Picture Perfect

John Baird caught sight of a book and it captured his attention. On the cover was an old photograph of a street from a bygone era, but for some reason, the photograph haunted him. Desperate for answers, John even allowed himself to be hypnotized by a local shop owner to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. His obsession with the photograph begins to distress his new wife Andrea, who is equally puzzled by her husband’s reticence to discuss his London job – he disappears for the day and says nothing about where he was or what he did...

Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst are hunting a serial killer known as the Acid Bath Murderer, and before long the two plot threads collide, along with a third thread taking place in Victorian London. There are even two impossibilities at work: first, a clairvoyant sends his own death prediction to himself, only to be found murdered in a locked room. Second, a man disappears without trace from a room that is under observation from all sides.

V is for Vampire

It’s September 1901, and the small village of Cleverley is gripped with panic. It started with children telling wildly improbable stories – a sinister face pressed against a window, a man appearing out of nowhere from a mysterious greenish fog, a sinister figure seen near a cemetery undoing the knots on a piece of string… But when a young girl narrowly escapes a vicious assault, the villagers gather at the cemetery and make a shocking discovery. One of the family crypts has been left wide open, and two of the coffins inside have been vandalized. The corpses inside have been impaled through the heart with a wooden stake… and although both have been dead for many years, one of the bodies looks like it has been dead for only a few weeks.

The two vandalized corpses are the two deceased wives of a Russian count, the subject of many a malicious rumour in the village. It is said that his wives, before their deaths, developed a taste for human blood, and one of them even was implicated in the death of a child. And wife number 3 is looking alarmingly pale lately… and has taken to wearing a scarf around her neck.

Never fear, for Owen Burns is nearby. He is investigating the death of a Catholic priest, whose last act was to hear a dying man’s Mysterious Last Confession. He makes a connection to an unsolved murder case which took place in a locked-room. Before long, a similar locked-room murder takes place, sending Owen Burns and his partner-in-crime, Achilles Stock, to Cleverley. There, they discover that the main suspect in the locked-room mystery is our friend the Russian count… an alleged vampire!

Visions

William Rigg has a problem and he doesn’t know exactly what to do about it. It has been nine years since his young cousins, Sylvain and Lisette, disappeared. Then he is advised to go to the Red Dragon, a bar in Soho, where he can consult Miss Ylang Li. Apparently, the young lady is a clairvoyant, and when William sits down, she goes through the usual motions of establishing contact… But her vision becomes very dark all of a sudden, and she describes the scene of a gruesome murder, with the corpses of the two young children being bricked up in a cellar!!!

William is shocked, naturally, and enlists the aid of his girlfriend Shirley to find the house described by the clairvoyant, and to find out whether there really are two corpses hidden there. They even manage to gain the approval of Inspector Briggs, a man who’s seen his fair share of the impossible. After all, he used to work with Inspector Archibald Hurst, a man who attracted locked-room murders and impossible crimes of all shapes and sizes. But will he be able to solve the mystery, or will Dr. Alan Twist have to step in to save the day?

Sleuth

On a night in August of 1938, police constable Edward Watkins is walking his beat when he comes across some strange sights. It seems that somebody is walking around the streets of London in the garb of a seventeenth-century plague doctor. Soon afterwards, Watkins has a conversation with an odd character calling himself Doctor Marcus, a doctor of crime. Suspicious, the officer is convinced that the doctor has hidden a body inside a nearby trash can—a suspicion that Doctor Marcus confirms! Watkins looks into them and finds they are all empty, much to Marcus’ apparent surprise. So the mad doctor skips off, but as a parting shot he tells the officer to look into the trash cans once again just in case. When Watkins does this, he discovers to his horror that there’s a dead body inside after all.

But how did it get there? And where did Doctor Marcus disappear to? All this seems like it is nonsense, but a few months later, Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst are visited by a man named Peter Moore, secretary to Sir Gordon Miller, a prolific author of mystery plays. According to Moore, Sir Gordon received a visitor in his study and the two men had a verbal duel of sorts, which ended in a murder challenge. The two men toss a coin, and the result will determine which man will commit a murder. That man must try and pin the blame on the other, and under no circumstances are the two players allowed to refer to the “game”. Unfortunately, Moore could not see what the coin landed on...

