Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Vampire Tree
WORK NOTES: trans by John Pugmire
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 6/19/1956
WEBSITE: http://www.paulhalter.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: French
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Halter * https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Halter/e/B00465ORBS * http://www.mysteryfile.com/Halter/Locked_Rooms.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born June 19, 1956, in Haguenau, Alsace, France.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Professional with France Télécom. Formerly also held jobs selling life insurance and playing guitar.
MIILITARY:Served in the French Marines.
AWARDS:Prix du Roman Policier, 1987, for La quatrieme porte (The Fourth Do0r); Prix du Roman d’Aventures, 1988, Hunkaku Mystery Award, 2005, and named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Mysteries of 2013, all for Le brouillard rouge (The Crimson Fog).
WRITINGS
Contributor to magazines, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
SIDELIGHTS
French author Paul Halter is considered among the best contemporary writers of “locked room” mysteries. Inspired by the work of John Dickson Carr, Halter began writing mysteries after a brief stint in the French Marines and subsequent jobs in insurance and telecommunications. Since the 1980s, he has completed more than thirty mystery novels, including the popular “Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst” series and the “Owen Burns and Achilles Stock” series. He also writes short stories, many of which have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
“Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst Series”
Halter’s first published novel, translated as The Fourth Door, is set in pre-World War II England and introduces protagonists Dr. Alan Twist and Chief Inspector Archibald Hurst of Scotland Yard, who team up to solve seemingly impossible crimes. In this case, a murder occurs behind a locked door–but the victim is not the same person who had been locked in the night before, and the door’s seal has not been broken. When another body is discovered inside a house surrounded by undisturbed snow, with no sign of tracks or entry, the investigating officer wonders if some supernatural trick has been played. But Dr. Twist is convinced that the crimes can be solved via logic. The Fourth Door was a best-seller in France and won the Prix du Roman Policier.
In Death Invites You, the murder victim is Harold Vickers, the best-selling author of mystery novels featuring locked-room puzzles. Vickers’s wife is surprised when two dinner guests summoned by Harold’s invitation arrive at the house. She says that her husband has been locked in his study for several days, and she knows nothing about a dinner. When Vickers is found dead in his locked dining room, his face in a pan full of boiling oil, Dr. Twist and Inspector Hurst wonder whether he had predicted–or even arranged–his own death.
The Picture from the Past, described by a Publishers Weekly reviewer as “absorbing,” follows three plot lines: Dr. Twist and Inspector Hurst are trying to find a killer who has dissolved the bodies of three victims in acid; a Londoner named John Braid becomes obsessed with the cover photo of a cheap romance novel; and, years earlier, three men are involved in a locked-room murder. “The fair-play resolution will delight fans of impossible crimes,” said the reviewer.
Among the other books in the series available in English, The Vampire Tree has received particular praise. Newly married, Patricia Sheridan is traveling by train from London to the village of Lightwood, where her husband’s family estate is located. She becomes so upset by a conversation with a stranger that she misses her stop and finally arrives at the estate very late. That night, she dreams that an old tree visible from her bedroom window has attacked her. To her horror, she learns that a murder had occurred near this tree and a vampire is supposedly buried there. Describing the The Vampire Tree as suspenseful and “ingeniously constructed,” a Publishers Weekly contributor thought that Halter provides more complex character development than is typical of genre writing of this sort.
“Owen Burns and Achilles Stock” Series
Set in early 1900s England, Halter’s “Owen Burns and Achilles Stock” series opens with The Lord of Misrule. Eccentric amateur detective Owen Burns, whom a Publishers Weekly reviewer compared to Oscar Wilde, is drawn to a country estate where a mysterious being conducts an annual ritual of terror. This figure is known as the Lord of Misrule, and over the years he has committed murders so clever that no one has been able to solve them. This year, however, Owen is determined to stop the villain.
