The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933) by Stuart Palmer

Stuart Palmer’s fourth Hildegarde Withers book, The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree, is set on the island of Catalina, a vacation destination for Depression-afflicted America. Our story doesn’t begin on the island, however, but on the mainland. A man misses the boat to the island and reluctantly gets aboard the “flying boat” the Dragonfly. It’s quicker, but the turbulence is a killer. Possibly literally. For barely five minutes into the flight, the man begins to panic, screaming “I’m dying—I don’t want to die!” By the time the plane lands, he’s dead. The local doctor and police chief, who’ve barely seen any crime, much less murder, for years are willing to write the death off as natural causes, a heart attack from the stress. Unfortunately for the killer, one of the tourists on Catalina is schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, who insists that the death is a murder. Her claims gain some force when the dead man’s identity is discovered: Roswell T. Forrest, a secretary who’s wanted back in New York by the police for testimony against his corrupt union bosses. Said bosses want him quiet, and they’re willing to pay $15,000 to make it happen.

Miss Withers will have to sort the killer out from the melting pot of people on board the Dragonfly. There’s a newly-wed couple, a director and his two assistants, a ship captain, a pottery seller, the pilots, and a young woman with dreams of stardom who becomes Miss Withers’s pseudo-Watson. Most of them are strangers to each other, much less the dead man, but $15,000 in 1930s money is motive enough. But there are other problems: How could anyone have poisoned Forrest on a crowded flight that he didn’t even plan to be on? Complicating matters further is that someone makes off with his body in the night. There’s no trace of it on the island even though there’s seemingly no place to bury it. And no, it wasn’t dumped in the ocean. Separated from dependable Oscar Piper of NYPD, Miss Withers will have to go this alone.

And it’s that aspect of going it alone that’s the main draw of the book. The previous book in this series, Murder on the Blackboard, toyed with having Miss Withers cut off from her normal support group, but this takes it further. Not only does Miss Withers not have any real allies, but it’s an uphill battle convincing the authorities that there’s even been a murder at all. Miss Withers gets pretty hardboiled here, even holding a gun on one of the suspects! But at the same time, Palmer subverts expectations a little bit here. Miss Withers’s stunt with a gun doesn’t really gain her anything and the whole chapter has her off-guard and flummoxed. When she does find herself face to face with an actual hardened criminal, she’s easily overpowered and almost killed. There’s this sense that the case might be a bit too much for her, at least on her own. I don’t think Palmer is using this as commentary on women being too weak for detective work or anything, but it feels like he’s trying to put Miss Withers in different circumstances and see how she reacts. It gives the book some interest for long-time readers.

Sadly, that’s probably the best part of the book. The actual mystery didn’t satisfy me. The explanation for the poisoning is fine. Similar to Murder on Wheels, Palmer is smart enough to know that the reader will likely figure out how it was done and reveals it early on. The location of the missing body is obvious but also clever. But the rest falls short. Near the end of the book there’s another death, a shooting. All of the suspects are tested for gunpowder residue, but no trace is found. Sadly, the explanation for how the killer managed to do this is just a trivia fact. And even when Miss Withers does point at the killer, there’s like, one clue pointing to them. It’s a good clue, yes, but it’s one clue! I agree with Dead Yesterday’s review that the killer really could have been any of the suspects.

All in all, while this was a good read, I found it to be a very weak mystery. I liked the island setting and seeing Palmer putting Miss Withers outside of her comfort zone. But the actual mystery wasn’t to my taste. I’m giving this a Not Recommended, With Caveats. If you like Miss Withers or Palmer’s writing, then this is worth a look because of how he plays with the formula. But if you’ve never read one of his books, or if you’re reading solely for the mystery aspect, you’d be better off picking another book from this series.

Other Reviews: Dead Yesterday, Bitter Tea and Mystery, The Grandest Game in the World.

A Fête Worse Than Death (2007) by Dolores Gordon-Smith

As has become clear by now, I really enjoy the works of Dolores Gordon-Smith. Her books make a genuine effort to emulate the Golden Age novels of yore, and even when she falls short, she still gives a charmingly written and dense mystery to chew on. I decided to go back to the beginning of her Jack Haldean series to enjoy it in full.

