Castle and surrounding land. However, they only have use of the castle with the eldest descendant holding executive powers "limited to maintenance, upkeep and persecuting witches." That persecuting-of-witches thing saddled the Castle Carnabys with a curse for the past four hundred years targeting the young brides who might bring the Castle Carnabys its next heir. A curse that had been suspended by employing a local witch to counter the curse. Cecil Carnaby, "castle despot," recently returned home with his Italian bride, Ludovica. Cecil is determined to shake things up at the castle and showed his resident witch the door.

Some time later, Ludovica is seen walking on the promontory above Hoy Scarp when "the mists rose from the river, raised her in the air, and flung her into the gorge." Six people witnessed it happen and swear no one was near Ludovica when "the mists carried her right over Hoy Scarp" ("...like the curse used to do in the old days..."). Anty learns of this impossible murder from Inspector Ivor Wittersham, of Scotland Yard, who bump into each other on the train en route to Hoy and Carnaby Castle, but, of course, it's not the only complication facing them. First of all, there's the intricate, crossed family relationships of the Carnabys twisted and intertwined through every aspect of the case. Secondly, Ludovica is a widow with a dead and a missing husband, which is why the other Carnabys considered her a mere gold digger. But her former stepson turned up believing she disappeared his father. And, before the mist carried her away, another member of the family had several near fatal accidents ("you'd almost think that the castle or someone in it was trying to kill her"). Not to mention a string of thefts from locked bedrooms and uncovering a rabbit warren of secreted doors, hidden passageways and underground catacombs.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is as entertaining and breezy a read as the previous three of Anty's outings, but the plot is regrettably thin and feels less fair. I spotted the murderer early on and tried to be too complicated in trying to find an explanation for Ludovica's impossible murder, which turned out to be something of a letdown. I honestly would have been happy if the solution turned out to be that Ludovica was hit in the back by a crossbow bolt with a rounded, padded tip – making it appear as if she was lifted and flung over the edge. The solution for the thefts from the locked bedrooms practically suggested itself, but perfectly serviceable for a minor subplot. Fortunately, there's a third impossibility somewhat redeeming the book as a locked room mystery. A second murder behind a locked door, what else, but inside is a normally hidden, now open doorway leading to several rooms in the castle. All occupied during the murder and nobody was seen creeping out of one of these hidden doorways! If this impossible murder had a slightly more ambitious locked room-trick, I would likely have placed the book alongside The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning on its strength alone.

You can chalk part of my disappoint up to having come across more than one locked room mystery this year toying and playfully subverting secret passages. Normally a big no-no for both the traditional detective story and me personally. So when the scene presented itself, I hoped the book would (plot-wise) pull itself together and deliver a noteworthy impossible crime during the final stretch.

So, once again, Anty sleuthing shenanigans leaves me in two minds. The humorous characters, storytelling and generally having a run of the place remain the series' strong points. And the primary reason to pick up this series. A highlight of The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is Anty forging an endearing friendship with a cemetery crow he christens Buns. Even having a few small adventures together along the way ("poor weather for aviation, Buns old man"). But the plots remain uneven and some good ideas undeveloped. Such as the second impossible murder here with its open secret passage or the first locked room murder from the first novel. This time, the who and why all felt a bit muddled and, on a whole, decidedly less fair.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse regrettably stands as the weakest in the series, so far, but think I'll stick with the series for at least two, three more novels. I simply enjoy Anty, Vickers and the humor too much to dump this soon, however, I do hope at least one of them has a plot that can measure up to the second novel. First, I'll return to a few other contemporary locked room specialists. I still have Gigi Pandian's The Raven Thief (2024) and J.L. Blackhurst's Smoke and Murders (2024) on the big pile with the new James Scott Byrnside and Tom Mead looming on the horizon. Next up is a return to the Golden Age!

The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

I previously reviewed P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), second and third novel in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, which makes The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) the next logical stop – being the first in the series. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, set in 1928, begins when an unusual telegram is delivered at the Juniper Gentleman's Club addressed to Anty.

The telegram reads, "COME AT ONCE -(STOP)- UNCLE SEB. DEAD -(STOP)- DEFENESTRATED BY UNSEEN HAND -(STOP)- FIDDLES." Fiddles is the nickname of an old college chum, Fairfax Canterfell. Anty has fond memories of the summer holidays he spend with Fiddles at Canterfell Hall and the surrounding countryside of East Sussex. So welcomes an opportunity to go back and help out his friend.