The Acquisitive Chuckle III: It's Really the Fourth Entry in the "Showing off Acquisitions" Series, but Only the Third to Use "The Acquisitive Chuckle" in the Title

Well, folks, it’s been a while since my last update on acquisitions. And believe me, there have been plenty of acquisitions in the interim. My biggest haul was pulled off lately when a local used bookstore, which just closed down, held a huge final sale in which prices were ridiculously low. How could I not take advantage of these deals? There are plenty of books to cover and I know I’ll manage to forget some, so let’s get right to it!

A Twist in Time

One theme that particularly fascinates me is, without a doubt, the time paradox. It is unfortunately difficult to deal with. (…) Time paradoxes suggest a wide variety of situations, the most classic being the case of the man who travels back in time to kill his grandfather. The rational solutions to explain these phenomena, on the other hand, are not legion…

— Author Paul Halter in an interview

The date: November 21^st, 1955. Spectators leaving the Adelphi Theatre are surprised to see a young man, in his 30s, wearing clothes long out of fashion from the turn of the century. He’s walking around as if he’s shocked, seeing everything around him for the first time. He almost gets killed by a car, but Providence spares his life. Unfortunately, Providence doesn’t help the man in question when he goes to a subway station. When the sound of the oncoming car is heard, the man appears curious and enters the tunnel to get a good look. And that is when he gets crushed by the subway, his body thoroughly mangled. Happily, the extensive damage leaves the face relatively intact and fingerprints can be salvaged from the corpse.

Thanks to the evidence of the deceased’s face, Inspector Archibald Hurst manages to find out his identity. But the maddening part of the whole puzzle is that the man cannot possibly be who he is identified as! The body is identified as belonging to one Victor Stephenson. Here is the catch: on December 2^nd 1905, Victor Stephenson went for a walk and never returned home. Almost 50 years later, he’s been spotted again—but he hasn’t aged by a single day! And the corpse bears this out: the dead man’s pockets are full of old things from 1905 but they seem like they’re in brand-new condition!

Spiral of Death

Ever since “discovering” him last year, I’ve been a devoted admirer of Paul Halter. Over the last few months, three new books have been planned for release, and I’ve been excitedly keeping track. Le Voyageur du Passé (The Traveller from the Past), a brand-new Dr. Alan Twist adventure, is due to be released next week. Another was Halter’s second short story collection, La Balle de Nausicaa (Nausicaa’s Ball) which I reviewed soon after its release. The third book, Spiral, was released earlier this month.

Spiral marks an interesting departure for Halter—it is a young adult novel set in the modern day world, a setting he has avoided in novels and used sparingly in short stories. When I had the honour of interviewing him a while back, I took the opportunity to ask him why he chose to write a novel set in modern day. The answer was simple: the publisher, Rageot, commissioned the book as part of its brand-new “Thriller” line of books, and one of the conditions was to set it in modern day. “I considered it my duty to initiate young readers to the locked-room mystery!” M. Halter said at one point. But did he succeed in doing that?

Showing Off Recent Acquisitions

I recently made many new acquisitions to my book collection, many of them in French. Those of you who read this blog regularly will by now know that I regularly read and review French mysteries on here, especially the work of Paul Halter. But there are some other authors whose books I’ve acquired recently, and I’d like to take this time to show off the new books—these are French mysteries you can look forward to my reading and reviewing in the near future, with a few more in the mail that I expect next week. What is the point of all this? Well, I want to show off, and since I have a blog, I can do it. The regularly-scheduled programme will be back soon enough.

First up, we have the work of Paul Halter. I bought a used copy of Le Mystère de l’allée des Anges (The Mystery of Angels’ Lane; right) as well as a copy of his brand new young adult novel Spiral.

Next is an author I am not familiar with: Martin Méroy. From right to left, the books (with titles translated into English) are: Lead for the Family, Silence—We Kill!, Murder in a Dark Room, and A Knife in the Wound. Blogger TomCat has reviewed two of these books on his blog, and one (Murder in a Dark Room) even made it onto his list of best locked-room mysteries. (Of course, the list’s reliability is challenged by the inclusion of What a Body! and The Curse of the Bronze Lamp… I’m kidding, I’m kidding!)

