The Dragon's Den

There’s no doubt about it, the killer is a madman. He smashed every single mirror in the home, and then proceeded to murder all the occupants, saving the lady of the house for last. He then committed some unspeakable atrocities, crimes so horrific that if I spelled them out I fear Blogger would censor this post. But the most frightening thing is… this wasn’t his first. “The Tooth Fairy” – so nicknamed by the cops because he bites his victims – has done this before, and if the FBI and Will Graham cannot catch him soon, he will do this again.

In order to catch this maniac, Will Graham turns to another madman he helped put away a few years ago – Dr. Hannibal Lecter: psychiatrist extraordinaire, gourmet chef, serial killer, cannibal… Dr. Lecter is delighted to help an old friend like Will… But whenever “Hannibal the Cannibal” offers his help, you should keep on your toes, because there is often a tremendous price tag attached…

And Then There Were Nun

There’s a killer somewhere out there on the loose, and he’s targeting the Catholic priests and nuns of Detroit. The murderer leaves his calling card behind at every crime scene: a black rosary left clutched in his victim’s hand. The media is outraged, and are eagerly tracking the Rosary Killer’s every move, putting enormous pressure on the cops to solve the case. Luckily, they have their top man on the job, Lieutenant Koznicki… and he in turn gets some help from some rather unlikely sources, one of them being Father Robert Koesler…

William X. Kienzle’s The Rosary Murders was his first book, and the first Father Koesler mystery. Published in 1979, the book is another entry into serial killer territory, and unfortunately was advertised with the word “mystery”. This is no mystery, this is a thriller. The killer’s identity remains unknown until we find out with everyone else. Father Koesler is not so much a detective as much as he is there at the right place and time. This is just your typical serial killer thriller plot, with the single twist of being set within the Catholic community of Detroit.

Dance into the Fire

When the United States entered the Second World War, Detroit converted its automobile factories into an “arsenal of democracy”. Car manufacture was put on hold and instead, workers produced tanks, aircraft, and other machines which helped the Allies win the war. All sorts of people had to come together and collaborate in a spirit of patriotism. But racial tensions were high and eventually resulted in rioting.

And in Loren D. Estleman’s novel Jitterbug, a psychotic killer is taking the whole patriotism thing a bit too far. A maniac is on the loose, murdering people left and right. Specifically, he targets hoarders, convinced that every dead hoarder means a soldier’s life is saved on the war front. All those gas and food rations can go to the fine American troops instead of the greedy hands of citizens back home too old and/or infirm to fight. He even leaves a calling card, the message “Kilroy was here”, and it’s up to police lieutenant Maximilian Zagreb to hunt the killer down. But there’s no shortage of suspects in a metropolis like Detroit, and Zagreb is racing against time as Kilroy’s violence escalates…

Rough Justice

Living in 2013, when we think about World War II we can often forget about the smaller things. Of course the widespread Nazi atrocities are well-known, but it seems that many people assume that once Germany surrendered, the European war was over in one night. It’s not true, as J. Sydney Jones reminds us in his new book Ruin Value. Many Germans resented the Allied conquerors, and there were even some bands of Nazi holdouts. Jones sets his story in Nuremburg, shortly before the infamous Nuremburg trials began. The city itself lies in ruins, and it is about to become the stage for arguably the most important trial in the history of mankind.

That is, unless a mysterious serial killer gets his way… Because someone has been targeting Allied troops, slitting their throats and leaving cryptic coded messages behind. And if this killer gets his way, the murders will upstage the events at Nuremburg. Luckily the Allies have an ace in the hole: Captain Nathan Morgan, an ex-cop who went into intelligence during the war. Now he has to return to police work, and he’s paired with an unlikely partner: a German cop accused of collaborating with Nazi war criminals.

The Grandest Game in the World

Okay, here’s the situation: some crazed maniac is out there killing people left and right. With victims dropping like dead flies, the murderer leaves taunting messages for the police in the form of a crazed “dialogue”, chock-full of riddles, puns, and clues to the next victim. The press has gone insane over the story and have dubbed this lunatic “the Wordman”, and the chase is on. Sounds just like a mystery from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, doesn’t it?

