The Helm of Hades (2019) by Paul Halter (translated by John Pugmire)

After taking a slight break from short stories (beyond a couple of collections that I won’t be reviewing),

I decided to get back into them via Paul Halter’s The Helm of Hades. For some time now, I’ve held that Halter’s The Night of the Wolf, a short story collection, was his best work, as the short story played to his strengths while downplaying his weaknesses. As a result, I’ve eagerly awaited the next collection of his short work. But can it match up to (my memories of) The Night of the Wolf?

We open with an honestly quite lovely preface from Ronald Lacourbe before the first story, which provides us with Halter’s take on Carr’s The Judas Window: “The Gong of Doom.” Philip is a young man looking to marry Rose Strange, but her uncle/guardian opposes it. Philip goes to have words with him in his study, and Rose and her uncle’s manservant hear a vicious argument from within, which is interrupted by “a booming, resonant sound.” And the colonel has in his office a gong that is said to ring without being struck, and that foreshadows “someone’s imminent death” when it does…and indeed, when a terrified Philip opens the locked study door, the colonel is found dead on the floor with an arrow in his neck. And while the window is open, it leads out to “an unbroken brick wall without a single nook or cranny,” and to a street covered with unmarked snow…While there is one aspect of this solution that I don’t like, after letting the story settle for a bit, I’ve come to like it more on the whole. The solution is good, although this story demanded a map; I’m always terrible at solving mysteries that hinge on visualizing a scene, especially when there’s no map.

I’ve already reviewed “Jacob’s Ladder,” so let’s move on to “The Man with the Face of Clay,” the first Owen Burns story of the collection. Determined to knock Burns down a peg, Achilles Stock invites a young woman, the maid of archeologist Sir Jeremy Canvendish, to tell Burns about the man’s inexplicable murder. After a controversial expedition that ended in a fire, the deaths of two native workers, and a curse put on Sir Cavendish, multiple attempts were made on his life. One night, these efforts reach a climax. The maid lets in a man who wishes to meet with Sir Cavendish, a man whose face looks like it’s been made of brown clay. He leaves and Sir Cavenfish seems unharmed, but the next morning, the household is roused by “the sound of an explosion,” and Sir Cavendish is found shot to death in his study. The door is locked, and the open window leads out on to carefully raked flower beds that were turned to mud by a rainstorm. In other words, “If Sir Jeremy was murdered, it could only have been by someone or something with wings!” Of course, there’s a natural explanation for this, but I wasn’t overly satisfied with it. There’s enough of a twist to it so that it isn’t disappointing (although I would have liked there to be more to it), but it’s still not my favorite solution.

I’d read “The Scarecrow’s Revenge” in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine before, but I reread it for this collection. Antoine Dupuis was a jealous rake who treated his wife so terribly that she has nightmares about him even after his death. The day after one visceral nightmare, where Dupuis appears in the form of the scarecrow outside and stabs her father with a pitchfork, her father is found dead in front of it, no footprints besides his own and that of the man who discovered the body in the mud, straw scattered around as if the two fought. And yes, he’s been stabbed with a pitchfork! This one is slightly more whodunit focused than some of Halter’s other works, since you have a good handful of suspects to pick through. On the whole, it’s a good story with a good solution, although there is one aspect that seems off to me, though I might have missed something. (ROT13: Fubhyqa’g gurer unir orra sbbgcevagf yrnqvat gb gur jryy, be jnf gung fheebhaqrq ol fbyvq tebhaq?)

“The Fires of Hell” is another reread. A colonel tells Dr. Twist the tale of Charles-Alexandre Villemore, a taciturn man who claimed to be a clairvoyant, specifically one who predicted multiple fires. The fires he predicted continued to come to pass, even though Villemore had a perfect alibi for some of the fires and the locations he predicted were carefully guarded. I didn’t care much for this story, mostly because the problems are too vague. We’re told that the locations were under guard, but we get so little detail about those precautions that we really don’t have a good grasp on what solutions are and are not possible. I suspect that most will hit on the “how” of this story.

Burns recounts to Stock the tale of “The Wolf of Fenrir,” which occurred during a stay at the home of a friend, Marcellus Blanchard, a jockey. One of the guests at the lodge is Frida Prince, a beautiful woman who boasts of having tamed a local beast, a half-breed wolf. During the first night, she goes out to her cabin…and is found dead the next morning, her hand mangled as if it had been bitten, and only her footprints and those of the wolf in the snow. The explanation of what happened is quite clever, with some good cluing. I was a little unclear (ROT13: ba jung gur ivpgvz qvq qvssreragyl gung avtug, fvapr fur srq gur ornfg erthyneyl. Oheaf fnlf fur cebibxrq vg, ohg V’z abg fher ubj.) I also felt that (ROT13: gur rknpg zrgubq bs zheqre yrsg n ybg gb punapr.) Finally, I didn’t care for how Frida’s husband’s pain gets dismissed because he’s ugly and a bit of a snob. Still, it’s a very good impossible crime.

“Nausicaa’s Ball” is a Christe-style tale, complete with tropical setting and love triangle. Dr. Twist is staying at a hotel on the beautiful island of Corfu, but “the beauty of the landscape and the purity of the blue sky” give the place an eerie vibe, belaying the “gathering storm.” Soon, a crime takes place at the side of the “Blue Lagoon,” a cove with a diving board at the end of a slippery path. Needless to say, the husband of a famous actress is found dead on the rocks, apparently having slipped…but it turns out that he was bludgeoned to death. This is technically an impossible crime; as the time and circumstances of the crime are tightened, it seems impossible that anyone beyond the main suspect could have done it, although Halter doesn’t exactly play it as one. This is another story that needed a map, as where things are play a role in the crime.

Ever since I read Patrick Ohl’s review of “The Robber’s Grave,” it’s been one of my most anticipated Halter stories. Dr. Twist is staying in a village inn and inquires about a gravestone surrounded by an empty plot. About a hundred years ago, a man was hanged for robbery and murder, protesting his innocence, and cried out to God to prove it by “never allowing a blade of grass to grow over his grave.” He was buried outside of the village…and “the grass first turned yellow and then disappeared. And it has never grown there since!” A few years ago, a property developer bought the land to build a golf course and resort hotel, and saw the dead land as a challenge…a challenge he could not overcome, as grass refused to grow in spite of him replacing the dirt multiple times over several months and surrounding the gravesite with a wall, dogs, and guards. I admit that I found the solution to be slightly disappointing on my first readthrough. I skimmed over the solution for this review and understood it a little better; it’s just slightly over-long and (ROT13: onfrq ba na bowrpg V xarj abguvat nobhg jura ernqvat guvf fgbel.) So on the whole, a good story that was improved on the reread.

