The Twyford Code (2022) by Janice Hallett

The Twyford Code is the second book by Janice Hallett, author of The Appeal. This book sounded interesting, but it wasn’t until I read her first that I decided to give it a shot.

The book is narrated by Steven Smith, an ex-con who’s taken up recording voice logs in an old cellphone given to him by his son. Steven is a reflective soul, and before long he’s recounting his life. He was in a remedial English class taught by one Alice Iles, along with four other students. One day, he brought a book to class that he found on a bus: Six on Goldtop Hill by Edith Twyford, a famous children’s book author whose works have been silently banned from schools due to outdated language and offensive portrayals. Still, Miss Iles reads it to the fascinated class, and seems interested herself in the notes inside the book and some scribbles in the margins. And eventually decides to take them to Twyford’s beachside home where…

Well, Steven doesn’t remember. Just that somehow, all of the kids made it home, but Miss Iles was never seen again. Her disappearance has bothered Steven for years, and he sets out to reconnect with his old classmates, hoping for answers. Instead, he meets with stonewalling, a refusal to talk. When he does start to find answers, they prove to be the cover of a rabbit hole. It seems that there are rumors that Edith Twyford put a code into her works, leading to…something. No one knows what. But Steven starts to wonder if Miss Iles didn’t come close to cracking it. And so, he sets out on a treasure hunt, hoping to find closure at the end of the road.

But the readers already know that his logs were recovered from an iPhone, evidence in a missing person’s case…

Like The Appeal, The Twyford Code is an epistolary novel, but instead of emails, it’s voice logs and phone calls. Hallett has some fun with this. The transcription software has a habit of mixing up words, meaning that readers have to read carefully to figure out what people are actually saying. It gives the characters more distinctive voices (literally) than in The Appeal. The idea of a code hidden in the works of a children’s book author that’s also connected to a mysterious disappearance is like catnip to me. Cynical readers might suspect that this whole “code” is nothing more than a wild goose chase, populated by poor, sad people who have nothing better to do than obsess over hidden messages. Indeed, some of the characters quickly go off the deep end with the possible meanings of the code. But there are two men in black who seem to be stalking Steven and have little problem using violence. And there’s just enough weird stuff along the way to keep Steven—and the reader—hooked.

It’s fair to say that this is more of a puzzle thriller than a fair-play mystery like The Appeal was. Some of the mysteries, like how the kids got home, don’t really have satisfying answers, hinging on Steven’s convenient amnesia. But the book works overall. The last bit of the book is the best part, containing a certain trope that’s not super common but that I love: a seemingly unconnected side character has to go through the in-universe narrative and piece together what in the world happened. When we get the bevy of plot twists at the end, I was impressed to see that most of them have some form of hinting, even if it’s off-hand comments that come up once. The titular Code is the highlight. You can solve it, though I’d be surprised if most did so. It reminds me of an alternate reality game, in that you are absolutely going to have to get out Google to get anywhere. This is a book that is better as an eBook with in-text searching, which will make it easier to find the necessary terms. But the reveal of what the Code actually is is very staying. Hallett fly’s very close to a plot twist that normally would annoy me greatly, but she makes it work.

The only thing that kind of bothered me isn’t really Hallett’s fault: I assumed she was going to do more with Twyford—who’s obviously a take on Enid Blyton—and the idea of texts that aren’t, like, vile but contain stuff that’s totally inappropriate for a modern generation, but she doesn’t’ actually do anything with those themes. This might have been the fault of the reviews I read leading me to expect that. This is more of a tribute to Blyton, a grown-up version of one of her novels.

