Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

I recently read Benjamin Stevenson's genre debut, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022), which perfectly blended the contemporary, character-driven crime novel with the plot complexity and fair play principles of the Golden Age detective story – starring crime fiction expert Ernest Cunningham. A reliable narrator, if there ever was one! This time, the promise to "modernize" the great detective stories of yesteryear without brutally butchering them was fully delivered on to the point where the book read like a modern continuation of the Golden Age traditions. So far from the usual pale, unfunny and cliche-ridden imitations of the Agatha Christie-style country house mysteries of the past. But neither is it a cutesy, sugary sweet cozy, or cozy adjacent, mystery as the book title and cover might suggest. It's as much a modern crime novel as it's a classically-styled detective story. I was incredibly pleased.

I was so pleased with Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, I ordered, received and read Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) post-haste. And it's even better than the first one!

Ernest Cunningham is back from his disastrous, deadly family reunion at the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat and has gone on to write a modestly successful book about his experience, but the experience left him with the lingering symptoms of survivor's guilt and impostor syndrome. He also signed a lucrative publishing contract to write a second, fictional book and took a large advance, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone was a firsthand account of his personal experiences – not complete fiction. Just a little. So without inspiration, Ernest accepts an invitation from the Australian Mystery Writers' Society to attend a crime writing festival aboard the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, the Ghan. A four day tour cutting through the Australian desert with panels, Q&As and sight seeing stops.

The guest of honor and "major drawcard" is the international bestselling author of the Detective Morbund series, Henry McTavish, who's famous creation "is as close to a modern-day Holmes or Poirot as they come" with a dedicated fandom – calling themselves "Morbund's Mongrels." Scottish phenomenon is not the only writer on the card. Alan Royce is a forensic mystery writer who has written eleven books in the Dr. Jane Black series, SF Majors writes psychological thrillers, Jane Fulton wrote a widely acclaimed legal thriller twenty years ago and has been working on the sequel ever since. Wolfgang is a representative of the Australian literary crowd, "shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize," who's only link to the crime genre is "his rhyming verse novel retelling of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood." He reminded me of the characters populating Arthur W. Upfield's An Author Bites the Dust (1948) and enjoyed his confrontation with Ernest during the first panel ("...all you did was copy Capote"). Ernest represents both the debuting and non-fiction categories, because his book is a true-crime memoir, but he brought along his girlfriend Juliette Henderson. The former owner of the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat who had also written a book about the murders that took place there ("her book had sold better than mine"). Naturally, there are some ill-feelings, bruised egos and buried secrets to be shared among the authors eventually leading to a dramatic murder.

Sounds conventional enough, so far, but Ernest takes a hands-on approach to the job of a reliable narrator with a lot of foreshadowing, fourth wall breaking and a bit of teasing. That's why Ernest is "a bit chattier than your usual detective" to ensure no "obvious truths" are concealed from the reader. For example, Ernest tells the reader that he uses the killer's name ("in all its forms") 106 times and gives a tally throughout the story of the name count. And, of course, it not even remotely close to being that easy to find the well-hidden murderer! Stevenson clearly understands that the ability to gracefully lie through your teeth without saying an untrue word is an invaluable tool when it comes to writing and plotting detective stories. It not only makes for an incredibly fun, fairly clued meta-whodunit with a bit of comedy and self-parody, but an engaging cat-and-mouse between armchair detective/reader and narrator. I appreciated the early heads up ("if you're hoping for a locked-room mystery, this isn't it").

 

 

Just like the first book, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect might still strike some as somewhat cozy adjacent, when summarily described, but another thing this series does very well is striking a balance between the classical and modern schools of the genre – which include a few sordid elements you would never come across in a Golden Age mystery. However, it's not merely the more sordid criminal elements making this series a perfect blend of the traditional and modern style, but how the world of today is incorporated into this whodunit. Particularly the plot-thread concerning (SPOILER/ROT13) Jbystnat'f vagrenpgvir neg cebwrpg Gur Qrngu bs Yvgrengher naq ubj vg'f yvaxrq gb nabgure cybg-guernq to reveal something that could only happen in today's world.

I noted in the past how the argument that advancements in technology and forensic science during the second-half of the previous century made the traditional detective story, popular during its first-half, obsolete was demolished by Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54) decades before it was put forward. It simply depends on who's doing the writing and plotting. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect are exactly what I imagined the Grandest Game in the World could have evolved into had it been allowed to co-exist alongside the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and police procedurals. So was even more pleased than with the first book in the series and only the potential of spoilers prevents me from raving rambling on about this richly-plotted gem of a retro-Golden Age mystery, but you probably get the idea by now.

So I don't know what's more appropriate to close out this shoddy review, we're so back or nature is healing? Either way, I'm slightly pissed the third in the series is titled Everyone this Christmas has a Secret (2024) and we're not even halfway through April! I guess Christmas is coming early this year as that one is going to be cleared off the list long before December rolls around.

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

The traditional, Golden Age-style detective story has seen a tremendous resurgence over the past ten years spurred on by the fortunate concurrence of the reprint renaissance gaining full momentum with the outbreak of the translation wave – which occurred a decade ago this year. A confluence of discovery, and rediscovery, leading to a rebirth of the classically-styled, fair play detective novel. Not to mention a locked room revival that came as a byproduct of the reprint renaissance and translation wave. Happy little accidents, indeed!

So times have definitely changed over the past twenty years, particularly the last ten, which even gave rise to a strong, independent scene of traditional and borderline experimental impossible crime experts. After all, a rising tide lifts up all ships.

I'm still flinchy when it comes to modern detective fiction presented as clever, hilarious send-ups of the Golden Age country house whodunit or clever, hilarious modern reinterpretations of the classic British mysteries. More often that not, they aren't clever (e.g. Catherine Aird's The Stately Home Murder, 1969) nor hilarious (e.g. Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, 2006). At their worst, they trot out old, dusty tropes and cliches presented as clever, subversive takes on the "surprise" solution (the butler did it by way of a secret passage). Like I said on a previous review, I've been tricked too many times with false promises of contemporary, Golden Age-style mysteries not to be flinchy – hence why I was skeptical about today's subject. Nearly everyone raved about Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) by Australian stand-up comedian Benjamin Stevenson upon its release, but the packaging and presentation was cause for hesitation.

I honestly forgot it existed until John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, returned from hiatus in January and recommended Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone as "the best one" with "a couple of impossible crimes." Yeah, it's embarrassing how easy it really is to reel me in. The promise of a couple of impossible crimes usually does the trick.

Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is the first entry in the Ernest Cunningham series, which currently counts three novels comprising of Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024). The titles in combination with their covers immediately pushes them in the cozy corner of the genre, but John Norris turned out to be correct when he called them puzzling, engaging meta-mysteries – both honoring and spoofing the fair play principles of the traditional detective story ("Knox would have me drawn and quartered..."). That still sounds a bit cozy adjacent. Regardless of its traditional trappings and narrative, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone is a dark, gritty crime novel with all the plot-complexity of a classic mystery. There are, however, no impossible crimes or locked room murders.

