Death in the House of Rain, by young Taiwanese author Szu-Yen Lin, is a gruesome and fiendishly clever novel about a series of impossible crimes in a strange house built to resemble a 3-D version of the Chinese character for rain. Publishers Weekly not only gave it a starred review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-974337-79-8 . . . they plan to publish an interview with the author in the 9/25/2017 issue. Watch this space.
As many readers of detective fiction know by now, Soji Shimada (western version of his name) was instrumental in the revival of honkaku, the Japanese equivalent of fair-play Golden age writing, starting in the early 1980s. LRI has published three novels and a short story collection in this vein and another novel is underway (for which he has already written the introduction!)
I feel very fortunate to count him among my friends; there is a not a kinder or more modest individual on the planet, even though his The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is widely regarded as an epic of the genre, and there have been multiple screen and TV adaptations of his works. So it was a great pleasure for my wife Helen and I to have lunch with Soji, his wife Masae and his daughter Yuko during their recent trip to New York. The three lovely and gifted ladies are, from left to right, Masae, Yuko and Helen. No prizes for guessing which of the men is Soji.
I presented Soji with a copy of the anthology The Realm of the Impossible, in which his own story, “The Locked Room of P.”–translated by Yuko–appears. He was pleased to see it was the last story in the book, which in Japan is reserved for the best.
To those of you who wondered what had happened to mylri.com and lockedroominternational.com, it’s now safe to go back on line…at least for now.
Without boring you with the details, all the problems were caused by the web-hoster I chose, ipage.com, who shut me down without warning three times, the third time for a week. Alas, I’m stuck with them for 3 years, so there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again.
I am delighted to announce that the international short story anthology I have been working on for a long time, together with my friend, consultant editor of LRI, and co-editor of Mystery Scene magazine, Brian Skupin, has finally been published!
Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, writes: “…a landmark anthology, which establishes that the crafting of brilliant short impossible crime fiction is not an exclusively Anglo-American endeavor.”
In his Foreword, Otto Penzler writes: “The range of authors collected in this surprising and welcome volume, and the diversity of their backgrounds, is a tribute to the detective skills of the editors, who have somehow unearthed a cornucopia of virtually unknown stories that deserve the attention they will now receive. It is… well… impossible to applaud loudly enough…”
Here is a groundbreaking collection of 26 impossible crime stories from over 20 countries, demonstrating the global reach of this most fiendishly ingenious type of tale. Several stories appear here for the first time, many have never been anthologized, and a few classics are included.
Also included are 12 short anecdotes of real-life impossibilities: How can a man locked in his room without alcohol get drunk every night? How can heavy stone coffins in a sealed crypt be moved? How can hundreds of rare French books be stolen from an ancient library? These are just a few of the actual impossibilities that are explained in The Realm of the Impossible.
And, at a mere $19.99 for nearly forty stories from more than 20 countries, it would be a crime not to buy it. . . (I had to get that in before anyone else.)
P.S. There will not be a Kindle edition.
https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/the-madmans-room-by-paul-halter/The good doctor isn’t one to throw praise around lightly, so it was particularly pleasing to read his review: “Works Perfectly….. Something special.” Music to my ears, as I, too, would rank this among Paul’s best books ever.
https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/the-madmans-room-by-paul-halter/
The French for brain-teaser is ” casse-tete” = head-breaker and that’s the perfect description for the the maestro’s latest, which piles impossibility upon impossibility until your hair starts to hurt. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1545568125
The highly influential Otto Penzler, the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop, chose Death in the Dark, first published in 1930, as his July 2017 book-of-the-month! Never say die, or in this case, die three times (that’s the body count, and they’re all impossible) 2017_7_6 DID Otto Penzler Book of the Month
This one’s from the highly reputable CADS magazine 2017_7_7 TGG CADS
One of my favourite blog spots provides a lengthy and very thoughtful review of Keikichi Osaka’s short story collection The Ginza Ghost. The comparison to the turn-of-the-century works by Meade and Eustace is very apt and one that frankly hadn’t occurred to me.
http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.com/2017/06/within-bounds-of-possibility.html
Noel Vindry’s masterpiece (and I do not use the term lightly: one of the greatest locked rooms ever written, with an increasingly excruciating build-up and an impossible murder that even eye-witnesses cannot explain or even believe) The Howling Beast is now available on Kindle.
This is possible because the French publisher Gallimard no longer has the rights and a diligent search has failed to locate a rights owner. If there is one, he or she is invited to come forward.