Next is “The Yellow Book,” which is stuffed to the brim with mysterious events. A séance that predicts a man’s death! A man stabbed to death in a bolted house surrounded by unbroken snow! The murder is committed with a dagger that was elsewhere mere minutes ago! The King in Yellow is found on the floor! I wasn’t very fond of this on the first-go-round, but I warmed up to it after thinking about it. Like most of Halter’s short stories, this is mainly an account told to Dr. Twist, so the suspects don’t stand out too much. And one of the answers to those dramatic statements above is a bit disappointing. But the solution is good; I was disappointed at first, but came around to it.

We wrap up with the titular story, an account to Owen Burns about the bizarre murder of Conrad Berry, an archeologist who claimed to have found the Helm of Hades, rumored to turn its wearer invisible. He promises a demonstration to show off the helm’s power, but an unknown party hijacks it. Four witnesses sit in the salon outside of Berry’s study, when one notices a curtain leading to the salon move, and footsteps are heard in the corridor. Soon after, the door to Berry’s office opens, and ten minutes later, a tremendous crash is heard. More footsteps follow, and a vase in the salon is knocked over…and the intruder is never seen! When the witnesses go inside the office, they find Berry bludgeoned to death, and they soon find themselves targeted by the helm’s wielder. This is another story that I wasn’t too keen on at first, but I suspect that I just read it too quickly. The later attacks after the murder are a bit perfunctory, but the central crime itself is well-done, although one part (ROT13: gur infr orvat gbccyrq bire) felt a bit simple.

I admit, when I sat down to write this review, I thought I’d be giving a pretty low score to it. But, as I’ve chewed on the stories, I find that I enjoyed them more than I thought I did. They show Halter’s ability to come up with unique impossible crimes, and while I didn’t like all the solutions, and noticed more keenly how little Halter characterizes his suspects, I did enjoy them. Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Beneath the Stains of Time (interestingly, it looks like our views on Halter's short fiction underwent the same transformation), The Invisible Event (not a review of the full collection, but if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see links to individual reviews of the stories)

A Meditation on Murder (2015) by Robert Thorogood

For over a decade now, the British TV show Death in Paradise has provided mystery fans with plenty

of entertainment. The show started by taking DI Richard Poole, a stuffy inspector who insists on wearing suits in the Caribbean, and placing him on the island of Saint Marie. The show has gone through quite a few cast changes, even replacing Poole, but the general formula of a British inspector in the Caribbean has remained intact, even though they’ve usually been more receptive to its charms than Poole was. (Although the most recent protagonist as of this writing is back to the Poole-style fish out of water.) I’ve only seen a handful of episodes by series creator Robert Thorogood, but I really enjoyed them. So I decided to give one of the tie-in novels by Thorogood, A Meditation on Murder, a shot.

Aslan Kennedy is one of the owners of The Resort, a hotel-cum-health spa. Aslan wakes up one day for the “Sunrise Healing,” a procedure where guests will meditate in the “Meditation Space,” a Japanese tea house-style building on the grounds. Aslan goes and greets his guests. They enter the Meditation Space, which is made entirely of paper on wooden columns, barring a Yale lock on the door to prevent disturbances. They gather, drink tea, put on eye masks and headphones…and ten-to-fifteen minutes later, the screaming starts

Julia Higgins is found standing over Aslan’s body holding the knife. She confesses to killing him, but Poole isn’t convinced. She says she has no issue with the victim, no idea how the knife got into the Meditation Space, and has no memory of the crime.

Not to mention the annoying (to Poole) issue of the drawing pin found on the floor of the Meditation Space…

The book plays out like a long episode from the show. You have a handful of suspects, the whiteboard to summarize information, etc. I found the whole book to flow very well. I have read some complaints about the writing, mostly concerning too much recapping or it being stodgy. I’m sympathetic to some of these claims, more than once I felt that Thorogood could have made his point more concisely by cutting the last sentence, but I didn’t feel that it was too recap heavy. It flowed quite well for me.

The mystery itself is quite clever, with suspicion freely passed around between suspects with well-developed motives. I felt that Thorogood did a good job with misdirection, although I felt that some aspects were a bit obvious. Still, come the summation, I wasn’t 100% sure that Thorogood was going that direction, so I’d say he played the game well. I only have two real issues with the plot. One is that (ROT13 gur cyna uvatrf ba gur ivpgvz abg pnevat gung svir gbgnyyl qvssrerag crbcyr unir wbvarq uvf zrqvgngvba frffvba. Gur obbx qbrf whfgvsl guvf jvgu uvf trareny nggvghqr naq uvf oryvrs gung “Creuncf guvf jnf ab zber guna xnezn ernyvtavat vgfrys?” ohg V qvqa’g ohl vg jura V ernq vg. Guvf vf zber ba zr guna gur obbx gubhtu.)

My other issue is that the non-Poole main characters don’t get a lot of attention. If you aren’t familiar with the show, then you just have to look at their pictures on the back of the book to tell who’s who. While I understand Poole getting most of the character development--and it is good character development-- the other cast members could have used some more time in the spotlight.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It really does read like an episode of the show, I’ll definitely be looking at more of Thorogood’s fiction in the future. Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Mysteries Ahoy!.

The Word is Murder (2018) by Anthony Horowitz

No matter what, I can’t seem to get away from detectives named Hawthorne.

A couple of years ago, I read and reviewed Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders after seeing positive comments about it from other bloggers. I ended up enjoying it so much that I grabbed his next mystery novel, The Word is Murder, almost sight unseen. But would it prove to be another solid example of the modern mystery novel?

The book opens with Diana Cowper planning her own funeral; not an uncommon occurrence for those who want to make things easier for their families. But six hours later, she’s been strangled to death in her home, a bizarre and baffling crime that demands examination by an expert. Enter Daniel Hawthorne, a former police officer who was “kicked out for reasons that weren’t made clear” and who now serves as a sometimes consultant for the police when they’re dealing with an “unusual” case. Hawthorne is called in to investigate, and Anthony Horowitz is following him and writing it all down.

Horowitz (who I will refer to as “Tony” to distinguish him from the author Anthony Horowitz) is fresh off writing Foyle’s War and The House of Silk, and is looking for new ideas. Hawthorne approaches him with a proposal: Tony follows him around and details his case, and they split the profits fifty-fifty. Tony is reluctant, but after being accused of not writing about “real people” at a literary festival, he takes Hawthorne up on his offer.