TomCat also reviewed the next author featured here: Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe. His review of Elvire à la tour monte (Elvire Climbs the Tower) was far from enthusiastic, however, and he tore its impossible crime to shreds. (I’ve since found out what the ending was, and I must agree it’s a complete let-down.) Endrèbe was far more prolific as a translator, famously translating John Dickson Carr’s The Burning Court. But he did write some of his own books—one of these, at the far right, is his only other ‘impossible crime’ novel, La Vieille dame sans merci (The Old Lady without Mercy). The other two are Danger Intime (Intimate Danger) and Gondoles pour le cimitière (Gondolas for the Cemetery).

Finally, we move on to the work of a personal favourite author of mine—René Reouven, who has a new page on this blog devoted to his work. The four books pictured here from left to right (with titles translated into English) are: Grandfather is Dead, The Best One’s Will is Always the Strongest, Six Characters in Search of a Murder, and Death to the Jury. (I’m also awaiting Reouven’s newest book, a young adult novel.)

Last, but not least, is a book I’ve been eager to find for a long time. It is the French equivalent of Robert Adey’s classic bibliography Locked Room Murders. Titled Chambres closes|crimes impossibles (Locked rooms|Impossible Crimes), it is a French-language survey of the impossible crime sub-genre. Not all of these books are French—in fact, quite a fair chunk I’ve seen are English-language novels—but it promises to portray quite a bit of the French impossible crime landscape with spoilers very cleverly hidden while being stated. (It’s a long story.) My copy is also inscribed by one of the authors, M. Philippe Fooz—I’m very grateful to him for having pointed out several French novels I would enjoy, and his list of suggestions played a major role in these recent acquisitions.

Inverted Murder à la française

« Pourquoi? » répéta Chaubard, dans sa dernière lueur de conscience.

L’individu chuchota : « Je pourrais vous répondre que c’est parce que vous êtes vulgaire et parfaitement antipathique, mais ce ne serait pas exact. C’est surtout parce que vous vous appelez Chaubard, et qu’à ce titre vous devez être trouvé mort sur le pont des Arts à cinq heures du matin. »

***

“Why ?” Chaubard repeated, in his last glimmer of consciousness.

The person whispered: “I could answer you that it is because you’re vulgar and perfectly unsympathetic, but that wouldn’t be accurate. Above all, it is because your name is Chaubard, and as such, you must be found dead on the pont des Arts at five o’clock in the morning.”

— René Reouven, Souvenez-vous de Monte-Cristo (Remember Monte Cristo)

That's not Raymond Chandler...

Good morning (or afternoon, or evening—it’s all relative, really) everyone and welcome to yet another special edition of At the Scene of the Crime! Today I am joined by blogger extraordinaire Xavier Lechard, who writes At the Villa Rose.

It’s hard to believe that this blog has already been around for an entire year, and I’ve made my fair share of discoveries in that time. I’ve found out, for instance, that Raymond Chandler wasn’t the St. George who slew the dragon of Golden-Age-style plotting, despite what many critics will tell you. I’ve also found out that there is an entire world of mysteries that was hiding in plain sight: the world of the French-language mystery. We Anglophones are often led to assume that Georges Simenon was the only non-English speaking writer of mysteries out there. Folks, we are being swindled—the truth couldn’t be any more different!

This journey of mine started back in May, when I read and reviewed Le Roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule) by Paul Halter. I had read much about this French author, and I glowered in misery when I couldn’t find any of his novels to read in the original French. But finally I managed to convince my parents that it was a perfectly reasonable idea to spend $30 on an omnibus that contained The Lord of Misrule… and the book served a dual purpose. It reminded me why I love mysteries, but it also warmed up my French and my desire to find out more about French-language mysteries.

