Blood on the Tracks (ed. Martin Edwards)

A railway anthology! Yay! There's no setting I enjoy more than a train setting, and there's nothing I enjoy more than a mystery. So railway mysteries are my very favourites of all time.

There's something organic about how a train becomes a closed off setting for mysteries, because as long as it's not a local train, there will be lots of time between stations and that naturally allows the detective some time to solve the crime. Snowed-in castles and boats can fulfil the same natural set-up, but there's just something about the rails...

Anyway, except for this anthology focussing on train settings, this is a standard British Library Crime Classics anthology set-up. Older authors in the beginning, newer ones towards the end, and a mix of a bit of everything.

But since this revolves around trains, surely it'll automatically place itself somewhere in the top of the rankings? Well, you'll just have to read on to find out.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Man with the Watches

As a train is about to depart from Euston Station bound for Manchester, a pair of travellers - a middle-aged man and a young woman - arrive just in time to catch it. But a couple of stops later, attention is drawn to their compartment where the door is hanging open. When this compartment and the neighbouring one are searched, it turns out that the two, as well as a younger man from that neighbouring compartment, have gone missing. But instead, in their compartment there is the dead body of a man with six watches in his pockets.

This is one of the two apocrypha of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon - there is a "famous detective" referred to, though he is never named. To be honest, both Doyle's apocryphal stories are generally better mysteries than the Sherlock Holmes ones. They come as close to being fair play as Doyle ever got, and they show that Doyle could plot with the best of them. A fine start to this anthology.

L. T. Meade & Robert Eustace - The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel

John Bell is an investigator of unexplainable phenomena, and in this story he is approached by Bainbridge, a man from a railroad company in Wales who wants him to investigate the death of a signalman just next to Felwyn Tunnel, where the dead man was surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs (and the tunnel), and there were signs that he had tried to escape something by climbing one of the cliffs. And then when Bell and Bainbridge return to Wales, they receive news of a second death at the same spot.

Meade & Eustace wrote several impossible crimes, but this isn't one of them. I think it's a fairly clever tale, better than most of their impossible ones, to be honest. The solution to the mystery is well-grounded in science, and I'm sure it would work in real life as well.

Matthias McDonnell Bodkin - How He Cut His Stick

A man is tasked with carrying a bag of bank gold on the train from London to one of the bank's branch offices, and is attacked and robbed of the gold without seeing his assailant. Suspicion falls heavily on the carrier, but the bank manager enlists female investigator Dora Myrl to investigate the case.

Now we're getting closer to fair play mystery clueing, though I can't say I was all that impressed with the story as a whole. There's never any doubt about who the villain is. A bit disappointing.

Baroness Orczy - The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway

The Old Man in the Corner and Polly Burton discuss a case where a woman has been found dead on an underground railway carriage (first class - those were the days!), with suspicions first going towards suicide, though the Old Man has different thoughts.

This is on the whole a pleasant and good story. I can't say that the culprit comes as much of a surprise, and it has to be said that the police must have been dimmer than most not to be able to identify how the woman was killed. Still, as I said, a pleasant and nice read.

Victor L. Whitechurch - The Affair of the Corridor Express

A young boy disappears on board a train, and there's no sign of him when the train is searched from front to end. Thorpe Hazell, the railway detective, is put on the case to try to work out what could have happened to him.

An impossible crime on a train, no less! As awesome as it sounds, the whole thing didn't wholly satisfy me. I just think that the solution was a bit too far-fetched, even though it's very prosaic. It's still a very good tale, it just didn't fully live up to my expectations when I'd read the problem. I'll need to search out more stories from Whitechurch, I think.

R. Austin Freeman - The Case of Oscar Brodski

Jewel thief Silas Hickler meets an old acquaintance, Oscar Brodski. When it turns out that Brodski is in possession of several diamonds, Hickler decides to kill him and steal the jewels. He arranges things to look as if Brodski met his fate on the railway tracks, but then Dr. Thorndyke enters the scene and starts investigating the whole thing.

As you see, this is an inverted mystery story - possibly the first one ever - which is the main thing against it. Because otherwise, this is a very fine short story indeed. Well, "short" might be a misnomer, it's almost a novella in length. I've often said that I don't like inverted mysteries, but this makes the investigation quite interesting, and since the culprit is such a blackguard it's good to see how his comeuppance comes closer with every second.

Roy Vickers - The Eighth Lamp

Signalman George Raoul is haunted by an underground train that only he can hear nearing the station where he works. Each day the train is heard coming just a little bit nearer...

Yeah, so from that description you'll probably be able to guess that this is not a mystery, it's a ghost/horror story. There's some criminous elements on the fringes, but this story really shouldn't be in a mystery anthology. But is it any good? I don't know, I guess it's kind of effective. But since I'm no aficionado I find it hard to review it.

Ernest Bramah - The Knight's Cross Signal Problem

Max Carrados investigates a baffling event where a passenger train ran past a signal and crashed into another, resulting in several people killed. Could the experienced train driver really have missed the signal, or is something more sinister going on?

I've mentioned before that Bramah's stories are an early precursor into the Golden Age, and he often writes fair play stories. This is one of them, and features a very interesting motive on the part of the culprit. There's no mistaking the story being from the early 1900s, but it's still a good read.

Dorothy L. Sayers - The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face

A man has been found washed up on the beach with his face disfigured, and Lord Peter Wimsey gets interested in the case.

This isn't the best Sayers story I've read, that's for sure. It's a bit too steeped in melodrama, I feel, and compared with some of her better works this comes up a cropper. The railway connection is pretty tenuous, also.

F. Tennyson Jesse - The Railway Carriage

Solange Fontaine is travelling on a train which is derailed.

I said that the Vickers story didn't really belong in this collection, but this is even worse. I mean, I couldn't even come up with anything even remotely criminous to use in my short description of the story. This is not a mystery story, it's simply a story. A story with some supernatural elements, but it definitely is completely and thoroughly out of place here.

Sapper - Mystery of the Slip-Coach

An elderly bookmaker has been murdered in a train compartment. There was no way to get to the train car where the murder happened from the rest of the train, and there are only four other passengers present in that particular car. Now all Ronald Standish has to do is to find out which of them committed the murder...