This book has plenty of meta moments in it, and honestly it was slightly hard for me to keep track at first: for example, Chapter 3 is titled “Chapter One” and revolves around Hawthorne’s reaction to the actual Chapter 1 of the book, and the inaccuracies Tony put in there. That are still in the current Chapter 1. And then Tony follows up by going, “Fine, ignore everything that he mentioned, but the rest is true, including the clue to the killer’s identity.” There’s another chapter where Tony meets with who I assume was Horowitz’s agent at the time, and she says that she doesn’t want to be named in the chapter titled “Lunch with Hilda.” In fairness, my confusion was more due to me trying to read too much into the meta, and the mystery doesn’t hinge on you being able to navigate it. Horowitz uses it all well, and I found his discretions on his different works and writing in general to be very interesting.

Of course, the partnership isn’t smooth sailing: Tony finds Hawthorne frustrating and evasive about his life, and gets a taste of the man’s more unpleasant opinions during the case. I admit though that Hawthorne didn’t come off nearly as offensive as intended. I may have had incorrect expectations based on what I’d read about the book, but Tony came off as the prickly, insulting one to me. Perhaps this is because Hawthorne’s more repulsive moments (like his homophobia) either don’t play a major role or don’t get a lot of development (like the sting in the tail at the end). For most of the book, he comes off as an intense but awkward guy who (based on my reading) does value Tony’s companionship more than he shows. Of course, I also have the expectation that Holmes-Watson style relationships will end with the Watson realizing that the Holmes is indeed a genius who has all the right answers, so that influenced me as well.

I mentioned how Tony teases you with a clue to the killer’s identity in Chapter 1. This is partly true. The clue is there, but you won’t realize its significance until late in the book. I would say that this is a fair mystery on the whole; you can piece the killer’s identity together before the reveal, but the full motive behind the crime won’t become apparent until near the end. It’s more like the “modern-day” narrative of Magpie Murders, more a procedural than a more traditional mystery. The killer is well-hidden, and as I said, you can figure out who they are with a bit of thought.

All in all, I quite liked this book. The meta aspects were fun, the mystery was well-constructed, and it was a joy to read. Highly Recommended.

Other Reviews: ahsweetmysteryblog, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, crossexaminingcrime, The Invisible Event.

The Gold Watch (2019) by Paul Halter (translated by John Pugmire)

Tick, tock, tick, tock…

Unbeknownst to us non-French speakers, Paul Halter went on a bit of a hiatus in the 2010s, producing only about one short story a year. However, in 2019 he returned to form, giving us The Gold Watch, published first in English. The book features mysterious crimes in the past, the past having an uncanny influence on the present, and of course, impossible murders. Set your watches, and enjoy.

The Gold Watch opens in 1901, and details a woman’s brutal murder, a crime that seems to reach forward almost a century. The story switches between two narratives. In the 1991 narrative, Andre Leveque is a playwright who’s suffering from a terrible case of writer’s block, brought on by his frustration at being unable to remember the name of an unsettling movie he saw as a child. All he can remember are some key images: “A sinister figure, a house in the rain, a frightened woman, a slowly-turning doorknob, a staircase…” And of course, “A gold watch.”

The 1911 narrative follows a group of people invited to Raven Lodge, the second home of Victoria Sanders, the head of a firm “speciali[zing] in the import of fine fabrics.” Among the guests are her deputy director Andrew Johnson and his wife Alice, along with Andrew’s secretary Cheryl Chapman, as well as Victoria’s brother, Daren Bellamy. There’s tension among the guests, as Alice despises Daren and has a bone to pick about her husband’s closeness to Cheryl, his former model, but before there’s any chance for argument, Victoria’s body is found out in the snow, having apparently tripped and hit her head on a rock while trying to get some air after a nightmare. The lack of any footprints besides her own and those who discovered her body attest to that. But Owen Burns is suspicious when he learns that a copy of the infamous play The King in Yellow was in her room the day before…

At first, these narratives seem to have nothing to do with each other, but eerie coincidences and strange echoes keep popping up, and it seems that they may be more connected than anyone thinks…

The 1991 narrative is more of a “what is going on here?” tale than anything. Another impossible crime is introduced, that of a woman who fell to her death when no one was near her, but it’s not the main focus (although the solution is clever). Halter does a good job of playing with your expectations in this narrative, and I have to say that I enjoyed this narrative more than the other one. The 1911 narrative suffers from a lack of…I suppose “substance” is the best word. There’s really only a handful of suspects, and not much investigation. I should have liked the culprit reveal more than I did; it’s possible that I was reading too fast and didn’t quite get that Halter was saying “X was the culprit” at first. (The fact that I didn’t suspect X at all didn’t help.) The central solution is very clever, although I don’t totally buy one aspect of it. (ROT13: Anzryl, gung gur jvgarff jbhyq znxr fhpu n znffvir zvfgnxr nobhg jurer gurl fnj gur obql; rira jvgu gur xvyyre’f qrprcgvba, V srry gung gurl fubhyq unir ernyvmrq gung fbzrguvat jnf bss.)

My main issue with the mysteries in both narratives is that you don’t really get the needed detail to solve them. The mysteries are drawn in broad outlines, and the specific details that would let the reader solve them get glossed over. (ROT13: V guvax urer bs na haoernxnoyr nyvov jurer n xrl qrgnvy gung jbhyq znxr vg fbyinoyr vfa’g zragvbarq hagvy Oheaf rkcynvaf rirelguvat.) I will say that the 1991 narrative is better clued than it might seem; there’s no final summing up, but the clues about what’s going on are there. The final explanation for the connections between the two narratives could irritate some readers. It frustrated me at first, but after chewing on it, I’m satisfied with it, as Halter does set it up. I admit I was thrown off because (ROT13: V gubhtug vg jbhyq or gur fnzr rkcynangvba nf nabgure Unygre abiry gung hfrf qhny aneengvirf. Vg jnfa’g, ohg V guvax V fgvyy unq n uneq gvzr pbaarpgvat gurz, nf Bjra vf fb rfgnoyvfurq va zl urnq nf n svpgvbany punenpgre, gung V pbhyqa’g dhvgr ernyvmr gung gur gjb aneengvirf jrer gnxvat cynpr va gur fnzr havirefr; gurl sryg qvfpbaarpgrq va gung frafr.)

On the whole, I enjoyed this book. There are some aspects of it that I’m not totally satisfied with, and I know that my generosity is because it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I do think that it’s an interesting experiment. The impossible footprint problem is good, and the 1991 narrative is gripping. It’s another solid Halter. Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Invisible Event, Ah, Sweet Mystery Blog!, and Beneath the Stains of Time.