A series of strange paintings seems to connect several bizarre deaths in The Seven Wonders of Crime. A man dies of thirst in a locked shed, but there is a full container of water next to his body. Another is stabbed to death in a pergola surrounded by smooth mud that contains no footprints. Before each victim is discovered, police receive a cryptic painting. Burns figures out that each painting contains a coded references to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World–and from this clue, he and Inspector Stock eventually find the killer.
In The Phantom Passage, Burns is shocked when an old friend, American diplomat Ralph Tierney, asks for his help. Tierney had been chased into shabby Kraken Street by police who had mistaken him for someone else. Three people on the street encouraged him to hide in a nearby building, which he did. But when he emerged, Kraken Street had disappeared. Burns learns that Tierney is not the only one who has reported this eerie experience, but he eventually discovers a logical explanation for seemingly supernatural events.
Other Novels
Among Halter’s highly regarded stand-alone novels is The Crimson Fog. The book, noted a writer for Publishers Weekly, reveals Halter’s “ingenuity at misdirecting the reader.” Part one, set in 1887, follows narrator Sidney Miles, who is set on solving the stabbing murder of Richard Morstan, an illusionist. Morstan was killed behind a stage curtain as he was preparing to perform a magic trick. Miles’s investigation provides the backdrop, in part two, for the author’s retelling of the Jack the Ripper murders, with particular focus on the killer’s almost magical ability to disappear after committing his crimes.
Set in the mid-1930s, the stand-alone novel The Invisible Circle “offers a neat variation on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Gerry Pearson has invited a group of relatives and friends, among them his niece, Madge Pearson, and London friend Bill Page, to his remote castle in Cornwall to attend what he had told them would be an important get-together. When they arrive, they are shocked to hear that he has summoned them to witness a death. He then assigns each guest an identity based on the King Arthur legend and shows them a sword that he claims is Excalibur and a chalice that he says is the Holy Grail. A locked-room murder is discovered, and the surviving guests are terrorized. The Publishers Weekly reviewer admired Halter’s skill in heaping “impossibility upon impossibility” before finally revealing how the culprit pulled off the crime.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2007, review of The Night of the Wolf, p. 38.
Publishers Weekly, October 7, 2013, review of The Crimson Fog, p. 32.
Publishers Weekly, October 25, 2013, Lenny Picker, “When You Eliminate the Impossible . . . PW Talks with Paul Halter.”
Publishers Weekly May 19, 2014, review of The Invisible Circle, p. 52.
Publishers Weekly, October 27, 2014, review of The Picture from the Past, p. 72.
Publishers Weekly, June 15, 2015, review of The Phantom Passage, p. 64.
Publishers Weekly, November 30, 2015, review of Death Invites You, p. 41.
Publishers Weekly, October 31, 2016, review of The Vampire Tree, p. 54.
ONLINE
Flash Bang Mysteries, http://flashbangmysteries.com/ (April 16, 2016), Barry Ergang, review of The Demon of Dartmoor.
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/ (June 19, 2016), review of Death Invites You.
Mystery File, http://www.mysteryfile.com/ (July 25, 2017), John Pugmire, “Paul Halter, a Master of Locked Rooms.”
Paul Halter Home Page, http://www.paulhalter.net (July 25, 2017).
Series
Owen Burns
The Lord of Misrule (2010)
The Seven Wonders of Crime (2011)
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Novels
The Fourth Door (2010)
The Demon of Dartmoor (2012)
The Seventh Hypothesis (2012)
The Tiger's Head (2013)
The Crimson Fog (2013)
The Invisible Circle (2014)
The Picture from the Past (2014)
The Phantom Passage (2015)
Death Invites You (2016)
The Vampire Tree (2016)
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Collections
The Night Of The Wolf (2006)
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Paul Halter was born in Hagenau, Alsace, in 1956. He pursued technical studies in his youth before joining the French Marines in the hope of seeing the world. Disappointed with the lack of travel, he left the military and, for a while, sold life insurance while augmenting his income playing the guitar in the local dance orchestra. Upon discovering the writings of John Dickson Carr, he gave up the guitar for the pen.