This is, in a sense, an impossible crime, though I think the author could have made those aspects much more integrated into the case. But it's a good story, though it has to be said that there is a bit too much coincidence involved in how the crime was committed.

Freeman Wills Crofts - The Level Crossing

Dunstan Thwaite has made his mind up to kill his blackmailer, John Dunn. He plans everything meticulously, and then finally the fateful night has come...

So, an inverted tale, and no Inspector French either. This is not really the type of story I enjoy, as you will probably know by now. If you do, then you will probably like this story, for it is well-written.

Ronald Knox - The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage

Sherlock Holmes is approached by a caretaker, coming to report on her master, who has been coming with suicidal hints in the presence of his wife. Holmes and Watson sets out to follow him on the train, where they are surprised to find that he is throwing bits of paper through the window. They managed to get their hands on one, which again seem to be suicide notes.

Knox manages to craft a fairly Doyle-an tale, though that is rather to its detriment, because he emulates those bits in Doyle's writings that are the main problem with Holmes - it's simply not fair play at all. Otherwise, a pleasant enough read.

Michael Innes - Murder on the 7.16

Inspector John Appleby is in charge of investigating a case where movie director Lemuel Whale has been killed on the set of the film he was directing.

This is just a cute little story, there's no real investigating of any kind. The culprit confesses everything and that's when we find out everything that happened. Still, it was amusing and being as short as it was, I didn't mind it being here.

Michael Gilbert - The Coulman Handicap

The police have it on good authority that mrs Coulman is fencing stolen goods, and they set up an elaborate scheme to follow her to her contacts. Unfortunately, Sergeant Petrella manages to lose her when she goes into a pub and never appears again.

So, it's a bit of an impossible problem then. Unfortunately, the train connection is very tenuous, and there's not much of a mystery involved. There's never any focus on the impossible situation, it's just revealed as an aside as Petrella manages to get hold of the culprit. A bit disappointing.

Conclusion

I know that immediately after reading this collection, I felt fairly disappointed with it all. But going through it again now for this write-up, I find that I actually enjoyed it a bit more than I remembered. The main problems with the collection are that there are no true standouts among the stories, that it features two absolute non-mysteries, and that, unlike several others of the BLCC anthologies, it tapers off towards the end.

But there are many interesting stories here that are worth reading nonetheless. I liked the tales by Doyle, Bramah, Meade & Eustace, Sapper and Whitechurch, for example, and if you're more tolerant of inverted mysteries than I am, then there are a couple more to look forward to.

Kate agrees with me in praising this anthology at crossexaminingcrime, though we differ in which stories we highlight... And Aidan echoes us in enjoying the collection at Mysteries Ahoy.

Where does it go in my rankings of BLCC anthologies, you (probably don't) ask?

1. Miraculous Mysteries - no surprise there, this is an impossible crime anthology, so it has lots of things going for it that elevate it above all the other collections.
2. Silent Nights - the quality of the collections here in the middle of the list is fairly uniform, but I think this one just manages to go to the top. A good variety of stories and a few really good ones.
3. Blood on the Tracks - a collection with few standouts and some truly bewildering inclusions, but on the whole it was still a worthwhile read.
4. The Long Arm of the Law - starts off spottily, but gets better and better, and even though it finishes with one of the worst stories I've ever read it's still distinctly above average.
5. Murder at the Manor - I was thoroughly disappointed that this didn't feature any true country house mysteries. I think there was one fair play mystery among the whole bunch of stories.

Small Crime: Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens

This is the latest novel in Robin Stevens' "A Murder Most Unladylike" series, but we can expect the next instalment later this year, according to the author herself.

As the title intimates, this story takes place in the theatre world, more specifically the Rue Theatre in London, where Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong have got small parts to play in a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It seems that their adventures in Hong Kong in the previous novel has led to them needing some rest before going back to school and thus Daisy's uncle Felix has sent them on to the Rue Theatre, where the owner is an old acquaintance of his wife's.

And since this is a mystery, you'll no doubt not be very surprised to hear that feelings run high among the cast and the staff. In the centre of this turmoil is the leading actress, Rose Tree. She has an antagonistic relationship with most of the others, and soon she is receiving threats and being pranked in more and more horrible ways.

And then finally, she is found dead in a well in the cellar of the theatre building. Since the lid has been replaced over the body, it is apparent that this must be murder. And as Daisy puts it: "Murder is always awful [...] which is why we must detect it."

Everyone has a motive and the young ladies need to apply their best detective skills to find the culprit. And not only that, they need to overcome all the difficulties that the adults put in their way.

So, this is the theatre mystery. I've spoken before on how Stevens seems determined to examine all the different GA tropes, and yes, we've not had a theatre mystery before. As such, it is quite a success. I think this might be the book in the series where I was most surprised by the denouement. Admittedly, when I think it over, I should have seen it coming, but I was just cruising along reading it, and then someone - Stevens - pulled the carpet out from under me.

In general, this novel resembles the others in the series. The girls make up their list of suspects and set out eliminating them one by one. Though there is a bit of a wrinkle, because Daisy is absolutely adamant that one of the suspects must absolutely not be suspected.

We also get to meet competing detectives George and Alexander again. They drop by towards the second half of the novel and help Hazel with some of her investigations, while Daisy is at home with the flu. I always like when George turns up - it's interesting to contrast him with Daisy. They are both brilliant, yet George is a less abrasive personality and probably more socially astute.

However, there is a bugaboo that I'll address here: the (over)representation of minorities in this novel. I know I'm the opposite of every minority out there: I'm white, male, middleaged, heterosexual and fairly affluent. So by all means, keep that in mind.

Among the characters in this book, we get two black actors among the cast, the director and the original leading man, and no less than five or six homosexuals. I just find it hard to see this as a novel taking place in the 1930s - to me it reads as a very modern story for modern readers transposed into a different age. Yeah, this is set in the theatre community, which would perhaps account for a higher percentage of minorities - though that may just be another prejudice of mine...

Sure, Stevens tries to ground all this in the 30s by referring to the illegality of homosexual acts, and also uses this for the plot - which is good! - but no matter, I just find it hard to see that a majority of the main characters in a story set in the 1930s would be gay.