Murder in the Crooked House (1982/2019) by Soji Shimada (translated by Louise Heal Kawai)

 A crooked man, a crooked hinge, a crooked house…

In 2004, a translation of the debut novel of Soji Shimada, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, made its way into the hands of eager mystery fans. Ever since, we have patiently waited for more of Shimada’s work to drift over here, but outside of a couple of short stories, we had nothing. However, a few years ago Pushkin Vertigo released a translation of Shimada’s second Kiyoshi Mitarai novel, Murder in the Crooked House. But was it worth the wait?

The titular house is the Ice Floe Mansion, the recently-constructed home of Kozaboro Hamamoto, the CEO of Hama Diesel. The house is known as “The Crooked House,” as the house tilts “at an angle of about five or six degrees off the vertical.” It also has a tilted tower made of glass connected to the house by a drawbridge that serves as Hamamoto’s living quarters. Hamamoto invites a handful of people to attend a party over Christmas week, including a business partner, Eikichi Kikuoka, one of the partner’s executives as well as his wife, and two students vying for his daughter’s hand in marriage, among others. It’s a relatively peaceful affair, with the only slight oddity being a pair of stakes in the snow outside, noticed by one of the guests. But come morning, a body is discovered.

Kazuya Ueda is Kikuoka’s chauffeur, a quiet, ex-military man who almost nobody at the party is familiar with. Nonetheless, someone slips into his locked bedroom and stabs him to death, leaving him in a bizarre pose, “almost as if he were dancing,” along with tying his wrist to the bedpost. The door is locked. One window was locked and barred, the other was too high up for a killer to reach. There are no footprints in the snow leading up to the door…and the entrance was on the other side of the house, meaning that any killer would have had to walk a great distance just to get to the locked door. The only opening was a small ventilation hole that was too high to reach, and too small for any killer to use. 

Not to mention the nightmarish face one guest reported outside her window the night of the murder, on the highest floor of the mansion, with no footprints on the snow outside, and the man’s roar heard right afterward, over an hour after the victim was killed…

The police are summoned, although they prove unable to not only solve Ueda’s murder, but to prevent Kikuoka’s. He’s found stabbed to death in his own bedroom, the door not only locked and bolted from the inside, but blocked by a coffee table. Not only do most of the guests lack a motive for the crime, but investigation reveals that all of them, even the ones who would have a motive, have perfect alibis!

There were two aspects of the first murder that I found disappointing. First is the corpse being tied to the bed; the explanation is very poor and has very little to do with the crime. The other is the motive behind the murder; it comes out of nowhere. (Kikuoka's murder has the same problem.) I wouldn't care that much, if it weren't for the fact that the story emphasizes that no one has a reason to kill Ueda and makes it a major part of the mystery. That being said, other than those aspects I quite enjoyed it, especially the explanation for how the killer left no footprints. There are two parts to the trick, and I found one to be very clever; something obvious that I should have thought of, but didn’t. 

Of course, the second murder is the main attraction, and it lives up to the hype. Again, I wasn’t very impressed at first, but upon thinking about it and looking at the map (yes, there is a map in this book), I realized that it was both an update of an old mystery device and a very, very clever trick. The kind of trick where I looked back at the aforementioned map and went, “Oh come on.” In a good way! I’ll admit that this was partly because I went in expecting a dramatic solution; I can’t speak to how I would have reacted if I’d gone in blind. Perhaps I would have liked it less, perhaps I would have loved it more. Is it fair? In a sense. There’s one minor aspect that is not clued, and Shimada is quite cheeky about it, but I feel that it could have been mentioned without giving the game away. The solution is so bombastic that I think that most readers wouldn’t hit on it, even with the extra clue, because it’s so far out of the norm. But I see why Shimada might have been concerned about tipping his hand.

The book brightens up when Mitarai is summoned to help with the investigation. I’d forgotten what he was like from Tokyo, but he wastes no time in utterly dominating the final third of the novel; I’m glad his entrance was delayed, he would have been too much otherwise. There is one more impossible stabbing before the book is out, in circumstances that seem even more impossible than the last one, but while it makes sense in the book and proves to be the set-up for a larger twist, it’s quickly resolved.

I had a slightly mixed reaction to Murder in the Crooked House. After my first read-through, I had a “Well, that was kinda cool, I guess,” reaction. After thinking about it, I then decided that I actually really liked it…before shifting to not liking it. But as of right now, I like it again. I can’t quite explain why the book has this effect on me. I think a combination of being spoiled on the killer’s identity (although incorrectly on the method), the lack of characterization, and the hype I’d built up before the book began (especially this) all worked against it. Like I mentioned earlier, had I gone into it blind, I might be a little more sure about what I think.

It’s very much the mystery novel fan’s mystery novel, with some very baffling mysteries and some equally clever solutions. However, those same qualities that will make it a joy for fans might cause more casual readers to bounce off it; this really should not be anyone’s introduction to the genre. John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books nails it when he says, as a criticism, "It is a series of puzzles with one overarching puzzle that serves as the pièce de résistance." If that sounds amazing, then you'll love it. If not, then I'd stay away from this one.

For those who think they’ll like and appreciate it, it’s Recommended. But my personal opinion is Recommended, with Caveats.

Other reviews: She Reads Novels, The Green Capsule, James Scott Byrnside, Beneath the Stains of Time, Mysteries Ahoy!, Pretty Sinister Books (contains review of The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, also contains spoilers), Criminal Musings (contains review of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, also contains spoilers), The Grandest Game in the World (contains other reviews), and Bad Player's Good Reviews.

Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018) by Edward D. Hoch

 At long last, the end.

Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne is the final collection of Hoch’s Dr. Sam stories, and finishing this brings a close to a chapter of my own life. The fourth collection gave me hope for the rest of the stories, but how do they hold up?

We start with “The Problem of Annabel’s Ark.” The Ark is a veterinary clinic run by Annabel Christie, who manages to capture the heart of Dr. Sam and give him another locked room mystery to solve. A cat staying overnight at her clinic is found strangled to death in its locked cage, inside of the also locked clinic. I admit I liked the method since I didn’t figure it out, although it is a tad prosaic. The motive behind the cat strangling will be obvious, and there’s one element of the backstory behind the crime that I didn’t quite understand, but this is still a nice story.

“The Problem of the Potting Shed” is one of my favorites of the collection. It’s a straightforward locked room mystery, with a man found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the titular shed, the door padlocked on the inside. The story suffers a bit from the lack of suspects, but there’s still a good twist involving one of them. The final solution is one of my favorite mystery solutions: the one where you have all the clues, but you won’t figure it out because the solution is so unconventional as to be unthinkable. It certainly isn’t a prosaic solution, even if it is simple.

