“But rest assured, my indications will lead you to the truth.” He paused. Then he said: “And perhaps, then, you would wish that they had not led you so far. You would say instead: ‘Ring down the curtain.’” The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was one of the first mystery novels I read, the one that arguably made me Someone Who Is Into Detective Fiction. The other two Poirot novels that my school library had were Murder on the Orient Express and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case . Quite the reading order. What you might call a speedrun. Which meant that this grand summation of Poirot flew way over my head the first time I read it (where is Styles, anyway?). I've now read, I think, just over half of the novels, so more of the references to past events made sense. On a reread, I would still say Curtain 's mystery has its underwhelming elements. But oh, that ending. The Locked Room: A man is found dead in his locked room (which the narrator saw him enter), holding a gun and with a bullet h...

"They were trying it with a bogy, but for a bogy to be effective its terrors must be known to the victim." This is the actual Rex Stout book chosen for John Dickson Carr's 10 Best Detective Novels , and I realized on cracking open the first chapter that I had read it in high school, despite remembering nothing about it. JDC chose Stout for his "literary" skill and character work: In the powerful story called The League of Frightened Men, with its tortured figure of Paul Chapin, you will find Wolfe the psychologist drawing a moral which might well be heeded by many writers of the too-hard-boiled school. A group of Harvard boys seriously injure an underclassman in a hazing prank, leaving him with a permanent leg disability. They guiltily form a "League of Atonement" to take care of him. What they don't realize is that their victim is Moriarty. Twenty-five years later, he is apparently taking his revenge by killing off the League one by on...

Originally posted April 23, 2024.  The 8 Mansion Murders , which I read recently, had a reference to Clayton Rawson’s short story ‘Off the Face of the Earth’. I’d already read it a couple years back, but gave the whole collection The Great Merlini: The Complete Stories of the Magician Detective a re-read to refresh myself. In a formula that would later be used by Jonathan Creek , Merlini is a stage magician and proprietor of a magic shop (inspired by Rawson’s real-life performance under the same stage name), who uses his expertise in “impossible” tricks, misdirection, and occasionally cold-reading to crack various cases that baffle the police. It’s a quick and amusing read. As you might imagine from the premise and length (with some as short as four pages), these stories are pure puzzles, often focused on identifying the crucial clue that allowed Merlini to work out what happened, like an Encyclopedia Brown for adults. Indeed, some of the stories were originall...