Please don't misunderstand me. I didn't mind reading about this cast of characters at all - the thing I mind is that these charactes are placed in a story set in the 1930s. It just doesn't ring true. To Stevens' credit, she doesn't make a big production out of featuring minority characters. They just happen to be, and apart from using the illegality of homosexuality, nothing in the plot is affected by these characters' status. They're just there, and that's great.

So with that minor quibble out of the way, I must say that I would rate this novel very highly. I think Stevens is very assured of herself as a mystery writer by now. She creates a strong plot with misdirections that could compete with the best of them. She has a great team of characters that she manages to bring to life in a wonderful way. And the plot is really excellent, I cannot stress that enough.

I'd rate this on par with the previous "best in series", First Class Murder. That book had a better setting and a more interesting problem, but this one has the better plot. So, go and read it!

Now I'm just waiting for the next novel in the series...

The Long Arm of the Law (ed. Martin Edwards)

And here we have another anthology in the British Library Crime Classics series. As the title indicates, this is a collection of stories featuring the police in different roles.

Otherwise, this - as we should be used to by now - has the same structure as other BLCC anthologies: a mixture of stories from different genres and times. For once, the opening story is not by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though.

With this particular theme, you'd expect quite a lot of police procedurals in this collection, but to be honest, there was quite a lot of variation here as well. As my opinion of police procedurals isn't the highest, I approached this with some apprehension. Find out below what my experience was with the individual stories.

Alice and Claude Askew - The Mystery of Chenholt

Reggie Vane has been given charge of a local police station, and one day he is approached by a butler who reports that he is suspicious of his master, a Mr Darrell, whom he suspects of harbouring plans to poison his wife. As it is difficult to find hard evidence of the butler's suspicions, Vane tasks his fiancée Violet with joining the household to see what she can find out.

This was a bit ho-hum. It's hard to imagine how a police could get away with sending in a female non-police into a household where murder is suspected. It's all a bit improbable. The "surprise" ending didn't come as much of a surprise, either.

Edgar Wallace - The Silence of PC Hirley

PC Lee tells the story of his taciturn colleague Hirley and the case where they both were involved in the investigation of a murdered man. It's a crime where Lee had seen a young man enter a house, and because his suspicions were aroused Lee followed him a minute later, then hearing an awful yell from the second floor. After ascending, he finds the body of a man with a gunshot to the forehead.

This isn't quite an impossible crime - more an improbable one (how on earth could the murderer get away so quickly?) - but being so short, this tale gets the explanation in quickly, showing Hirley's superior reasoning skills over Lee's. An all right vignette, fairly entertaining.

George R. Sims - The Mystery of a Midsummer Night 

Inspector Chance investigates a kidnapping case where a four year old boy has been taken from his bedroom at night without anyone hearing anything. His body is later found in an outhouse on the premises.

This is a run of the mill police procedural story, though of the type that was common during the earliest few decades of the 1900s. There are not many surprises here, and even less so since the foreword tells us which famous real life case the story is based on. I don't mind having read this story, but I guess that's damning it with faint praise...

Laurence W. Meynell - The Cleverest Clue

In this story, a journalist is interviewing Inspector Morton and asks him about the cleverest clues he's come across during his career as a police officer. He recounts the tale of the kidnapping of a professor who's working on an invention that is set to revolutionise aerial warfare thoroughly.

This is rather amusingly told, but there's never any doubt about what's happening (or what's going to happen). Nevertheless, the titular clue is actually quite clever, though rather farfetched as well. I'm guessing most people would never get it - I take some comfort in being a foreigner, who will have a tougher time than most. Another story that was an okay read, not much more.

Gerald Verner - The Undoing of Mr. Dawes

The titular Mr. Dawes is a fence, who induces one of his thieving acquaintances to break into a jeweller's and steal some of their wares. But Superintendent Budd is on his trail...

Another fairly amusing but never mysterious story - there's no detection here either. I liked this a bit less because it's a story of entrapment, and thus would never be allowed in court today.

Roy Vickers - The Man Who Married Too Often

Molly Webster manages to marry a Marquis who's rather too stupid and naive, and then of course it turns out that the Marquis had been married before. And when the previous wife turns up in their neighbourhood, what's a Marchioness to do to protect her young son?

Another story about a crime, and an inverted one at that. And just like the previous story, this is a tale of entrapment and it also features a bit of a nasty sting towards the end. I didn't like this at all.

Leonard R. Gribble - The Case of Jacob Heylyn

An old man has been found dead from a gunshot wound, and everything points to it being suicide. But Inspector Slade has seen some things that don't quite add up.

Well, finally a story with detection and some fair play clues! This wasn't bad at all - it made me want to check out Gribble's "The Arsenal Stadium Mystery". The interplay between the policemen Slade and Jerrold gives this something a little bit extra, at least for this reader.

Freeman Wills Crofts - Fingerprints

Jim Crouch has decided to murder his uncle, being his only heir and needing the money because of a needy girlfriend, and sets things up as neatly as possible to escape suspicion.

That's sort of plot 101 of inverted mysteries, and there's absolutely no surprises here. Even the mistake that the culprit makes is probably among the top 5 mistakes that you've seen in mysteries like this one. So it's fortunate that it's so short, it certainly doesn't overstay it's welcome.

E. C. R. Lorac - Remember to Ring Twice

A police constable overhears a rather suspicious conversation at the pub one night, and commits this to memory. Some time later, he comes across one of the conversationalists in conjunction with a death that looks like an accident.

So, this was actually an impossible crime! Yay! I'd have liked it more if we weren't told from the outset who the culprit was, leaving only the murder method unexplained until the end, but this was still an enjoyable read. Admirably short as well, and manages to get everything done anyway.

Henry Wade - Cotton Wool and Cutlets

Constable Bragg and his new superior, Detective-Inspector Hurst, are investigating a case where a man was found dead with his head in the oven. At first, most things point towards suicide, but Bragg has his suspicions.

This was another story I liked quite a bit. There's never really any surprise in who's guilty, but Wade manages to still inject the story with some liveliness and interesting points, keeping my interest up throughout the whole thing.