I had high hopes for “The Problem of the Yellow Wallpaper,” but it didn’t quite live up to expectations. Dr. Sam is treating a woman who, just like in the original “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is being confined to an upstairs room in response to psychological issues and is tearing at the wallpaper. Dr. Sam tries to bring in a specialist, but the woman vanishes from the locked and barred room, leaving only a watercolor painting of her face on the wallpaper. Again, I came into the story with high expectations, and that threw me off. It’s a good story with a fairly clued solution, it just wasn’t what I was thinking it would be.

Next up is “The Problem of the Haunted Hospital,” A young woman recovering from an appendix surgery claims that she’s twice seen a dark hooded figure standing next to her hospital bed before vanishing in the moonlight. That same room was briefly the home of an injured jewel thief who was killed after attacking his guard, and the implication is that his ghost has moved in. Dr. Sam is skeptical, but something smothers the new occupant of the room after a room swap, forcing him to play detective once again.

I liked this story well-enough, but the solution is rather obvious. The impossible murder is also only vaguely “impossible.” Hoch is normally good at establishing how thoroughly locked/watched a room or location was, but here, we really don’t get a good impression of how impossible the murder could be, beyond a couple of lines about the room being under observation. It’s one of the weaker Dr. Sam stories I’ve encountered because of those issues. Still, it ends happily with the engagement of Dr. Sam and Annabel…with a wedding date set for December 6, 1941.

But before that, Dr. Sam has to confront a traveler and a double murder in “The Problem of the Traveler's Tale.” Graham Partridge tells of encountering an isolated house while on a walk that he thinks is the current hideout for a notorious swindler. After some trouble, Dr. Sam and Sheriff Lens allow him to guide them to the house…where they find the swindler and his lady friend shot to death. It looks like a murder-suicide, and the totally locked house adds to that, but Dr. Sam sees the evidence that points to this being a double murder instead. I liked this story, if just for the minor twist on the normal Dr. Sam formula: Dr. Sam realizes who the killer is before he’s able to piece the method together, and while I wasn’t awed by it, it’s still a good one. The killer’s motive for doing something seemingly very foolish is also quite good; I’ve seen it used before and should have seen it here.

The wedding of Dr. Sam and Annabel goes off without a hitch, but the same can’t be said of their honeymoon. “The Problem of Bailey’s Buzzard” presents two problems for Dr. Sam to deal with. One is the mysterious (non-impossible) substitution of a large buzzard’s skeleton (the titular Bailey’s Buzzard) for the bones of a Union war hero and the impossible disappearance of Annabel’s maid on honor during a horse ride, seemingly spirited away from her horse, leaving no footprints in the snow. Writing my review, I find that I’m a little more fond of this one than when I first read it. The explanation for the buzzard substitution is a bit of a guess on Dr. Sam’s part, and while I do like the explanation for why it happened, there’s one part of the explanation that really boils down to, “Based on this vague character trait, X would have done this.” The disappearance is better done, but I figured out the method quickly; I’ve seen Hoch use it in a non-Dr. Sam story. As usual though, the clue pointing to the killer is well-done.

Another of my favorites from the collection is up next: “The Problem of the Interrupted Séance.” Dr. Sam is approached by a distressed patient who’s started to meet with a psychic to talk to her son, who died at Pearl Harbor. She and her husband convince Dr. Sam and Sheriff Lens to sit in on the woman’s next séance to determine its validity, but nothing goes how they expect. Dr. Sam and Sheriff stand outside of the only door to the windowless room where the séance is taking place, but when they hear nothing from inside, they enter and find the couple drugged and the medium’s throat slashed. And a knife that was outside of the room the entire time mysteriously vanishes…While there are only two suspects for this crime, Hoch does a good job of creating a truly baffling impossible crime, with an elegant solution. Once again, every detail matters.

I also really enjoyed the next story, “The Problem of the Candidate’s Cabin,” less for the mystery and more for the personal aspect of the story, as Sheriff Lens finds himself accused of murdering the campaign manager for his opponent in the election for sheriff. The man called Sheriff Lens, reporting a prowler, but when he arrived, the cabin was locked and the manager was dead on the floor, shot in the head. Sheriff Lens is caught at the scene, and it doesn’t look good for him. I was pretty invested in Lens’ plight, even though the reader knows that Dr. Sam will get him off. These stories don’t often tend to directly involve the main cast, and don’t always do a good job with them when they do, but I enjoyed how it was handled here. Unfortunately, the solution is a bit of a letdown, and one aspect (ROT13: ubj gur xvyyre tbg gur zheqre jrncba) felt handwaved.

I first reviewed “The Problem of the Black Cloister'' in the very early days of my blog, as it was included in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, and it was my first introduction to Dr. Sam and Hoch in general. The story takes a while to get to any crime, much less an impossible one, as Dr. Sam digs into the history of a door being offered as part of a war bonds auction. The door was the door to a cloister “for disenchanted monks and other religious men who’d left their various orders but weren’t ready to return to the secular world.” Dr. Sam is curious about the cloister and the fire that burned it down, killing a juvenile offender staying there in the process, and the death of a movie star visiting Northmont for the drive proves to be tied to the cloister’s history. This is a hard story to explain, because the exact crime isn’t specified until the denouement. It’s also not really an “impossible” crime. The anthology got it right, but I can’t go into more details without spoilers. The cluing is also a bit weak; it hinges on (slightly) specialized knowledge and a clue that is never described in detail until the summation. In fairness, the truth isn’t hard to deduce in spite of this, but it still damages the story.

“The Problem of the Secret Passage'' is another good story, Dr. Sam gets dragged into playing the role of “Unlock Homes,” a character who searches out scrap metal that could be used in the war effort. He’s set to pose for a photograph at the house of Aaron Cartwright, an old man who’s happy both to play along and to show off the secret passage that connects the library to his bedroom. The passage is locked on the bedroom side and can’t be opened from the library side, meaning that the library is still a perfectly locked room when he’s found dead the following Thursday, bludgeoned to death. It’s a pretty good problem. I want to say that the solution is too simple, but there is a perfectly plausible chain of logic explaining the actions that had to be taken to make it possible. I suppose the motive comes a bit out of nowhere, but that’s the only other major issue I had. There are some solid clues pointing at the murderer, and I admit that I missed two of them.