But all in all, I liked The Twyford Code. It’s a good puzzle thriller that toys with the common plot devices of conspiracy thrillers while still giving the reader something genuine to work out. While I don’t quite know if this would, ahem, appeal to all mystery fans, if you want something a little different, or just enjoy Hallett as an author, this is Recommended

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

The Summons (1995) by Peter Lovesey

Last year, I read the first book in Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, The Last Detective. And I didn’t like it. The mystery was merely okay and I found Diamond insufferable. It put me off both the character and the author for a time. However, I’ve been getting back into Lovesey recently, and so I decided to return…for the third book in the series. I read a review of the second, Diamond Solitaire, that was pretty negative, and Lovesey himself seemed to be struggling for what to do with the series, based on an essay of his that I read. So I skipped ahead to the third book, The Summons.

The book opens with the daring prison escape of John Mountjoy. He’s been imprisoned for four years for the murder of Britt Strand, an investigative journalist who was on the verge of exposing a scam he was running at his school. Combined with his history of violence towards women and the fact that he was the last to see her alive, he was the obvious suspect. Now he’s free, and he’s kidnapped the daughter of Assistant Chief Constable Tott. He wants to speak to the man who arrested him in the first place: Peter Diamond.

Problem: Diamond left (i.e. quit) the force. The police are able to wrestle him into helping long enough to meet with Mountjoy and lay out his demands: Find the actual killer. An absurd request, but Peter has to admit that this is a lot of effort when he could easily have gone underground. And the police never did find the murder weapon. Nor did they find out who ordered the red roses found in Britt’s bedroom and stuffed down her throat…

So Peter teams up with DI Julie Hargreaves to track down the old witnesses and go over the evidence again before the trigger-happy brass find Mountjoy themselves. Could the killer have been one of Britt’s other boyfriends? Could the police have missed one? Maybe it has something to do with one of her final projects: a report on a group of “crusties” squatting in an abandoned home. As the two dig deeper, Peter starts to remember how much he loved his old job…

I admit, I went in expecting not to like this book after bouncing off the first so bad. So I was surprised to find myself pretty quickly invested in the plot. The mystery is pretty interesting, and Lovesey wastes little time in getting to the point. Diamond and Hargreaves make a great team as well. When Diamond is focusing on the investigation, he’s great, a dogged detective with a good mix of charm and intimidation depending on who he’s talking to. Of course, when he’s taking advantage of this situation to get his job back, I wanted someone to sock him in the jaw, though thankfully this is a small portion of the book. The bulk is focused on the mystery.

Of course, this is a police procedural like the Kate Ellis I reviewed earlier this month. But there’s more cluing here. The key information is only discovered pretty late in the book, but there are clues pointing to some of the conclusions Diamond comes to throughout the book. With a little more work, this could have been a really good mystery novel. But I don’t want to take away from what’s here, which is still a very solid police procedural with plenty of twists and turns along the way. And finally, the reason for the roses is pretty good.

All in all, I really liked this book. I really expected this to be a slog on my way to the locked room mystery Bloodhounds, but now I’m not only looking forward to that book, but to others in this series. In light of that, I can only say that this is Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Mystery*File.

Turnabout Pairs (2012) by Bad Player and Blackrune

A few years ago, I binged a bunch of Ace Attorney fancases, hoping to pick out some good ones to review. Ultimately, I didn’t go through with that until recently. Part of it was me feeling that some of the cases were too reliant on AA knowledge to be really satisfying. Some weren’t that good. And then there were some that were good, but I thought would be frustrating to someone who wasn’t a hardcore AA fan. One of those fancases was Turnabout of Courage.

Courage is one of the most infamous fancases in Ace Attorney history. It’s a brutal, difficult case that delights in messing with you, the player, personally. After playing it, I decided that, while the mystery was good, the case as a whole was too irritating to recommend. But I kept it in mind. And I knew there was an “independent sequel” that I wanted to play. That brings us to Turnabout Pairs, by Bad Player and Blackrune.

I should note that while Pairs doesn’t explicitly spoil Courage, there are some key twists that would be very clear if you played Pairs first. So keep that in mind.

I should also note that this was the winner of a competition dedicated to troll cases. So keep that in mind too.

