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.

Enter the Murderer

Set in the world of the theatre, Derek Smith’s Come to Paddington Fair brings back Algy Lawrence as well as his policeman sidekick, Chief Inspector Steve Castle, from Whistle up the Devil. Their involvement in the story begins innocuously enough, as Castle has received a pair of tickets to the theatre. But included with the tickets was a mysterious message that simply reads: “Come to Paddington Fair.” The meaning of the message is not immediately apparent, but its sinister undertones become quite clear when the play’s leading lady is killed onstage, during a climactic scene in which her character was shot.

Fortunately, with two detectives in the audience, the investigation is poised to begin on the right foot, and indeed, a suspect is apprehended almost immediately! But, as the investigation proceeds, suspect after suspect is cleared, and it slowly begins to appear impossible for anyone to have committed the crime! Thus, Come to Paddington Fair establishes itself firmly as a sort of spiritual sequel to Whistle up the Devil. Instead of a conventional locked room mystery, Smith gives his readers an impossible crime in the vein of “nobody could have committed the murder… and yet it happened!”

Treasure Island

Introduction: Goodness me, it has been a very long time since I last reviewed a book, not since late August of 2015!! Unfortunately, the demands on my time during the school year have made reading fiction nearly impossible. Indeed, during the 2016-17 academic year, as I ended up writing over 160 pages worth of essays, I was only able to read one work of fiction – Shusaku Endo’s Silence – but it was a book I felt I should not review on the blog. Now that summer is upon us, I can take a deep breath, step back from academia, and read a little bit more fiction. So I decided to treat myself with some mysteries. My reviewing may be a little rusty, so I please ask you to forgive me in advance.

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As Alice Arisugawa’s The Moai Island Puzzle begins, we are introduced to a group of students at Kyoto University who are on their way to Kashikijima Island in order to solve a puzzle leading to hidden treasure. One of these students is the author, Alice Arisugawa, who along with his friend Mr. Egami is heading to the island on the invitation of their friend Maria. (Alice, by the way, is a male name here.) Maria’s grandfather, Tetsunosuke Arima, hid a collection of diamonds somewhere on the island, but neglected to tell anyone the location of the treasure before dying. All that is known is that the moai statues all over the island, inspired by the Easter Island statues, are the key to solving the puzzle.

It doesn’t take long for the murders to begin, as two bodies are discovered. The victims were shot, but the rifle used is nowhere in the room, and all potential exits (the window and the only door) were locked. More mysterious events occur, and it is up to Mr. Egami to solve the puzzle, with Alice acting as his Watson.

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!

A Twist of Time

When Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot got into the twentieth-century taxi, nothing was amiss. “Scotland Yard,” he told the driver – meaning, of course, New Scotland Yard. He had no frisson of premonition, no encounter with a mysterious stranger… in short there was absolutely nothing to indicate anything unusual was about to occur. But when Cheviot got out of the taxi, he found himself at Old Scotland Yard… in the year 1829.

Cheviot finds himself part of Scotland Yard at its inception. The police are not seen as society’s protectors, but rather as a group of thugs with which high society needn’t bother. Apparently, everyone accepts Cheviot’s presence in 1829—perhaps he is re-enacting the historical role of an ancestor of his?—and it turns out that the original Cheviot was trying to join the newly-formed Scotland Yard.

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?

Is there a murderer in the house?

Ten academics have converged to the Swiss town of Meiringen, right next to the Reichenbach Falls, where the world’s greatest detective once duelled with the world’s foremost criminal genius. The purpose of their visit? It is an academic convention, during which the esteemed Prof. Bobo will choose one suitable candidate to become the head of the first-ever Department of Sherlockiana at the Sorbonne. It would be an incredible honour to be chosen for this position, and the academics jealously guard their secrets, each convinced that their revelations on the Canon will be more stunning than the last. Getting snowed in and effectively cut off from the outside world was unfortunate, but the convention must go on!

But before long, a much deadlier game begins. It begins with Prof. Rodriguez, who makes a stunning revelation at the dinner table, only to plunge down the staircase later that night. Another academic gets crushed by some gym equipment. As the number of academics slowly dwindles, the living must fend for themselves. After all, the killer must be one of the people trapped in the Hotel Baker Street…

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???

It vexes me. I'm terribly vexed.