Next up is “The Problem of the Devil’s Orchard.” The titular orchard is a walled and fenced-off orchard that becomes the stage for a miraculous disappearance. Dr. Sam and Sheriff Lens go to collect a young man who’s drinking in despair of his recent drafting. During the drive back to his house, he breaks free from the car and leaps the wall into the orchard. Once he lands in there, there’s no way out, as the entrance is being watched and a guard is set up to catch him when he leaves. But come morning, the only trace found of him is a bloody T-shirt weighed down by a rock…

While this story does a good job of giving possible alternate solutions to the crime, it hinges on how well you can picture the orchard and the surrounding properties. I couldn’t, and that, combined with a weaker solution, damaged the story for me. I will concede to falling for a red herring that Hoch set up, although it more or less led me to the same final solution. Finally, a bit of pop culture knowledge will make this story much easier to solve.

Speaking of pop culture, Hoch gives The Lord of the Rings a shout-out with “The Problem of the Shephard’s Ring,” a story about a ring that can apparently turn its wearer invisible. Its current wielder doesn’t need magic powers to make him unstable, he’s already threatening to kill another man for allegedly selling him a faulty tractor. He’s suffering from a broken leg, but that doesn’t stop him from suddenly appearing outside of his victim’s house, seemingly out of nowhere, and breaking in to kill him. There’s a clever plot here and the cluing was good (barring one minor clue that Hoch could have put in, but perhaps he was worried it would make things too obvious), but I don’t think it quite clicked for me.

To be honest, I didn’t read these last three stories in the best frame of mind, so take that into account as you read my thoughts.

“The Problem of the Suicide Cottage” sees Dr. Sam and Annabel ride out the last month of her pregnancy on vacation at a lake cottage. They find out that their cottage is known as the “suicide cottage” due to two previous deaths there. Needless to say, when Dr. Sam and Annabel return from a dinner, they find the windows locked, the doors locked and bolted, and a woman staying at a nearby cabin hanging from the ceiling. I know that, “I liked this story, it had good cluing where every detail mattered and a good solution” is getting trite by now, but it’s my opinion on the story.

“The Problem of the Summer Snowman” is a bit of a letdown from an intriguing premise. A local man is found stabbed to death in his locked home, and a little girl claims she saw a snowman going to the house…an idea backed up by water on the living room carpet. However, I found that the story did not quite live up to its component parts; sure the explanation for the “snowman” is good and points the finger directly at the killer, but some bits, such as the water and the locked room itself, are quite weak. The action the killer takes to create the latter is very easy to miss.

The collection, and the Dr. Sam series as a whole, closes with “The Problem of the Secret Patient.” Dr. Sam is requested to assist in the care of the titular patient, a man with a bandaged face who’s scrupulously guarded; even his food and drink are carefully analyzed. With a set-up like that, you know that somehow he’ll end up poisoned in spite of the precautions. I liked this story well-enough, but the solution is quite simple, Skupin even refers to it as “hoary.” The identity of the titular patient is also pretty obvious. (ROT13: V’z nyfb abg dhvgr fher jul Qe. Fnz yrgf gur xvyyre tb orlbaq ynpx bs rivqrapr; ur’f ghearq va zber flzcngurgvp zheqreref orsber.) A slightly disappointing end to this series.

And so, that’s it. The final Dr. Sam story. While this collection was weaker than the last one, there were still some excellent stories here, like “Potting Shed” and “Interrupted Séance.” I did find myself wishing that there was some more variety in the types of stories I was getting, stories like “Traveler's Tale” or “Black Cloister.” By the end, I was getting a little tired of straightforward locked rooms, but that was in part due to burnout. I’m looking forward to taking on Hoch’s non-impossible crimes; since I’ve seen plenty of variety of story types in other collections I’ve read by him (see this review for an example). On the whole, I liked this collection, although I must now bid adieu to Northmont. Recommended.

Other reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Mysteries, Short and Sweet, Beneath the Stains of Time.

All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne by Edward D. Hoch (2017)

Cover image from Beneath the Stains of Time.

I admit, I went into this collection with a bit of trepidation. After the disappointment of the last Hoch collection, I started to fear that he simply wasn’t as good as I’d thought, that I would have to sadly conclude that I’d overhyped him due to my inexperience with mysteries. I’m glad to report that I was wrong; All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne is a very worthy collection of impossible crimes.

The collection opens with “The Problem of the Country Church.” Dr. Sam heads back to Maine to reunite with his former nurse, April, who wants Dr. Sam present at the baptism of her son, who has been named after the good doctor. Dr. Sam, April, her husband Andre, the baby’s godmother Ivy, and the reverend performing the baptism, Dr. Lawrence, head out to the titular church, where the impossible happens (proving that you should never invite Dr. Sam to anything, ever).

The reverend, April, and Andre are at the front of the church, while Dr. Sam and Ivy sit with the bassinet with the baby in it in a back pew. However, when Ivy brings the baby to the front, he turns out to have been replaced with a Shirley Temple doll! And there’s a ransom note attached to it. No one could have entered the church without being noticed, and the switch couldn’t have been made with two people, including Dr. Sam, sitting right next to the baby. However, I was able to figure out the how, simply because there aren’t any real alternative solutions for the reader to latch on to. Like quite a few of the other stories, it also suffers from a lack of good suspects. It’s not a bad story (beyond Dr. Sam making a really shocking accusation that makes him look like a jerk), but a little easy.

“The Problem of the Grange Hall” sees the return of Lincoln Jones from “Pilgrims Windmill.” This time, he’s the main suspect in a locked room murder. Pilgrim Memorial Hospital is hosting its eighth anniversary at the hall, and a former high school friend of Jones is playing in the orchestra. The two meet in a dressing room during a break in the music, but when they don’t emerge, Dr. Sam breaks the bolted door down to find the friend dead of a codeine injection, and Lincoln Jones holding the syringe.

I admit to mostly figuring this one out. The story is better at giving out alternative solutions, but the final solution still jumped out at me. It must also be mentioned that the final decisive clue isn’t given until near the end. This story does once again show Hoch’s skill in having *everything* matter in the denouement.

“The Problem of the Vanishing Salesman” presents Dr. Sam with a baffling disappearance. James Philby is a traveling salesman who vanishes practically in front of Dr. Sam’s eyes. Dr. Sam sees him open the storm door of the widow Gains’s house, but the widow swears that he didn’t enter. And indeed, the only other way into the house is bolted from the inside. It’s a bizarre mystery, magnified by Philby denying that he ever vanished when Dr. Sam meets him again. But the scenario becomes much more serious when he repeats the disappearing act in front of Dr. Sam and Sheriff Lens…after shooting a man.