After all, Anty enjoys a modest reputation in his social circle as something of problem solver, "the Alexander to their Gordian knots," but this is the first time he has been asked to help out with a mysterious death. A locked room murder, no less! The victim is Fiddle's uncle, Sebastian Canterfell, who was thrown out of the second-story window of his study located in the ancient tower of the estate ("...designed and built to resist the Norman hordes"). So, beside the open window, the only other way in, or out, is a heavy oak door that was locked on the inside with the key stuck in the lock. Sebastian Canterfell was overheard arguing with someone and another saw him being ejected from the open window. But when they battered down the door, the study was empty!

Canterfell apparently being flung out of the window of an otherwise empty and locked room is not the only complication. There's a rumored codicil to the will of Major Canterfell, family patriarch and elderly father of Sebastian, who "takes insidious pleasure in neither confirming nor denying its existence." A painting impossibly disappears from the conservatory right under everyone's noses. One moment it's there, the next it's gone. Fiddles falls in love with a house guest of his aunt and "he takes on the speech, demeanour and facial expression of one who's been hit on the back of the head with a cricket bat" every time he looks at Rosalind Pierpoint – before getting into much more serious trouble. Inspector Ivor Wittersham arrests him halfway through the story on suspicion of having murdered his uncle following Anty's explanation of the locked room-trick.

Anty has to play dual roles, fairy godmother and amateur sleuth, which is part of the fun of this book and series. Before returning to the plot, I should note that the first thing to recommend about this series are the humorous characters and dialogue placing it alongside the comedic mysteries of Leo Bruce, R.T. Campbell and Edmund Crispin. I guess the comedy is the reason why the series is advertised as "locked room cozies," but the cozy label is doing the series a disservice. They're substantially better plotted than the cozies with pastel covers with cute animals sitting next to bags of yarn or standing in front of a bakery or candy shop. And actually funny once you get acclimated to Anty's personality. I agree with Kate's review that the comedic highlight of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is Anty recalling the time he made up a parlor game, "Quite Right, Milord," to hide from his mother how drunk his father was at the time. It was a roaring success. The plot themselves have a distinct touch of absurdity, which is probably why they tend to be uneven in quality... judging by the first three novels.

The locked room murder of Sebastian Canterfell is a case in point. The idea behind the locked room-trick is hilariously clever, buzzing with originality and very subtly clued – perhaps too subtly clued for it to be fully effective. I think those clues would have been strengthened and made the solution a whole lot fairer had the reader been told up front (ROT13) gung gur xrl unq orra tyhrq vagb cynpr. Which should not have given too much away as the locked room-trick was revealed halfway through anyway. It would have given the reader an opportunity to roughly work out the trick for themselves. Not to mention that that piece of information particularly would have nicely complimented the bizarre clue of (ROT13) gur cbgngb fghpx va gur fcrnxvat ghor. Still a really fun idea for a locked room murder and surprised something similar hasn't been used before to eject someone from an empty, sealed room. There's also the seemingly impossible disappearance of the painting and a second locked room murder, a faked suicide, but both impossibilities are fairly minor plot-threads with simple solutions.

So the strength of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is in the overall plot, but the devil is in the details there as well. Fitzsimmons is not a mystery writer you'll catch red-handed being dull or boring, but the finer plot-details aren't always executed with the same rigor as his Golden Age counterparts. That can be frustrating as they're so close to the genuine article and honestly leaves me in two minds, which is why I want to tackle The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) next before deciding to get Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022), The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). They're cheap enough as ebooks to continue. So, for now, a recommendation as very entertaining pastiches/parodies of the Golden Age detective story.

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) by Roger Ormerod

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) is a standalone mystery published at the tail-end of Roger Ormerod's quarter-of-a-century run as a writer of varied, original and sadly overlooked crime and detective fiction – retiring after two more novels in 1999. Ormerod greatest contribution to the genre is finding a way to successfully integrate the fairly clued, Golden Age puzzle plots with the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and the then emerging police procedural. They're not merely traditional detective novels with modern trappings. A variety of personalized tropes makes them distinctly Ormerodian detective novels.

