Originally posted May 29, 2024. “One of my names,” she said, “is Nemesis.” “Nemesis? And what does that mean?” “I think you know,” said Miss Marple. “You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.” — Nemesis, by Agatha Christie When my wife gets home from work, we like to unwind with vaguely investigative popcorn shows. The latest that we’ve finished is Ms. Ma, Nemesis ( Miseu Ma: Boksuui Yeosin ) (2018), a Korean thriller-mystery serial created by Hong Chang-wook with writer Park Jin-woo,that loosely adapts the Ms. Ma rple series by Agatha Christie. I was inspired to check it out by the glowing review over on Ah Sweet Mystery! A creative re-imagining of Christie that re-tools the component stories into one longform thriller? Sign me up! We had a great time with it, and the series is an interesting adaptation—but some of its original elements were the parts I liked most. The series is based on five Ms. Marple boo...

Originally posted May 24, 2024. For the ache of mystery is that we are compelled to solve it. For the frustration of mystery is that we are not always able to solve it. You might argue that a “literary thriller” which has the veneer of crime fiction but is actually an elaborate character study, such as 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister by Joyce Carol Oates, does not belong on a detective fiction blog. To which I say: it’s my blog and I get to choose the mandate! Let’s get into it.  48 Clues revolves around the Fulmer sisters, Marguerite and Georgene (referred to by the de-gendered M. and G. both in their lives and in the narration). M., the older sister, is a beautiful, talented heiress and Guggenheim Fellow sculptor, whose apparently charmed life makes her abrupt disappearance all the more baffling. Unremarkable younger sister G. is “sturdy as a turnip,” works at a post office, and has a history of severe mental health issues. One morning, M. heads out ...

Originally posted May 22, 2024. Ellery Queen, you lucky devil! thought Ellery Queen. There were a couple of Ellery Queen novels whose eBooks were on sale for $2 (no longer at time of writing), so I picked this up alongside Cat of Many Tails. You might think based on how I talk about them that my least favourite part of EQ stories is when I’m able to solve them—not so! In fact, my least favourite parts are the moments where Ellery behaves like an unrepentant skeezebucket. How does The Greek Coffin Mystery score on those two counts? Let’s dig in. During the funeral for millionaire art dealer Georg Khalkis, his lawyer discovers that the dead man’s new will is missing. Khalkis had written in a new name, but refused to tell the witnesses who it was, so without the will, they’re in a very awkward legal position. To make matters worse, there was only a tiny window during the funeral that it could have been stolen, but an extensive search fails to locate the will anywher...

Originally posted May 20, 2024. “Ye olde ghosts-of-long-ago. An instance in the present echoes an instance in the past. You certainly can’t write a traditional mystery without it. But, my dear child, […] you’re not in a traditional mystery. You’re in a psychological thriller.” Horror critics frequently discuss the idea that the scares in horror media reflect current cultural anxieties. What does our society find frightening? I think you could argue something similar for mysteries and thrillers: at the most basic level, they rely on cultural ideas of what is a crime . More broadly, you have the question of what is a secret . How many turn-of-the-century stories involve the scandal of an unmarried young woman having children, or a previous relationship? Finally there is the question of what is a plot twist : if I revealed the bloodthirsty serial killer was a woman, or a grade-schooler—Gasp! Shock! Less so if I revealed that the serial killer was (dun dun dun) an adult m...

Originally posted May 17, 2024. Despite cutting my teeth on Detective Conan , I only started reading its influences, writers of the shin honkaku (neo-orthodox) school of crime fiction, a few years ago. At the time, I was in a jaded period where I felt like I’d seen every trick that mystery fiction had to offer, and could no longer be surprised. I was gifted Murder in the Crooked House by Sōji Shimada, thought it was okay, at least enough to seek out his previous book The Tokyo Zodiac Murders . And, well, that one surprised me—enough that I had to put the book down and rest my head in my hands. After that, I was hooked again. I made it my mission to read all of Shimada’s work published in English, which remains ‘not that much,’ and from there, some of his contemporaries. One strategy was to camp out Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine ‘s Passport to Crime department, started in 2004, which publishes works in translation for the first time. Here are some of the scattered shin ho...

Originally posted May 15, 2024. People hunger for epiphany, you think, they clamor for it, but given a chance, who among us would actually recognize it? Happening across West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman at the library, I was intrigued by its promise of a metafictional murder mystery (“the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader”) that combined elements of noir and fair-play detection, and in which “everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective”. Given that description, I wasn’t expecting a conventional solution, but unfortunately I still came away disappointed—as much as it was the initial draw, I almost wished that this hadn’t been metafiction at all. West Heart Kill is aggressively fourth-wall-breaking, but I’ll start with the in-universe plot: It’s 1976, and private investigator Adam McAnnis has joined his university friend James Blake for a Fourth of July party at an exclusive hunting club owned by the Blakes and five other wealthy f...

Originally posted May 13, 2024. “I’m asking you not to rob anyone.” “Even those who deserve it?” Arsène Lupin, gentleman burglar, might work on the opposite side of the law, but his adventures often sidle along detective story beats, whether that’s the riddle of the Hollow Needle or Lupin matching wits with an unknown serial killer. Occasionally Leblanc dabbled in straightforward mysteries… including ones that were politely stolen. ‘A Tragedy in the Forest of Morgues,’ from Confessions , is quite openly just ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ with the framing device of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost Special’. The overall effect is of someone blusteringly recounting the plot of ‘Rue Morgue’ over the phone in the minutes before they have to catch an airplane. It’s not good, basically. This wouldn’t be the last time that Lupin directly played amateur detective. Leblanc revisited the concept in the stories collected in L’Agence Barnett et Cie . The complication...