I wasn’t overly impressed with this story on my first read-through, but I admit to enjoying it more on this second go-round. Philby’s disappearance feels like something anti-modern, and the bizarre incident, combined with him constantly trying to sell his lightning rods like nothing is wrong, gives the whole story a surreal atmosphere. Another author might have drawn those elements out a little more. (Although the feeling could have just been me.) The solution is pretty good, with Mary getting a very good false solution that actually does have some basis in the story itself and which Dr. Sam is able to refute with, again, evidence within the story beyond, “That wouldn’t work.” (What’s weird is that Mary’s false solution is the same as another story I read with a similar premise. She even points to the exact same evidence as the other story, and it’s a very specific piece of evidence!)  Like I said, I was more impressed with it on this second read. Some elements, such as the motive for the murder, come without much build-up, but I can forgive it. I appreciated how yet another off-hand comment foreshadowed a part of the backstory.

“The Problem of the Leather Man” is Hoch’s take on the Paris Exposition story. A man killed in a car crash utters the name of the Leather Man, a real-life figure who walked in a circuit through the northeastern United States. Evidence points to someone else copying the route, and Dr. Sam goes to follow him. The new Leather Man turns out to be an Australian man on walkabout, and Dr. Sam accompanies him to try and get more information about the accident. During their walk, they encounter a witness driving by, a crossing guard, and end by resting at an inn run by a couple. However, when Dr. Sam awakes in the morning, he finds that his companion is gone and everyone he met denies the man’s existence.

It must be said that this is neither a straightforward impossible crime nor a Woolrich-style nightmare. It’s acknowledged pretty early on that, “They all lied” is a perfectly plausible solution, but then the question becomes, “Why would a bunch of unconnected people all tell the same lie?” The answers are good; one has very little cluing but is a very plausible deduction, one is well-clued, and one is a bit of a let-down. This is a solid story on the whole.

Next up, we have one of my favorites: “The Problem of the Phantom Parlor.” A teenage girl named Josie Grady comes to Dr. Sam for a medical issue and confides in him that she thinks her aunt’s home is haunted. Josie is staying there for the summer and claims that a china closet will sometimes change into a parlor with a tasseled sofa and drapes on the walls. Dr. Sam investigates and finds only the china closet, but the room will play a key role in a brutal murder during the night.

Josie rings Dr. Sam and says that her aunt is lying dead in the parlor. When he and Sheriff Lens arrive, the body is lying in the hall outside of the china closet, but Josie insists that she was lying in the parlor. On the one hand, this is another story that lacks real alternative solutions. I didn’t find this as big a problem, because there isn’t anything obvious for the reader to jump to. There’s no, “Well if it’s not X or Y, it’s clearly Z.” And personally, I love this sort of solution; it’s a type of grand trick, (ROT13: n fbeg bs “lbh gubhtug guvf jnf K, ohg vg’f npghnyyl L” vqrn) gung V ybir frrvat va zlfgrevrf.) I admit that the cluing is a bit obvious, and there aren’t many suspects for the reader to chew over, but the solution itself makes up for that.

Alliteration is also the name of the game of the next story, “The Problem of the Poisoned Pool.” Dr. Sam is invited to a clambake hosted by the publisher of one of Northmont’s newspapers. Unfortunately, his show-off of a brother is a guest, and he baffles the crowd by suddenly emerging from his brother’s pool…a pool that’s been watched for the past twenty minutes, and which Dr. Sam looked into and saw no one. When the host challenges his brother to dive in and disappear, the other man gladly jumps in and doesn’t emerge. When Dr. Sam goes to check, he finds that the man is very much still there and very much dead at the bottom of the pool, poisoned by cyanide. Since he ate nothing and the beer he drank before diving in would have killed him before he made it to the pool, the only explanation seems to be that the pool itself was poisoned. The actual solution is pretty good; I actually came very close to seeing how the victim was able to appear in the pool in the first place. The main weak points are the explanation about how he planned to vanish, and the motive for the murder, which isn’t clued at all.

“The Problem of the Missing Roadhouse” takes on one of the more audacious of impossible problems: a vanishing building. A couple are driving home one cloudy evening when they stumble on the Apple Orchard, a roadhouse with cars in the lot and music blaring that they’ve never seen before. When trying to leave, they accidentally run over a man, and when they bring him to the hospital they learn he’s actually been shot. Making matters worse, the roadhouse has disappeared.

Vanishing buildings suffer from the same problem as vanishing rooms: There are only so many ways you can work that kind of trick. I can’t complain too much about this one, since I fell right for a red herring and missed the actual, fairly clued, solution. (In fairness, I’m very bad at visualizing things, so perhaps I didn’t understand how X could make the appearance/disappearance possible. It didn’t help that I missed a blatant clue though.) However, the explanation of “who shot the victim?” is very underwhelming. There’s a final twist in the tail that I admit I didn’t like on my first read, but worked a little better on this round.

“The Problem of the Country Mailbox” is another solid story. Like a few of the stories we’ve seen so far, the main problem appears to be a prosaic one: books left in the mailbox of a local man seem to disappear, even when he watches the box the entire time. Dr. Sam gets roped into figuring out how it was done, placing the book in the mailbox and then watching to see who gets close. The man goes, gets the book, then looks confused and gets it out of his pocket…and sets off a bomb. Complicating matters is that the book the bomb was planted in was a completely different book than the one Dr. Sam put in the mailbox!

I suspect that most people will hit on the “how” of this solution, because again there aren’t many alternative possibilities. Hoch plays his cards well though, and has a final twist waiting to catch the unwary reader, a twist that has been set-up and clued throughout the story. I liked the cluing for the trick itself too, such as the clue of the reading glasses.

After peacefully serving as a graveyard trustee for a number of years, the Detective's Curse strikes and gives Dr. Sam another baffling mystery to solve in “The Problem of the Crowded Cemetery.” Flooding and soil erosion have left some of the coffins exposed and in danger of drifting away down the stream. Dr. Sam goes to supervise their removal in preparation for reburying them, but when he examines one of the removed coffins, his fingers come back stained with blood. The body of one of the other trustees is removed, forcing Dr. Sam to explain how a man killed less than twenty-four hours ago ended up buried with a body dead for twenty years.

I didn’t see the solution to this, although I should have. I did figure out the “who” via a dialogue that is very obviously there to give you a clue. It’s a pretty well-done mystery on the whole, and reminds me of the best of the earlier Dr. Sam stories.