Fast-forward to today. My bookshelf contains 22 of Halter’s novels. My Kindle has four more titles. I’ve got an entire page running on this blog, devoted to his work! But my interest in French detective fiction goes even further. I’ve suddenly got books like L’ingénieur aimait trop les chiffres (translated as The Tube) by Boileau-Narcejac on my shelf. I’ve got two omnibuses of works by S. A. Steeman. And finally, I own three omnibuses of works by René Reouven.

It is this last author I’d like to bring your attention to. Earlier this year, I read Reouven’s fabulous book Tobie or not Tobie, where he rewrote the Book of Tobit as a mystery, complete with an impossible crime! It was a triumph on every level that left me hungry for more. I made up my mind to buy something else and I ended up purchasing Souvenez-vous de Monte-Cristo (Remember Monte Cristo). The choice was a strategic one— I have always loved the Alexandre Dumas novel.

René Reouven discussing Sherlock Holmes.

But time is a cruel mistress, and I hadn’t read any more Reouven since December. When I was planning these crossover reviews, I suddenly realised that the best possible thing to do was to invite Xavier for a cross-blog review! As a native French speaker, Xavier has known about the French mystery landscape for years, while I am just starting to discover it. His knowledge far eclipses mine—and hey, he’s a fan of René Reouven! So the idea was pitched, and Xavier agreed to come here today. As luck would have it, he hadn’t yet read this book, so we would both read it for the first time…

I apologize for the extremely long introduction, but I am very excited to reacquaint myself with Reouven and to welcome Xavier to this blog! Xavier, the floor is yours!

Meeting a Master of Mystery: An Interview with Paul Halter

There are many people I would like to thank for making this post possible. First and foremost, it is thanks to John Pugmire that I was able to get in touch with M. Paul Halter, and without him, this interview would have been impossible. Words cannot express my gratitude. I would also like to thank M. Paul Halter, who bravely tolerated a barrage of questions from my direction and graciously answered them all. I conducted this interview via e-mail in French— French-speaking readers may want to read the original version of this interview, which I posted here — and Xavier Lechard kindly helped me to translate some of the more tricky passages, also taking the time to read the entire thing after I finished. Thank you very much for your continued support, Xavier. Finally, my thanks go out to Barry Ergang, who took a look at my translation and gave detailed suggestions for improvements.

The Art of Murder

Back in June of last year, I enthusiastically reviewed Paul Halter’s novel Le Diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor), which I unequivocally called a masterpiece. And I stand by those words— Halter’s novel has excellent atmosphere, convincing enough characters, and one of the most fiendishly ingenious impossible crimes of all time.

At the end of that review, I noted that a comic book adaptation of the novel exists and that “I don’t own a copy, but I hope I will someday”. That day arrived a few weeks ago, and I sat down and read the bande dessinée adaptation. It did not disappoint in the least.

Having a Ball

A few weeks ago, the French-language Paul Halter forum exploded in excitement, as the modern-day Master of the Impossible Crime updated his French website with two new books: Spiral, a young adult novel, and La Balle de Nausicaa (Nausicaa’s Ball), a short story collection. I had recently reviewed La Nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) and was convinced Santa Claus had listened to my plea for another short story collection from Halter. When I went on vacation to end 2011, nothing more had been posted on the subject. Little did I know what was brewing…

I love this cover!!!

On December 27^th, Paul Halter made the announcement that the book was available to order… from Amazon.com! This was an odd move— Halter, a flagship author of legendary publisher Le Masque, had chosen to go with Createspace, an American self-publishing service, to publish a French book! Fans in France were understandably upset, and when the book finally appeared on Amazon.fr, the item quickly became “temporarily out of stock”. When I got back on January 1^st, I immediately ordered a copy for myself. After all, how couldn’t I? As a sincere, though not uncritical, admirer of Halter, I relished the opportunity to support his newest book by ordering a copy, and ironically, making it first available on Amazon.com made it far easier for me to do so!

So maybe I’m the first person in the world who has gotten to read his copy of Nausicaa’s Ball. Possibly not, but as I don’t see any reviews of it online, I’ll go ahead and give myself an award. Nausicaa’s Ball contains seven short stories by Halter, whose writing style is remarkably suited to the short-story form. Some of these stories are short, and others could be published as novellas. The title story had been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but this is the first time it’s appeared in French as far as I know. Meanwhile, two of the stories included here were actually translated and included in the English edition of The Night of the Wolf, but they weren’t collected in the original French book. I’ve adapted my original reviews of these tales and included them in this post.

