The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (2016) by Denis O. Smith

This is actually the third time I’ve tried to read this book. This has nothing to the with its quality, but just because it’s a dense read! I never took the time to finish it.

A few years ago, I was browsing Reddit when I saw someone talking about good Sherlock Holmes pastiches. For the unaware, “pastiche” refers to a derivative work that tries to emulate the tone and feel of the original. There’s a whole bunch of Holmes ones out there and finding good ones can be a challenge. This user recommended, among other names, Denis O. Smith. I took note of that, and when I saw his collection, The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, at the library, I picked it up. Smith is a prolific writer of Holmes pastiche, with multiple collections to his name. I assume that this collection contains stories unpublished elsewhere, though I can’t be sure.

It is fair to note that Smith isn’t trying to write clever throwbacks to the Golden Age of Detection. He’s writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches. That means there’s less focus on clever mystery and more on interesting situations, nocturnal adventures, and sensational solutions. Smith does play fairer than Doyle in some ways. Usually there’s one part of the mystery that the reader can solve, such as the culprit’s identity or a code, but the rest of the solution comes from Holmes’s personal knowledge or investigations. So all of my complaints should be taken in that spirit. I judged these as mysteries because that’s my default, and I don’t want that to take away from Smith’s work here.

“The Adventure of the Black Owl” sees Holmes called upon for his expert opinion regarding the murder of Professor Arbuthnot, who was found stabbed to death in his study. Oddly, there was a black figurine of an owl on the scene. His professional rival, Dr. Zyss, was in the country and was supposed to meet up with him, but he canceled their meeting and has mysteriously vanished…though one woman claims to have seen him wander dazed into a church and then disappear! Not an impossible crime though.

This one is pretty fun. I suspect that most keen readers will at least suspect the identity of the killer. The most important clues are only obliquely mentioned by Sherlock, but there’s enough there for the reader. The ending is a little too cheery, too much “virtue rewarded” for me, but other than that I have no issues.

The titular club of “The Adventure of the XYZ Club” is a small group of university students led by Charles Churchfield, of the family of prestigious bankers. Charles’s idea of fun involves debauchery and the humiliation of his lesser, driving one of the members, Julian Ashby, to the edge of quitting. But that’s not what brings him to Holmes’s doorstep. Ashby says that he arrived at the Churchfield estate by boat late at night, crashing into a houseboat docked outside. He bumbled his way into the boathouse, lit a match to see…and caught a glimpse of a woman before being knocked out. When he came too, Charles tried to convince him that he just saw a picture of his sister that was being stored there before tripping and bumping his head, but he isn’t so sure. He’s right to be suspicious, as about a day later he’s calling on Holmes again, as the Chesterfield estate has burned to the ground with a body amidst the rubble. Holmes delivers much of the backstory behind the crime based on off-stage knowledge, but the key points of the mystery are fairly clued.

“The Adventure of the Velvet Mask” is one of the longer stories in the collection. This time, Holmes’s client is Isabel Ballantyne, the great actress. Her latest production, The Lavender Girl, has been besieged by multiple acts of sabotage. Some are just petty pranks, like one of the stars being locked in his dressing room, but others are more serious, such as the gas being switched off in the theater. One of the dressmakers came face to “face” with the culprit…seeing as he was wearing a blank piece of velvet as a mask. Even Watson encounters him in the dark corridors of the theater basement. Smith does a wonderful job of scene-setting here, really capturing the old theater the story is set in. He lacks Doyle’s knack for punchy description but is good at what he does. There is a good clue pointing to the culprit. But the sinister plot feels a little ill-thought out.

It’s a patient of Watson who brings a case in “The Adventure of the Old School Friend.” Alfred Hebert is a patient who recounts a series of odd events that have happened to him. One night, he found himself stranded in a train station where he had a chance encounter with Stephen Hollingsworth, a fellow student from his school days. The encounter is pleasant, but Hebert is in for a shock when he sees a newspaper article saying that Hollingsworth drowned a few days ago! Stephen is able to present a plausible explanation for that and begs Hebert to keep hold of a locked black bag who some shady figures are after. Bad enough, but there’s more to come. Hebert tells Watson that he was thinking on the matter in the night and was struck by a sudden realization: the man he’s been interacting absolutely cannot be Stephen Hollingsworth. When Hebert finds his way to Baker Street, it’s after he’s been badly beaten by some thugs looking for the bag. At this point, Holmes steps in and resolves it in short order. This is more of an “adventure” than a “mystery.”