Pairs opens with attorney Mia Fey heading to Embassy Hotel to meet with a client, prosecutor Klavier Gavin. Klavier is in a legal dispute with his brother, Kristoph, over their father’s inheritance. Mia arrives and joins a maid, Maria, bringing room service, but finds that Klavier’s door has been locked, the key still inside. Mia and Maria manage to get the door open, where they find Klavier’s body, with a bloody knife on the floor! And yet, Klavier has been shot to death…

A suspect is soon arrested. Ron DeLite, a shy, retiring man staying in the room next door. Not that the prosecution is explaining how he’s supposed to have committed the crime. Mia investigates for his trial when she learns that Kristoph is staying at the same hotel, on the opposite side of his brother. Mia goes there with another employee, but this door is locked too. No surprise what they find on the other side. Except for the twist that Kristoph has been stabbed to death, even though the gun that killed Klavier is lying on the floor next to him...“It’s just like Kristoph killed Klavier. But it’s also almost as if Klavier killed Kristoph.”

And so, Mia heads off to court to defend Ron on the double murder, little realizing the disaster she’s about to walk into…

To be clear, Pairs is very much a hard case too. It’s just less aggressive with its trolling than Courage. Courage was willing to pull the rug out from under you at a moment’s notice, constantly shifting the “facts” of the case whenever you got a handle on them. It was happy to waste your time, as a joke. Here, the difficulty comes from the case genuinely being very complex, and you having to fight for every little contradiction…that seems to make no impact on the case against your client. There’s nothing like the nightmare of Luna von Doppelbohringen here. (Although one testimony is clearly a callback, it is, in my view, easier and less inclined to mess with you when you make a mistake.) One infamous instance of trolling from Courage gets reused as more of a plot twist here, for example, making it feel less like the case playing games with you and more an obstacle you’ve overcome.

The locked rooms are pretty good. If someone wanted to quibble with them, they could point out how there’s no grand trick here, but a serious of smaller ones linked together. I don’t mind that too much, and the central mystery is still a meaty one to ponder, with plenty of moving parts. The only real issue I have is that the clue that tips Mia off as to what really happened is A. something she only discovers through a massive coincidence and B. a really minor bit that she blows up for all its worth. Sure, the best Ace Attorney cases hinge on the implications of small details, but this feels like a lot to base your case-winning theory on.

And yet, I enjoyed this case. In fairness, I made heavy use of the provided walkthrough, or “Invisiclues,” which do a good job at guiding the player’s logic and making clear what the developers were thinking with the puzzles and contradictions. Most of them made sense. There were a couple where you’re presenting an alternative theory or a possibility, instead of pointing out a contradiction, and I found these a little more frustrating since it wasn’t always clear when that was intended. But if you can put up with the rest of this case, you can put up with that.

So all in all, I do think that Turnabout Pairs is worth a shot. If you have no Ace Attorney experience, then, unlike the previous fancases I’ve reviewed, maybe you shouldn’t dive right into it, but if you do and want a challenge, this is worth your time. Recommended. But you probably should play Turnabout of Courage first. Just have a walkthrough open. Keep that in mind too.

You can find the case here.

The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie

I read this for the Honkaku Discord server’s bookclub.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Miss Marple.

The Murder at the Vicarage is set in the small village of St. Mary Mead. Nothing really happens here. The worst crime is poaching. Even the last murder was fifteen years ago. Life in the village is simple, only occasionally broken up by a bit of local drama, like the archeologist hunting for artifacts. Most news is transmitted by the local gossip circles, of whom Miss Marple,“the worst cat in the village,” is a leading member. The only blemish on the peaceful life here is Colonel Protheroe, a magistrate. Devoid of mercy and almost taking pride in how disliked he is, the colonel is currently raising a fuss about some allegedly missing money from the church offering plate, an act that’s so gotten under the skin of Vicar Clement that even he grumbles at lunch that“anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service.”