Now that we’ve gotten the background information out of the way, it’s time to dig into Nausicaa’s Ball and discover what gems are to be found in this collection.

Year in Review: Top 10 Discoveries of 2011

What better feeling is there than stumbling over an author you love? That moment of excitement, the thrill of the discovery, is one of many things that keep us readers going. We want to find an author who will excite us, and when we find one, we tend to hold on and refuse to let go.

2011 was no exception for me— I discovered new authors left and right and many of these discoveries were tremendously exciting. Some authors I unfortunately neglected despite the discovery, but I’ll be doing my best to make up for that in the New Year. But which discoveries were the most exciting? After all, it’s been a long year and there have been many book reviews. Surely some must stand out more than others.

Yes, it’s time for another list as I take a look at the ten most exciting literary discoveries I made in 2011. They are, in alphabetical order:

Murder has no language barrier

Paul Halter’s 1997 novel Les Sept merveilles du crime (The Seven Wonders of Crime) has now been published in English, thanks to the relentless efforts of translator John Pugmire. It is the second Owen Burns novel to be translated after Le Roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule) and the third Halter published in English, hot on the heels of his award-winning La Quatrième porte (The Fourth Door).

The Seven Wonders of Crime is centered on a fascinating idea. Owen Burns and Achilles Stock are back in action as a serial killer begins to terrorize the nation. The faceless madman is striking again and again, killing people in apparently impossible ways and all the while patterning his murders on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. It’s an impressive to-do list and the killer is making his job harder by sending taunting messages along to the police, not by handwriting his message or pasting it with various letters from newspapers, but by painting his messages onto canvas. (Naturally, I use “he” to describe the killer merely as a matter of convenience. It could be anyone or anything, so don't take the choice of pronoun as a clue.)

Interview with Paul Halter (Part II)

Yesterday, I posted Part I of an interview between Roland Lacourbe and Paul Halter. Now here is Part II, which deals more with Halter's own writing career. Both these parts originally appeared in Le Masque's Paul Halter omnibus, Volume 1, and have been translated with the permission of M. Roland Lacourbe.

***

Now we’ll begin to tackle your own work. So, traditional question: what brought you to write? The fundamental reason?

Fundamental? … (Long silence.) I believe I wanted to follow up on the investigations of Dr. Fell and H. M. Particularly Dr. Fell. 

La Malédiction de Barberousse (Barbarossa’s Curse)

Interview with Paul Halter (Part I)

Paul Halter is arguably the current master of the impossible crime mystery. I have read ten of his books (one of which was a short story collection) and I was consistently impressed with the way he handles variation after variation on the impossible crime. He has explained away everything from the phenomenon of bilocation (La Quatrième Porte; translated as The Fourth Door) to an invisible man (Le Diable de Dartmoor; meaning The Devil of Dartmoor). The explanations are often simple and elegant, and at the top of his game, Halter can write books and puzzles to rival those of his hero, John Dickson Carr.

Paul Halter

French publisher Le Masque published three omnibuses of Halter’s works, and each omnibus contains a preface. I was particularly fascinated by the introduction to Volume 1, which is an interview between Roland Lacourbe and Paul Halter. It had plenty of interesting information on Halter and his approach to mystery-writing, and I thought to myself “Wouldn’t it be great to get this interview translated?” However, I didn’t act on this right away because I didn’t want to inadvertently get myself into any legal trouble.

However, the thought persisted, and eventually I was able to get in touch with M. Roland Lacourbe via e-mail, who most graciously gave me permission to proceed with the translation. I'm indebted to John Dickson Carr biographer Douglas G. Greene for making this possible. I would like to thank M. Roland Lacourbe for his kindness and the support he's shown throughout the project. I would also like to thank those who took a look at this translation and gave me helpful suggestions on improvements, particularly Barry Ergang, Xavier Lechard, and John Pugmire. Finally, another set of thanks goes out to Xavier Lechard, who helped me with footnotes about figures who will likely be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers. 