He has since written over 30 novels, almost all “locked room,” including La Quatrieme Porte (The Fourth Door,) which won the Prix du Roman Policier in 1987, and Le Brouillard Rouge (The Crimson Fog,) which won the coveted French Prix du Roman d’Aventures in 1988, the prestigious Japanese Hunkaku Mystery Award in 2005, and was named as one of the Publisher’s Weekly Top Mysteries of 2013.
The Fourth Door and The Crimson Fog are both available in English, as are The Lord of Misrule, The Seven Wonders of Crime, The Demon of Dartmoor, The Seventh Hypothesis and The Tiger’s Head.
M. Halter is a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: The Call of the Lorelei, The Tunnel of Death, The Night of the Wolf, The Robber’s Grave, Nausicaa’s Ball, The Gong of Doom, The Man With the Face of Clay and Jacob’s Ladder and more to come.
In 2006 his collection of short stories ‘The Night of the Wolf’ appeared in English, to critical acclaim.
For more information and articles about Paul Halter, please go to:
http://lockedroominternational.com/
Paul Halter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Halter (born 19 June 1956 in Haguenau, Bas-Rhin) is a writer of crime fiction known for his locked room mysteries.[1]
Halter pursued technical studies in his youth before joining the French Marines in the hope of seeing the world. Disappointed with the lack of travel, he left the military and, for a while, sold life insurance while augmenting his income playing the guitar in the local dance orchestra. He gave up life insurance for a job in the state-owned telecommunications company, where he works in what is now known as France Télécom. Halter has been compared with the late John Dickson Carr, generally considered the 20th century master of the locked room genre.[2] Throughout his more than forty books his genre has been almost entirely impossible crimes, and as a critic has said "Although strongly influenced by Carr and Christie, his style is his own and he can stand comparison with anyone for the originality of his plots and puzzles and his atmospheric writing."
His first published novel, La Quatrieme Porte ("The Fourth Door") was published in 1988 and won the Prix de Cognac, given for detective literature.[3] The following year, his novel Le Brouillard Rouge (Red Mist) won "one of the highest accolades in French mystery literature", the Prix du Roman d'Aventures.[4] He has published more than forty books. Several of his short stories have been translated into English; by June 2010 six had appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; ten were collected and published by Wildside Press as The Night of the Wolf.[5]
Bibliography
Novels
Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst novels:
La quatrième porte (The Fourth Door) 1987
La mort vous invite (Death Invites You) 1988
La mort derrière les rideaux (Death Behind the Curtains) 1989
La chambre du fou (The Madman's Room) 1990
La tête du tigre (The Tiger's Head) 1991
La septième hypothèse (The Seventh Hypothesis) 1991
Le diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor) 1993
A 139 pas de la mort (139 Steps from Death) 1994
L'image trouble (The Blurred Image) 1995 (Translated as The Picture from the Past, Locked Room International, 2014)
La malédiction de Barberousse (The Curse of Barbarossa) 1995
L'arbre aux doigts tordus (The Tree with Twisted Branches) 1996 (Translated as "The Vampire Tree", Locked Room International, 2016)
Le cri de la sirène (The Siren's Shriek) 1998
Meurtre dans un manoir anglais (Murder in an English Manor) 1998
L'homme qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds) 1999
L'allumette sanglante (The Bloody Match) 2001
Le toile de Pénélope (Penelope's Web) 2001
Les larmes de Sibyl (Sibyl's Tears) 2005
Les meurtres de la salamandre (The Salamander Murders) 2009
La corde d'argent (The Silver Thread) 2010
Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past) 2012
La tombe indienne (The Indian Tomb) 2013
Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst short stories:
Les morts dansent la nuit (The Dead Dance at Night) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
L'appel de la Lorelei (The Call of the Lorelei) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
Meurtre à Cognac (Murder in Cognac) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
La balle de Nausicaa (Nausicaa's Ball) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011