Ernest Cunningham is a writer who writes books on how to write a book and something of an expert on crime-and detective fiction. Cunningham is also the narrator who promises the reader to be a reliable narrator, contrary to the customary reliable narrator, but "not competent." Everything he tells is the truth or what he believed the truth to be at the time. Cunningham regularly addresses the reader or foreshadow what's to come like referring in the opening to the chapters where the readers can expect the "gory details" or acknowledging "there is only one plot-hole you could drive a truck through." There are layers and double meanings to everything. Cunningham's narrative recounting the events gives this otherwise dark, modern crime tale its classical whodunit structure festooned with clues and red herrings.

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone takes place during the Cunningham family reunion at the remote Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat, which sounds conventional enough, but everyone in Cunningham's family has killed someone. Some of his relatives, "the high achievers," killed more than once. So the family is well-known to the police and media, especially after the murder Ernest's brother is serving time for. Three years previously, Michael turned up at Ernest's doorstep with a bag of money and a dying man in the backseat. Michael asks him to help bury the man and Ernest complies at first, but witnesses something wishing he hadn't and turned him to the police – even testifying against him. That betrayal turned their mother, Audrey, against Ernest. Her current husband and their stepfather, Marcelo Garcia, who's a lawyer and defended Michael in court. It only got him a three year sentence.

So the family comes back together for a reunion and greet Michael back a free man at the Sky Lodge, which honestly would have been enough to fuel the entire as the unraveling of the family's backstory demonstrates. Not only the various, individual backstories giving the book its title, but the overarching backstory in how the killing three years ago is connected to the death of Ernest and Michael's father. A small-time criminal who died in a shootout with the police decades ago. Neither the murder three years ago nor the shootout are quite what they seem as everything obfuscated by layers of lies, misunderstanding and misconceptions. All wrapped up as meta-mystery penned by someone who understands how to gracefully lie through your teeth without uttering a single untrue word. A talent that separated the likes of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Christianna Brand from their contemporaries.

Normally, a crime novel or even a more traditionally-styled detective story focusing entirely on backstories is a huge red flag, as it rarely bodes well for the quality of the plot, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone simply turned the collection of backstories into the various, interconnected pieces of an intricately-designed, fairly clued puzzle plot. Impressively, it recreated the traditional whodunit without dragging out bodies-in-libraries or subversively secret passages, but the sordid, downright reprehensible crimes not often associated with the good, old-fashioned whodunit. So peeling away the layers surrounding the Cunningham family secrets alone would have been a compelling modern take on the classic mystery novel, but it's not just the past throwing up questions and mysteries. The reunion is interrupted when the unidentified body of a man, an outsider, is found under mysterious circumstances. A death that could be the handiwork of an active serial killer, "The Black Tongue," who already made three victims by employing a very unusual, terrifying murder method.

This only touches a fraction of the deeply rooted, widely branched family plot buried at the core of Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone streaked through with thrills and a couple of close calls. There was, in fact, so much going on I became skeptical how Stevenson intended to pull all the twisted, intertwined plot-threads together in such a way that had my fellow detective aficionados raving. Well, I suppose my fears were put aside when Ernest turned to the reader to give a list of all the clues, "to keep Ronald Knox happy," he used to put every piece in place. So everyone still alive gathers in the library where Ernest explains everything. Admittedly, there's a lot to explain and unpack, technically and emotionally, which slows down the pace a little. But absolutely necessary to digest everything properly. One, or two, things stretched things a little (ROT13: gur zvpebqbgf nxn “fcl fuvg”), but nothing detrimental to the plot, story or characters. I rather have a plot that's a little over indulgent in some places than threadbare. I really liked who the murderer turned out to be. I certainly had my suspicions against that person, but not that. Very, very cheeky!

So it can be said Stevenson succeeded Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone in creating a genuine, character-driven modernization of the plot-oriented Golden Age detective story, but I like to see it as a long overdue continuation of the traditional, fair play detective story. There have been glimpses over the decades of what the Golden Age detective story could have turned into had it not been slowly snuffed out during the post-WWII decades, which were often short-lived or somewhat hidden, but it looks like its time has finally come. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone comes recommended as not only a superb detective novel, but as another step towards that Second Golden Age. I very much look forward to Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023), which is going to be short-tracked to the top of the big pile.

Strange Pictures (2022) by Uketsu

I noted in the 2024 roundup post, "Murder in Retrospect," Pushkin Vertigo had begun to expand their catalog of Japanese detective translations beyond the lavishly-plotted, grandiose honkaku and shin honkaku locked room mysteries – starting with the publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi kakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960). A police procedural originally published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction, however, the breaking down of two cast-iron alibis is done with all the ingenuity of the classic detective story.

Somewhat of a departure from what readers have come to expect from the Japanese detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo, Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji, but comments on my review called The Black Swan Mystery one of their best translations to date. I can't entirely disagree. The Black Swan Mystery is a 1960s police procedural with the heart of a Golden Age detective novel and the social issues playing out the background enhanced the overall story. Pushkin Vertigo has a few other intriguing, non-impossible crime translations lined-up for this year like Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-loop mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995) and Taku Ashibe's classically-styled family whodunit Oomarike satusjin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021). I was most intrigued of all when Pushkin Vertigo announced the forthcoming translations of Uketsu's "strange novels."

"Uketsu" is the pseudonym of a popular, Japanese horror Youtuber who has nearly two million subscribers and his debut novel, Henna e (Strange Pictures, 2022), sold over three million copies, but the person behind this success remains a mystery – hidden behind a white mask, black bodysuit and voice changer. I didn't know what, exactly, to expect from Strange Pictures except that it appeared to bring the visual medium to the printed page. But was it a proper detective, a hybrid mystery, horror masking itself as a detective story or something completely different? I decided to not probe it too much and find out when its published. A good decision as Strange Pictures gives you a different experience than your average detective or crime novel.

Strange Pictures is a collection of four, interconnected short stories each centering on the hidden or obscured meaning behind a drawing, or series of drawings, but the book has a ton of additional illustrations, diagrams, timetables and even the odd floor plan. So richly illustrated you can almost call it wordy picture book.

This collection of linked stories begins with a short, untitled prologue in which a professor lectures on the revealing nature of pictures and drawings into the inner works of the artist. She shows the drawing of a child who had been involved in a murder case to illustrate her point and explain why the child is "now living happily as a mother." This analysis pretty much serves as the framework for the bigger picture behind the overarching story.

The first of these linked mysteries, "The Old Woman's Prayer," takes place in 2014 and reads like a 2000s-era creepy internet story. Shuhei Sasaki, a student and member of his university's paranormal club, learns about an innocently-looking, dormant blog – called "Oh No, Not Raku." A blog filled with the "empty silliness that was the hallmark of your average daily diary." Someone going by the handle "Raku" started blogging about his daily life in 2008 and discovering his wife, "Yuki," is pregnant. So the blog prattled on for months, before taking a tragic turn and the blog became inactive in 2009. Three years later, Raku returned with a last, cryptically-worded update about finally having figured out the secret of those numbered pictures. The pictures in questions were drawn by Yuki depicting, what she called, "visions of the future." The solution to what happened behind the scenes is locked away inside those drawings.