A Fête Worse Than Death opens at the village fête, run by Jack’s aunt, Alice. He’s enjoying the festivities, aside from the heat, but runs into a fly in the ointment: Jeremy Boscome, a former fellow officer. Boscome was only in the Royal Air Force to escape the front lines of World War I and was a notorious nuisance. A reputation he lives up to here, getting drunk, making insinuations, and being a pest, before crashing in the fortune teller’s tent to sleep it off. He’s seemingly left alone in there, but when someone peeks in, they find that he’s been shot in the head.

This murder is soon followed up by one of Boscome’s compatriots catching a bullet to the head in his hotel room. Luckly for Jack, the investigator in charge, Superintendent Edward Ashley, has heard about his previous work in crime solving and is willing to let him assist. Boscome was a vulture who had a nasty habit of prodding people’s emotional weaknesses, and Jack suspects he was making money off of blackmail. But against who? The truth lies in Boscome’s memoirs, where he recounts how a traitorous officer led good men into a German ambush in the tunnels under the battlefield…

Gordon-Smith does a good job here. There’s plenty of mystery and intrigue. There’s a love triangle of sorts. Marguerite Vayle has fallen for a war hero with movie star looks, Colonel Whitfield, but one of her trustees, Hugh Larwrence, opposes the marriage on the grounds that the colonel comes off as a gold-digger. There’s also shady parentage, more murders, the works. She evens hints at an impossible crime with Boscome’s death. It seems, if not impossible, certainly very unlikely that anyone could have slipped into the tent and shot him without being seen or heard. She doesn’t make much of this (although the clue that explains it is what breaks the case for Haldean), but I wanted to make a note of it. I predicted some of the plot twists in advance, but I can see someone less familiar with her work not reaching the same conclusions I did. The mystery isn’t as complex as her later ones, but there’s still plenty of theorizing for characters and reader alike to chew on.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the cluing is, again, a little weak. Haldean points out multiple little indications during his explanation at the end, and fair enough. While reading the explanation, I was impressed at how easily Gordon-Smith slotted the killer’s actions into earlier parts of the book. But those elements really only point to the killer after you know who they are. You can’t look at them and deduce who the killer is from them. I also think that there needed to be one or two more suspects for the reader to, er, suspect. Now, part of this is just the fact that I’ve read enough of Gordon-Smith to get a feel for how she constructs her stories, but the killer stood out to me here. She does a good job of spreading suspicion around, but I think another potential killer would have served her well.

All in all, while this isn’t my favorite of Gordon-Smith’s novels, it is still a good read. Remember that this was her first book and that she would get much better. You could certainly do worse than starting here if you’re prowling around looking for a new author. Recommended for anyone looking for good historical mysteries. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Invisible Event, My Reader's Block.

Turnabout Retribution (2023) by The Fury Wraith

I almost didn’t review this.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the fancase, which is quite good, and more with the premise. One of the reasons I haven’t reviewed more AA fancases before now is because I knew there would be a hurdle for those who hadn’t played AA before. I did A Game of Turnabouts because it’s pretty simple and doesn’t depend on knowing the plot of the AA games. But Turnabout Retribution, a fancase by The Fury Wraith, is different. The very premise of the case is a massive spoiler.

The plot revolves around the antagonist of the fourth game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The game opens with our hero about to face justice, when they’re suddenly transported to Hell. By the Devil. Who has an offer for our protagonist, because they’re just that much of a scumbag (“…Plus I think someone might have seen me appear on your hand in that one court case…”) The Devil will send our hero 24 hours before the court case that spelled their downfall. If they can avert their fate, they can live a full life. Fail, and the Devil gets their soul now instead of later. But that task is harder than it looks. In short, even if our hero finds a simple solution, there’s a ticking time bomb in the background that will ruin them anyway. The Devil happily leads them to the only real solution: Kill Phoenix Wright.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Phoenix is very safe for the full 24 hours. He was attending a poker tournament at a run-down casino, only for the dealer, one Roy Elflash (ugh) to wind up dead in his safe with a knife in his back. Luckily, the police already have a suspect in custody: one of the players, Bethany Ittal (ahhhhhh). She was caught in the locked safe with a bagful of money, and seeing as the dead man had the only key in his hand, there’s no way it could be anyone other than her (“It’s like one of those locked-room mysteries in novels. Only with an obvious culprit!”) However, our hero can’t let that stand. If they can’t lure Phoenix Wright into a blind alley to smash a bottle over his head, they’ll do the next best thing: Take Bethany’s case, and frame Phoenix for the murder.