La tombe de David Jones (David Jones' Tomb) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011
Owen Burns and Achilles Stock novels:
Le roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule) 1994
Les sept merveilles du crime (The Seven Wonders of Crime) 1997
Les douze crimes d'Hercules (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules) 2001
La ruelle fantôme (The Phantom Passage) 2005
La chambre d'Horus (The Chamber of Horus) 2007
Le masque du vampire (The Mask of the Vampire) 2014
Owen Burns and Achilles Stock short stories:
La marchande de fleurs (The Flower Girl) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
La hache (The Cleaver) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
Other novels:
Le brouillard rouge (The Crimson Fog) 1988
La lettre qui tue (The Deadly Letter) 1992
Le cercle invisible (The Invisible Circle) 1996
Le crime de Dédale (The Crime of Daedalus) 1997
Le géant de pierre (The Stone Giant) 1998
Le mystère de l'Allée des Anges (The Mystery of Angels' Lane) 1999
Le chemin de la lumière (The Path of Light) 2000
Les fleurs de Satan (Satan's Flowers) 2002
Le tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger) 2004
Lunes assassines (Killers' Moon) 2006
La nuit du Minotaure (The Night of the Minotaur) 2008
Le testament de Silas Lydecker (The Will of Silas Lydecker) 2009
Spiral 2012
Other short stories:
L'escalier assassin (The Tunnel of Death) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
Un rendez-vous aussi saugrenu (untranslatable pun) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
Ripperomanie (Rippermania) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) in the collection La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
Le spectre doré (The Golden Ghost) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011 and "The Night of the Wolf" (English Edition) 2006
Le regard étrange (The Unsettling Gaze) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011
L'abominable homme de neige (The Abominable Snowman) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011 and The Night of the Wolf (English Edition) 2006
Le clown de minuit (The Midnight Clown) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011
La malle sanglante (The Bloody Trunk) in the collection La balle de Nausicaa 2011
Short story collections:
La nuit du loup (The Night of the Wolf) 2000
La balle de Nausicaa (Nausicaa's Ball) 2011
PAUL HALTER, A MASTER OF LOCKED ROOMS, by John Pugmire
The two figures stand at the top of the hill and survey the desolate winter landscape, still and silent under the full moon. In front of them is a smaller hill. The man they are trailing has just begun his descent towards the frozen lake less than a hundred yards beyond.
Nothing else is moving in this lonely place. The snow has just stopped, leaving a thin, pristine blanket as far as the eye can see; the wind is creating small flurries in the baleful light. Now the two men walk slowly down into the small depression between the hills, temporarily losing sight of their quarry. They become aware of a strange intermittent whistling sound which can be heard above the wind, interrupted by a sudden, hideous scream. As they crest the brow of the new hill, they are stunned to see the inert form of the man they have been following lying at the edge of the snow-covered lake. Their eyes scour the landscape, from the slope of the hill down to the distant clumps of lakeside trees dimly visible in both directions. The only footprints that can be seen on land or lake are those forming a lone trail leading to the sprawling figure, evidently made by the victim himself; everywhere else there is powdery snow. They hasten down towards the lake, creating fresh tracks of their own. Reaching the body, they turn it over: the man has been stabbed through the heart. But there is no weapon to be seen, either on the surrounding ground or on the surface of the adjacent lake, where the flurries of snow are still dancing in the wind…
For those who yearn for the Golden Age of detective fiction and in particular for the classic “locked rooms” of John Dickson Carr, take heart: only the lack of a publisher stands between you and new-found happiness! Paul Halter, a forty-something Frenchman, has donned the mantle of the great JDC and has to date produced twenty-nine novels and a collection of short stories, all replete with cunning clues, brain-twisting puzzles and always “fair play” solutions. All in the grand manner … and all in French.