The hook of “The Adventure of the Brown Box” is so good that it’s used on the blurb:“Is it really possible, do you suppose […] that a healthy and robust man may be so stricken with terror that he falls down dead?” Such is the fate of Victor Furnival, according to his niece anyway, who comes to Holmes, telling him that her uncle let out “the most dreadful cry of terror she has ever heard” upon opening a brown box he got in the mail. Her uncle isn’t the only victim of the box. Another man falls into a dead faint upon opening it, and Holmes arrives at the dead man’s house just in time to find that his sister has also perished. However, the solution is pulled right from the sensation pulps. I always find this solution creepy, and Smith has some genuine clues pointing to it, so it’s not all bad, but it might lack the needed “oomph” for some. The motive for the crimes is straight Doyle.

“The Adventure of The Tomb on the Hill” opens with Everard Dyson approaching Holmes about the theft of the titular painting. Kinda. You see, the painting was not only stolen but replaced with a near-identical copy. There are a couple of details that are different, most notably an inscription on the painted tomb, which is now totally different. When Holmes (and the reader) learns that the paintings used to belong to the brother of an infamous robber, whose last haul was never recovered and who was just released from prison, the truth becomes clear quite quickly. The reasoning for the switch is a bit handwavy; surely the culprit could have just thrown them in a fireplace. But the story is fun. You need some specialized knowledge to break the cipher, though a clever reader can figure out it’s supposed to work, and there’s a nice endgame twist to complicate the case.

“The Adventure of the Purple Hand” sees Holmes meeting with Mark Pringle about a series of small domestic mysteries. Pringle’s wife recently took on a new gardener and his wife and seems to have developed a very odd relationship with them. Pringle caught his wife embracing the gardener and laughing with the gardener’s wife. She refuses to fire the man even though there’s no actual gardening getting done. Pringle believes he overheard his wife and the gardener discussing his health and that “all our troubles will be at an end.” Not to mention the shady figure in the garden and the imprint of a six-fingered purple hand he’s been finding on his estate. This has probably the best hook in the collection, but the solution is Holmes going, “Check out all this cool stuff I learned off-page.” Which is a recurring problem in this collection: Don’t get me wrong, I like these stories, and I acknowledge that even Doyle would promise big things and then not deliver a fair-play mystery like we want. But there are a lot of stories here that have really interesting hooks but then don’t deliver with a resolution that matches up to the premise. Give Christie this premise and she would have made a minor masterpiece out of it.

“The North Walk Mystery” is set at the titular building, a place for solicitors. One rainy night, Sir Gilbert Cheshire’s body is found at his desk, his throat slashed. The place has a bloody history, and this is not the first violent death on the premises. Ten years ago, Sir John Hawkwood was bludgeoned on the doorstep, and his killer was never caught. This would normally just be a piece of morbid trivia, were it not for the fact that the dying Sir Gilbert uttered the words, “It was he…Sir John Hawkwood.” Now, Holmes knows better to believe in ghosts, though he’s just as skeptical of Inspector Stoddard’s theory that the culprit was just a prowler. Holmes does some good detection here, though again, there are no real clues pointing to the killer. And the dying message is pretty basic. But I accept that as the Doylean style.

“The Secret of Shoreswood Hall” is the other long story of the collection, and it’s a good one. Holmes is approach by a young woman, Amelia Davenoke, who wants to report the disappearance of her new husband, Edward. Edward has inherited the titular hall after the death of his father, who died suddenly while the couple was on their honeymoon. Edward rushed back to England, but when Amelia arrived, there was no trace of him. The servants tell her that he’s just in London on business, but she can find no trace of him. Not to mention that the hall is filled with strange noises at night, and Amelia has seen a figure creeping among the ruins of an old chapel. While all of these on their own could have innocent explanations, a seemingly innocuous letter from Edward tips Sherlock off that there’s something more sinister afoot.

This is a good story. “Holmes in a Gothic” is, I’m sure, very well-trodden ground in pastiches, but it works well here. There’s genuine mystery here, as well as a real sense of dread overhanging the story: “All at once I had an overpowering sensation of impending doom, an awful conviction that, do what we might, we could not protect Ameila Davenoke from the fate that awaited her.” While the mystery aspect isn’t very strong, it’s a good example of the sensation style of the original Holmes stories. The ending is also bleak, as Holmes falls short even while solving the mystery. This one justifies its length.