Ormerod's third-to-last novel lost none of the vitality of his work from the 1970s, '80s and early '90s. On the contrary! The Seven Razors of Ockam is one of his most striking and entertaining mysteries to date, but notably different in tone from what came before. Ormerod probably knew his writing career was drawing to a close and decided to have some fun with this one. Ditching the tone and trappings of the crime novel to tell a bonkers, pulp-style mystery thriller that could have been plucked from the pages of James Ronald or Gerald Verner yarn.

The backdrop, really the main "character," of The Seven Razors of Ockam is the fictitious steel manufacturing town of Ockam. Not to be confused with the other Ockam in Surrey. The town, famous for its Ockam Steel, has a long history of steel and arms manufacturing dating back to ancient times, when rival barons would travel to Ockam to have their troops equipped with Ockam weaponry – only "to meet later in order to slaughter each other in distant parts." So "nobody attacked Ockam" and the place developed an independent spirit and populations with "the mercurial sense of fairness and decency that arose from several hundred years of carefully balanced neutrality." That sense of fairness is what helped kick everything off.

Bert "Slasher" Harris, the incumbent mayor of Ockam, is asked to draw the prizes for a raffle held to get the hospital a new dialysis machine. The prize closet is well-stocked with the two top prizes being a Ford Escort and a BMW motorcycle, but also include a typewriter, a Sony Walkman and a new kitchen layout. So an easy enough, routine gig for a mayor, however, Slasher Harris decides to call the winners in reverse order. The first two names drawn think they have won the first and second prize, instead of the sixth and seventh consolation prizes. Pretty soon, the confusion turned into a riot as the crowd was ready to tear their mayor to pieces, wrecking the old Town Hall and burned down the Slasher Harris Stand at Cutters' football field. Graffiti began to appear all over town, mocking the mayor and threatening the prize winners, but of more concern is the theft of one of the town's treasures. A case with a set of seven classic open razors each engraved with a day of the week.

Nearly a month later, on a Monday, the first prize winner is attacked in a parking lot by someone wearing a ski-mask and wielding an open razor. A razor that had Monday engraved on it. However, the assailant is unsuccessful, but Tuesday's victim is not so fortunate ("the attack was savage, sir"). Detective Inspector Tomkins is tasked with putting a stop to this razor wielding maniac apparently slashing through the prizewinners of the raffle.

Like I said, The Seven Razors of Ockam is redolent of the pulp mysteries of yesteryear with killer menacing and thinning out a group of people, but the comparisons only go as far as the setup. After the second attack, Ormerod simply refuses to follow the obvious plot patterns expected from such a pulp-style mystery and goes off-script. So, going into the second-half, the story enters a calm before the storm resumes phase, which admittedly slackens the pace a little. There's not much to tell or describe about this part of the book, except for a curious little anecdote told by the town clerk to the mayor that would have made for an interesting (historical) subplot. In the 1950s, the town had another "one of those crazy murderers on the loose," but "one used a shotgun, though, and he couldn't aim straight to save his life" – targeting the sons of the members of a secretive club. An anecdote that comes with the hushed up solution, however, the motive is quite novel. Just imagine what a writer like Paul Halter would have done with such a story? I think a historically retelling of the 1950s serial killing case intertwined with the present day case would have shored up the whole novel and given the whole story that Ormerodian as shotgun killings was one of his personalized tropes. Something that's notably missing from The Seven Razors of Ockam.

So how does The Seven Razors of Ockam stack up? Ormerod obviously wanted to have fun with this one and therefore lacks the usual plot machinations and complexities of the previous novels. No perfect alibis (Time to Kill, 1974), galore of false solutions (More Dead Than Alive, 1980), locked room slayings (When the Old Man Died, 1991) or delivering a rug-puller of an ending (Face Value, 1983). For example, the murderer becomes more, and more, evident as the story progresses. Even without the wonderful, somewhat surrealistic clue of the tissue paper. While less complicated, densely-plotted than previous novels, Ormerod makes that up by delivering one of his most readable and striking novels. And more humorous in tone than when presenting his detective fiction as serious crime novels or police procedurals. Particular the opening chapters detailing the run-up to the raffle, its immediately aftermath and the Ockamites helped to make The Seven Razors of Ockam a fun, '90s rendition of the pulp-style mystery thrillers from the '30s and '40s.