Yuki's strange, cryptic drawings aren't the only illustrations adorning this story. There's a screenshot of the blog (yes, I tried the address, but nothing) and a ton of other pictures to illustrate ideas/solutions. So it definitely sets the tone for the rest of the book and provides some answers, but the open ending leaves the reader hanging. However, not without reason!

The second story, "The Smudged Room," takes a more grounded approach with an apparently small, unimportant domestic problem. Naomi Konno is asked by a teacher if anything unusual or scary had happened at home, because her five-year-old Yuta drew a strange picture in class. At first glance, it looks like a typical child's drawing showing him and his mother standing next to their apartment building. But the room in the middle of the top floor was "covered with a large grey scribble." The room where they lived. So nothing worrying enough to fuel some domestic suspense, but then a mysterious man begins to stalk the two and Yuta disappears one night from their apartment. And figuring out the meaning behind the smodged room is the key to finding him. This story also closes with an open end, but you can already see the bigger picture of the overarching narrative taking shape. The next two stories bring everything together with the next one, unsurprisingly, becoming my favorite part of Strange Pictures.

"The Art Teacher's Final Drawing" is an out, and out, shin honkaku detective story, but in the tradition of Ayukawa's previously mentioned The Black Swan Mystery. So no locked rooms or other types of impossible crimes, but unbreakable alibis, a gruesomely ingenious murder method and one of the few genuinely classic examples of the dying message.

In 1992, the horribly mutilated body of Yoshiharu Miura, an art teacher, was discovered on the side of "Mt K—in L—Prefucture," where he had planned to stay for an overnight camping trip – whoever killed him took his food and sleeping bag. But why not his other supplies? And why the overkill? Miura had been stabbed numerous times and beaten over two hundred times! So the police assumed the murderer had a very personal motive behind it and they come up with three potential suspects, but two have alibis and only suspicions against the third. So the case goes unsolved for three years, until a veteran reporter and young, eager newshound pick up the trail again and try to retrace everyone's steps. But central to their investigation is the victim's dying message. A drawing of the mountain scenery on the back of a receipt which poses two questions: message hidden in the drawing and how he could have composes such a dying message under, let's say, less than ideal circumstances. But the murderer from three years ago returns. And leaves behind another human-shaped, battered mess along the hiking trail. Just the solutions to the murders and how it folds the gruesome murder method, alibi-trick and dying message together with the identity of the murderer is enough to make it a first-rate shin honkaku mystery, but, more importantly, is how these murders fit into this interconnected web of strange pictures.

The complete, not exactly comforting picture emerges in the fourth and final story, "The Bird, Safe in the Tree," which connects the prologue and the previously three stories in a way that's both deeply satisfying and disturbing. Not merely a play on that old, tired cliché of the horror genre, "humans are the REAL monsters," but on their cruel, uncanny knack to create monsters. Strange Pictures is eerily effective in how each drawing, in each succeeding story, gradually reveals the whole tragic, sordid mess connecting all the characters and pictures. Something that makes Strange Picture very difficult, if not impossible, to pigeonhole. It's both a traditionally-plotted detective story and entirely in line with the darkly modern, character-driven crime novels told partially in pictures, diagrams and timetables. I was tempted to draw a comparison with Shichiri Nakayama's Tsuioku no nocturn (Nocturne of Remembrance, 2013), but perhaps Strange Pictures is best described as a darker, grislier take on the puzzles-with-a-heart stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series.

Either way, I found Uketsu's Strange Pictures to be an engrossing, original take on both the traditionally-plotted detective story and the darker, character-driven crime novels of today. A different way to tell either and still something fans of both can appreciate. I sure did! Very much look forward to the sequel later this year.

A note for the curious: I only found out after finishing the book Strange Pictures got multiple translations including Dutch. If I had known a Dutch translation was available, I would probably have been tempted to pick it over the English translation. Anyway, I included the cover of the Dutch translation, Vreemde tekeningen (Strange Drawings).

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

In 2020, P.J. Fitzsimmons debuted his series of humorous, lighthearted historical locked room “cozies” about the bantering, snooping idler-about-town Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly – who's ever ready with a funny quip or unhelpful comment. I was aware of the series since The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) was published, but the series description "cozies" made me hesitant to give it a try. I've been tricked before!

I decided last December the season was appropriate enough to take a risk on a Christmas-themed locked room cozy, even it turned out the plot lacked any kind of substance. So picked up The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021), second title in the Anty Boisjoly series, which proved to be a pleasant surprise. Leo Bruce meets Jonathan Creek plotted around a handful of impossible crimes and inexplicable situations. It has everything from a murderer who leaves no footprints in the snow and ghostly visitations to the theft of the church's weather vane. The solutions are neither routine nor uninspired. I immediately added the first and third title to the big pile.

So anyone who's not a willfully, chronologically-challenged dipstick would have peddled back and started The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, but the third novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), has a premise I found hard to ignore – not merely for its alluring locked room premise. Detective stories plotted around the classic tontine scheme tend to be good or at least a ton of fun. I always enjoy them!

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine begins at the Juniper Gentleman's Club, in Mayfair, where Anty gives his condolences to his fellow clubman, Tristian "Lager" Tenpenny, who recently lost his Uncle Ratcliffe and Cousin Hadley. Ratcliffe Tenpenny and Hadley Tenpenny were two elderly relatives and "rival beneficiaries" in "the vast, unfathomable wealth of the Tenpenny Tontine." A tontine that was established in 1825 and has been accumulating a fortune over the course of more than a century, but it's going to be dissolved upon the death of either Ratcliffe or Hadley. And the whole pile goes to the last survivor. Ratcliffe and Hadley "shared" a house, Wedge Hedge Square, which was cut in half. One half was for Ratcliffe and Lager and the other half for Hadley and Lager's cousin, Victoria. Another part "remained neutral ground" for receiving guests and shouting matches ("this was very much a house divided").

Ratcliffe and Hadley apparently decided to take matters into their own hands and settle the whole thing in a good, old-fashioned duel. They appear to have locked themselves into the reading room and barricaded the doors by slipping a candle stick through the handles. When they're inside, they take a shot at each other with dueling pistols with troublesome results. They both end up "lifelessly slumped into their wood and wicker wheelchairs" dead of gunshot wounds to the heart. So the problem starts out not as a double murder in a locked room, but a question as to whom dead first? If there's a despite over the legal claim, the court could award the whole lot to the crown instead of one of the heirs, Lager or Victoria. Lager asks Anty to do "that thing you do" and see if he can discover who died had first.

It doesn't take Anty long to turn a simple, uncomplicated case of an illegal duel with two fatalities into a full-blown locked room murder. Not the last, seemingly impossible murder, to take place in that room. A third murder sees the room barricaded with a chair with the added complication that the murderer appears to have left the room without leaving bloody footprints all over the place. I'll return to the locked rooms in moment.