Paul Halter first came to prominence in 1987 when he won the Prix de Cognac, given for detective literature, with his first published novel La Quatrieme Porte (The Fourth Door). The following year he received one of the highest accolades in French mystery literature, the Prix du Roman d’Aventures, for Le Brouillard Rouge (The Red Fog). The first novel introduced M. Halter’s principal series detective, Dr. Alan Twist, a tall, thin, pipe-smoking Englishman in his late fifties, aided and abetted by the rambunctious Chief Inspector Archibald Hurst of Scotland Yard in whose lap seem to fall every impossible crime in the country, the country in question being England.
For, although Paul Halter hails from France, the vast majority of his novels are situated in England – because he feels it has a unique atmosphere, and because his beloved Carr and Christie both set the majority of their stories there. M. Halter, who was born in 1956 in Haguenau, Alsace (a region which for most of its history was a pawn in the Franco-German wars), dreamed initially of becoming a poet. That all changed when, as a teenager, he discovered Carr’s He Who Whispers and became immediately captivated by the locked-room genre, quickly devouring everything by Carr then available in French. Already writing stories for his own gratification, he nevertheless recognized that it was not a paying career and decided to train as an electronics engineer. Despite being, by continental standards, a best-selling author, it is still to this day necessary for him to augment his income as a writer by working part-time at communications giant France Telecom. Crime – at least Golden Age crime – doesn’t pay.
His first published novel, The Fourth Door, takes place in the late1940’s in a small English village, on the outskirts of which looms the sinister and forbidding Darnley House where, twenty years before, the lady of the mansion was found hideously slashed in a locked attic room. Since that time, mysterious noises emanating from the attic have driven every tenant away, until the arrival of a spiritualist couple who claim to be able to reach the deceased in the afterworld.
One of them decides to encounter the lost spirit by spending the night in the infamous room, which is sealed with wax bearing the imprint of a rare coin selected only minutes beforehand by one of the observers. When the seals are broken, the dead body of a stranger lies in the barren room, a dagger in its back. The window, of course, had been locked from within. Later, a second victim is found shot point-blank in an otherwise empty house, surrounded by virgin snow. Once again, the elusive murderer has found a way to vanish without trace….
One of the protagonists is a prodigal son obsessed with Houdini and his escape routines; he is seen at the same instant by two witnesses one hundred miles apart. And that’s just the first half of the book. Needless to say, Dr. Twist finds a perfectly rational explanation for everything.
The Red Fog is a more complex tale with undercurrents of Edgar Allan Poe, set in Victorian times and hence with a different detective. It starts with a typical Halter brain-twister: a magician has claimed to a group of young girls that he can conjure up a ghost. A makeshift theater has been created by curtaining off one end of a large room in the top floor of the rambling country house. The girls sit in chairs and sofas in one part of the room while the magician opens or lifts up each of the articles of furniture on stage to show that nobody else is there. The curtains close; there is a cry and a thud; and when the curtains are drawn back moments later, the magician is lying there stabbed to death.
The puzzle is actually solved halfway through the novel, but by that time the perpetrator has fled, and it is at that point that the Jack-the-Ripper murders start in London, the dark shadows form, and the story becomes decidedly more gruesome….
Just as Carr had two principal detectives, so too does Paul Halter. Owen Burns is a moneyed dilettante who lives in the London of the early 1900’s (and who seems to be based on none other than Oscar Wilde). He, too, specializes in impossible crimes, the more the merrier, solved inevitably with verve, grace, and good humor. In one of my personal favorites, Les Sept Merveilles du Crime (The Seven Wonders of Crime), Burns tracks down a disarmingly demented killer who perpetrates no less than seven “impossible crimes” before being caught; in Les Douze Crimes de Hercules (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules) he unmasks the perpetrator of a dozen crimes, about half of which are seemingly impossible – even the prolific M. Halter can’t string a dozen together in one book.
The extract at the beginning of this article is liberally adapted from another Burns book: Le Roi du Desordre (The Lord of Misrule). Halter has also set several of his books in ancient times, explaining among other things, how the Minotaur was slain!