It's the Numbers That Count: Q.E.D. vol. 44-46 by Motohiro Katou

I ended the review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 42-43 with the plan to have this series wrapped before July, which can be done at the current rate in four twofer reviews, but alluded to similar plans and intentions before – rarely panned as originally intended. Going by past results, it probably would have meant a review of vol. 50 wouldn't have materialized until January or February 2026. I'm going to step up with two threefer reviews this month, review vol. 50 next month and tidy it all up with part two to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25." After that, I'll turn my attention to Motohiro's C.M.B. series interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. I've not forgotten about that recommendation of the archery-themed murder case from The Gordian Knot series. So that concludes these household notes, unto to the review!

The first, of two, stories from Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 44, "Tuba and Grave," brings back the three disaster magnets of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club, Enari "Queen" Himeko, Nagaie "Holmes" Koroku and Morito "Mulder" Orisato.

This time, they caused a minor uproar when mistaking a sleeping drunk, on a park bench, for a victim of foul play with their wildly incorrect deductions ("the suspect is possibly an alien, because we didn't find footprints"). So the "absolute imbeciles" get reprimanded, loose access to their club room for a week and warned their club will be disbanded if they get involved in another incident. Before long, those three find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when they witness an actual murder: a man being strangled behind a building and his body dragged into an abandoned factory. They decide to call-in an anonymous tip and the police turns up with the man they recognize as the killer to open the factory, which searched top from bottom starting with a suspicious looking case – containing a tuba. A second, obvious place is what looks like a makeshift grave, but only contained a visually pleasing arranged collection of garbage. Props to the police detective for clearing away the junk to continue digging. No evidence of a body or crime was discovered.

So where could the body have been hidden when the police "turned the entire place upside down and didn't find a thing?" The detective club, once again, turn to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to bail them out, but Touma tells them the police will figure it out without their help ("...make sure that you behave and get the club back"). His advice falls on deaf ears as the club goes ahead with their own investigation and Mizuhara doing some legwork in the background, until Touma reappears to reveal what really happened at the factory. Touma's solution to the problem turns, what appeared to be an impossible disappearance of a corpse, into a Columbo-style breakdown of the murderer's alibi and ends up hanging him with his own incriminating words.

So a really excellent and entertaining story. Loved the cheekiness of the method even though (ROT13) vg'f abg n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel ng nyy, ohg nppvqragnyyl nccrnerq gb or bar qhr gb gur qrgrpgvir pyho'f vagresrerapr. Gur zheqrere bayl jnagrq gb evt hc na nyvov. By the way, I'm starting to develop a soft spot of the Detective Club. They're absolutely useless idiots, but they mean well.

The second story from vol. 44, "Questions," is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart that are scattered across this series. Touma receives a cryptic invitation to a getaway at a luxurious villa. The invitation is a card with the word "QUESTION" on the front and Fermat's Last Theorem on the inside. And he was not the only one to receive an invitation. Several people going through a divorce have gathered at the villa with similar, cryptically-worded invitations. What follows is basically a cross between a treasure hunt and personal journey's of rediscovery. Touma primarily functions as a sideline oracle giving mini-lectures on mathematics, history of mathematical ideas and "an ever-expanding universe of numbers" ("...didn't understand a thing...").

A decent, if not particular memorable, entry in the series and Katou has done better puzzles-with-a-heart stories before. However, the ending admittedly made for a nice finishing touch to this character-driven story.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 45, "Venus," is a somewhat off-beat whodunit. Himichi Sayaka, a second year college student, is arrested on suspicion of having killed her ex-boyfriend, Mizushima Takuya – a third year student. Mizushima Takuya was found beaten to death in his apartment with door and windows securely locked from the inside, however, Himichi Sayaka has a spare key. She was seen near the apartment at the time of the murder and a bloodied baseball bat was discovered behind her own home. They had been fighting over money he owed her. So the prosecution can prove means, motive and opportunity, but the prosecutor has her doubts and asks Touma to see if he can spot a frame job. Mizuhara remains perplexed important people keep asking Touma for help ("but... this guy is still in high school"). If she has been framed for murder, the crime becomes an impossible one.

This story is, strangely enough, interspersed with comic-y vignettes in which a Venusian space girl, named Serge, teaches a talking raccoon in dungarees about the solar system. I really liked the one panel blending the retelling of how the murder was discovered with a floor plan of the crime scene. Some artistic touches that helped to make it stand out and cushion two notable short comings: a murderer who suspiciously stands out and a surprisingly routine locked room-trick for this series. That being said, the conclusion is solid enough with Touma eliminating all but one of the suspects before trapping them with their own words ("...something only the murderer could have known..."). A fair effort.