Just like the previous novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine very much is a continuation of the comedy mysteries and genre parodies of Leo Bruce, R.T. Campbell and Edmund Crispin. A story full of eccentric characters, witty dialogue and scenes in which two collide head on. I particular enjoyed the lot of character who turned up for this one. Like the family lawyer, Chauncey "Chancy" Proctor, who hails from a long line of "notoriously inept solicitors" known and dutifully maintained "the appallingly low standard of advice and care the firm had been offering its clients for generations" – not wholly unsuccessfully either. There's a maid who pilfers umbrellas and walking sticks and the crowd at the Swashbuckling Society with their glorious tales of adventure, daring-does and crooked duels, but the best character and hero of the book is Hadley's "wire-haired havoc on four legs." A Scots Terrier variably-named Satan, Lucifer, Diabolus, etc., who has it in for employees of His Majesty's Postal Service. He's the reason why they haven't had a letter-box delivery for months as the postman usually pushes their letters into the hedge, before fleeing in terror. But the devil gets to help Anty solve the case. So he really is the hero good boy of the story.

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is a very amusing, highly readable and lighthearted mystery that's over before you notice it. I breezed through it at a leisurely pace. It therefore pains me to to say that the story, plot-wise, is not a patch on its predecessor. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning admirably balanced the lighthearted comedy with clever plotting and the locked room-tricks had some creativity behind them. I found that a bit lacking here with overall plot aiming for short term effect with the long term consequences causing the case to become muddled, which can work, but it didn't feel like it really held together here. Not convincingly. For example, the supposed duel in the locked room (SPOILER/ROT13) bayl jbexf orpnhfr ab nhgbcfl vf rire zragvbarq, cerfhznoyl abg cresbezrq, orpnhfr vg jbhyq erirny bar zna unq orra yrtvgvzngryl fubg naq gur bgure bar unq qvrq sebz n fgno jbhaq erfrzoyvat n thafubg jbhaq sebz n qhryvat cvfgby. The other locked room murder is fine, if you don't expect anything fancy from the solution, but it probably would have worked better had the room not been barricaded. Just the problem of the murderer crossing "the pool of blood between the body and the door" without leaving bloody footprints would have been good enough considering its solution.

So still enjoyed the hell out of it, but definitely expected more from the plot and its pair of locked room murders after the previous one. I was also a little disappointed. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning has earned this series enough credit to not immediately abandon it. Every series has its dips. You can expect reviews of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) in the near future. Hopefully, they provide me with ample reason to move to the fantastic sounding The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). That first title is not misspelled with one of my redundant typos and the second one sounds like a long-lost episode from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? So don't let me down Fitzsimmons!

A note for the curious: I still intend to do an addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century," an excuse to talk about impossible crimes thinly disguised as a historical overview, to focus on the developments from the 2015 to 2025 period. I want to make it either the last post of this year or the first one of next year. Yeah, adorably optimistic and another thinly disguised excuse to sink into another locked room study. So expect a noticeable uptick this year of locked room reviews from the 2015/25 period and the 2000s in general.

Check's in the Mail: "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" (1981) by Edward D. Hoch

I finished Edward D. Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne series when Crippen & Landru published its fifth and final collection of short stories, Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018), which gave closure to one of Hoch's most popular and long-running series – running from 1974 to 2008 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. So haven't visited the good doctor for "another small—ah—libation" since then and other Hoch collections beckon for my attention, but there's a short story I wanted to revisit.

A few years ago, "The Dark One," of A Perfect Locked Room, reviewed Hoch's More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2006) and it reminded me of a particular story that had inexplicably escaped my attention when compiling "The Updated Mammoth List of My Favorite Locked Room Mysteries."

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office," originally published in the June, 1981, issue of EQMM, takes place on October 24, 1929 – a day better known as Black Thursday. While the stock markets began to panic, the small town of Northmont is looking forward that day to the opening own, separate post office away from the general store. The brand new post office, "a pink post office," receives its last lick of fresh paint when the postmistress, Vera Brock, opens its doors for business. Among her first customers is Anson Waters, the town banker, who tells them about the panic down on Wall Street and needs to send his broker "a railroad bearer bond in the amount of ten thousand dollars" ("my broker can cash it at once"). Something everyone in the post office overhears and the registered envelope goes missing without a trace.

Fortunately, Dr. Sam Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens are two of the seven people present at the post office when the envelope disappeared. Dr. Hawthorne states "there are seven of us here, and I can offer seven solutions." The fast moving procession of false-solutions and them getting shot down almost as quickly is one of the highlights of this short story, however, the false-solution serve an even more important purpose than merely entertaining genre savvy detective geeks.

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office" starts out as an Ellery Queen-style "hidden object" puzzle, which is impossible crime adjacent, but Hawthorne knocking down his own false-solutions and eliminating all the suspects turned it into a fully fledged locked room mystery. Next comes the tricky part as the story has to, fittingly enough, deliver an eighth solution to the problem that has to be a little more than good. Hoch more than delivered on not only the story's premise, but on Hawthorne's opening statement that "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" is "unique among all the cases" he helped to solve. A shrewdly clued solution of beautiful simplicity which yet feels satisfying and original, because the trick is tailor-made for this story. A small gem and one of my favorite impossible crime stories from Hoch!

The House of Snow and the Six Tricks (2022) by Danro Kamosaki

Last year, the first round of nominations for the updated "Locked Room Library," hosted by Alexander of The Detection Collection, introduced me to the fanlations from Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmmiicnana" – whose work got several novels on the nomination list. Kie Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) became instant favorites, Takekuni Kitayama's Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders, 2002) is close on their heels. All three are modern masterpieces of the hybrid mystery with incredibly imaginative, visionary even, plots and original locked room mysteries. I also enjoyed their translation of Jun Kurachi's excellent, non-impossible crime mystery Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). This duo also translated two novels from a series with a very alluring premise.

Danro Kamosaki wordily titled Misshitsu ougon jidai no satsujin – Yuko no yakata to muttsu no trick (Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms – The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, 2022) is the first entry in the "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series. I'll simply refer to it as The House of Snow and the Six Tricks.

Three years previously, the first ever, real-life locked room murder was committed in Japan. Fortunately, the murderer was arrested, put on trial and acquitted, because nobody could break down the killer's locked room-trick – protecting the murderer like an unbreakable alibi. So the locked room murder and impossible crime, "that common fiction trope so looked down upon for its unreality," became "preeminently practical" over night. Just a month after the trial, the police were faced with four more locked room murders and the numbers climbed over the following months ("locked rooms spread throughout society like a disease"). The counter stands at 302 at the opening of the story meaning "30% of the total number of murders committed in Japan in an average year are locked room murders."

Over the course of the story, the reader learns just how much this epidemic of impossible crimes have changed police work and given rise to new jobs. There are now specialized detectives to handle complicated locked room murders that do not involve any of the routine tricks, "like using string to turn the key in the inside lock or hiding inside the room," but a murderer with a fresh idea or using new, cutting-edge tricks. The so called locked room detectives aren't the only newly created experts to combat the rash of impossible crimes. Locked room appraisal companies specialize in finding secret passages, hidden doors and other such hiding places with ultrasound and x-rays. A service provided to both the police and private citizens to make sure their crime scene or house they intend to buy is free of any hoary, nineteenth century plot device. That and much more you have to read for yourself.