- Commodus, Gladiator (2000)

I really like the work of Steve Steinbock in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Having taken over “The Jury Box” column from Jon L. Breen, Steinbock writes very good columns in which he shrewdly judges mysteries by their merits and gives you a good idea of just what you can expect from them. One review in particular caught my eye in the March issue of EQMM – it was a three-star review of Mary Anna Evans’ Rituals.

The plot sounded like one I couldn’t miss: consulting archaeologist Faye Longchamp and her adopted daughter are working in the picturesque town of Rosebower, New York, a town known for its long and storied connection to the spiritualist movement. Rare is the citizen who does not claim some sort of psychic power, and two of them, a pair of elderly sisters, invite the Longchamps for a séance. It’s a bit of an unnerving session, and an hour or so after it wraps up, the medium (a lifelong agoraphobic) crashes her car by Faye’s hotel. Here’s the intriguing bit: the medium somehow managed to escape a locked room in her home when it caught on fire (an “accident” of course) and drive all the way to Faye’s hotel despite her agoraphobia, where she finally dies of smoke inhalation.

Do as I do, Mr. Splitfoot!

Lucinda had a wonderful idea for a prank. To pull it off, she needed the help of an accomplice, so she enlisted the help of Vanya. The two teenagers decided to pull off a much-deserved scare on the grown-ups, faking supernatural activity. Vanya has a secret hiding place (which he refuses to disclose to Lucinda), and he’ll be hiding there. Upon a verbal cue from Lucinda, Vanya will make series of ghostly raps in reply. That’ll be sure to scare ‘em.

Sure enough, that evening, Lucinda finds an opportune moment and calls out “Do as I do, Mr. Splitfoot!” and claps her hands three times. She gets the reply: three taps sound in reply. It’s unsettling to the adults, and she is ready to call the prank a success… which is when she gets the phone call from Vanya. He’s been kept at home and is unable to play the part of Mr. Splitfoot this evening! But if Vanya was not making the ghostly taps… who was?

Who? What? Where? How? Why? When?

We open our story in the San Francisco of the 1890s. The detective agency of Carpenter and Quincannon recently solved The Bughouse Affair, a complex case that included a locked-room mystery. They could do without any overly-complex cases for a while. That’s what this job was supposed to be for Sabina Carpenter: she was basically hired as a babysitter, looking after Virginia St. Ives and making sure she doesn’t sneak off for a rendez-vous with her boyfriend, a man of whom her family disapproves. It’s true, Virginia was a little brat, but it seemed like the toughest part of Sabina’s assignment would be to refrain from slapping the girl.

But nobody could possibly have foreseen the outcome: at a fancy party, Virginia confronts Sabina and runs out of the house, only to commit suicide by jumping off a parapet. But when a group is organized to retrieve the body, it’s nowhere in sight… When a suicide note is discovered, the questions only get deeper. Why did Virginia St. Ives commit suicide?

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...

Rivers of Blood

The Wyvern Company were really no better than a group of medieval thugs. While on the warpath in France, the company sacked a French abbey and ran off with (among other things) the sacred Bloodstone ruby, allegedly collected from the blood of Christ while he hung on the cross. The ruby was given into the possession of Sir Robert Kilverby, a wealthy merchant, whose duty it is to produce the Bloodstone twice a year and who is safeguarding it until such a time as the Wyvern Company dies off.

That day might come sooner than expected, because somebody is murdering members of the Wyvern Company one by one. But Sir Robert Kilverby is also found dead, poisoned inside of a locked room. How was the crime committed? Lucky for us, Brother Athelstan investigates the matter, and in good time a second impossibility is thrown in the good brother’s face when a fire is started from inside of a locked room: how could the culprit have started the fire without waking the room’s occupant and without disturbing the locked door?

What Dreams May Come

The Dream Walker is about a young woman named Olivia Hudson, a teacher at a fashionable girls’ school, aged 34. She is narrating her story into a tape recorder as a break from looking at a Portugal-shaped crack in her ceiling. And the tale she tells is a fantastic one: it is the story of a plot to bring down a well-regarded man. But how do you do that? According to Armstrong, you need a crazy plan, one so insane that even when it is exposed it is hard to believe that someone would go to all that trouble to fool people. Such a plot apparently took place.