Continuing an Improbable Fiction

I very recently reviewed La Nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) by Paul Halter, where I noted that I was reading the original French edition. The French version and the English translation, published in 2007, contain significant textual differences. One story, Un Rendez-vous aussi saugrenu (An Appointment as Ludicrous) was dropped from the translation because it’s impossible to translate into English. Two more stories were then added to bring the grand total up to ten: L’Abominable bonhomme de neige (The Abominable Snowman) and Le Spectre doré (The Golden Ghost).

However, these stories have not yet been collected in French (although I sincerely hope that day is near). As a result, when I reviewed La Nuit du loup, I was unable to comment on these two tales which English-speaking readers can find in the translation. However, since my review, I have been fortunate enough to read these two stories, and so, I would now like to review them as an addendum to my earlier review.

An Improbable Fiction

“Truth, I may remind you, is stranger than fiction.”

“Spare me that tedious lie. You are quoting the only paradox which unimaginative people ever succeeded in inventing. And it is not true. It is insidious propaganda on the part of cheerless souls who want to make fiction as dull as truth. … What we need is some fearless iconoclast who will come out boldly against this damnable tyranny, saying, ‘Fiction is stranger than truth.’”

— Henri Bencolin, The Lost Gallows

La Nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) is thus far the only short story collection written by Paul Halter, and it was also his first book to be translated and published into English (back in 2007). It’s a wonderful collection that brings together all sorts of stories: some set in modern day, some starring Dr. Alan Twist, and others featuring Owen Burns. Halter has written several other short stories that have been uncollected thus far, and there’s enough to warrant a second collection, which would be most welcome.

However, it’s important to emphasize that I have read and will be reviewing the original French edition of La Nuit du Loup. There are several differences between the English translation and the original book. For one thing, the French edition contains only nine short stories (although the back cover claims it’s eight), while the English translation features ten. One of the original short stories was dropped because it was impossible to translate into English, and two others were added to bring the total up to ten: L’Abominable bonhomme de neige (The Abominable Snowman) and Le Spectre doré (The Golden Ghost). Finally, the order of the short stories is fairly different, although both English and French editions end with the titular short story.

Ministry of Miracles

John Dickson Carr: Scribe du Miracle is a fascinating book by Roland Lacourbe, a French critic who is no stranger to this blog. I have mentioned Lacourbe several times before, usually in connection with Paul Halter. I’ve found Lacourbe’s introductions to Halter’s works excellent, and he conducts a brilliant interview with Halter in the first of the three Masque omnibuses.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there was only one copy of Lacourbe’s book in all Canadian libraries, and they wanted me to pay around $20 to get it via Interlibrary Loan. It is sometimes available on sites like PriceMinister, but for rather high prices— the lowest I’ve found right now is 36,10€. So it seemed like I was doomed to not read this book anytime soon.

Until I found out something about my university library: they could get a hold of Lacourbe’s book via RACER (their version of Interlibrary Loans) for free! I rejoiced at the prospect and placed a request, expecting to wait a few months. I got the book after two weeks, and have been reading it on the side for quite some time now.

My friend Daedalus

Paul Halter’s Le Crime de Dédale (The Crime of Daedalus) has an idea at its core that has haunted and fascinated me since I first heard of it. Throw everything you know about Greek mythology into the dust bin: Paul Halter tackles the impossible crime with Ancient Greece as a backdrop and mythological characters taking roles in his story. Le Crime de Dédale is a fascinating book with two storylines: one takes place in Ancient Greece, and the other takes place in 1937.

The book opens in 1937 with Professor Lewis Newcomb making an incredible discovery on the island of Crete. Unfortunately, Paul Halter, that perpetual prankster, withholds the discovery from his readers for several chapters. In the meanwhile, you witness a strange series of events: Newcomb’s team of archaeologists opened a tomb a few days before the Incredible Discovery. This tomb came complete with its very own ancient curse, and right on schedule, one of the team members falls to his doom, winding up impaled on a bull’s horn carved out of stone.