So that's the country 17-year-old high school student, Kasumi Kuzushiro, finds himself in when he's dragged along by his friend, Yozuki Asahina, to the famous House of Snow. Apparently, the hunt for UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animal), but the House of Snow, currently a hotel, used to be the home of the celebrated mystery writer, the late Byakuya Yukishiro. A locked room specialist who was years ahead of the locked room boom when he created one of his own. However, the locked room was a challenge, not a crime, thrown down during a house party.

Ten years ago, Yukishiro hosted a party where his guests, comprising of some well-known mystery writers and critics, were surprised with a mocked murder – which they would declare later that night a perfect locked room mystery. A doll with a knife in its chest is found a room with the door locked from the inside, windows either do not open or have lattices to prevent them from being used, but the finishing touch is that the sole key to the room was inside a bottle with the lid closed tight! This prompted a lively, all-night debate and "an impromptu deduction competition," but nobody that night had been able to solve the mystery. Nobody else had since. So the House of Snow Locked Room Case, "Yukishiro's true masterpiece," became an attraction when he died and his home was turned into a hotel.

 

 

When they arrive, Kasumi Kuzushiro and Yozuki Asahina find an odd collection of guests gathering at the hotel. Eiji Sagurioka, a Locked Room Detective, who came to the hotel to try and find a solution to Yukishiro's mystery for a magazine. Riria Hasemi, a famous teenage actress, who's accompanied by her downtrodden manager, Toshiro Manei. Fenrir Alicehazard, a British woman, who claims to have come to the hotel to hunt for another UMA ("I heard there are skyfish near here"). Satoru Kanzaki, a priest of the Tower of Dawn, representing a religious sect who worship and purify crime scenes with prayer ("...one they held in highest regard was the scene of a locked room murder"). Dr. Hironobu Ishikawa and Haruki Yashiro, president of a trading company, are the more normal guests. Kuzushiro is surprised to find a familiar face among the guests, Shitsuri Mitsumura, who was his classmate in middle school and were the only members of the literature club. She has talent for solving locked room puzzles. Something that comes in handy when people begin to turn up dead under seemingly impossible circumstances.

The first of the murders is practically a copy of Yukishiro's locked room challenge, but, instead of a doll, the knife is now sticking out of a corpse and a unique, hand painted playing card is found – linking the murder to unsolved case known as "The Playing Card Serial Murder Case." On top of that, the murderer cut the phone lines and torched the bridge to trap them in the remote hotel during the dead of winter.

Kuzushiro and Mitsumura have all the time to pick both locked rooms, past and present, over the course of several chapters. Mitsumura pieces together the correct solution and her reconstruction sets the tone for what's to come. The locked room-trick is a complicated, but original, one in both presentation and resolution coming with a clear cut diagram to show the trick worked. Danro Kamosaki loves technical and physical tricks, which is here on full display, but this merely the first of half a dozen impossible murders.

I commented before on these multiple impossible crime mysteries and that they tend to run into one of two problems. They either have one, or two, good locked room-tricks with the remaining being either filler, to put kindly, or downright bad and disappointing. Or they feel to crammed with all the good ideas not given enough room to breath. The magical number to perfectly balance quality and quantity appears to be three or four. The House of Snow and the Six Tricks goes over that margin, however, it maintains a pretty decent quality overall. Only two of them failed to impress me.

There's a rather gruesome stabbing in the dining hall at the time the only entrance was under constant observation. The solution is, visually, unintentionally hilarious and should have been used in a Takemaru Abiko story or some dark, comedic-style mystery (what a way (ROT13) gb hfr n uvqqra, nhgbzngvp qbbe gb n frperg cnffntr!). I hated the third locked room murder, a shooting in a bedroom, which is bad enough to actually slightly detract from the story's overall quality. One of the clearest examples of smearing lipstick on a pig trying to make it look more impossible than it really is. Had the trick gone off as planned, it would have still posed a similar problem in distance. The fourth impossible situation places the body inside a locked room surrounded by "a square arrangement of dominoes" extending towards the door continuing right up to the last one. So nobody could have left the room without toppling the stones. A clever enough solution and the situation demanded a dash of originality, but found the trick contrived and unconvincing.

Even after all they explain all the locked rooms and apprehend the killer, another murderer strikes with a fifth and final impossible murder. A truly ingenious variation on Yukishiro's masterpiece with added difficulties. This time, the only key to the room is found inside a jam jar and the thumb turn, "used to lock the door from the inside," covered with a gachapon capsule ("...the lid of a capsule toy from a gachapon machine") – which immediately eliminates several potential tricks. Kuzushiro, not Mitsumura, finally gets to solve one with a fresh treatment of John Dickson Carr's "Locked Room Lecture" (see The Three Coffins, 1935). Kuzushiro uses the Locked Room Classification List, created by the Ministry of Justice, which lists all "fifteen different types of locked room tricks in existence.” One by one, Kuzushiro's Ellery Queen-style reasoning eliminates every trick on the list, before revealing "an extremely simple trick that doesn't fit into any existing category." I think this fifth is the best of the half a dozen, or so, impossible crimes with clues to its solution dropped throughout the story and doesn't need a diagram to provide a clear visual image of the trick.

If you haven't had your fill of miracle crimes, the murder that started the locked room boom comes into play as it's linked to one of the characters. That murder is revealed to have been something of nestling doll. Locked rooms within locked rooms! A murder in a mansion surrounded by a high wall with the only entrance under CCTV surveillance. The body was found in the customary locked room with the key to the door locked away in a drawer and the key to the drawer was found in the victim's pocket.

So, yes, the love of locked rooms and physical tricks is front and center of The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, but it's not all tricks, tricks and tricks. Just mostly. There's the intriguing backstory of the Japan's first locked room murder and how it's linked up to the main characters, but also a bit of gruesome meta-playfulness with the playing cards and their true meaning. It helped to make this densely-plotted, very technical and detailed locked room mystery fun and readable. Even though the story sometimes tried to be a little too clever for it's own good, The House of Snow and the Six Tricks comes highly recommended to rabid locked room fanatics and everyone who simply enjoys a meaty puzzle plot. You can expect a review of the sequel sometime in the not so distant future.

The Riddle of the Ravens (2024) by J.S. Savage

J.S. Savage debuted two years ago with The Mystery of Treefall Manor (2023), a historical locked room mystery, which introduced his two series-characters, Inspector Graves and Constable Carver – an experienced, older detective and his young protege. A debut full of a promise and an outstanding homage to the great detective stories and writers of yesteryear. I wasn't as enthusiastic about the debut of Savage's contemporary mystery series, Sun, Sea and Murder (2024), introducing the ex-Secret Service agent Penny Haylestone, but I'm confident the next one will improve on the first. I already enjoy the idea of Savage alternating between a historical and contemporary series of locked room mysteries and impossible crimes.

That brings us to the second entry in the Graves and Carver series, The Riddle of the Ravens (2024), which is set in November 1926 during the run-up to Guy Fawkes Night.