I make no claims that Paul Halter is a master stylist in the manner of a Ruth Rendell or a Reginald Hill: the development of in-depth characterizations is not crucial to his stories. What Halter does do is to deliver cracking yarns loaded with dark menace, whole shoals of red herring, and, above all, diabolical puzzles worthy of The Master in his prime. Indeed, what is striking to those of us who felt that Carr had just about mined every possible locked-room seam – and whose later books seemed frankly bereft of new ideas – is the freshness and originality of Halter’s riddles.
It is no mean feat to create thirty or more puzzles worthy of Carr that the maestro himself never imagined. Furthermore, Halter, while every bit Carr’s rival in the creation of eerie atmosphere, is closer to today’s writers in his willingness to incorporate gore and horror more explicitly in his stories.
As for M. Halter himself, he stands as one of the very few authors prepared to defend the Golden Age banner, for which he offers no apology, cost him what it may. As Dr. Twist says in A 139 Pas de la Mort (139 Steps from Death):
“The mystery novel has become the vehicle for a social message and for exploring humanitarian and philosophical issues. It is almost indispensable these days to portray the police as corrupt and the murderer as the innocent victim of fate… There’s never any doubt about the identity of the villain: it’s always ‘society’. And all that, of course, while wallowing in the most stupefying utopianism.”
Is this defiance of the modern trend the reason why Paul Halter’s works, which have been translated into German, Italian, and Japanese, haven’t yet been published in English? Possibly. There has been no revival of interest in Carr’s work in the U.S. as there was in France in the 1980s, from which M. Halter undoubtedly benefited. And, despite the success of the JONATHAN CREEK impossible-crime series on British television, none of Carr’s work has been reprinted in the U.K. for many years.
Nevertheless, two of Halter’s short stories have made it into print here: one, “The Call of the Lorelei,” appeared in the July 2004 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and a second, “The Tunnel of Death,” is due to appear in the March/April 2005 double issue. Both are part of a collection of eight stories entitled The Night of the Wolf, seven of which are “locked room.” Bob Adey, the undisputed guru of the genre – who gave generously of his time to work closely with me on the translations via the Internet and transatlantic phone – calls the stories “little gems,” and says of Halter: “Not only does he come up with ingenious solutions, but he has a marvelous talent for inventing completely new impossible crime situations.”
Ed Hoch, the astonishingly prolific master of the impossible-crime short story, says: “As Paul Halter’s stories begin reaching American readers in EQMM and elsewhere, I think they’ll discover a combination of baffling mystery and eerie atmosphere not encountered since the glory days of John Dickson Carr. One of my great pleasures this year was reading English translations of eight Halter stories in a collection which I hope will find an American publisher soon.” Is it too much to hope that some enterprising independent publisher will take the risk of swimming against the tide?
As for the novels, The Fourth Door [La Quarta Porta in Italian] has already been translated into English, but it has not yet found a publisher “because the characters lack depth” according to one. Undeterred by this, work has nonetheless commenced on two more, all with M. Halter’s active and enthusiastic encouragement. Anglophile that he is, he dreams of the day he can see his works appear in English the world over.
PAUL HALTER: A Locked-Room / Impossible Crime Bibliography
Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst novels:
La Quatrieme Porte (The Fourth Door) 1988 [Prix du Roman Policier, Festival de Cognac, 1987]
La Mort Vous Invite (Death Invites You) 1989
La Mort Derriere le Rideau (Death Behind the Curtain) 1989
La Chambre du Fou (The Madman’s Room) 1990
La Septieme Hypothese (The Seventh Hypothesis) 1991
La Tete du Tigre (The Tiger’s Head) 1991
Le Diable de Dartmoor (The Devil of Dartmoor) 1993
A 139 Pas de la Mort (139 Steps from Death) 1994
L’Image Trouble (The Blurred Image) 1995
La Malediction de Barberousse (Redbeard’s Curse) 1995
L’Arbre aux Doigts Tordus (The Tree with the Twisted Fingers) 1996
Le Cri de la Sirene (The Siren’s Song) 1998
Meurtre dans un Manoir Anglais (Murder in an English Manor) 1999
[First appeared as a promotion with the French version of the game “Cluedo.”]