Christianna Brand - After the Event

Inspector Cockrill and several other guests at a dinner are regaled with a tale from a Grand Old Man about a murder in a theatre. Of course, Cockrill sees through everything and manages to figure out who the culprit is only through the clues he hears about.

I had read this before, but it's still a great tale. I like the whole setting with Cockrill acting the armchair detective, and Brand manages to get quite a lot of humour from this. Lovely stuff.

Nicholas Blake - Sometimes the Blind...

A blind man is always helped by his cousin, led around everywhere, but one day, there is a terrible car accident where the blind man narrowly escapes but his cousin dies. But was it really an accident?

Blake does well in under five pages here. He manages to get in one important clue. The plot isn't all that difficult to see through, but at least it's still a fair play one.

John Creasey - The Chief Witness

Chief Inspector Roger West investigates what seems like a crime of domestic violence where the husband has killed his wife, leaving his young son to discover the corpse the next day.

A fairly good one, this one as well. This might be the most police procedural-ly of all the stories here. It's not particularly fair play, and I don't think it's all that hard to see where things are going, but still a good read.

Michael Gilbert - Old Mr Martin

An old sweet-seller has died, and when his charwoman is tidying up after him she finds the body of a dead woman in the cellar. Inspector Petrella starts investigating, and soon he finds signs that point toward a previous tenant, who lost his wife during a bombing in WWII.

The streak continues with another eminently readable story. Again, I managed to see through the "twist", but this time I'm actually proud of it, because I think it's better hidden than in the previous stories.

Gil North - The Moorlanders

A policeman has been found unconscious, knocked out next to his motorcycle. Now Sergeant Cluff and his colleagues must find out if it was an accident or something more sinister.

This is a poorly written story, where it's almost impossible to follow what happens. So much goes unsaid that I had to go back a couple of paragraphs every ten seconds, or at least so it felt. Hopelessly bad.

Conclusion

In all, I liked this quite a bit, though it had a bit of a rocky start. I think it's safe to say, from the reviews I've had of the BLCC anthologies so far, that I think they improve towards the end (though this particular one had a very bad ending story). I guess that's not too surprising, given my liking for GA mysteries and less-than-fondness for the writings of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the fact that these anthologies are ordered more or less chronologically.

By now, I think it's time for a ranking of the BLCC anthologies I've reviewed so far.

1. Miraculous Mysteries - no surprise there, this is an impossible crime anthology, so it has lots of things going for it that elevate it above all the other collections.
2. Silent Nights - very close in quality to TLAotL, but I think this one just pips it. A good variety of stories and a few really good ones.
3. The Long Arm of the Law - starts off spottily, but gets better and better, and even though it finishes with one of the worst stories I've ever read it's still distinctly above average.
4. Murder at the Manor - I was thoroughly disappointed that this didn't feature any true country house mysteries. I think there was one fair play mystery among the whole bunch of stories.

Kate was very impressed with this collection over at crossexaminingcrime. And Aidan had several good words for it over on Mysteries Ahoy.

The Ginza Ghost - Keikichi Osaka

This collection of short stories, nearly all of the impossible crime variety, was published by Locked Room International in 2017, in translation by Ho-Ling Wong (of The Case Files of Ho-Ling fame). Osaka wrote these tales over a period of 15 years, during the 1930s and 1940s. Some feature a couple of different series detectives, while others are stand-alone stories.

I had mixed feelings about this collection. We'll come to my opinion on the specific stories below, but my main problem was with the writing. I don't know whether it is Osaka's writing style or the translation - though I've read other translations by the same translator where I didn't have the same problems, which points to the author in this case - but it was a tough slog to read. I had to put it down every few pages, which meant that I couldn't generally finish even one story in a sitting. However, it should be said that comparatively, LRI's publications have more words per page than most other books, so that's at least part of the explanation.

Still, there were definite qualities in the plotting and the explanations of the various impossibilities, so let's get down to specifics.

We begin with "The Hangman of the Department Store", the first story Osaka ever wrote. A man is found strangled to death and with several mysterious wounds on his body. It seems he was thrown to the ground from a department store roof. According to witnesses, there was no opportunity for anyone to enter the store, but at the same time it seems none of the people inside the building could have been responsible either.

It's a pretty fine problem Osaka has created here, and seeing that it's his first story I'm okay with the solution. There's some innovative enthusiasm here, though like some other stories here there's some coincidence required for the solution to work. But definitely a good start to this collection.

In "The Phantasm of the Stone Wall", a woman is murdered on a walkway in front of her home, and witnesses see two men flee from the scene along the road. However, a man walking in the opposite direction claims that he saw no one pass.

This is yet another great set-up, and I think Osaka found a good solution to the impossibility here.  Finding the culprit isn't all that hard, if you've read a couple of impossible crimes before, but the explanation to the disappearance is clever and innovative.

The third story is "The Mourning Locomotive", wherein we're told about a specific locomotive that regularly manages to run over pigs on its travels, always with the same drivers.

Here's where the wheels start to come off. This story is bonkers. Yeah, you might call it innovative, but to me it just doesn't work. People just don't behave this way - unless the differences between Japan and Sweden are bigger than I imagine. The preface says that this is Osaka's masterpiece, but I definitely disagree.

Osaka seems to have liked lighthouses, because "The Monster of the Lighthouse" is just the first story to feature such a structure. In this particular story, the top of the lighthouse is destroyed by a large rock and an octopus-like monster is seen diving into the sea. And at the same time, the lighthouse keeper disappears without a trace.

So, some obvious horror and/or supernatural elements in this story. I definitely felt this worked better than the previous story. It has to be said, though, that the specifics of the solution are a bit convoluted and require a bit of coincidence.

There's more supernaturalisms in "The Phantom Wife" where a servant tells the story of how his mistress took poison after having separated from her husband. The husband is haunted by this event, avoiding everything associated with the wife and looking more ill with each passing day. And then one day the servant finds him dead and the killer seems to have superhuman powers, as he wrenched the iron bars of the window out of their sockets.