Graves and Carver are sent to the Tower of London on a not quite routine assignment. Peter Standford, Constable of the Tower of London, turned to Scotland Yard when three of the six ravens died. All three ravens died over the span of a week under mysterious circumstances. There's an old legend "which says that if there are no ravens at the Tower of London, the kingdom will fall," but the ravens also happen to be the property of the King. Graves and Carver have to find out if someone's targeting the feathered custodians of the Tower.

When they arrive, Graves and Carver find the closed community residing within the high, thick walls and battlements of the Tower "practically a ghost town" as everyone else is up in Scotland to attend a funeral – leaving behind a small, tidy and tight-knit group of people. Firstly, there's Peter Standford, his devoted wife Joyce and their rebellious daughter, Emma. Dr. Colin Gibson, Tower doctor, who's an amateur historian greatly interested in the Tower's history and the hidden treasure of John Barkstead ("this is no bedtime fairytale, gentlemen"). Nurse Bess Trent assists him at the hospital block. Sergeant Madan Gurung, a Gurkha, is their only patient recovering from the lingering effects of scarlet fever. Further more, there's the Tower's schoolteacher, Anna Bower, and the one-armed Ravenmaster, Len Kittle. In addition to three Beefeaters (Yeoman Warders), James Burroughs, Bob Cooper and Philip Davies. So, "if there is foul play going on," the mostly deserted Tower provides Graves and Carver with neat, trimmed down list of potential suspects.

Before they can give the riddle of the ravens their full attention, Warder James Burroughs is shot and killed, while tied to a chair, at the Tower's firing range. So the two detectives have to extend their stay at the Tower to hunt for a murderer who gone from killing ravens to shooting warders. More bodies, cadavers, clues and red herrings will litter the grounds of the Tower of London before they're done. Another murder brings an impossible element to the case, but I'll get back to the plot in a moment. There are a few other things other than the puzzle.

Except for the morning briefing at Scotland Yard, The Riddle of the Ravens entirely takes place within the walls of the Tower ("...holding them prisoner") with it ancient traditions and a bloody, thousand year history "where queens and spies were executed, where a king was murdered and princes disappeared" – "where treasure is still buried, hidden to this day." So the book read like a "modern" rendition of one of Paul Doherty's historical locked room mystery novels like The House of the Red Slayer (1992), which also takes place at the Tower of London in December, 1377. I personally enjoyed that unintended effect. Needless to say, the historical setting, color and atmosphere was not wasted on The Riddle of the Ravens. Something I can always appreciate. What's perhaps more important than my personal enjoyment, storywise, is how the classic detectives were subtly updated for this retro-GAD series. Savage evidently wants Graves and Carver to have some depth and backstory, which carefully intertwined into the story when and where it was needed or mattered. So no needlessly long mini-biographies taking big chunks out of the story to dwell on the character's depressing back stories. I really like Graves is actually mentoring the younger, green-as-grass Carver to become the best detective he can be. That might prove an interesting investment into the future of the series. Back to the plot.

The Riddle of the Ravens is, as to be expected even after only two previous novels, an impossible crime and centers on the murder weapon: how can the gun have been used when Graves and Carver observed it hanging on the wall at the time it fired the fatal shots? A murder weapon under lock and key or observation is a rarity of the impossible crime with a pleasingly elaborate solution to match, but the impossibility is not central focus of the investigation. Just another part of an increasingly complicated puzzle for Graves and Carver. There are "many people with secrets" that need to be pried loose, movements to be tracked, alibis to be scrutinized, motives to be found and a piece of doggerel to be deciphered. And not to be forgotten the riddle of the dead ravens. Best of all, Savage appears to be determined to restore the fair play principles of the Golden Age detective story and planted a fair amount of clues among the red herrings and potential suspects. Sometimes the clues were a little too subtle, but that's really looking for faults where none exist. It's just nice to see properly clued, cleverly plotted detective fiction being written and published again.

Savage's The Riddle of the Ravens is a pleasingly elaborate, well-constructed and fairly clued detective novel representing another step towards that second Golden Age. It's coming! So look forward to the third title in the series, which, if I correctly interpreted the foreshadowing, is going to be set during Christmas, but expect the second Penny Haylestone novel to be next. Until then, The Riddle of the Ravens comes recommended as a solid retro-GAD novel.

The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments (2024) by Tom Mead

I mentioned in my review of the third Joseph Spector novel, Cabaret Macabre (2024), Tom Mead has been a busy bee with not only working on the fourth title in the series, The House at Devil's Neck (2025), but branching out in translating French detective short stories and novels – starting with Pierre Véry's Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937). Mead has been commissioned by Bedford Square Publishers to translate Paul Halter's impossible crime novels. Fingers crossed for a translation of Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past, 2012). But wait... there's more!

Last November, Crippen & Landru published a short story collection with a selection of Mead's own work. The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments (2024), introduced by Martin Edwards, containing eleven short stories. Three of which appearing in print for the first time. I thought it would make for a perfect follow up to the previous review of John Dickson Carr's collection of short stories The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963). So let's dig in!

"The Indian Rope Trick," originally published in the July/August, 2020, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, finds Joseph Spector refereeing a challenge between two magicians, Ferdinand le Sueur and Doctor Gupta, who have been arguing about the Indian Rope Trick – former claims to have come up with "a perfect mechanism for working the trick." Something entirely new and revolutionary. Doctor Gupta performs the trick under traditional circumstances, inside a theater, but Le Sueur demonstrates his version of the trick under an open sky! Even more, he pulls off the trick and that alone should earn the story a spot in a future locked room anthology. But murder interrupts the challenge when one of the magicians is strangled without leaving behind a single footprint on the muddy driveway. Spector is the impartial witness to the cast-iron alibi of both suspects.

The solution to the impossible murder is not bad. Just a bit skeptical about one part of the trick, because I don't think doing that, so casually, is as easy as the story suggests. Even with that to help. Still a pretty good impossible crime story, overall, succeeding where John Basye Price's abysmal "Death and the Rope Trick" (1954) failed all those decades ago.

I can only imagine "The Octagonal Room," originally published in the anthology Millhaven Tales (2018), came about after Mead read the shin honkaku mysteries by Soji Shimada, Yukito Ayatsuji, Takemaru Abiko and saying, "I'll give it the old college try." Spector is drawn to the home of Simon Eldridge, an American writer, who moved to England and took residence of a reputedly haunted house, Black Mill. Beside stories of robed figures, satanic rites and "bonfires blazing in unoccupied rooms," Black Mill has an architectural mystery. The place has a strange, octagonal room not any of the original architectural plans and sketches, but nobody knows who or when it was added to the house. Some malevolent, otherworldly force or eldritch horror appears to reside in the octagonal room and has taken possession of Eldridge. Spector is not the only one who came to Black Mill to investigate, but the magician-detective eventually has to solve another impossible crime when Eldridge's decapitated body is found lying inside a pentagram in the locked octagonal room.