L’Homme Qui Aimait les Nuages (The Man who Loved Clouds) 1999
L’Allumette Sanglante (The Bloody Match) 2001
Le Toile de Penelope (Penelope’s Web) 2001
Owen Burns and Achilles Stock novels:
Le Roi du Desordre (The Lord of Misrule) 1994
Les Sept Merveilles du Crime (The Seven Wonders of Crime) 1997
Les Douze Crimes de Hercules (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules) 2001
Novels set in ancient Greece or Crete:
Le Crime de Dedale (The Crime of Daedalus) 1997
Le Geant de Pierre (The Stone Giant) 1998
Le Chemin de la Lumiere (The Path of Light) 2000
Other novels:
Le Brouillard Rouge (The Red Fog) 1988 [Prix du Roman d’Aventures, 1988]
Le Cercle Invisible (The Invisible Circle) 1996
Les Fleurs de Satan (Satan’s Flowers) 2002
Le Tigre Borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger) 2004
Short story collections:
La Nuit du Loup (The Night of the Wolf) [Nine stories, seven of which are impossible crimes]
Other mysteries (not “locked room”):
La Lettre Qui Tue (The Letter that Kills) 1997
Le Mystere de l’Allee des Anges (The Mystery of Angel Lane) 1999
This article and bibliography first appeared in Mystery*File 47, February 2005.
PAUL HALTER: FOUR REVIEWS, by John Pugmire
For those of you interested in learning more about Paul Halter, I offer four reviews, each of which represents a different aspect of his recent work:
Le Crime de Dedale: Daedalus’ crime was killing the Minotaur. (You thought it was Theseus whodunit? According to Halter, Daedalus – the da Vinci of ancient Crete – got there first!) He declares he will slay the creature while he himself is locked in another room of Minos’ palace. The Minotaur is kept in a room in a sunken chamber, down steps at the bottom of which is a door to which Minos himself has the only key. The chamber has an open roof around which are
stationed four soldiers under orders to survey the proceedings whenever Minos is down there. Minos leads Daedalus down to check the Minotaur is alive and returns him to his room. When Minos again leads Daedalus down, he finds the Minotaur’s throat has been cut.
The solution is completely without precedent, to my knowledge, and is brilliantly simple: as in Maskelyne’s celebrated walking-through-the-wall illusion, what appears to be the biggest impediment is in fact the key to the whole effect. (Footnote). This book is probably the best of Halter’s several excursions into the Ancient World, the others being Le Geant de Pierre (The Stone Giant) and Le Chemin de la Lumiere (The Path of Light), in each of which a present-day group of adventurers attempts to solve a mystery of the past from archaeological clues and the sections of the story alternate between past and present.
Les Sept Merveilles du Crime (The Seven Wonders of Crime) – which I am halfway through translating – is set in 1905 London and features Owen Burns with Inspector Wedekind as the police foil. A seemingly demented killer is sending paintings with warning notices containing clues concerning impending murders, each of which is linked in some way to a Wonder of the Ancient World, and each of which, when it occurs, turns out to have been impossible to commit: a lighthouse keeper is set aflame in the middle of a raging storm which prevents all access, an archer is felled by a shot from such a distance that proper aiming was out of the question, a man dies in a pergola surrounded by a sea of mud, etc., etc.
It is an astonishing feat to concoct seven entirely distinct and original impossible crimes – at least four of which are top drawer – within the covers of one book (the nearest competitor being Pierre Boileau with Six Crimes Sans Assassin which did have some repetition in the murders.) This may be my favorite Halter: the rapidly-moving plot, while containing the usual high content of twists and turns, is not quite as frenetic as The Fourth Door (with an impossible crime every third chapter, it doesn’t need to be) and the character development is better. The effete Burns – a more fully-developed character than Twist – is torn between his instincts as an investigator and his admiration for the ‘artistic’ (i.e murderous) abilities of the perpetrator. The identity of the latter comes as a true surprise, and the conclusion, every bit as extraordinary as the sequence of crimes, wraps everything up very satisfyingly.