“The Problem of the Enormous Owl” is better described as an “unusual” mystery, rather than as a “locked room” one. A local playwright/farmer is found dead in his field, his chest crushed and a couple of feathers attached to his shirt. Even though there’s some talk about an owl killing him, this isn’t really an impossible crime. It’s a good mystery, don’t get me wrong, with a clever method of murder and a killer of a final line, but temper your expectations accordingly.

“The Problem of the Miraculous Jar” presents a more traditional locked room. A couple return from their trip abroad bearing a gift for Rita Perkins, a friend of theirs: a jar from Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. There’s some brief drama at the party when Rita faints, but the party goes well. The jar is even filled with water as a joke, but both Rita and Dr. Sam confirm that it’s still water. Shortly after, Rita calls Sam in distress, saying she drank something before cutting off. Dr. Sam goes to her house, finding it locked tight, the snow unbroken on the ground, and Rita dead of poison. And as you might have guessed, the jar is now found to contain poisoned wine.

This is another story that I liked a little more on my re-read. The main clue is pretty obvious and I caught it on my first read, although the “how” still requires a little more thought to piece together. However, the whole thing hinges on someone keeping quiet about something without ever questioning it, and the killer’s motive for doing what they do is very weak. (ROT13: V haqrefgnaq gur xvyyre jnagvat gb oevat cbvfba vagb gur ubhfr fb ab bar ernyvmrf gung gurl tnir vg gb gur ivpgvz, ohg jul qb vg va n jnl gung’f vzcbffvoyr sbe ab tbbq ernfba (rfcrpvnyyl fvapr gur thl jub unf n erchgngvba sbe fbyivat ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrevrf jvyy trg vaibyirq), naq jvyy cbvag gur svatre bs fhfcvpvba qverpgyl ng lbh, fvapr lbh oebhtug gur wne va gur svefg cynpr? Guvaxvat nobhg vg, V’z abg fher jul Qe. Fnz qbrfa’g tvir zber nggragvba gb gur pbhcyr rneyvre, fvapr lbh’q guvax gurl’q or gur svefg crbcyr lbh’q dhrfgvba.)

Dr. Sam goes to New Bedford, where Herman Melville first got on a whaling ship, in “The Problem of the Enchanted Terrace.” Dr. Sam and Mary head there with two friends and stop at a Melville museum run by a friend of the couple. His neighbor lives on what is allegedly the site of the inn that Melville stayed at before boarding, and apparently Melville’s ghost likes to hang out on the newly-built terrace. Dr. Sam and the friend’s backer stop at the house, only for a green light to lure the man out onto the terrace. Then a scream is heard and by the time Dr. Sam makes it outside, the man has vanished, leaving only a few drops of blood.

JJ really did not like this story, and I can understand why. The solution leans towards the ridiculous, and while I did solve it, I could see someone missing the needed clue. I happened to enjoy it, but I admit that if I’d read it in the previous collection, I might have been more critical.

“The Problem of the Unfound Door” is another good story. As World War II heats up, a group of Anglican nuns in Northmont move to ask for permission to let some schoolgirl refugees stay at their convent. The mayor is suspicious, but agrees to tour the convent with Dr. Sam. Dr. Sam arrives late, but sees the mayor standing among the nuns in a closed courtyard…but when he reaches them, the man has vanished, and the nuns are talking about him walking through an unfound door.

I suspect that most people will see how the disappearance was arranged quite quickly. However, the full details of what happened will take a little more work, and I’m pleased to say that there are plenty of clues, including one that I missed until this reread. Seemingly irrelevant scene-setting turns out to be very important to knowing what happened at the convent. I enjoyed this story when all was said and done.

“The Second Problem of the Covered Bridge” is obviously meant as a call-back to Dr. Sam’s very first adventure. Northmont is celebrating major milestones in its history, and they recognize the beginning of Dr. Sam’s detective career as one of them. A celebration will be held at the famous covered bridge that started it all, where the mayor will ride through on a horse and buggy. However, the celebration is interrupted by another baffling impossibility. As the mayor rides through, he suddenly shakes and falls off his horse. When Dr. Sam gets to him, he finds that the mayor has been shot in the head, even though the bridge has over two hundred people watching it on both sides.

I wasn’t very fond of this story. I like the idea of a story that calls back to some earlier Dr. Sam stories, but beyond the set-up and the mention of the Jennings Tobacco Company from “Curing Barn,” there isn’t anything else. The crime itself is also unsatisfying; I simply don’t like this type of solution (I’m not talking about the crime itself, but how it was carried out), and there’s one deduction (admittedly not needed to know the “how”) that depends on specific historical knowledge. It reads like Hoch saw that fact and tried to wrap it into a story. And I don’t fully understand why the culprit did some of what they did. (ROT13: Jul qvq gur znlbe yrnir gung abgr nobhg Ncevy 1922? Gb or n uvag nobhg uvf qrprcgvba? Uvf bofrffvba jvgu gung qngr vf zrnag gb vzcyl gung ur qvqa’g xabj gur cubar pnyy jnf snxrq, ohg fvapr ur snxrq vg uvzfrys, V’z sbeprq gb nffhzr gung vg jnf n thvygl pbafpvrapr.)

The collection wraps up with “The Problem of the Scarecrow Congress.” The new mayor of Northmont decides to host a “Best Scarecrow Contest” and display the winners in the redesigned town square. The competition goes off without a hitch and the scarecrows are put up, but a few days later, blood is seen coming from one of the winning scarecrows, and, when it’s taken down, it turns out to be the body of its maker. However, the victim had spoken to Dr. Sam an hour before about an intruder who left a straw doll with a needle in its heart in his kitchen, meaning that the killer somehow managed to switch the victim with the scarecrow (which was tied to the post with wire) in a public square in broad daylight.

This is another good story, but I think there’s a contradiction in one of the main clues that weakens it. There’s still a good chance that a reader will realize how the crime was committed, but that’s still a blemish on the story. It’s irritating, because there’s another really good clue that I suspect will sail past most readers. The motive is also…indirect is the best word for it, because we get so little detail on the backstory of the crime. The final issue I had was that this was one of those stories where the killer really did not need to do half of what they did. (ROT13: Rira vs gurve cyna unq jbexrq nf vagraqrq, Qe. Fnz abgrf gung gur nhgbcfl jbhyq unir fubja gung gur ivpgvz qvrq rneyvre gung qnl.) In spite of these flaws, I still enjoyed the story; it was quite fun.

All in all, this collection soothed my fears that my Hoch love was a fluke; there are quite a few really solid stories here. It’s made me hyped up for the final collection of stories, and for that alone, I appreciate it. Highly Recommended.

Other reviews: Beneath the Stains of Time, Mysteries, Short and Sweet, The Invisible Event, MysteryFile, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.