I figured out for the most part how the trick was pulled off and who was behind it, but nothing to the detriment of this fantastic and original locked room mystery, nor my immense enjoyment. "The Octagonal Room" is the best short story in this collection and now my favorite Mead locked room mystery.

"Incident at Widow's Perch," originally published in the September/October, 2019, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, has a great backdrop for a detective story with impossible crime to match taking place at a house built into peak – known as Widow's Perch. A desolate summit so remote "it was accessible only by cable car." Giles Latimer's body was found by his wife, Margot, sprawled on the rocks at the foot of the cliff. The police wrote it off as an unfortunate accident, but Margot has good reasons to believe he was murdered and now murderer is out to get her. So she turns to the magician-detective, Joseph Spector, who quickly loses his client under seemingly impossible circumstances. Spector is one of the people who sees Margot enter the cable car alone, pulled the glass door shut and began its descent downwards from the peak, but mid-way through, Margot burst into flames. So another rock solid impossible crime story, curiously more reminiscent of Arthur Porges than Clayton Rawson.

"The Sleeper in Coldwreath," originally published in the March/April, 2023, issue of EQMM, wonderfully plays on that old, hoary trope from the pulps. Hypnosis! Something that makes most of us shudder whenever it turns up in a proper detective story or locked room mystery, but Mead found a good use for it in this short story.

Forty years earlier, in 1893, the house known as Coldwreath was the property of a psychic researcher, Dr. Peberby, who specialized in "sleep, dreams and hypnosis" ("a cocktail of mysticism and blasphemy"). One day, Peberby locked horns with a skeptic, Lester Brownlow, who challenged him to demonstrate and prove his hypnotic powers. What happened next has haunted Coldwreath ever since. Peberby invited Brownlow to Coldwreath to be placed in a hypnotic trance, while witnesses were present, before being guided to an upstairs bedroom – commands him to lock and bolt the door behind him. Thirty minutes later, the house is rocked by an unearthly scream and three men had to break down the bedroom door, but the room was empty without a trace of Brownlow. Ever since, the place has been haunted by an apparition with half-lidded eyes as though in a trance ("a phantom sleepwalker, wandering between the worlds"). Spector comes to investigate and naturally is present when somebody else impossibly vanishes from a locked room and a body turns up under equally impossible circumstances of the no-footprints variety. This story would have made for a great Jonathan Creek episode and enjoyed the solution to the disappearance from the locked bedroom. A trick based on a locked room idea, or concept, that always amuses me (ROT13: qbbef gung nccrne gb or ybpxrq, obygrq naq frnyrq).

"The Footless Phantom," originally published in the March/April, 2022, issue of EQMM, brings Spector to the dying mining village of Greeley in the Cotswolds of western England. A village that had been dealt a fatal wound when a mining accident killed numerous miners and workers moved to others mines in the region, which left behind a dwindling population who stuck around. So the village has problem of its own and more problem is added to the list when the troublesome Danny Snape is found dead with the back of his head caved in at the foot of a cliff. There's only a single track of footprints going from Snape's van to his body and if the weapon was dropped from the top of the cliff, then what happened to it? So it appears the murder could have only been committed by "a weightless, invisible assassin."

Not a bad premise for an impossible crime story, nor is the backdrop of a dying mining village, but plot-wise, it felt ropy – especially how the whole impossibility was rigged up. So not the best impossible crime story to be found in this collection.

"What Happened to Mathwig," first published in the anthology Wrong Turn (2018), is Mead's take on Herbert Brean's The Traces of Brillhart (1961). A Harley Street psychiatrist begins a relationship with one of his patients, Claire Mathwig, who ends up agreeing to kill her husband, Chester Mathwig. And how! Chester Mathwig ends up with three bullets ("...final bullet hit him in the skull...") before disappearing into the waters of the Thames. So imagine the murderer's shock when his victim turns up, alive and well, with nary a scratch or flesh wound. Enough to run to Spector to confess and ask him to explain how Mathwig pulled a Rasputin. The solution is as grim as that historical, hard-to-kill figure. One of the better and stronger plotted stories in the collection with a tantalizing premise that has barely been scratched by impossible crime and locked room specialists, past and present.

The next non-series short story, "Invisible Death" (2018), but already reviewed it a few years ago together with Mead's "The Walnut Creek Vampire" (2020).

"The Three-Minute Miracle," first of the three previously unpublished short stories, which combines the problem of the unbreakable alibi with the head scratching phenomena of bi-location. Spector is consulted by his old friend, Inspector George Flint, who's investigating the murder of a rich philanthropist, Mrs. Anthea Wheeldon. She was shot and killed by her no good, criminally charged nephew, Alec Mellors, whose little blackmailing enterprise is possibly going to land him in prison. And his aunt is determined to cut him out the will. Alec not only has a motive, but he was seen entering the house and pulling the trigger by an impartial witness. There is, however, another equally credible witness swearing he was fifty miles away, three minutes before he was seen firing the fatal shots!

I'm in two minds whether, or not, the story qualifies as an impossible crime. I think most of you are aware of my hesitation to qualify unbreakable alibis as impossible crime, unless the alibi hinges on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the crime. Not when the alibi turns on witnesses or paperwork. On the other hand, the murder committed in front of a witness in combination with the alibi gives it the appearance of bi-location. Either way, Spector finds a way to break his cast-iron alibi down with the only smudge on his ingenious solution is that one, not unimportant, detail is impossible to anticipate. Other than than, "The Three-Minute Miracle" will please fans of Christopher Bush and Tetsuya Ayukawa.

"The Problem of the Velvet Mask," second previously unpublished short story, takes place during Christmas, 1931, which begins when Juliette Lapine comes to Joseph Spector on behalf of her father, Lucien Lapine – a retired French diplomat. She believes her father is in danger from their new next door neighbor, Eustace Dauger, who arrived in a funeral car ("like the grim reaper himself") and always wears a velvet black mask. Lucien Lapine reacted to his arrival "as though he had been expecting him for many years." Eustace Dauger possibly is Felix Duchesne. One of the two main players in the "the Duchesne Affair," an espionage case from some twenty-five years ago, whose downfall came at the hands of Lapine. Felix Duchesne, "accused spy," reportedly died as a prisoner on Devil's Island. Or did he?

Lucien Lapine is shot and killed in "an impenetrable room" with the windows locked from the inside, the door locked with the key inside the lock and the two detectives were standing outside the door. Not the mention that the snow outside is unmarked. Interestingly, there's a good amount of "the blinkin' cussedness of things in general" going on, but not used to create the locked room murder. A route Carr would have taken. Here it takes place all around the locked room murder, which has a somewhat prosaic solution, but also a good example a touch of cleverness and ingenuity can be applied to a simple idea. I was entertained!

"Lethal Symmetry," third and last of the previously unpublished stories, is one of the shortest works in the collection and an unexpected gem. Inspector Flint calls upon Spector to help him out with the strange murder of Conrad Darnoe. A man who "prized symmetry above all things" and got himself impossibly poisoned in a locked room. The brilliant solution is a clever and even original variation on a impossible poisoning situation/trick I've seen only once before. No idea if Mead has read that particularly story, but this is a good, new way to use that trick.