But surprisingly enough, this is the plot summary for Dialogues of the Dead by Reginald Hill, a book that was published in 2002. In this book, Hill’s regular detectives (Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe) find themselves duelling against the Wordman, a killer who writes stories about his murders after the fact and submits them to a short story competition.

Verdict of Nine

They called Michel Delupas “The Surgeon”. He was a medical student turned serial killer, and he murdered his victims with the aid of a scalpel. Fortunately, he was caught and justice prevailed: a jury of his peers brought in a verdict of “Guilty” and The Surgeon has been behind bars ever since. That is, until he was finally released…

Delupas is a deranged psychopath on a mission. According to his twisted worldview, society has done him wrong and he needs to shift the balance back onto his side. And what better way to do that than by killing off the members of the jury that convicted him, one by one? It’s what happens in René Reouven’s Mort au jury (Death to the Jury).

Quoth the Raven

Imagine Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meeting Harry Houdini in 1920s New York City, and a bizarre string of murders takes place. A madman is murdering people by using the works of Edgar Allan Poe as inspiration. Every grotesque murder seems more inexplicable than the last. Is there some sort of pattern? To top it all off, Houdini and Conan Doyle are in the middle of their famous spat over spiritualism and whether ghosts can be real. How awkward, then, that the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe keeps showing himself to Conan Doyle!!!

This extremely-awesome idea is the one behind Nevermore, a novel by William Hjortsberg. I’ve searched for this book for a long time, but with no success, before finding an edition for the Kindle. Unfortunately, after all the hype, the book turned out to be a major letdown.

No, the murderer doesn't live here... try number 21 in Paris

Yesterday, I was initiated into the Stanislas-André Steeman Appreciation Club when I read L’Assassin habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives at No. 21) for the very first time. I marvelled at the plot construction, the meticulously fair clueing, and the brilliant ending. But why am I bothering you with this summary? Go and read my review for yourself—I can still feel the enthusiasm dripping from my words. In fact, instead of starting a new mystery novel, I spent much of my reading time yesterday re-reading several passages from the book one more time… and my appreciation only deepened.

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before I got around to reviewing the film adaptation. It was released in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France. American films were banned and so the French cinema was pressed to give its audiences quality films—and thus, Henri-Georges Clouzot (sometimes called the French Hitchcock) was put into the director’s chair for his first major film, adapting L’Assassin habite au 21 with the help of the book’s author. And that’s about all I’ve been able to piece together—I’m sure more material is available on this film’s genesis but I haven’t got the ability to go out and do more research. Instead, I’d like to discuss the process of adaptation: what has translated well? What doesn’t work? What unique touches does Clouzot bring to the film as the director? And so on…

Mr. Smith = ?

It’s been two and a half months since the first death, and the murderer has literally left his calling card at every crime scene. He calls himself “Mr. Smith”—admittedly not a particularly colourful alias, but apparently an effective one, because the police cannot track the killer down. And the Smiths of London are understandably going through a very difficult time…

Until one day, Toby Marsh climbs up onto a lamppost and verbally abuses police constable Henry Beecham, who takes it upon himself to haul the lad into the clink. Once there, Marsh tells an astonishing tale: he followed Mr. Smith home from his last murder, and can give the police the address: the murderer lives at no. 21 Russell Square! But here’s the catch… no. 21 Russell Square is a guest house!

Return of the Peculiar

When I reviewed Christopher Fowler’s The Victoria Vanishes, I quickly recapped my opinion of the Bryant and May series of books. Although I loved the first ones, when White Corridor came, I was instantly turned off. Although White Corridor had a clever plot, it took forever to get anywhere, had plenty of psychotic characters, and was just dull, dull, dull. The Victoria Vanishes was an improvement of sorts, but had a laughable solution and some other problems.