“The Adventure of the Minon Canon” is, fittingly, a minor story. A canon, Martin Zennor, approaches Holmes, begging for help. He stands accused of trying to steal a check from his cathedral, which was found in his coat pocket. The case against him is black, but Holmes thinks the truth lies in the game of musical chairs that the canons play with their coats. This is one of the fairer stories of the collection, as I suspect that you probably could figure it out if you sat down and plotted it out.

“The East Thirgby Mystery” is a mysterious unsolved crime. Watson recounts it to Holmes, explaining that a local eccentric and self-styled intellectual was found murdered on the road following a series of robberies in the district. Watson bemoans that no one knows the truth, but Holmes corrects him. One man does know: Sherlock Holmes. It turns out that Holmes vacationed in the area in childhood, and he recounts his experiences leading up to the murder. “Kid Holmes” has a lot of ways it can go wrong, but to Smith’s credit, the picture he draws is charming without being cloying or precious. Young Holmes is clever but not yet infallible. Some parts of the mystery aren’t used to their fullest—I think here of the “sinister stranger” lurking in the area—but the Holmes’s conclusions about what happened the night of the crime are solid and logical.

We end with “The Adventure of Juniper Cottage.” Holmes’s client this time is Sidney Potter, a clerk who has just inherited a cottage from his uncle, a military man. The cottage is pleasant and in a peaceful area but recently has received some unwelcome guests. Robbers have apparently been inside looking his and just recently Mr. Potter found his home invaded by an unknown man who was likely looking for something and might be stalking him even now. Holmes steps in and quickly finds what the robbers are searching for. This is a weak story to end on, with a pretty simple mystery, although there is a bit of code cracking that a clever reader can work out on their own.

I know I did a lot of griping about this book, but I did enjoy it. Like I said, these aren’t meant to be elaborate mysteries you can solve on your own. There’s some of that, but you’re mostly sitting back and watching Holmes at work. Smith lacks Doyle’s effortless command of language, but he does a very good job at emulating Victorian narratives. So, if you want classic, fair-play mysteries, I would look elsewhere. But if you want to lose yourself in Victorian gaslight and walk the streets with two of the greatest characters in all of mystery fiction, I would give this a shot. Sit in a nice chair in front of a fireplace and read a story a night. You’ll enjoy it. Recommended.

Danganronpa Kirigiri 1 (2013/2019) by Takekuni Kitayama (translated by Kamase Megane and "kanan is love")

I read this book for the Honkaku Discord server’s book club. 

If you’re someone who plays mystery games, then you have doubtless heard of the Danganronpa franchise. The series is set in a world of “Ultimates,” masters of their certain talent: Idol Singer, Chef, Scion, etc. The main series games involve groups of these teenagers being kidnapped and forced to play a murder game by the robotic bear Monokuma. Kill your classmate, and they’ll be a Class Trial. If the others solve it, the “Blackened” will be executed. If they can’t, the culprit goes free and the others are executed. You know, fun school activities.

I mentioned in my review of The “Lapis Lazuli Castle” Murders that author Takekuni Kitayama really rose to prominence thanks to his work on the Danganronpa series. The Danganronpa Kirigiri series is one of his contributions. It’s a prequel to the main series, starring Kyoko Kirigiri from the first game as a middle schooler. Though she’s not our viewpoint character. No, instead, the book opens with narrator and teen detective Yui Samidare waking up handcuffed to a bed. She’s trapped in picturesque (“depairesque”) Sirius Observatory. She and four other detectives were invited to the observatory by an unknown client, before suddenly passing out. Yui quickly frees herself and searches the place, stumbling on an unconscious Kyoko…with a bloody pair of shears next to her. The reason for that blood becomes clear on further searching: The other three detectives lie dead in their beds. Decapitated. And dismembered. And with the body parts swapped around.

Complicating matters is that the observatory is totally cut off from the outside world thanks to heavy snowfall, and there’s no trace of anyone else in the building. Therefore, the killer must either be the narrator, or the girl the series is named after.

But little do our heroines know that the observatory has been chosen as the stage for the Duel Noir. A shady organization known as the “Victims’ Catharsis Committee” is approaching the victims of crime and offering them an opportunity to get “catharsis,”…revenge on those who’ve wronged them. The client gets the weapons, location, and even the tricks for a fee, which can be paid for with sponsorships from the Committee. An itemized list of these items is sent to a detective (in this case, Yui, although she didn’t know the context) as a challenge. If they can’t solve the crime within 168 hours, the Committee will give the client a new identity to live in peace. If not, they expect to be paid back. In full.