We're back to stupid again here. This is not an impossible tale, and therefore there's not even the mitigating factor of a thoughtprovoking impossibility. The attempts at trying to apply supernatural explanations for the murder make me roll my eyes, and the final solution is so, so dumb.

"The Mesmerising Light" is by comparison a much more mundane tale, where a car disappears from a stretch of road between two toll stations. And then it turns out that a guest has been murdered in the home of the car's owner.

The solution to the impossibility of the vanishing car is good, perhaps even great. Osaka's explanation probably would have worked in the real world. But the rest... No, I'm not impressed. The motive is pretty hokey and the bit about the age of the culprit is both non-fair play (because of cultural differences) and super stupid.

In "The Cold Night's Clearing", a teacher is called to a colleague's house, because a young student has found a horrible crime scene there. The colleague's wife and her cousin are both found dead, murdered after a violent struggle. But not only that, the six-year-old son of the house is nowhere to be found, and outside the house is a single track from skis which just suddenly end in the middle of a field...

This is a lovely set-up, which is why it feels like a cheat when the explanation comes. It turns out that the whole thing is not an impossible situation at all, our narrator simply didn't tell us everything. It's a fairly powerful story nevertheless, with a sad and tragic ending. So much potential squandered here...

"The Three Madmen" are all inmates at an asylum, and one morning the staff wakes up and finds that they are all missing, as is the chief doctor. He is found some time later, horribly mutilated and with his brain missing.

Yeah, so that's a fairly grisly business. Still, that leads the reader's thoughts towards a certain conclusion... The main thing this story has going for itself is the way it's narrated, which creates an almost surreal atmosphere. If not for that, I think almost everyone would see through the misdirection here.

We return to the world of lighthouses with "The Guardian of the Lighthouse". In this story, there are two families sharing the task of lightkeeper on a remote island: a husband and wife, and a father and son. The husband has been taken to hospital, and his wife accompanies him. When he's recuperated, the father takes the boat to fetch them back to the lighthouse, but they are delayed over night because of a storm, and when they return the son has vanished. And yet the lighthouse has been functioning the whole time...

This wasn't too bad - a bit prosaic, but Osaka manages to squeeze out some thrills by the way he's describing events. The explanation to the disappearance is quite plausible, and also quite poignant.

"The Demon in the Mine" gives us a problem where a man is left behind during a fire in the mine, when the rest of the workers get to safety behind a fireproof door. When everyone returns, one after one are murdered, and it seems as though the man left behind is picking off those who were responsible for shutting him in the mine.

This was quite possible the cleverest story in the collection. There's some extra sense of danger in the story because of the terrible conditions down in the mine. And Osaka conjures up some fine misdirection before revealing who the killer is. I'm not going to say that it couldn't be deduced beforehand, but the whole thing's still quite impressive.

In "The Hungry Letter-Box", a man posts a letter in a letterbox, but then remembers he forgot to put on a stamp. The letterbox is locked, and cannot be opened until the next morning when the mailman comes - and yet the letter has disappeared when the box is opened!

This is a tale with a lighter touch, and it's all the better for it. The explanation to what's going on is quite workable. The motive for it all is more or less impossible to work out, on the other hand.

The final story here is the story that gave its name to the whole collection, "The Ginza Ghost". In it, two women are killed, with witnesses saying that one of them killed the other and then killed herself - however it turns out that the woman who the witnesses say died first survived the other by more than 30 minutes. But surely it couldn't be a ghost who killed?

Another pretty clever explanation here, and the misdirection Osaka employs works very well. A good finish to this collection.

Conclusion

There's some very bright spots here, but also quite a lot of messy stuff. There's some overreliance on superstition here, and I don't know, maybe it's a cultural thing, but I just don't see how so many people, particularly professional police officers, should be so gullible and believing in that stuff. In many of the cases here, the only reason that the truth isn't found is because everyone focuses so hard on the supernatural things.

One example is from the final story, "The Ginza Ghost" - I'm not sure that the whole thing would stand up to scrutiny. There's just one thing that makes the witnesses identify the killing woman, and seeing that it's all a big contradiction, surely the police should be able to reason out what actually happened? But perhaps I'm just a bit too annoyed with some of the trappings here.

My preference is for the stories that don't focus too hard on that stuff and rely more on "normal" mystery tropes with an investigation and deductions from the available facts. For a reader who enjoys stories with ambiance, this collection will surely be even more impressive.

But it should also be said that most of the stories here have parts that are very good, it's just that I find that Osaka seldom manages to get everything to work.

Seeing that this is a collection of impossible mysteries, I will use a couple of the better ones for my project: "The Phantasm of the Stone Wall", "The Demon of the Mine" and "The Ginza Ghost".

Out in the blogosphere, most of the words on this collection have been very kind:
TomCat praises it effusively on Beneath the Stains of Time, while J. J. is very complimentary in his review over on The Invisible Event.

Meanwhile, Aidan over on Mysteries Ahoy joins me in taking a more reserved stance, though we're not entirely in agreement on which stories deserve praise and which do not. It seems everyone except me likes "The Mourning Locomotive"...

Small Crime: A Spoonful of Murder by Robin Stevens

In this sixth book in the young adult "Murder Most Unladylike" series, we're finally allowed to see Hazel Wong's home and family, as she and her best friend and fellow sleuth Daisy Wells travel to Hong Kong after Hazel's grandfather has passed away.

But the first thing that greets the girls upon their arrival is Hazel's newborn brother Teddy, and his arrival has turned everything in the family upside down. This affects Hazel's standing in the family, as previously she was the eldest child but now is "only" the eldest girl.

However, that's not the only thing upsetting the status quo - since Hazel's grandfather is now gone, her father is the new head of the family, and he has a much more modern outlook on things which annoys and/or upsets several people among the family's friends and acquaintances.

And then when Hazel's infant brother is due for a doctor's visit, he is kidnapped, the accompanying maid is murdered, and there seems to be no lack of suspects... one of whom is Hazel herself!

This is another enjoyable instalment in this rather excellent series. We've previously talked about Robin Stevens introducing different GA tropes in her books, and this could be called an example of the "mystery in an exotic setting". Purely plotwise, there's nothing here that's entirely new, unlike previous books, where we've had impossible murders, focus on reconstructions of the crime and elimination of suspects, and so on and so forth. This is more a distilment of the things we've already seen.

