Like the holiday displays at Hallmark Cards, Locked Room International has delivered the perfect Halloween murder mystery two months early. Publisher John Pugmire and translator Ho-Ling Wong have teamed up to unleash the latest example of shin honkaku mystery fiction on the English-speaking world. And this one is something extra special. It’s another debut novel along the lines of … Continue reading IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS: Death Among the Undead
locked room mysteries
DONE IN? DONE GOOD: Why It Has to Be Murder
In a recent post at The Invisible Event, one of JJ’s readers ended his response, full of interesting observations, with this: “Finally, a point that’s been bugging me for years. Why does so much detective fiction, especially the novels, focus on murder? Detective short stories, at least, tend to be a bit more diverse and focus … Continue reading DONE IN? DONE GOOD: Why It Has to Be Murder
THE EENSY WEENSY SPIDER MURDER MYSTERY: Penelope’s Web
It’s always a cause for excitement when Locked Room International’s very own John Pugmire translates another Paul Halter novel. What sort of impossible crime or locked room will the French heir to John Dickson Carr give us this time? Will he take us to the Golden Age world of his Gideon Fell stand-in, Dr. Alan … Continue reading THE EENSY WEENSY SPIDER MURDER MYSTERY: Penelope’s Web
BEATING PUZZLE DOCTOR AND KATE TO THE PUNCH: The 2021 Mystery of the Year
It’s February 28, and I know exactly what you’re doing: you’re waiting with bated breath for 306 more days to go by, the amount of time it will for the Puzzle Doctor and Kate at Cross Examining Crime to finish sifting through the respective books they’ve read all year (about 2000 for PD, and 6953 … Continue reading BEATING PUZZLE DOCTOR AND KATE TO THE PUNCH: The 2021 Mystery of the Year
COFFEE TABLE BOOK TALES: Everson’s Trio of Crime Film Classics
William K. Everson (1929 – 1996) was a film historian, educator and archivist who was one of the guiding lights in preserving films from the silent period through the 1940’s. Born in England, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1950 where he put his experience in film publicity to use for Monogram Pictures, a small, … Continue reading COFFEE TABLE BOOK TALES: Everson’s Trio of Crime Film Classics
TOO MUCH META IN MY DIET: Lending the Key to the Locked Room
Here we are at the start of 2021, and the Western world is facing an existential crisis of enormous proportions while the Eastern world seems to have things pretty much under control. I’m speaking, of course, of the efforts of thirty or so bloggers to transform public opinion in America and Europe as to the … Continue reading TOO MUCH META IN MY DIET: Lending the Key to the Locked Room
REPRINT OF THE YEAR: Paging Doctor Death! Doctor Death? Paging Doctor Death!
“And what a simple explanation, if that were all of it! Simple and natural – and surprising. The good old formula. The sort of thing that lay concealed beneath the red-herring trickery of all good fictional problems, then bobbed up at the end to knock the cock-eyed reader cold with astonishment..” It’s Week Two of … Continue reading REPRINT OF THE YEAR: Paging Doctor Death! Doctor Death? Paging Doctor Death!
FANGS FOR THE MANORYS: The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire
It has been forty-five years since we could all savor the prospect of a “Christie for Christmas.” Alas, that time is passed, so I propose a new tradition: a “Byrnside for Boo-time!” The classic-style impossible crime mysteries penned by modern-day scribe James Scott Byrnside are, by turns, mystifying, sometimes fear-inducing, and most of the time … Continue reading FANGS FOR THE MANORYS: The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire
DAY-OLD BLANCMANGE: Paul Halter’s The White Lady
It turns out that if you Google “white lady,” it’s an actual thing. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the legend of a woman in white pervades the folklore of multiple countries. She tends to be the ghost of a woman who died by violence, committed suicide or, in the scarier versions, killed her husband and/or … Continue reading DAY-OLD BLANCMANGE: Paul Halter’s The White Lady
MAY I SUGGEST YOU READ A MURDER MYSTERY?
I have to admit I’ve been stressed for about . . . three and a half years. Bernie Sanders said recently that the current health crisis is “on the scale of major war,” but I’ve felt battle-scarred, mostly by tweet, for some time now. And now, thanks to COVID-19, I’m in exile: our schools have … Continue reading MAY I SUGGEST YOU READ A MURDER MYSTERY?
Ah Sweet Mystery! 