Danganronpa Kirigiri is that rare mystery that combines the closed circle and the locked room. As I said, Sirius Observatory is cut off from the outside world, but at the same time, the only possible culprits are our heroines. Kirigiri touched the killer’s hand before being knocked out, but that doesn’t help them much. I believe that most savvy readers will at least suspect the trick the killer used, but Kitayama cleverly throws in enough complications to obscure just how they did it. And the answer is very good. Is it fair play? Mostly. I knew part of the solution going in and picked up on the clues for that part of it, but I would be surprised if most readers really solved it. It requires some lateral thinking. Though I’ll concede that I breezed over a key point because I thought I knew the whole trick. I admit I was skeptical about that part of it when Kirigiri explained it, but after looking up some details, I’m willing to give Kitayama the benefit of the doubt here.

My main complaint is that the book is quite short. It’s just over 130 pages, and a fair bit of those pages are spent on set-up, explaining the backstory, and looking at Yui and Kyoko’s investigation into the Committee once the dust has settled. So the actual mystery falls by the wayside a bit. The one-shot characters are also pretty whatever; if it weren’t for the (very good) illustrations I wouldn’t be able to describe them at all. Yui and Kyoko fare better. Yui is fun but doesn’t exactly get to strut her detective bonefides here. And maybe it was just me, but I had a hard time picturing Kyoko as a middle-schooler, which made her come off as quite bland instead of the stoic and brilliant girl with a trolling streak from the games.

But you know what? I still enjoyed this book. It’s a good mystery and both the main mystery and the “Duel Noir” are excellent hooks. Outside of a couple of mentions of “despair,” “talent,” “Hope’s Peak Academy,” and a few other references, there’s really no connection to the wider Danganronpa franchise, so you can enjoy this even if you’re not familiar with the series. If this sounds intriguing, or if you just like Kitayama, this comes Recommended.

You can find the translation *here.

 

The Night My Friend (1992) by Edward D. Hoch (edited by Francis M. Nevins)

It’s been a while since I last looked at a non-series Hoch collection. That book, The Future is Ours, didn’t impress me and I’ve stuck to his series fiction since. But recently I’ve decided to really sit down and read all those various Hoch collections out there. Hence today’s book, The Night My Friend. According to editor Nevins, this “celebrates the unfamiliar side of his output,” with more of a focus on stories of crime and suspense than mystery. Though there’s plenty of that too. 

The darker tone is clear from the first story, “Twilight Thunder.” During WWII, Dale Fielding and some of his fellow soldiers fragged an unpopular commanding officer. Well, to be exact, the other two fragged him, Dale didn’t do anything. Now one of his old war buddies is in town and talking blackmail. Dale hems and haws but decides there’s nothing to it but to arrange a “hunting accident”… Good story, and the ending is thematically appropriate, but I don’t know if the other man would be so willing to just walk away.

The title story introduces us to Johnny Noctune, a songwriter who sometimes rides with the cops at night, looking for inspiration. This means he’s on the scene when a young woman wearing only a coat runs up, collapses, and utters the name of Cotton Cravess, a newspaperman turned politician, before dying. Johnny is later summoned (read: kidnapped) to Cotton’s office where he gives an explanation of the girl’s death that puts him legally in the clear but would spell the doom of his campaign. So when one of the cops present when the girl died is shot to death, Johnny steps in. That being said, the mystery part is weak. Johnny’s logic boils down to “vibes.” But speaking of vibes, this has some good ones. I read this—and a lot of the other stories—late at night while in a slightly melancholic mood, and Hoch really captures the appeal of the night.

The next two stories are short ones. “The Suitcase” is a bitter-bit story about a farmer who takes a suitcase from the wreckage of a plane crash. His wife convinces him to bury it behind their barn, but he just can’t stop thinking about what could be in there…well-written, if conventional. The narrator of “The Picnic People” crashes a picnic to meet with some old friends. At first, things just seem a little off and passive-aggressive, but it soon becomes clear that our narrator hasn’t met up with these people because he’s been in an institution after killing a girl…I was worried Hoch was going to take this a dark direction. But it feels like just a vignette, part of a longer narrative that just ends. Reminds me of the stories I didn’t like from Future.