Turnabout Retribution does a pretty good job at matching the Ace Attorney vibe. It’s not perfect; some of the contradiction logic is wonky, but for the most part this is a reasonable pastiche of an AA case. There’s only one original character, an actress participating in the tournament, but she’s good. Her gimmick is just the right level of annoying and her skill at brushing off contradictions makes her a formidable opponent in court. The mystery is good too. I found the contradictions were usually reasonable but sometimes quite hard, especially at the beginning and about two-thirds of the way through the case. One of the big contradictions in particular is tricky, because I can see players dismissing it as a limitation of the engine, but when taken in context, it’s clever.

The reason I highlighted this case is because the locked room is great. If I were to describe the solution flat-out you’d think it was stupid, but it’s very well done. It’s so silly, but it’s very well-justified. It feels like an Ace Attorney-style solution, with an idea that sounds absurd on paper until you start thinking about it... There are proper clues pointing to it (in fact, when I replayed the case, I wondered how I missed it) and I like how the case leads you to the bizarre but very creative truth.

The main hook for AA fans is the protagonist and their relationship with Phoenix. Let me start by saying that I think they’re a little too easily flustered. This character is usually portrayed as smooth and in-control, and they have a few too many freak-outs for me. Sure, you can argue it’s like Phoenix in Turnabout Revolution where he seems much more confident when you’re not getting his internal monologue, and the case does throw our hero curveball after curveball, but it didn’t sit right with me. I also didn’t 100% buy the face-turn you can have them make at the end. But I liked how the case handled Phoenix. This will mainly be of interest to those who are familiar with the fanon surrounding Apollo Justice-era Phoenix. While I found this less subtle on my second playthrough, I think case does something interesting with that and really plays with how fans view the battle of wits between our hero and Phoenix. It avoids a common cliché in AA fanon.

Of course, the case then does something I don’t like to see in fancases, but that’s more me.

All in all, Turnabout Retribution is really good! The hook is interesting, the mystery is very clever, and the characters are all great. I do think that you’ll get the most out of this if you’ve played Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney first. But if all you’re looking for is a new locked room mystery, you could do a lot worse than this. Recommended. 

You can play the case here. 

A Eulogy for Reason (2019) by DWaM

A delivery girl brings a package to a shady apartment. A woman goes on a date with a man she met online…and plans to rob him. A desperate man tries to make money for his daughter with a pyramid scheme (“T-triangle”). And the police investigate a brutal locked room mystery. And there’s even more going on in the city besides. It all sounds overwhelming. But just relax. The Inspector is coming.

And remember that the date is always April 17th, 2028.

Such is the set-up of DWaM’s A Eulogy for Reason. I admit, I was tentative going into this, unsure if I’d vibe with it, but there was nothing to worry about. Beneath the slightly unusual narrative structure is a very good, if nightmarish, mystery story. There’s a bombing, a cult that wears animal masks, and a book, The Inspector’s Arrival, that seems to predict the future and definitely mirrors the major crime. We get multiple perspectives on this fateful day (and following morning). There’s a fair bit of dark humor here (one of the narrators mocks conspiracy theorists online but proves to be more paranoid than any of them, one viewpoint character is a detective who gives a Lenny Briscoe-style one-liner and keeps apologizing for it for the rest of his chapter). Even if it's not clear how at first, most of the narrators fill in some piece of what happened on that fateful April 17th, 2028.

Oh, and one of the narrators dreams that a giant hand is coming out of the sky. There’s that too.

But what about the locked room? I hear you cry. Fear not, for there are two here. Kinda. One is fictional, contained within The Inspector’s Arrival. Both have a woman set on fire in her bedroom, which is not only locked from the inside, but taped. The solutions are pretty good. I liked the in-universe one a little better. It relies on some unusual behavior but is the right amount of twisted for me. The main locked room is still good though, not so much for the how but for the why, which connects the murder to a lot of the other weirdness going on throughout the novella.