He will eat his words when he’s decoyed out of his house, and returns to find the colonel shot at his writing desk.

Murder at the Vicarage is charming. That’s the best way of putting it. This is one of the most well-known village mysteries of all time, and Christie does an excellent job at capturing the feel of a small English village. There’s plenty of gossip floating around, like how Dr. Stone’s assistant is obviously angling for marriage. Of course, one of the themes of the Marple stories is that humans are much the same everywhere, and that sin and vice are just as present in small villages as they are in the city. So there’s plenty of drama and skullduggery afoot, even outside of the murder. The vicar walks in on the colonel’s wife, Anne, in bed with traveling artist Lawrence Redding. The colonel’s daughter, Lettuce, hates her stepmother. The new curate, Hawes, has been bullied by the colonel over his High Church beliefs. So there’s plenty of people who would have very good motive to kill the colonel.

The best part of this book is hands down Vicar Clement. Christie peaked with narrators here. Poirot should have fired Hastings and replaced him with this guy. Clement is the idea Watson: observant enough about the evidence and the relationships between the villagers, but lacking that needed insight into human nature to put the pieces together. He’s also very witty. I couldn’t get enough of him. Maybe it’s a bit unlikely that the police would keep him so close to the investigation (in spite of the murder occurring in his home he’s not treated as a serious suspect), but we accept that in other stories. The relationship between him and his wife is good too.

Of course, this means he overshadows Miss Marple a bit as well. While she’s present, she actually doesn’t get all that much page time. Don’t get me wrong, she gets all the best lines, and her role as a witness means she’s very involved even before she “officially” starts investigating. Once she quits observing and starts making her deductions known, she’s great. But again, she’s not the central figure here. I’ve heard it argued (by Robert Barnard, at least), that Miss Marple underwent “flufflification” shortly after her debut, going from a snoop and gossip into a more gentle, grandmotherly figure, her sharp views about human nature blunted in later books. I admit I don’t see that. Miss Marple is more proactive about getting information than in later books, but she’s still the same character, in my view. And while her view of human nature is quite caustic, I don’t read it as harsher than later books, though keep in mind it’s been year since I’ve read those books.

Moving onto the murder, that’s handled well. The case is complicated by a speedy clock, two dramatic yet disproven confessions, as well as the general skullduggery that everyone in the village gets up to around the time of the murder. For the most part, this works. The central idea behind the murder is quite clever, hinging less on physical tricks and more on psychology. There are some physical aspects to the crime, but they’re secondary to that central idea. Still, I can see some readers not liking it. This is one of those Christies where a bunch of people get up to some minor crimes that don’t really intersect with the central murder at all. Some of the characters are pretty minor as well. There’s a reason most of the adaptations cut Dr. Stone, for example. Combine that with some clues that are introduced late (and one of which isn’t even mentioned until the summation!) and some weaker minor elements (the gunshot), and I’m open to arguments that this isn’t top-tier Christie.

Still, I think it would be wrong to deny it a place of honor in the Christie pantheon. Complaints aside, this is a great village mystery that has both a strong village and a strong mystery. I know, saying that a book Christie wrote in the 30s, and that brought Miss Marple to the novel to boot, is a good one is kind of a given. But it is very good. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Ah, Sweet Mystery! (longer post with spoilers), Beneath the Stains of Time, The Grandest Game in the World (contains spoilers), FictionFan's Book Reviews, My Reader's Block, Countdown John's Christie Journal (second post with spoilers), Mysteries Ahoy! (audiobook review), Crossexaminingcrime (behind Patreon).

An Unhallowed Grave (1999) by Kate Ellis

Like Dolores Gordon-Smith, Kate Ellis is another author I was introduced to by the Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. She sounded right up my alley: good storytelling, complex plotting, and mysterious crimes in the past. So I decided to pick up one of her books from the library and finally give her a shot.

