The Intermittent LRI Blog

Publisher’s Weekly just issued a digital review.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-517419-78-3

Just out. Locked room lovers will delight in this cleverly constructed and genuinely funny mystery, full of references to the classics of the genre. Gunnar Lundgren, a detective sergeant in a small Swedish town, is called in to investigate the death of a resident of a shady boarding house. He makes the mistake of telling his father, Carl, all the details of the case, including the fact that the victim’s room was locked from the inside. Carl, a locked room enthusiast, is a member of a small club which meets regularly to discuss locked room classics. He and his fellow members gleefully seize on the case and apply chains of Ellery Queen style logic to devise a solution which Gunnar finds so hilarious he reads out extracts to his wife in bed. Meanwhile, he himself interprets the same set of clues to arrive at a totally different solution, through shoddy police work which follows the path of least resistance. It is left to a cheese-loving local doctor to interpret the clues in yet another way to solve the case and confront the murderer.

LRI has been honoured for a second time by Publisher’s Weekly. Just as in 2013, when Paul Halter’s The Crimson Fog was named, this year it’s Yukito Ayatsuji’s turn with The Decagon House Murders. Expect more honkaku from LRI in 2016.

http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2015/mystery#book/book-2

The two titles were previously only available by ordering The Derek Smith Omnibus. As of today, each will be available separately, albeit without the Bob Adey introduction and the background material (just the texts, ma’am, just the texts) , which makes them much more affordable.

Model for Murder will not be made available separately. The lead character is Sexton Blake and, although I sneaked it in at the back of DSO, I’m rather more sanguine about offering a much easier target for copyright infringement. I did try to discover who does own the copyright, but that’s a mystery in itself.

This is LRI’s tenth Halter novel, featuring his Edwardian-era detective Owen Burns, who regards murder as an art form if done elegantly enough. It received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly:   http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-511939-92-8.

I personally think it’s by far the cleverest disappearing street/house/whatever I’ve read, avoiding the overworked sign-was-turned-round trope and its variations.

Paul and I have agreed on the eleventh novel, due out at year-end: it will be La Mort vous invite (Death Invites You), featuring Twist and Hurst. Meanwhile, I’ve submitted another short story to EQMM: The Scarecrow’s Revenge

Speaking of EQMM and honkaku (see earlier post), there will be a story in the December issue by Koga Subarou, who coined the term back in the 1920s. It’s called The Spider.

Japanese honkaku writers rejoice! July 16, 2015 was a red-letter day! One of the most influential mystery reviewers in America, Michael Dirda (a Pulitzer Prize winner and an elegant writer) vowed, in his terrific review of The Decagon House Murders, to discover more honkaku novels, starting with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-decagon-house-murders-evokes-agatha-christie–in-japan/2015/07/15/628391ce-297c-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

It just so happened a few days earlier that my penpal Dokuta sent me this beautiful English-language page from the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan:        http://honkaku.com/english.html

Dear Reader,

I am pleased to announce that as of today, the prices of the following five Paul Halter books and e-books will be reduced to $15.99 and $7.99 respectively: The Fourth Door; The Demon of Dartmoor; The Seventh Hypothesis; The Tiger’s Head; The Crimson Fog.

The Killing Needle will now be $12.99 and $5.99

“These changes are in response to [fill in the blanks]”

I’m delighted to announce that Yukito Ayatsuji’s classic is now available on Amazon and Kindle. It’s the book which is credited with re-launching the Golden Age style novel (known locally as honkaku) in Japan after a forty year period dominated by social/police-procedural mysteries.

Although it is an open tribute to Dame Agatha’s And Then There Were None, it is nevertheless brilliantly original and richly atmospheric. Publisher’s Weekly has named it as one of their Best Summer Reads of 2015.

As an added bonus, the maestro of honkaku, Soji Shimada himself, has done me the honor of writing a fascinating Introduction which describes in detail the evolution of Japanese detective fiction and the renaissance of honkaku. Of particular interest is the role played by the Kyoto University Mystery Club, covered in an essay by Ho-Ling Wong, the gifted translator of DHM, himself a member.

Not for nothing is Noel Vindry known as “the French John Dickson Carr.”  Between 1932 and 1937 he wrote twelve locked room novels, of a quality and quantity to rival the master himself, yet he has so far remained unknown to English-speaking readers.

In its starred review Publisher’s Weekly says: “Vindry displays gifts for puzzle making and a creepy atmosphere that will resonate with fans of John Dickson Carr.”

The legendary Boileau-Narcejac team, responsible for Vertigo and Diabolique, spoke of his “unequalled virtuosity” and “stupefying puzzles.” Thomas Narcejac said that “not even those specialists E. Queen or D. Carr” (sic) were Vindry’s equal. He was the poet of the puzzle novel.

The House That Kills (“La Maison Qui Tue”) was Vindry’s first book, featuring examining magistrate* Monsieur Allou and three baffling locked room mysteries, including the first appearance of one particular puzzle type, to the best of my knowledge.

*an examining magistrate is a peculiarity of the French judicial system. Carr’s first four books featured another one: Henri Bencolin.

I have just learned, to my intense sorrow, of the death of Robert Adey (Bob to all of his friends). Bob, of course, is known to all locked room fans for his bibliography Locked Room Murders, the reference “bible” for all such English-language works.

He was the epitome of the phrase “a gentleman and a scholar,” for he was not only possessed of a prodigious memory and a fabulous private collection, but he was the kindest and most generous of men. Despite a debilitating illness in his final years, he was always ready to help and supplied me with copies of many out-of-print stories. When I asked him to write the introduction to ‘The Derek Smith Omnibus’ he did it splendidly, despite an initial reluctance, doing weeks of research through his old files. I only realize it now, but it must have been literally “painstaking” for him, yet he did it graciously as an act of friendship and a tribute to a late friend.

He will be sorely missed

John P.