Speaking of picnics, “Day for a Picnic” is one of the few genuine mystery stories here. The narrator reminiscences about a wonderful month with his grandfather in the country, the highlight of which was the annual picnic. Well, it was a highlight for different reasons than you might expect, as a rising politician in that little town died after drinking from a poisoned mug of beer. No one could have poisoned his glass after it was poured, and others drank from the pitcher without a problem. I suspect most readers will quickly leap to both the solution and murderer, but I still liked how carefully Hoch clued it.

Speaking of clues, I was impressed with “Shattered Rainbow.” O’Bannion quits his job in a fit of anger and is stuck trolling for a new one. Meanwhile, a man named Green steals a necklace and kills a man. Obviously, destiny will bring them into each other’s paths. Green needs someone to take some “candy” over the Canadian border, and O’Bannion is feeling quite desperate. I shouldn’t have been surprised at how it all unfolded, and I was kicking myself for missing some of the hints. A good story.

Carley is “The Patient Waiter,” a man who is always waiting, waiting, waiting. He waits on customers for his job, he waits for the right chances to come along. He also waits for his clients, business owners whose businesses are failing and who need insurance money fast. This is another Hoch tale about an isolated loner wandering unknown through life, and while the ending is a bit silly, the story as a whole touched me.

“Too Long at the Fair” sees tax attorney Sam Clinton trekking up to the titular fair, which is currently in the off-season. He’s looking for a General Spindler, the head of the Noahites, an eccentric group who believe that Noah and his ark came from space. Clinton is here because the Noahites’ meeting place was written on a piece of paper in the pocket of one of his clients…who was shot and burned. Once again, I missed an obvious clue and was kicking myself for it; it elevated the story for me.

I’d first heard of “Winter Run” in a review from Mystery*File, where a comment mentioned how this story, which was first published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, it was darker than the kinds of stories Hoch tended to write for EQMM. And that was right. The protagonist, a cop, shoots a man and quits the force. He and his girlfriend go up north, where he gets a job as a security guard for a sleepy resort. It’s easy work and easy money, but he soon runs into his predecessor on the job, who was fired for sleeping with some of the ladies at the resort. And his own girlfriend is growing distant…A well-written story with a slight shock at the ending.

“The Long Way Down” is the highlight of his collection for mystery fans. Billy Calm is the mighty head of Jupiter Steel, which is heading into an advantageous merger. But something seems to be wrong with Calm. He’s late for a meeting one foggy morning, and when he does show up, he enters the directors’ meeting room and jumps out the window. His security chief, McLove, rushes to the street to find…nothing. No glass. No body. Calm has vanished into the fog. The rest of the board run around to try and resolve the financial side while McLove tries to figure out what happened to the body. Like the best of Hoch’s mystery fiction, the cluing is very well done, and the possible fake solutions are all shot down by details you see in the story. The solution is pretty good too. I have to wonder if the culprit would really come up with this plan on short notice, but it’s a clever explanation. I wasn’t super impressed with this when I read it for the New Locked Room Library, but I enjoyed it much more this time.

“Dreaming is a Lonely Thing” introduces us to Dave Krown and his girlfriend, Helen Reston. Helen isn’t brilliant or pretty (c’mon Hoch), but she does have a unique gift: She dreams, dreams of clever criminal plots and almost seems to have precognition. Dave finds this a useful gift in his line of work, but Helen is getting antsy about walking away from crime, and Dave is too much of a gambler to ever really stop. Then, during one robbery, he meets Susan Brogare, who figures out who he is and wants to meet up. She becomes fascinated by him, and soon she and Dave are meeting much more often. But Helen and her dreams, literal and figurative, are in the way. Most will see the ending coming, but it’s still a solid and dreamy (hah!) story.

“In Some Secret Place” is similar in set-up to “Day for a Picnic,” also being narrated by a young boy recounting an incident in his youth. Here, it’s the funeral for his Uncle Ben (no relation to Peter Parker), who toppled off a tractor one night and hit his head on a rock, probably while drunk. Or so it seems. The sheriff has his own ideas about what happened out there in that field. And the narrator’s Uncle Charlie has some ideas of his own. The mystery isn’t really that strong. There are some good clues but some parts of the explanation feel like the detective is just saying stuff. Still, I liked it.

“To Slay an Eagle” is a good example of Hoch’s surprisingly cynical espionage fiction. The eagle in question is the oddly named Colonel China, who’s been looting German art in the ruins of (fictional) Augshiem to fund a neo-Nazi movement. Our protagonist, Visor, has been tasked with killing him. Visor is something of an eagle himself. During the war, he led a bombing raid on Augshiem, and he exploits that experience to get close to the Colonel. The colonel’s death is a bit of an anti-climax, and you could argue that the ending is too suddenly dark.

