Last year, my fellow
locked room enthusiast JJ, of The
Invisible Event, posted an installment on his blog of "Adventures
in Self-Publishing," a series bravely tackling self-published
detective novels, novellas and short stories, which introduced me to
the work of Robert
Innes – a mystery writer specialized in impossible
crime fiction. So that earned him a top spot on my list of
persons of interest.
As of this writing, Innes
has penned nine novellas about his series-character,
Detective-Sergeant Blake Harte, who transferred in Untouchable
(2016) from Manchester to the quiet, picturesque village of
Harmschapel. But as Sherlock Holmes and Midsomer Murders has
learned us, "the lowest and vilest alleys in London" do
not present "a more dreadful record of sin" than does "the
smiling and beautiful countryside." Harmschapel proved to be a
hotbed for seemingly impossible murders.
JJ had cautioned me to
read the series in chronological order, because the later stories
refer back to the murderers from previous cases, but also warned that
Untouchable would probably infuriate me beyond all measure –
which is why it took me so long to get around to this series. I had
no idea where to begin. So I finally decided to just pick a title
with the most intriguing-sounding premise and impossible problem.
Flatline (2018) is
the sixth novella in the series and D.S. Blake Harte is hospitalized
and scheduled to go under the knife to have his appendix removed, but
something dark is brooding in the staff rooms and corridors of
Clackton General.
Exactly a year ago,
Doctor Joe Tilsley and Nurse Kelsey Richards, who are dating,
accidentally killed a young woman, Lucy Pennock, when they struck her
with their car on a dark, rainy country road. Joe convinced Kelsey
they should get out of there in order to protect their careers, but
the death of Lucy weighs very heavy on Kelsey's conscience, which
naturally puts a strain on their relationship. She becomes incredibly
suspicious and slightly paranoid when D.S. Harte is hospitalized,
because she found out he's "an extremely talented officer"
behind "the solving of some truly baffling cases," but
worst of all, Harte is the police officer in charge of the
investigation into a deadly hit-and-run – one which happened
exactly a year ago! But the worst is yet to come.
Kelsey receives a
disturbing video message from someone wearing a surgical mask and
cap, who identifies himself as The Watcher, warning Kelsey that the
time has come to pay for the innocent life that had been so cruelly
snatched away. This is followed by the bells of Big Ben booming from
the tannoy system in the middle of the night and sinister phone call
from The Watcher ending with "the long, monotonous tone of a
flatline." Finally, there's the murder.
Dr. Joe Tilsley enters
one of the two elevators in the hospital on the tenth floor and gets
stuck on his way down, between the eight and seventh floor, which
stays there for twenty-five minutes. When they finally opened the
elevator doors, Dr. Tilsey is lying on the floor. And according to
the physical evidence, he had been drowned in a bone dry elevator
during those twenty-five lonely minutes when he had been trapped
inside.
So here you have, what's
undoubtedly, an intriguing premise for an impossible crime, but the
story turned out to be a mixed bag of tricks. Let me begin with what
I liked about it.
The locked room-trick
found a new variation on an old principle of the impossible crime
story often employed by such luminaries as John
Dickson Carr, Edward
D. Hoch and Paul
Halter. You have to wonder why nobody else had come up with this
idea before and miraculous drowning in the closed elevator was
strengthened by the cussedness of all things general. A well-done
impossible crime with a Carrian touch. The second thing I liked was
the presence of a rival-detective, Sergeant Gardiner, who has been
after Harte's position ever since he arrived in Harmschapel and
provides the story with a ridiculous false solution, which is exactly
what I expected from a rival-detective – because the Western
detective story needs more Simon Brimmer's and Superintendent
Akechi's. They're simply fun.
On the other hand, I
hated how Harte's private life intruded upon the story. I mean, this
is supposed to be a dark, brooding detective story with an elusive
figure dressed as a surgeon stalking a doctor and a nurse in the
corridors of the hospital and apparently leaving behind a body in a
locked elevator. But the flow of this story is interrupted several
times so that Harte can argue with his boyfriend about him always
working or discharging himself from hospital against the advice of
the doctors.
This is exactly what I
hate about so many modern police procedurals. Not to mention that
this came at the cost of at least three characters who needed a
little more fleshing out.
Dr. Joe Tilsley is pretty
much a non-entity and only there to provide a corpse for the story
and a motive for the murderer, while Nurse Kelsey is a typical
woman-in-peril who gets unburdened when a deus ex machine gave
a new explanation for the hit-and-run. So not very original, but
could have been more than it was if it was shown how that fateful
night changed their relationship. The two already were an interesting
contrast of each other. But the character who really got the short
end of the stick was the murderer.
If the reader had been
told what made the murderer tick, it would have strengthened the
locked room-trick even more, because the murderer's personality and
state-of-mind is integral to the murder. Innes could have gotten away
with this, because he had dragged a good red herring across the trail
to divert your attention away from this person.
So, all in all, Flatline
is an uneven detective story with some good ideas, but clings too
much to the conventions of the modern, British police procedural and
allowed the personal life of the police-detective to intrude upon the
story – disrupting and eventually breaking my immersion. However, I
will not give up on this series and try one or two more. Ripples
(2017) and Atmosphere
(2018) have fascinating-sounding premises for an impossible crime
story.
Well, this is the third
mixed review in a row, but I'll try to pick something good for my
next read. Fingers cross!