There's one last story, "Jack Magg's Jaw" (2022), but reviewed it last year as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 4." The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments ended on a high note for me with the strong, short and excellent "Lethal Symmetry."

Strong, short and (mostly) excellent perfectly sums up The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments. A collection of a short impossible crime stories representing another fresh and promising page in the budding locked room revival and should entertain fans of the Joseph Spector novels until The House at Devil's Neck is released.

Speaking of the locked room revival, I've accumulated a small pile of modern impossible crime novels over the past two months and holidays. So I'll begin decimating it presently, but first, back to the Golden Age!

The Black Swan Mystery (1960) by Tetsuya Ayukawa

I pontificated in "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century" on how today's translation wave started when Keigo Higashino's 2011 translation of Yogisha X no kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) became an unexpected, international bestseller opening the door to invite future translation – which the late John Pugmire accepted in 2015. Locked Room International published the first-ever English edition of Yukito Ayatsuji's epochal Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) opening the floodgates to even more translations. And attracting other publishers to the joys of the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries.

Funnily enough, neither The Decagon House Murders nor The Devotion of Suspect X can be labeled as a locked room mystery or impossible crime, but the translation wave has been dominated by locked room novels and impossible crime stories. So the past ten years have been something of a locked room renaissance and the translation wave infused the form with some much needed fresh blood, which helped to revitalize it and even lead to a revival.

However, the locked room mystery is not the end-all of detective fiction, you don't always get that impression from reading this blog, but the impossible crime story is merely my favorite hobby horse – a hobby horse I enjoy riding into oblivion. I love and welcome good, craftily-plotted detective stories in any shape or form and wanted to see what the Japanese detective story can do outside a locked room or field of untrodden snow. This is one of the reasons why I've been so intrigued by their hybrid mysteries, tracked down Seimaru Amagi's Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) and jumped at the opportunity to sample Jun Kurachi's Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). So was not dismayed at all when it became apparent Pushkin Vertigo was going to diversify their output of honkaku and shin honkaku translations.

This year, they're going to publish Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-looping, hybrid mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995), Taku Ashibe's classically-styled whodunit Oomarike satsujin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021) and two strange novels by horror Youtuber "Uketsu." I'm not sure about Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947), but it appears to be a whodunit without any impossible crimes. Don't worry. I'll be getting my Japanese impossible crime fix through Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991), MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996) and the various anime-and manga detective series. This move began last November with their publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960), translated by Bryan Karetnyk, whom readers will remember from the short story collection The Red Locked Room (2020).

Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery is best summed as a police procedural in the tradition of Seicho Matsumoto's Ten to sen (Points and Lines, 1958), but with the heart, soul and plot of the traditional, fair play detective novel – particularly Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts. Yes, the story largely hinges on the question of alibis, complete with time tables and railway schedules, but it's much more than simply retracing people's movement and breaking down alibis. It's also an excellent and absorbing police procedural/whodunit.

The investigation at the heart of The Black Swan Mystery is an involved one starting with the murder of Gosuke Nishinohata, director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to railway tracks near Kuki Station with a bullet in his back. Detective Inspector Sudo and Constable Seki get to take a crack at the case first and they get a lucky break as Nishinohata's body had been thrown from an overpass and landed on a train passing under the Ryodaishi Bridge. So the blood on the bridge and roof of the train gives the police an exact time and place to check everyone's alibis ("my, my, that's awfully precise, Inspector"). There are, of course, enough complications to make this everything but a routine murder investigation. This is a detective story, after all.

Firstly, the owners of the Towa Textiles Company are at "loggerheads" with the trade union who presented them with "a four-point list of demands and called a strike." One of the four demands is freedom of religious expression, because Nishinohata was a follower of the Shaman, a new sect of Shintoism, who tried to push his religion on the workers and that didn't sit well – neither with the workers nor the the Shaman. The Shaman have stranglehold on their followers, figuratively and literally, which is why they're not happy Towa Textiles is willing to give in on that specific demand. It would mean losing thousands of members at once. They employ an ex-secret serviceman, Hanpei Chita, who's job is to dissuade people from leaving the Shaman and considered to be capable of everything ("...even of killing a man"). Secondly, Nishinohata was a known philanderer coming with the usual complications and his position as director gets entangled with the personal lives of the people at the company. His private secretary, Takeshi Haibara, wants to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the directors, Atsuko, but she's in a secret relationship with the vice-chairman of the trade union, Narumi.

So enough to keep Sudo and Seki pleasantly occupied with trying to entangle this complicated knot of relationships, potential motives and those pesky, rock solid alibis, but then more bodies begin to turn up along the way – all curiously connected to the first murder. Sudo and Seki eventually hit a dead end and the top brass decides to assign the case to Inspector Onitsura to give it a second look.

Inspector Onitsura previously appeared in several short stories from The Red Locked Room, translated by Ho-Ling Wong, who described him "Ellery Queen wearing the face of Inspector French" and his short stories/novels are generally regarded as early police procedurals. But they're crammed with original tricks and EQ-style chain of logic/deduction. Tetsuya Ayukawa certainly allowed Onitsura to live up to his reputation in The Black Swan Mystery. Onitsura is as logical and methodical as French, but neither is above making the occasional mistake or overlooking a small detail. Once they got hold of something, they follow it to its logical conclusion. Whether there's a murderer waiting at the end of that specific trail or not. There's something really comfy about following Onitsura on those leisure train rides pass the small stations along the less frequent traveled lines. Or, to quote the story itself, "writer of children's stories with a fantastical mindset might have imagined that the train were a tortoise and that he were riding on its back towards the Palace of the Dragon King" ("...the inspector himself was too much of a realist to have such fairy tales in his mind"). So the first and second-half of The Black Swan Mystery already form an excellent, slightly classically-styled, police procedural published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction. The story definitely has a strong flavoring of the social school with a strike going on in the background and addressing certain issues of post-war Japan, but the overall plot and uncluttered, clear solution possesses all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective stories of the West.

A solution that naturally turn on the question of alibis and opportunity, but those alibis don't come into play until Onitsura has identified the murderer with roughly a quarter of the story left to go, only to be stonewalled by a pair of cast-iron alibis – "unassailable from every angle." But the "very perfection" of those alibis makes him only more determined to tear them down. And tearing them down, he does! The tricks behind the two alibis honestly are something you would expect from a honkaku mystery novel rather than a police procedural with obvious ties to the Seicho Matsumoto's social school of crime fiction. Bush, Crofts and Queen could have hardly done better! That fact is also depressing as hell. Even when Japan moved away from the traditional, plot-oriented detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo and Akimitsu Takagi to make way for the social school, they continued to produce first-class detective fiction. Sure, it was often disguised as historical fiction or police procedurals, but they were still there. When the West abandoned the traditional detective stories of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, the genre descended into a dark age.

So, to cut long story short, Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery comes heartily recommended as one of those rare mysteries that fans of the classic detective story and modern crime novel can enjoy, but the former have to keep in mind it's a little different from what most have come to expect from a Japanese detective novel. A little different, but just as good.