Because, in the end, this is a pretty well thought out mystery. The multiple perspectives might seem confusing, but most of the connections are made pretty clear early on. I was impressed by how smoothly everything linked together. I’d hesitate a bit to call Eulogy a fully fair mystery. I would be shocked if anyone solved this 100%, since some of the smaller details are mentioned in passing and you really aren’t given the context to recognize their relevance. But those who pay attention and take careful notes can make it 85-90% of the way there. Come the explanation, we see that every key point was at least mentioned earlier, so the ending still feels satisfying. It may not be perfectly clued, but it is well-foreshadowed.

All in all, this was another great mystery from DWaM, and probably my favorite of his stuff that I’ve read so far. This may not be a traditional mystery, but it is a real one. Fans of Kitayama’s The “Lapis Lazul Castle” Murders who are craving something with that same sense of a mystery that takes place on the edge of reality might want to check this out. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: The Invisible Event.

Strange Buildings (2023/2026) by Uketsu (translated by Jim Rion)

I didn’t plan to review this book so soon after it’s prequel, but my library gave me both when I checked Strange Houses out.

As it’s Japanese title, Hen na le 2, implies, Strange Buildings is a sequel to Strange Houses. The publication of the latter book has resulted in a flood of people contacting Uketsu to tell him about their own weird houses. Most of these don’t have an explanation (“I couldn’t bring those stories to an end.”), but there are some that do have answers…and connections. Strange Buildings collects eleven “files” that turn out to have far-reaching links.

I won’t talk about each file in detail; there are other reviews for that. Instead, I must give Uketsu credit for changing things up for this book. Houses used the same basic set up for each of it’s stories. Buildings mixes it up. There’s the conventional floorplan/interview format where the author has to examine houses with weird bits, like a dead end hallway, but there’s also the journal of a young boy subject to horrifying abuse, an exposé on a cult, a historical account of a mill house in the woods. There’s a little more variety to the mysteries as well. Two of the files are linked accounts of a fatal house fire. In another, a man finds that his house is listed on an app for “Incident Properties” “places where bad things have happened,” but his house was built after the date on the app. Most of the files follow the script format of Houses, but the variety in the storytelling gives the book some more life.

Strange Buildings is stronger as both a mystery and a horror novel than its predecessor. On the mystery side, it’s very well-clued. Most of the files have the author presenting an explanation or answering some kind of question, but there’s usually some hanging detail that he can’t explain. The last chapter has best bro Kurihara examine the files himself and connect all this mystery and bloodshed. And it’s good! Just about every twist has some sort of cluing or foreshadowing. The summation even has exact quotes from earlier in the book! I know that some people don’t like Uketsu’s illustration/recap heavy style, and I don’t disagree, but it works really well here and keeps everything clear. There’s even cluing for the big connection between the files, even if it does require some abstract thinking. The connection is weird and creative and hilarious and deeply cynical and kinda gross all at once. Some of it doesn’t work for me (ROT13: fheryl fbzr bs gubfr ubhfrf qba’g ybbx gung zhpu yvxr gur Ubyl Zbgure?), but for the most part I was willing to buy into it. I also had a problem with some of the smaller mysteries, (ROT13: Va Svyr 1, V sryg gung gur rkcynangvba sbe Lnlbv’f zbgure’f orunivbe qvqa’g jbex jryy. Fheryl n orggre rkcynangvba jbhyq or ure srne gung ure “puvyq bs fva” jbhyq or chavfurq, rfcrpvnyyl fvapr n xvq npghnyyl qvq qvr bhgfvqr ure ubhfr? Gur oybbq glcr vqrn sryg gbb qvfpbaarpgrq.) And in File 5 (qb jr rire yrnea jub chg gur ubhfr ba Vapvqrag Ncc naq jul?) Finally, the structure of the book means that the mastermind behind all this bloodshed gets less page time than a bit character. I accept it as a necessity of the culture, but it’s worth noting. And why was chapter 4 written in present tense?

