Entertaining and Impossible
In Mystery Scene’s 100th issue I listed the 5 Most Ingenious Impossible Crimes. In fact, the list could have been called the 5 Most Entertaining Impossible Crimes, since I excluded some of the cleverest of these (The Three Coffins, for example) if they weren’t terrifically well written.
You can get that issue of Mystery Scene here. In the meantime here are the Next 5 Most Entertaining Impossible Crimes:
6. What a Body! By Alan Green (1950)
This won the Edgar award in 1950 for Best First Mystery, and I doubt there have been many firsts better than this one. Set at an exercise resort, this very funny book gently lampooned physical fitness enthusiasts, and the murder victim was the fittest and most enthusiastic of them all. The unusual and absolutely original impossible crime had the victim found dead in a locked room wearing pajamas with the pajamas covering the wound. Hard to explain but oh, so easy to read.
7. Have His Carcase, by Dorothy Sayers (1932)
Now let’s not have any arguments here. Sayers did write some very hard-to-get-through books, The Nine Tailors being the classic example. But she was one of the best idea generators the mystery has ever seen, and she also invigorated the form when she started the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane romance, which features in this book. It’s well-paced, fun, entirely original, and her insanely impressive knowledge of literature permeates without polluting. The puzzle here is a body found dead on a beach with no footprints to account for the murderer, and there is also no accounting for how Sayers came up with this brilliant idea.
8. Invisible Green, by John Sladek (1977)
This book would have made the Top 5 were it not for the fact that Sladek deliberately wrote it as a throwback to the Golden Age, and some of today’s readers may find it a bit stagey. In fact it’s a gentle parody of the classic puzzle novel, with not one but two impossible crimes: one is a murder in a locked room with a new kind of solution, and the other a murder that takes place while all the suspects are together in a room across town from the victim. An absolute gem.
9. Hard Tack, by Barb D’Amato (1991)
D’Amato loves the classic puzzle mystery, and has had several successes incorporating inventive ideas into the modern mystery thriller. This is one of her Cat Marsala “Hard” mysteries, and has journalist Cat on an ocean-going boat trip when one of the passengers is found with a slit throat in a locked (and guarded!) cabin. It was no small thing to come up with a brand new solution to the locked room mystery in 1991, but D’Amato pulled it off. And as with all the books in the “Hard” series, there’s a fantastic, nail-biting action scene at the end as Cat fights it out with the killer.
10. Whistle Up the Devil, by Derek Smith (1953)
A masterpiece of ingenuity. This is a sprightly tale of amateur detective Algy Lawrence and his attempt to prevent the impending murder of Roger Querrin. He fails, despite being one of three people guarding the murder room while the crime occurs. Another murder in a locked room follows – this one a killing of a prisoner in a locked cell. This is one of those Golden Age mysteries without much connection to police procedure and reality – Algy is buddies with the police superintendent and gets to do whatever he wants. But it’s fast, friendly, and fabulously, fiendishly clever. Watch out for a future blog dedicated to this book.