An Unhallowed Grave is the third book in her Wesley Peterson series. Peterson is a Black police detective who has just been transferred to the quiet village of Stokeworthy. It’s a cozy little place. The only real excitement comes from the increasing development, which is bringing in tourists who disrupt the quiet, to the frustration of the locals. The lord of the local manor is trying to push more development, but is stymied by protestors and by an archeological dig held on the grounds. But again, this is a quiet place where the worst crimes are drug-taking by the local teens. The book opens on two of them creeping into the churchyard at night to do a ritual to see their true loves…but they see a body hanging from a tree instead.

The doctor on scene quickly realizes that the woman hasn’t been hanged but strangled and hung after death. She’s identified at Pauline Brent, a doctor’s receptionist. She’s lived in the village for fifteen years, and is liked by everyone, but no one was really close to her, nor did they really know anything about her. Piecing together her past is the major hurdle for Peterson and his fellow officers to overcome. Of course, readers will already know that the prologue features a young girl being arrested on the charge of murder…

Meanwhile, the dig stumbles on two discoveries in rapid succession. One is a collection of sculptures that formed a Jesse Tree—a design tracking the ancestors of Christ, rising up from Jesse, the father of King David—which have been buried since the Reformation. Also unearthed is the skeleton of another young woman, who’s also been hanged, professionally. Wesley’s college friend Neil Watson is heading the dig, and dives into the local manor records to figure out who this woman was and what she did.

This tying in of a long-distant case to the present is the main hook for the Peterson books, and I liked it here. Obviously, considering the distance, the cases aren’t directly connected, but there are parallels with both deaths that get drawn out throughout the book. The blurb mentions that Ellis is fascinated by “‘armchair archeology” and it shows. These aren’t the only plot threads in the book. Some are more personal, like Wesley’s wife’s search for a nanny for their son. Some are criminal, like the thief stealing items from local churches only to return them a couple of weeks later. It’s to Ellis’s credit that most of these threads end up tying together. Like the two deaths, sometimes the connections are thematic, but they are there. Only the bit with the church thefts doesn’t, to my eyes, go much of anywhere beyond some criminal activity for one of the suspects. Said suspects range from an artist acting shady on the night of the murder to an outsider who threatened the victim to a local politician who seems uninvolved but proves to be deeper in this than it seems.

Wesley is pleasant company. Him and his fellow officers (as for once the protagonist isn’t the one in charge) are well-characterized, and if they aren’t ground-breaking characters they at least stand out (though the one guy trying to sleep with teenagers to the mild annoyance of his colleagues wasn’t great. At least he contributes to the investigation.) The tone is pretty light, actually. That’s not to say that Ellis shies away from human evil, but this is a book where most of the characters are halfway pleasant and where the author isn’t setting up strawmen to knock down. The best example of this comes when Wesley and his boss have to go to a nursing home to talk to Pauline’s former employer. Wesley (and the reader!) except to find a nightmare house where bored, uncaring employees ignore the elderly wasting away, body and mind…and instead are greeted with a pleasant young woman who takes them to the witness, who’s living his best life with mystery novels and his own computer. Wesley is kicking himself.

However, this is a police procedural, not a fair-play mystery. There is some foreshadowing to the killer’s identity, but not much cluing. The end of the book has our heroes switching between two suspects not because of Queenian interpretation and reinterpretation of evidence they already have, but because of new information and some of the characters admitting they lied. It’s a good solution that fits with the book and makes sense, but it’s not something you can really deduce. And, in spite of some good speculation about why the killer would do that, the reason the victim was hanged is disappointing,

And yet, I liked this book. I’m a sucker for any sort of crime influenced by past events, and so I liked seeing everything come together. Ellis is a good writer, and I really enjoyed my time with her. I get why the Puzzle Doctor likes her so much, and I’ll be checking her out again in the future. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. 

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.