But I was very intrigued by the plot summary of The Memory of Blood, the ninth Bryant and May novel. The extremely rich Robert Kramer hosts a party for the cast and crew of The Two Murderers, a lurid play with plenty of gratuitous sex and violence. Everyone is there: Robert’s wife Judith, the leading man Marcus Sigler, the director Russel Haddon, the scriptwriter Ray Pryce, and plenty more. Suddenly, Judith comes to Robert and tells him that the door to their baby Noah’s room is locked, and she had left it open. And to make a long story short (too late), the door is broken down and Noah is missing—he’s been thrown out of the window! But how was it done? A malfunctioning lock makes it impossible for anyone to have locked the door from the outside! But the most grotesque thing about this business is that the puppet of Mr. Punch is no longer on its hook—instead it is lying inside the room, as if he came to life and threw the baby out the window…

You Reap What You Sow...

WARNING: This review contains a potential spoiler in that I give away something that does not happen when I hoped it would. However, it was impossible to describe my disappointment without this revelation. The reader is warned, but it's something that should have been obvious.

The Reverend Otis Joy is a very, very wicked man. Indeed, his bishop, one Marcus Glastonbury, discovers that Joy has been embezzling funds from the Church of England systematically, and there is a deficit of about £15,000. But Marcus Glastonbury wants to ensure there is no public scandal involving the church, and so he makes a fatal mistake. The bishop neglects to tell anyone of his plan visit to Otis Joy, coming more-or-less-inconspicuously on his day off. And so, Otis Joy seizes his opportunity and murders the bishop, making the whole thing look like a suicide. To add credibility to this theory, he makes the bishop look like a sex pervert who jumped into a quarry because of shame.

It’s a jolly start to the story in Peter Lovesey’s The Reaper, and as we soon find out, Otis Joy is not only an embezzler but also a serial killer. People who inconvenience him have a nasty habit of dropping dead and things are no different at his current parish in Foxford. But the police scoff at these stories, shared in the pub: after all, how could a man go and tell his congregation to live their life one way, and then turn around and do something completely different himself? Otis Joy is a man of the cloth: how could he be a serial killer?

The Return of Mrs. Croc

Simon and Keith Innes are two young boys who are supremely excited: the circus is coming to town! It’s true that the festivities will be taking place on a Good Friday, but it only comes once a year and it should be taken advantage of. And in honour of Good Friday, the only reasonable thing to do is to sneak into the circus without paying!

The action begins on Holy Thursday, when the boys sneak out of their house to prepare their route for the following night. But suddenly they see a sinister-looking figure clutching a knife—a knife that looks rather like the knife owned by their elder brother, with whom they live! The next day, a grisly discovery is made—one of the circus people, a tight-rope walker, is found murdered, slashed to death by a Jack-the-Ripper-like murderer… and the bad news is, this is only the beginning.

Cat Among the Pigeons

Welcome once more, good readers, to a special edition of At the Scene of the Crime!

In this ongoing series of crossovers, I have managed to convince my fellow mystery bloggers, somehow or another, to join me in discussing a book/author/etc. Today’s victim is Steve, better known as The Puzzle Doctor. This rogue mathematician blogs at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, and has appeared on this blog before, in a crossover review of Paul Doherty’s An Ancient Evil that celebrated my reaching 100 posts.

So when we decided to team up again for another review, the first question to pop up was: what should we review? An initial suggestion was The Poison Maiden by Paul Doherty, seeing that our reaction to The Cup of Ghosts was so different. But this idea was scrapped due to the book’s length and my having midterm exams at around this time of year.

But suddenly, an idea galloped onto the scene, when I recalled that Steve here had a very—unorthodox, shall we say?— reaction to Ellery Queen’s Cat of Many Tails. It’s a book that I consider a personal favourite, and which many believe is the finest work penned by the EQ writing team. And wouldn’t you know it—one of Steve’s on-going projects is to read all of Ellery Queen’s output and review it!

So the elements were set in place for a potentially controversial review. Would I enjoy Cat of Many Tails upon a re-read? Just as (and arguably more) important, would the Doc’s opinion stay the same? There were at least three ways to find out, but the most feasible one was to simply read the book. So here we are today!

Steve, thanks so much for joining me today!