Instead, what's new here is the setting, which affects both our sleuths in different ways. Daisy has to adjust to the fact that Hazel is now the more important person of the two and that her title is fairly meaningless to the people in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Hazel is at the same time both more confident because she is at home in Hong Kong, and less confident because of the new arrival in the family and also because of the experiences she's had while living far away from home and their effect on her outlook at things.

This introduces a somewhat different dynamic to our pair of intrepid detectives. At the same time, Daisy is still the same person as always: blunt and courageous and clever and impetuous. May she never change!

I guess as a consequence of the Hong Kong setting, we have to make allowances for the Chinese Triads getting involved in the investigation. Fortunately, they're used in a fairly atypical way, which means that at least I wasn't too disappointed. But I suppose that's another mystery trope that's explored a bit here...

One thing that could have improved my reading experience was if the sequence where young Teddy is kidnapped and his maid is murdered had been retooled into an impossible crime situation. It wouldn't have taken much to create that appearance. On the other hand, I suppose that would have taken time from other aspects of the plot and the setting that Stevens wanted to explore here. It's not a big thing for me, just something that immediately struck me while I was reading.

As for the investigation and the denouement, I think this was one of the better books in the series. We're still following a similar structure to the previous novels where the young ladies eliminate one suspect after another. Some of the things that they use to eliminate suspects work better than others, but on the whole I think Wells & Wong (and Stevens, of course) do well here.

There's also a bit of a twist - for want of a better description - towards the end which I thought was handled well and elevated the story above the average of this series. Hazel and her father also reach a new understanding as the case wraps up, and it will be interesting how this plays out over the course of the rest of the series.

This is highly recommended, though I do think that this series should be read in order. There are no mystery spoilers between the different stories, but we get to follow the development of the main characters over several years here. And more importantly, all of the books are at least above average, so do read them all!

Murder at the Manor (ed. Martin Edwards)

In my last post on a Martin Edwards edited anthology, there were a lot of country house murders. However, I can promise there will be even more of those in this one!

This is another anthology centred around a setting, rather than a plotting genre. Again, this will undoubtedly make the stories a varied bunch. Otherwise, Edwards uses the same set-up as always, some famous authors and some less well-known ones, ordered in a roughly chronological order.

So let's move along and see how this one compares with the previous anthology.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Copper Beeches

Sherlock Holmes gets a visit from a young woman who's been employed as a governess, but her employers are giving her increasingly strange instructions on how to dress and look. She is feeling more and more uneasy, and Holmes agrees to investigate her case.

Like the previous collection, Edwards finds a great Doyle story to start this anthology off. It's one of my favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. It's hardly fair play, but as I've said before that hardly matters when Doyle is firing on all cylinders.

Dick Donovan - The Problem of Dead Wood Hall

At a dinner party at the Tranklers' manor, one of the guests walks out into the garden where he is later found dead through poisoning. A few years later, Trankler's son dies during a hunting party in the same gardens. And then the rumours start spreading...

This wasn't the best of stories, to be honest. It's a bit too reliant on shocks and thrills and is also very 1800s in its style. Again, not a fair play story, but unlike Doyle, Donovan doesn't have the panache to hold my interest.

E. W. Hornung - Gentlemen and Players

Gentleman thief Raffles and his friend and accomplice Bunny are invited down to Milchester Abbey to play cricket against some local teams, with the secret motive of stealing some jewels. However, it turns out that the police are on the trail after other prospective jewel thiefs, making Raffles' coup more dangerous.

So, yet another story that is not really a mystery, just an adventure. It's fairly amusing and zips along quite nicely, though.

W. W. Jacobs - The Well

A young man is threatened and blackmailed for a large sum of money, but resorts to murder to escape his tormentor.

This is even less of a mystery, simply a kind of psychological thriller with some horror elements. Not my type of story at all.

G. K. Chesterton - The White Pillars Murder

Two clever young men join the celebrated Dr. Adrian Hyde in investigating a murder where a man has been bludgeoned to death and then ended up floating in a lake. They are both sent down to White Pillars, while Dr. Hyde acts as an armchair investigator.

Well, this is a bit more like it. The ending is quite good, though I must admit I was always suspicious of the person who turned out to be the culprit.

Ernest Bramah - The Secret of Dunstan's Tower

Bramah's blind investigator, Max Carrados, is asked to come down to Dunstan's Tower by Dr. Tulloch, an old friend of his. It appears that there is a haunting attached to the Aynosforde family, and Dr. Tulloch held a nightly vigil by the haunted staircase yet did not notice how a pool of blood could appear there.

Bramah can generally be relied upon to provide proper mysteries, but this is not much more than a Gothic horror story. At least Carrados works out part of the solution from clues provided. The best thing about it I can say is that it's not the worst story so far in the collection, but it is quite possibly the biggest disappointment.

J. S. Fletcher - The Manor House Mystery

An elderly gentleman has been killed in the titular Manor House. The detective on the case gets visits from several of the people involved in the case, each of them proceeding to tell their part of the story.

A somewhat differently structured story from one of the biggest names in the field before Christie and Sayers started writing. I can't say that I found the structure all that successful. The reader can hardly be expected to solve it from the clues provided. Interesting, but flawed.

J. J. Bell - The Message on the Sun-Dial

A ne'er-do-well has been misusing his cousin's name and forged his checks and is therefore prompted to leave the country by that gentleman. Instead, he decides to kill him, and does so in the cousin's garden. Unfortunately, there's a dying message left by the unlucky man...

Well, this has a couple of things against it already from the start: it's got a very similar plot to a previous story (though it flips who is the culprit and who is the victim), and it's also an inverted mystery story. The dying message itself is fairly easy to see through - in fact, so easy that the author only allows the characters to read it out aloud to begin with. It's not a bad story, but I'm not particularly happy with the anthology this far.

Sapper - The Horror at Staveley Grange

Several male members of a family have died suspicious deaths, while sleeping in the same room, and Ronald Standish is asked by a friend of the wife of the next in line to take a look at the case.