The target of this plot was John Paul Marcus, a highly respected man whose advice led to Raymond Pankerman’s illegal activities being discovered. Now, Pankerman desires revenge, and right on cue he met Kent Shaw, who devised a brilliant and completely mad plan to bring about Marcus’ downfall. Four people were in on the plot, and Ollie tells us all about it. For although the truth is now known, the damage to Marcus’ reputation has been done, and this is Ollie’s attempt to undo it. But it’s hard work: “Respect is a kind of Humpty Dumpty. All the King’s horses can’t put it all the way up, again.”

Nothing is Impossible

Last year, I reviewed The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. A translation that was published in 2011, it was the first “new” novel that I had read for the blog and when I found out that a second novel was about to be translated, Salvation for a Saint, I perked up and kept track of the publication date. On the day of this novel’s release I purchased an audiobook. I loved The Devotion of Suspect X, and was hoping to once again get a clever story with good characterization.

Well, Keigo Higashino has done it again. This is an improvement over The Devotion of Suspect X. Once more, it’s an inverted mystery, and once more you know who the killer is. But the author turns it into an impossible crime novel, and manages to pull off a daring piece of sleight-of-hand! The plot is a simple enough one: a wife, Ayane Mashiba, decides to poison her husband Yoshitaka, a man so selfish that he was going to divorce his wife because she hadn’t given birth to a child. But, trickster that he is, Keigo Higashino forgets to tell you just how she murders Yoshitaka, who meets his Maker thanks to poison in his coffee.

What a Trick!: The Tricksters Return

Back in April, I reviewed the entire first season of the Japanese TV show Trick. I found it a delightful series. Although the plots often came with more holes than Swiss cheese, the comedy was fairly decent and the chemistry between the two leads was absolutely terrific. And so it was just a matter of time before I got around to season two.

Overall, I thought season two was a major improvement over the first season. There are still plot holes, but these aren’t quite as jarring as those from the first season—and to be honest, it forms part of the series’ charm. The subtitles also markedly improved, and so I got to appreciate a lot more of the jokes. The production design also improved—season one at times looked like a low-budget 70s TV show. Season two now feels like an okay-budgeted 80s TV show. (Okay, pardon the bad joke.) Finally, the stories in season two have got even more intriguing premises than those of season one, and in general, the plots are a lot more satisfying. Plot-wise, season one only had a few minor successes. Season two, on the other hand, is mainly composed of successes.

Some things have changed in season two. Professor Ueda is now well-known, with a successful TV show and a bestselling book called “Come Over, Spiritual Phenomena”. Naoko Yamada, meanwhile, is still at the same apartment with the same landlord, and she still performs magic tricks. Only now, she resents how the Professor keeps taking credit for the cases she helps to solve. The two police officers, Yabe Kenzo and his assistant Tatsuya Ishihara, play bigger roles than they did in the first season, and continue to admire Professor Ueda while showing nothing but disdain for Naoko.

Keep in mind that my plot summaries will try to avoid spoilers, and so I won’t describe many of the scams that are exposed on the side. The episodes really like that kind of thing, where a psychic or medium or whatnot will try to prove their authenticity with a bold trick. Describing them all would be a major chore, however, and would probably make this review far too long. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on season two of Trick.

'Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil

Maciej Słomczyński

Joe Alex was the pen name of Polish author Maciej Słomczyński (1922-1998). His most famous accomplishment is that he was the only person in the world to translate the complete works of William Shakespeare – an accomplishment I mention because it is relevant to today’s review. Unfortunately, his translations have been criticized as unclear, unfaithful to the source material, and lacking “literary value”—whatever that is. Still, the accomplishment itself is an impressive one, and it is a work of Shakespeare’s – sort of – that lends his novel Jesteś tylko diabłem (You’re Only a Demon) its title.

I say “sort of” because the text in question is The Birth of Merlin, which although originally credited as a co-production between Shakespeare and William Rowley, most scholars nowadays agree that Shakespeare didn’t write any of it. Another reason I say “sort of” is because the book kicks off with the following quote of The Birth of Merlin, translated into Polish… and the lines I have highlighted are all condensed into the phrase “Jesteś tylko diabłem”.