“They Never Come Back” has a premise straight out of a Harlan Coben novel. Harry Gordon is in a violent car crash that bangs him up and leaves his wife a charred corpse. Horrible enough, but then the wife of one of his friends says that she’s alive. And then Harry thinks he sees someone like her in the city, although he’s disabused of that. And then the note arrives:“Please help me. I didn’t die in the accident.” It’s a great premise, but the final explanation is a letdown, especially since one of the clues is too obvious. (ROT13: Abeznyyl V jbhyq svaq vg naablvat, ohg urer V jbhyqa’g unir zvaqrq n fyvtug fhcreangheny nfcrpg jvgu gur sevraq’f jvsr whfg cynva frrvat n tubfg.)

“The Only Girl in His Life” sees George Granger meeting up with old friend Harold Beach. Beach has a request for George: To track down Harold’s runaway wife Linda and deliver some jewelry and clothing. George is reluctant at first but eventually decides to track this hard-to-find woman down. Good story, and the ending caught me off guard this time.

Like “Too Long at the Fair,” “It Happens, Sometimes” is set at one. This one is more active though, and protagonist Craidy—another loner—is in charge of fixing the machines at the arcade. Craidy has lived a quiet life, but this time lets himself be pulled away by the fair’s “psychic,” Rita, to watch a boxing match. But the champion throws the fight, and the newcomer is found beaten to death in an alley. In spite of the summary, this isn’t a mystery at all. There’s no doubt about what happened, it’s just the various characters deciding what to do about it. It’s not bad, but this time the bleak ending comes out of nowhere.

The narrator of “A Girl Like Cathy” runs into, well, a girl like Cathy, his ex-girlfriend, in a Greenwich Village shop. The two strike up a friendship, and before long, Laura has talked him into helping her with a job. Specifically, stealing a jeweled chalice from a rebuilt chapel. The central idea is good, but alas! Hoch used this plan as an anecdote in a Nick Velvet story, so I knew what was coming. But I don’t blame him. It’s a good idea.

“What’s It All About?” is the shortest story of the collection, about a serial hit-and-run driver. It’s a chilling picture of a psychopath that doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

Next up is “First Offense.” This time, our hero is an angsty seventeen-year-old who spends his time at the drug store, chasing girls, and wishing he had a car so he can get out of his small town. That’s how he gets sucked into an older boy’s plan to rob some bank clerks while they’re transporting money. It’s not a bad plan, really... Hoch captures teenage ennui and naivety quite well, and the ending is good.

“Hawk in the Valley” is about another loner, this one a traveling harmonica boy who makes his way into a small town in the valley, looking for a job playing. He finds one but clashes with another player and kills him in his home, before being brought down by a single mistake.

I wasn’t sure if I’d like “The Ring with the Velvet Ropes,” but it was actually one of my favorites from the collection. Jim Figg is a boxer on the verge of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. He sallies forth, uncaring about the rumors of the real champion, Roderik Blanco. Turns out that Blanco is very real. His men kidnap Jim and bring him to Blanco’s mansion. Blanco is a rich man obsessed with boxing, but he’ll lose his trust fund if he’s ever caught fighting. So he has a boxing ring in his home and makes a habit of duking it out with the latest champion. He’s never lost yet, but Jim can take him. Of course, Blanco might not take defeat well…While I think the way Jim gets out of this mess is weak—there’s no way Blanco would go for it or accept defeat like that—I really enjoyed this story. It’s just so weird that I can’t help but like this very unusual thriller.

The collection ends with “Homecoming,” where the old boys—those that survived the war, anyway—come back to their old high school. Most of them haven’t done great things in their lives, but Mark Wedmer has. The perpetual victim of bullying, he’s become a big-name Wall Street man now, and he wants to make sure everyone knows it. His bullies certainly take notice. A downer ending for a downer collection.

While the mystery content is pretty minimal, I actually enjoyed The Night My Friend. Part of it was my mindset while reading. Like I said, Hoch was fascinated by loners—good and bad—who thrive best in the night. As a loner who enjoys the night myself, I was often drawn into these stories and their melancholia. While I wouldn’t recommend this for those who care about the mystery and nothing but the mystery, for anyone who wants to walk in the sometimes gentle, sometimes bleak night, this is well worth your time. Recommended.

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.