And the horror aspects are better. Much “better.” I didn’t find Houses all that scary, but this book goes to some genuinely dark places. While there’s nothing graphic on-page, Uketsu pulls no punches. It fits with the cynical tone of the book. Just about every relationship or seemingly good deed is exposed as a sham, with something much darker behind it. It gets kinda comical, especially at the end, where Ukestu gives you a plot twist, then subverts it a page later just to set up the bleak ending. I didn’t feel that any of this was sleazy or overly exploitative, but I could see some readers finding the content distasteful.

In the end, I still enjoy Strange Pictures the best out of Uketsu’s work. It’s the best as a novel. But I can’t deny that Strange Buildings addresses every issue I had with Houses and is a massive improvement. If you completely bounced off Houses I don’t think this will make you a fan, but if you thought that Houses was good but flawed, or just thought the concept was neat, Strange Buildings is very much worth your time. If you’re a fan of mystery and horror in general, you should check it out. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Stephen M. Pierce, Beneath the Stains of Time, The Library at Borley Rectory, A Weekly Dose of Architectural Books, Fang's Mystery Blog.

Driysham 2 (2022) written and directed by Jeethu Joseph

Earlier this year, I reviewed the Malayali movie Drishyam (Visual) and really enjoyed it. It was a solid crime drama about a father trying to help his family after his eldest daughter accidentally killed a rapist. And the central alibi could have pulled right out the Golden Age. So it was with some interest that some friends and I sat down to watch Drishyam 2.

The movie takes place seven years after the events of the previous one. Georgekutty and his family are doing pretty well, all things considered. Georgekutty is now the owner of a movie theater where he gets to show off his favorite movies and is even working on a film of his own (though the production is going quite slow, to his wife’s frustration.) The family now lives in a nicer house. Georgekutty even has fancy CCTV at the theater and his old TV repair shop. Youngest daughter Anu is in her rebellious teenager phase, but she’s making friends at her school. There’s even hope of marrying off Anju, the eldest. Yes, life is looking very good for Georgekutty.

But there are shadows darkening the family’s lives. Anju suffers from nightmares and seizures from the trauma of Varun’s murder. Anu’s love interest has an unhealthy interest in the murder. Georgekutty’s newfound success breeds resentment among his neighbors, who are now more willing to believe that his family was involved in Varun’s murder, and it’s affecting his daughter’s marriage prospects. And the police haven’t given up trying to nail the family.

And unbeknownst to anyone, Georgekutty was seen that fateful night. The witness was arrested that same night and doesn’t quite realize the implications of what he saw, but he’s a desperate man, and there’s a reward offered for any information on Varun’s body…

After finishing the movie, my first thought was that I didn’t like it as much as the first one. But that’s a little unfair. Drishyam 2 is better paced than its predecessor. It’s still about an hour before the plot really kicks off, but there’s more intrigue since we know about the Sword of Damocles over the family’s head. And the midpoint has a really good twist that recontextualizes what we’ve seen so far.

My main issue was with the structure of the film, which really isn’t its fault. The original Driysham had a really fascinating cat-and-mouse game and central problem (How did Georgekitty fake an alibi?) Here, the tension comes from Georgekutty being oblivious to the tightening net around him, meaning we’re tapping our fingers waiting for it all to explode. This means, however, that the counterplays are all confined to the last half-hour of the movie. They are foreshadowed, but, like the first film, not in a way where you can watch and predict what the endgame will be.

And don’t get me wrong, the endgame is great. But it lacks the sheer impact of the first movie. To be as vague as possible about both: In the first film, Georgekutty beats the police in part because he’s able to manipulate them into destroying their own case. He knows how they think and act and exploits that. When he wins, it feels like well-deserved karma. Here, his plan boils down to "lie,” with his machinations meant to make that lie plausible. And they are good machinations, but because we’re not given the same insight into what he’s doing, they lack some oomph. It just felt implausible to me that he was able to get the police off his back with this plan, even if one of the main ideas is really clever. Maybe it would have helped if, after we get the evidence that “proves” his family is innocent, we were given a few minutes to see the aftermath and wonder how he managed to pull it off, but instead we get the moment and the explanation right after that.

Really, I’m just complaining that nothing can beat the final shot of the previous film.