An Air of Evil

Someone needs to buy Christopher Fowler a drink. I’d do it myself, except I’m not in the UK area. Here is a modern writer who understands that, generally speaking, a mystery is only as good as its story. And he comes up with a terrific plot idea in this one: Bryant and May and the Invisible Code. Two children are playing “Witch Hunter” outside a church, and decide that a sad-looking young woman is a witch. “So how are we going to kill her?” one of the kids asks. The woman then enters the church… and then, as the kids watch from the door, the woman drops to the ground, dead! Nobody approached her, and the CCTV cameras clearly show that she died alone.

Arthur Bryant gets to hear of this death from his doctor and is intrigued, but the Home Office refuses  to hand him the case. Instead, Oscar Kasavian calls Bryant and May to his office. Kasavian, it turns out, needs help. His wife has been going crazy of late—covering the mirrors in the house, talking to strangers on the street, and insisting that a coven of witches is after her life. Kasavian doesn’t understand what is going on, and he’s due to make a major speech in a week’s time. He asks Bryant and May to investigate his wife and try to help her—and if they succeed, Kasavian promises to stop trying to shut down the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

The Scarlet Wizard

Clayton Rawson was a magician, and so naturally, when he wrote mysteries he created a magician detective, The Great Merlini. I believe that Merlini’s first appearance, in Death from a Top Hat, is one of the all-time great fictional debuts. The book is a masterpiece, pure and simple, and understandably, Merlini’s career was all downhill from there. I’ve already reviewed a short story collection of Rawson’s on this blog, in which his Great Merlini tales were brought together. But did you know those aren’t the only short works Rawson wrote? In fact, he also wrote four novellas as “Stuart Towne” starring Don Diavolo, The Scarlet Wizard.

The novellas, as well as all of Rawson’s novels and stories, have been brought back to life by MysteriousPress.com, and I cannot recommend them strongly enough. These e-books are absolutely gorgeous by e-book standards, with excellent formatting, editing, proofreading, etc. And so today, I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the novellas found in Death from Nowhere.

But before I do, I’d like to tell you my one reservation about the collection. There are plenty of terrific images throughout these two stories, but on two occasions, a full-page image illustrated a crucial event in the story… chapters before they happen! It never ruins the method behind seeming impossibilities and doesn’t quite ruin the culprit, but it does tell you that Don Diavolo will have to do such-and-such sooner or later and so you do anticipate, for instance, Diavolo’s way of evading police surveillance at a circus. When I contacted somebody about this issue, I was told that the Rawson estate apparently prefers that layout. I cannot imagine why, unless it has something to do with the original magazine publication’s layout.

The Girl With the Sorcerer Tattoo

There is a legend about three powerful sorcerers who once lived in the Nagano prefecture. They were known as Tsunedahime, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru, and have been the subjects of numerous legends, plays … and tattoos. Akimitsu Takagi’s The Tattoo Murder Case involves the story of three such tattoos.

Mysteries in Japan have evolved in a completely different direction than those in the Anglo-Saxon world, at least from what I can gather. I don’t know Japanese, nor am I too familiar with the culture, but the translations we get into English only seem to confirm the idea. It seems that in Japan, the “game” is still highly respected—you give the readers all the clues and you tell a story instead of wallowing in angst and self-pity. In other words, a Japanese detective novel is about a mystery, and not about telling readers how awful society is. (Honestly, though, you're better off asking an expert to explain.)

Satan is a Devil

Brother Anselm and his novice Stephen are summoned to St. Michael’s Parish. The church has been the site of recent hauntings, and the mysterious warlock known as the Midnight Man is blamed for a demonic midnight ceremony that opened the very gates of Hell on the parish. But as Brother Anselm explained, these (undoubtedly) supernatural phenomena must have a human cause—its root lies in the wickedness of a human heart. And so in order to weed out these demons, Brother Anselm must find the human cause of their wickedness. Stir in plenty of ghostly Gothic atmosphere, and don’t forget that impossible crime that takes place in a locked church. And ta-da! you have the plot of Paul Doherty’s The Midnight Man.

Paul Doherty’s latest effort is a return to his Canterbury Tales series, which is my personal favourite. The premise of this series is that the pilgrims of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have made an agreement that, at night, each of them should tell a story about the night-time, a story to chill the blood. (This time, it’s the physician’s turn, although there isn’t a physician appearing anywhere in the story.) And so, in these stories, the supernatural goes without question. God exists, and just as importantly, so does Satan—but their inclusion doesn’t mean that you can’t have a fairly clued mystery thrown into the works!