So, written by a fairly hokey writer, with a hokey title and, as you see, a hokey plot. And yet... it's not all that bad, to be honest. It's rather too similar to a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories, though, but it's an okay impossible crime by an author who you'd never expect to write something of that ilk.

Anthony Berkeley - The Mystery of Horne's Copse

A young man sees his cousin lying dead on the road while walking home at night, but it turns out that the cousin is alive and well in Italy. But then he sees the cousin dead again... and again. All signs point to him being afflicted by some mental disorder, but his wife believes in him and asks for Roger Sheringham's advice.

This is by far the longest story in this anthology, close to novella length, but it's also a very good one. Yes, the plot is not that hard to see through, but Berkeley still manages to keep the reader guessing about several plot points. Finally a really strong story. The only drawback was that I had read it before...

James Hilton - The Perfect Plan

Sir George Winthrop-Dunster attracts the ire of his secretary, and the latter crafts a perfect plan to murder him.

Another non-mystery, this is one of those Francis Iles "anatomy of murder" things. Well-written, but again, not my cup of tea at all.

Margery Allingham - The Same to Us

There's a weekend party at Molesworth House, with the guests invited by the lady of the house. Unfortunately, during that weekend her jewels are all stolen.

This is not much more than a humorous vignette, probably all written to be able to use that final line... One has to wonder what happened to poor young Petterboy. A fairly amusing tale, but this anthology is truly scarce on meatier material.

E. V. Knox - The Murder at the Towers

Mr Ponderby-Wilkins is found dead, hanging from a tree at his enormous estate, and inspector Blowhard is brought in to investigate the case.

Now, this may just be my favourite tale in this anthology. It's an out and out parody of real country house mysteries, but since there is such a paucity of such stories here, this gets even better. And the best thing is, the reader only needs to read the first two paragraphs to see whether this is something for them.

Ethel Lina White - An Unlocked Window

Two nurses are in a remote house, taking care of an old professor who is suffering from gas-poisoning. Unfortunately, there's been reports of several nurses being killed in the county...

White is a good writer, but a good writer of stories I don't care for. It doesn't help that I immediately saw through what was going to happen - it felt much too obvious.

Nicholas Blake - The Long Shot

Nigel Strangeways is a guest at Gervase Musbury's place, and while there some of the guests watch as others shoot arrows towards the sky while the sun is sinking. But when the final arrow is fired off and falls down towards the earth again, it strikes a tree and Gervase falls down from it - dead from poisoning!

This is a fine little tale, not too long but does exactly what it sets out to do. Finally a fair play plot for the reader to try to play along with.

Michael Gilbert - Weekend at Wapentake

While handling a case of a husband and wife who have died, lawyer Henry Bohun is intrigued by some old notes of a previous death in their family. He contacts the old man who had written those notes and gets to hear a tale of murder.

Not a bad story at all, there's both a fair play plot and a bit of a sting at the end. Gilbert can generally be relied on for good story-tellling, and this is certainly no exception.

Conclusion

Well, this wasn't the best anthology for me, I'm afraid. There's way too few fair play stories, and too many stories that belong to other crime genres. The few real mysteries there are, are generally good. And most of the good stuff comes towards the end, which makes me remember the book a bit more fondly than I'd otherwise do, so I guess that's something in its favour.

But on the whole, I just thought there were too few "true" country house murders here.

On In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel The Puzzle Doctor liked this a bit more than I did, though he had some reservations.

Aidan's review over on Mysteries Ahoy is very thorough, and we seem to have similar reservations, though we aren't always in complete agreement on which stories are the better ones.

Silent Nights (ed. Martin Edwards)

"Silent Nights" is the first of - so far - three Christmas/winter mystery anthologies by Martin Edwards in the British Library Crime Classics series. In general, all of the anthologies in the BLCC series have a very similar structure. Almost entirely by British authors, ordered more or less chronologically, some big names mixed with some more unknown quantities. In this particular volume, the former are represented by such authors as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers, while people like Ralph Plummer, Marjorie Bowen and Joseph Shearing were less known to me beforehand.

As most will agree, anthologies are almost by design a mixed blessing. How much the reader will enjoy depends on what direction the editor has chosen when selecting the stories. My own opinion is that I like anthologies to be assembled around a plotting theme (impossible crimes, cozies, fair play mysteries, spy thrillers, adventures, etc.), because then you will have a certain inkling what the stories will contain. And also be able to give a pass to those collections that feature genres of less interest...

I get more wary when the anthologies are not, because then anything can be featured. I mean, just the presence of snow in a story is no indication that I will enjoy reading it (lex "The Mystery in White"). This wariness is somewhat mitigated when I know that the editor is a seasoned one and can be relied upon to bring in at least a couple of really good stories, no matter what. And as this is the case with Martin Edwards' work, I go into the reading of these anthologies with a certain optimistic mindset. Was that justified in this case? Well, read on...

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Blue Carbuncle

This is probably as safe a start to a Christmas mystery anthology as you can get. It is one of Doyle's more famous Sherlock Holmes stories wherein he is investigating how a valuable gem ended up inside a goose that was left behind in the street after an altercation.

My own opinion is that the Holmes stories aren't generally the best mysteries, but they are great stories. This is a wonderful read and does at least feature some investigation, though it all whizzes by a bit too quickly for the reader to be allowed to sleuth along.

Ralph Plummer - Parlour Tricks

This is a tale where several people are forced to spend Christmas indoors at an inn because there has been a robbery and no one is allowed out, and they amuse themselves with conjuring tricks and so on.

The most obscure tale in this collection, it's also quite fun. I must say, however, that there are indications that show why it seems the author never continued his writing career, because there are several things that are never told in the story, but later turn out to have a large importance to the final revelations. For example, we never actually get to know why everyone is forced to stay inside the whole time until our detective tells us who the criminal is. And also, during the first trick where one of the guests is blindfolded and led around the room until he finds a hidden object, we are never actually told what he is supposed to be looking for... But still, a fun read, and with some editing this could have been a good impossible crime story.

