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.
This complex web of plot forms the basis of Paul Halter’s L’Image trouble (translated as The Picture from the Past), and it is
exceptionally difficult to describe without spoilers. Halter is one of my
favourite current mystery writers – his books often have fantastic plots, and
even on the rare occasion where the solution is disappointing, I love his
imaginative touch at creating these scenarios. The Picture from the Past is no exception: the plot effortlessly
carried my interest throughout. Where the writing itself is concerned, I
thought Halter did a very good job of capturing my imagination, but there were
one or two odd moments. For example, the first-person narration that opens the
book is a little odd, given the direction the story eventually takes, and it is
unceremoniously dropped at a certain point. These are so different in style
that they got me to wonder whether this book was heavily edited, or whether
Halter attempted a narrative experiment and then called it off, or if he
revised his intended ending and correspondingly changed his approach to a large
chunk of the narrative. No matter what the explanation here is, the stylistic
quirks are not too distracting, and in fact, one of the stylistic quirks ends
up being a pretty significant part of the narrative.
On a plot level, the two impossible crimes in this book are
pretty decent. I absolutely loved the mystery of the murdered clairvoyant,
which was well-clued and ingenious. I was a little less enthusiastic about the
impossible disappearance, which was more or less a routine impossible crime
(aside from one very clever idea near the end). However, when it comes to the
solution of the story as a whole, there was one major issue. I find myself in a
tricky spot, because I can’t really describe the nature of the issue without
spoilers. It is Paul Halter’s attempt to pull off a solution straight from the
Golden Age, but I really don’t think it was ever a good solution to begin with.
All sorts of writers, Agatha Christie included, tried to pull it off, and I
have never been fully convinced by it – it always raises a cry of protest from
the reader, I find. This holds just as true for Halter’s attempt at making this
solution work – I just can’t bring myself to believe the plot point that is absolutely
central to the solution.
Thanks for the review! Out of curiosity, how have you been selecting your latest books to read and review?
ReplyDeleteChris, my approach has never been systematic. I simply read whatever I happen to be in the mood for.
ReplyDelete