***

The Dead Sleep Lightly

“When I was a boy, we used to light fires, a circle of bonfires around the village, to ward off the ghosts. Well, the ghosts have come back to Melford to haunt, to seek justice, perhaps even revenge. We not only deal with treasons of the living, Ranulf, but the treason of the ghosts.”

—Sir Hugh Corbett, The Treason of the Ghosts

I have shamefully neglected Paul Doherty’s tales starring Sir Hugh Corbett, but recent reviews by The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel convinced me to give the stories a shot as soon as I could. But I decided to be a rebel and start with a title that sounded great instead of reading in strict chronological order. The result? I ended up picking up a copy of The Treason of the Ghosts.

It’s a really good title, isn’t it? And it’s adequately explained by Doherty in the quote I chose to open the review with. And the story itself is just as atmospheric as the title. The village of Melford is our backdrop. Five years ago, Sir Roger Chapeley was hung for a series of brutal rapes and murders. Now, however, the killings have started again, and the dead man’s son, Maurice, insists on an investigation. This brings Sir Hugh Corbett down to the village, and like a bloodhound, he begins to sniff around, catching the killer’s scent and relentlessly pursuing it.

The Flying Inn

Christopher Fowler

How can I describe Christopher Fowler’s Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries? I was expecting something rather like John Dickson Carr’s The Department of Queer Complaints: impossible murders and locked rooms being investigated by a police squad. Well, I was wrong—the series turned out to be just what it claimed. It was all about peculiar crimes. Some books, like White Corridor and Ten Second Staircase involve genuine locked rooms (or other impossible scenarios). Others, like The Water Room, are just bizarre crimes.

Since this is my first time reviewing a Fowler novel on the blog, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the previous entries I read in the series. Full Dark House has a brilliant atmosphere, a retrospective murder case in WWII London with a lunatic murdering people in a theatre. It has a lot of social commentary, but Fowler gets away with it because it’s good stuff. The only thing wrong with it is the solution, where the book falls apart, as some impossible occurrences are never adequately explained and the killer is just random.

The Water Room has a far less interesting set-up but an infinitely better solution. (With Fowler, it often seems that the better the set-up, the less interesting the solution, and vice versa.) Ten Second Staircase involves a lunatic serial killer dressing up as a Highwayman and killing minor celebrities, becoming one in the process.

Ce sont des traces de sang...

Paul Halter impressed me considerably with his highly imaginative and interesting book, Le Roi du Désordre, which was flawed, but at the same time offered two really good impossible scenarios with a plot that kept my interest all the way into the wee hours of the morning. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I was anxious to read another Halter, and I finally settled on La Tête du Tigre (The Tiger’s Head).

I chose this book on the strength of an introduction penned by Roland Lacourbe to my Paul Halter omnibus, which contains Le Roi du Désordre and four other books. In the excellent aforementioned introduction, Lacourbe talks about Halter’s two main characters in his longest series: Inspector Archibald Hurst and Dr. Alan Twist. According to his introduction, when Paul Halter wrote La Malédiction de Barberousse, he was hoping to resurrect the career of the great Dr. Gideon Fell, but John Dickson Carr’s estate categorically refused to permit him to use the characters. So, with a bit of tweaking, removing the more obvious references, Dr. Fell became Dr. Twist, and Inspector Hadley became Inspector Hurst.

All murderers are equal, but some are more equal than others

They talked about movies. Professor Benedetti, who had decided to come after all, turned out to be an avid fan of American westerns. Buell criticized them for not being true to life.

“What difference does that make?” Benedetti had replied. “They are not historical documents, they are entertainment. Do you believe the motion pictures produced in my native country show an accurate picture of the life of a roman gladiator? A motion picture is an illusion, possible only because of a defect in our perception; why should we ask more of it than diversion, eh? When real life offers so many more profound illusions.”

As if I needed another reason to like William L. DeAndrea, I’m starting to believe he was a fan of Westerns. After all, he wrote two Western mysteries and may have written more if not for his untimely death— as it happens, this quote came from chapter 14 of The HOG Murders, which I was able to read thanks to John over at Pretty Sinister Books, who heard my cry of despair over not being able to find the book (in my Killed on the Ice review) and graciously sent me a copy. It was well worth the wait.