The second story in vol. 45, "First Love," can be read as an improvement on the previous story. Koba Tomotoshi is pretty average, second year student at Sakisaka High School. And to his very great surprise, Nitobe Rena asked him one day to be her boyfriend.

Nitobe Rena is the beautiful, popular girl at school and their relationship painted a target on his back. Something happened some time later when he took her back to his house and barely inside, they hear a thump coming from the balcony. What they find on the balcony is the body of a fellow student wrapped inside a bag. So how did the body end up on the balcony? It couldn't be a bizarre suicide, because the apartment is on the seventh floor of a twelve floor building and the body would have landed on an upper apartment balcony. Since this incident, Nitobe's parents have forbidden to see Koba. In desperation, he turns to the teenage genius and classroom detective of his school. Touma is currently engaged on, what they call, the Rakugo Artist Case. Mizuhara gets to play detective, collect evidence and contribute a pretty solid false-solution to the story. I had the most fun with this story playing armchair detective. I had a good idea about the who and why, but was stumped by the how. Something I should have figured out, but somehow missed entirely. Yes, I can be very dense at times, but well played regardless!

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 46, "Broken Heart," is the Rakugo Artist Case and is one of those stolen money stories Katou has done before, but this one has a neat and original wrinkle on the classic locked room situation. The setting of the story is the comedy theater Shitamachi where the princely sum of five million yen is stolen from the senior Rakugo artist, Tsubakiya Kamekichi, who brought the money along for safekeeping. And to ensure its safety during the performance, the money was locked inside a wallet with padlock secured to the handle of a steel ornamental jar. Only to discover later that evening the stacks of bills had somehow been replaced with blank paper! So how was the money taken from the locked wallet? The locked wallet-trick is only a relative small part of this character piece with its theatrical backdrop and backstory of young, aspiring actress/comedian/narrator, but just loved the visual imagery of the locked wallet hanging on a jar.

You don't find that many impossible crime novels or even short stories fiddling around with padlocks, because you have to ignore the fact they're not all that reliable and easily picked open. Suppose the same holds true for this story and the possibility alone should have made the person watching over the jar the primary suspect. Just going with the story, Katou demonstrated yet again you can achieve great effects with relatively simple, straight forward tricks. Loved it!

For those sick and tired of me droning on about locked rooms and alibis, the next story is for you. "Pilgrimage" is probably the darkest, most disturbing story this series has told and has Touma reconstructing a long-forgotten, deeply buried secret dating back to the Second World War. The story begins in the present with Uchibori Koyuki, a proof reader, finding an unpublished manuscript written by her late father, Shoichiro, who was a non-fiction writer. Manuscript is titled Pilgrim and has three handwritten notes on the cover, "rejected," "coincidence?" and "intentional?" Why was it rejected and shelved? She shows the manuscript to Touma and he found the subject matter more interesting than the reason why it was rejected. Pilgrim tells the tragic story from the early 1940s of a serial robber who accidentally killed one of his victims, a young newlywed woman, which forced him to flee the country. Yamai Seimei was eventually captured in Hanoi, Vietnam, ensuring "the bastard will get the death penalty." Usui Shigeru, victim's husband, travels to Hanoi under wartime circumstances, but halfway through he decides to continue the journey to Hanoi on foot – about a 1000 km journey. Two months later, Usui Shigeru arrives at the court in Hanoi and asks the court to spare his wife killer by commuting his death sentence to a prison sentence. But why? More importantly, why was it not enough to save the killer from death? And, of course, the reason is also why the manuscript remained unpublished.

A very dark, disturbing reason. Not that you would get that impression from the description, so far, because “"Pilgrimage" starts out with a human touch of Chestertonian wonder. A man forgiving and sparing the life of his wife's murderer following a mysterious, self-imposed pilgrimage and the wonder what he could have experienced during those two months. Only for it to turn in a terrifying, pitch-black and nightmarish horror plucked from the pages of an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Or, in this case, Edogawa Rampo. Bravo!

So, on a whole, not a bad collection of stories covering these three volumes. "Tuba and Grave," "First Love" and "Pilgrimage" are the obvious standouts and personally liked "Broken Heart" for its locked wallet mystery. Only "Question" and "Venus" trailed behind, but even they had their moments. Far from disappointed and look forward to the next three volumes, which you can expect before too long.