Raymund Allen - A Happy Solution

Kenneth Dale has come to visit Lord Churt at the latter's country house, where his fiancée Norah has been staying. He has brought along a letter from Norah, and when he opens it a thousand pound note falls out of the envelope. Everyone assumes Norah stole it, but Kenneth with some logical reasoning finds the true culprit.

A good knowledge of chess will help the reader who wants to solve the mystery, but this is a clever tale and one of the highlights of the collection. My main complaint is that it was very hard to divine the relation of Dale's fiancée Norah to the owners of the country house.

G. K. Chesterton - The Flying Stars

Flambeau tells us the tale of his final crime, wherein he managed to steal the "Flying Stars", a set of three diamonds, during a matinée performed at a country house.

There are just a bit too many things that go unexplained until the final Father Brown explanation of the whole thing, but otherwise, this is one of Chesterton's better stories. It's just not a perfect mystery.

Edgar Wallace - Stuffing

A bit of a trifle where several criminals are all out to steal money from Lord Carfane.

To call this a mystery is a misnomer. However, it's still a fun story to read, as all the coincidences pile up and everything - well, almost - turns out all right in the end.

H. C. Bailey - The Unknown Murderer

Bailey's detective Reggie Fortune often handles cases involving children, and this is yet another one of them. A female doctor is found with her throat cut and later on the suspicion falls on a Captain Warnham, who was a guest in the house at the time, and who has a step-son who falls very ill...

Bailey's stories involving children are often quite powerful, and this is not bad at all. The villain of the story is quite diabolical. I do think it's fairly obvious to spot the baddie, but Fortune is a nice acquaintance in the short story format, though his mannerisms make him less tolerable in larger measures.

J. Jefferson Farjeon - The Absconding Treasurer

As the title intimates, the treasurer of the Slate Club has vanished, and with him a large sum of money. But when detective Crook begins investigating, he finds that there may be more to the story than appears...

Compared with Farjeon's novel "The Mystery in White", this is more of a regular mystery. It's pleasant enough, but I think most seasoned mystery readers will see through the plot fairly quickly.

Dorothy L. Sayers - The Necklace of Pearls

Lord Peter Wimsey is guesting at Sir Septimus Shale's Christmas celebrations, and while they are enjoying the regular parlour games, the latter's daughter notices her pearl necklace missing. Lord Peter is asked to investigate so police won't have to be invited and cause a scandal.

Interestingly, this is in fact an impossible crime, though no one seems to have noted it as such. And it's quite a pleasant one to boot. I won't say that it'll cause any great "aha" moments, but Sayers weaves a robust plot around the disappearance, and it's certainly one of the better tales of this collection. I will probably include this in my own collection of impossible crime stories.

Margery Allingham - The Case is Altered

Another country house mystery, this time it's Albert Campion who is invited to spend the Christmas holidays Sir Philip Cookham's place. There are some shenanigans with government papers that go missing and several young foolish people doing their young foolish things.

That description may look a bit condescending (well, a lot condescending), but I actually enjoyed this story a whole deal. It's not much of a mystery, and if there had only been one or two more pratfalls this wouldn't have been out of place in a P. G. Wodehouse collection. But I enjoy Wodehouse, and as long as the reader doesn't go into this story with high expectations I'm sure they will enjoy it.

Ethel Lina White - Waxworks

A young female journalist has decided to take it upon herself to sit in a waxworks over the night because lately two people have died there while spending the night.

This story belongs to the suspense genre, which is one of my least favourite mystery sub-genres. It's effectively written and a reader who enjoys this type of tale will almost certainly find it a highlight, but I was quite bored with the whole thing.

Marjorie Bowen - Cambric Tea

A doctor is called to a bedridden old man who tells him he is certain that his wife is trying to poison him. Things get more complicated when it turns out that the doctor and the wife were well acquainted in younger years...

Another story that is hardly a mystery. It's quite reminiscent of some of Agatha Christie's early romantic short stories. And not particularly interesting to me.

Joseph Shearing - The Chinese Apple

A middle-aged woman has returned to London from Italy to take custody of her niece, since her sister recently died. They meet in a house where it's reputed that strange things have been happening.

Shearing was another penname for the author of the previous story, Marjorie Bowen, which makes the placement of this story a bit bewildering. It also doesn't help that again it's hardly a mystery at all, which is further compounded by it being dull as dishwater, making it three stories in a row that bring the momentum of the anthology to a screeching halt.

Nicholas Blake - A Problem in White

A train has got stuck in the snow and the people of one compartment start discussing among themselves how to best bring about a train robbery, as you do. One of them feels insulted and decides to move to a different compartment. And some time later he turns up dead...

Well, after those three duds, it's rather wonderful to arrive at this story, which is a definite highlight of this anthology. This is a proper mystery, fairly clued and all, and ends on a challenge to the reader. Top stuff from Blake.

Edmund Crispin - The Name on the Window

Previously discussed in this post.

Leo Bruce - Beef for Christmas

Beef and his narrator Lionel Townsend are invited to a - you guessed it - country house, where an old man has been receiving anonymous letters. Since he is known for spending his money lavishly, something his heirs resent, there is some cause for alarm. And then death strikes among the guests...

I really should start reading more from Bruce. This is a very good little mystery, almost an impossible crime in its simplicity. There's just one misdirection here, and if the reader sees through that, they should spot the culprit fairly easily, though. Still, a very good read, ending this collection on three high notes in a row.

Conclusion

This anthology confirms what I said above in the introduction - if it isn't curated around a specific plotting genre, it tends to be very uneven in what it offers. The main problem comes by placing the White, Bowen, Shearing stories next to each other, because they are quite similar and belong to the same sub-genre. By breaking them up, people who like me who are thoroughly bored by these kinds of stories wouldn't lose steam so completely in the third quarter of the book.

But on the whole this must be called a good anthology, because apart from those three stories I had some good fun here. And there are definitely quite a few great tales here. And the best ones are placed at the very end, which leaves an extra good impression on this reader.

If you're looking for other opinions on this anthology, Kate was very complimentary on her blog crossexamingcrime. Read more here.

Meanwhile, over on In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, the Puzzle Doctor had some reservations but still recommended it.

And on A Perfect Locked Room the Dark One was quite impressed with the whole thing.