There are also a couple of loose ends. The bit with Anu’s boyfriend being interested in the murder goes nowhere. The resentment towards Georgekutty from his neighbors also doesn’t impact anything, which is a missed opportunity in my view. Georgekutty’s plan in the previous film hinged on public sympathy, and it would have been interesting to see him try and account for a lack of it this time around.

But again, most of this is just me disappointed that I didn’t get the movie I wanted to watch. In the end, I have to give Jeethu Joseph credit for making a sequel that really does feel like a plausible outcome of first film. If you liked Drishyam and want to see Georgekutty win again, this is a solid sequel. Just keep in mind that this is a different film. Recommended.

Three Card Murder (2023) by J. L. Blackhurst

Back in 2023, the Puzzle Doctor reviewed Three Card Murder, a new book by J. L. Blackhurst. That's actually the pen name of Jenny Blackhurst, a writer of psychological thrillers. Three Card Murder, by contrast, was a colorful reference to the Golden Age of mystery fiction, complete with three(!) locked rooms. It sounded promising. But it wasn’t until the Honkaku Discord server chose it as a book club book that I finally got around to reading it.

Three Card Murder stars Tess Fox, a newly-appointed Detective Inspector looking to cut her teeth on a murder case. The murder is that of Shaun Mitchell, who crashed to the ground outside of his apartment building. He’s partly been bound with rope and his throat slit. But when Tess and her team enter his filthy apartment, they quickly realize they have a problem: The CCTV camera outside shows no one entering his apartment for a day before his death, and the door was boarded up from the inside. Tess isn’t looking forward to trying to chase down an invisible, intangible man, and she has enemies on the force who would love to use this as an excuse to one-up her. But she has bigger problems.

Tess is the daughter of Frank Jacobs, the biggest conman in Brighton, head of an organization of swindlers. Tess didn’t know her father growing up and tracked him down fifteen years ago. She was accepted with open arms but abruptly joined the police force six months later. The reason is only partly down to moral qualms. Tess’s half-sister, Sarah, made a foolish effort to con three men out of their ill-gotten gains and it went badly wrong. Tess ended up killing one of them to bail her and Sarah out. Shaun Mitchell was one of those men, and Tess has good reason to think that someone is trying to tie her half-sister, or even Tess herself, to his murder. So she, with great reluctance, asks Sarah for her help.

Shaun Mitchell isn’t the only locked room mystery our cop and con sisters will have to contend with though. Another man is found stabbed to death in a lift, even though no one was seen to approach him. Another victim is shot to death in a hotel room chained shut and that CCTV shows no one entering. There’s a nice sense of forward momentum to the book. The other members of the book club griped a bit about the writing, but I didn’t mind it too much. There are, perhaps, some chapters that are mostly filler, such as one where Sarah impersonates a psychic, but for the most part I found this to be a solid read on a writing level. The only thing I didn’t like was the book constantly reminding us that Tess killed a man. Yes, it’s important because concealing that and her connection to the Jacobs’ motivates some of Tess’s actions, but I didn’t need reminding of it.

The book falls apart for me at the ending. Take the locked rooms: They aren’t bad. You could argue that the first one makes use of a hackneyed plot device, but I’d say that the way Blackhurst uses it here is silly but plausible. The third locked room is pretty great, my favorite of the book. But there’s almost no cluing. This is especially egregious for the second death. We’re told that X was acting a certain way, but if you flip back, you’ll see that that detail is never mentioned. And it could have been a good clue! And, frankly, the police should have been able to solve it, they would have noticed that fact at some point. It would have been fine if that was the point, like, "they're going to figure this out but I just want to confuse them for a while,) but no, they just don’t notice it. The same goes for the culprit. They’re straight out of a thriller, no chance at figuring out who they are and what they want except through genre savvy and wild guessing. The worst bit is the ending. I can buy Sarah making the choice that she does at the end, I can’t believe that Tess would go through with it.

So, in the end, I was disappointed with Three Card Murder. It’s not an awful book, but it doesn’t live up to the promise of three impossible crimes with a backdrop of con artistry. I can’t in good conscience say you should check it out. Not Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel,  Crossexaminingcrime, Beneath the Stains of Time, Fang's Mystery Blog.