Le Tigre Borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger). As Bob Adey has observed, Paul Halter’s genius lies not only in finding ingenious solutions, but in first dreaming up the impossible situations to be solved. Nowhere is this more evident than in Le Tigre Borgne, set in the British Raj of the 1870’s. A prince’s life has been threatened and he is due to die at midnight. He has taken refuge in a room at the top of his palace set in a crocodile-infested lake. There is no window in the room except for a viewing aperture three feet wide and one foot high. His only companion is a pet rat. The room is accessed from a courtyard guarded by a baby elephant, but to reach it one must pass through three doors, the first of which is a massive external door whose bolts are so stiff the strongest man can neither knock it down, nor move the bolts by reaching through the tiny side window. At the top of the stairs is an ante-chamber, also with a locked door. Finally, the internal bronze door to the prince’s room has a lock for which only one copy of the key exists, which is always on the royal person.
A squad of hand-picked royal guards patrols the perimeter of the palace at a frequency which makes it impossible to climb the sheer walls of the palace without detection. A larger squad patrols the banks of the lake. And, just in case all the foregoing is too easy, there’s another tower thirty feet away in the lake, from the top of which a limited view into the prince’s room is possible. A witness perched there sees a scuffle between two figures, one of which then vanishes, and the prince’s body is found with a knife in its back shortly thereafter. Every door is, of course, locked on the inside.
The story starts very slowly, but once the impossibilities are gradually unveiled the pace picks up and, hard as it may be to envisage, there really is a ‘fair-play’ solution. Oh, and Halter also throws in a solution to the Indian rope trick as a bonus…
Les Larmes de Sibyl (Sibyl's Tears), doesn’t contain any ‘locked-room’ puzzles per se, but the events therein do nevertheless appear to be almost impossible, and to solve the mystery requires all the skills Dr. Twist – accompanied by the irascible Hurst – can bring to bear. A gifted psychic suddenly appears in a Cornish village in search of Sibyl’s Tears, the name given by the locals to a hidden spring in the forest caused, legend has it, by tears from the legendary soothsaying sprite Sibyl. When challenged to use his powers to solve a crime committed several years beforehand, he describes clues which he himself doesn’t understand, but which nonetheless lead to discovery of the body. After that amazing success, he is asked to help with two other unsolved mysteries, with the same results. Before he has the chance to apply his psychic prowess to a fourth, he is murdered.
The pacing and character development are deftly handled and the reader is constantly wrong-footed by Halter, who juggles the several suspects in a masterly fashion before producing a stunning denouement. With this book, he
demonstrates he can not only write excellent stories in the Carr tradition, but is capable of work reminiscent of some of the best of Christie.
Footnote: I can explain the Maskelyne trick for anyone who doesn’t know it. It’s one of the all-time greats and diabolically clever.
PostScript: I understand that La Ruelle Fantome will be published next month (November 2005), and that henceforth the Burns stories will be published by Labor and the Twist stories by Le Masque. Tout se complique.
***
UPDATE [11-30-07]. Since this article first appeared there have been a number of novels published in French and a collection
of ten short stories, The Night of the Wolf, has appeared in English (Wildside Press, 2006). See below. For the latest information, please visit www.paulhalter.com.
Short stories in English: add “The Night of the Wolf” EQMM, May 2006
and “The Robber’s Grave” EQMM, June 2007
and another story in EQMM, sometime in 2008.
The Night of the Wolf, the 2006 collection of 10 short stories, received the following critical acclaim: a Publisher’s Weekly starred review, a EQMM four-star review, and was nominated for a Barry Award.
Dr Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst novels: add Les Larmes de Sibyl (Sibyl’s Tears) 2005 (Le Masque de l’Annee 2005)
Owen Burns and Achille Stock novels: add La Ruelle Fantome (The Phantom Passage) 2005
and La Chambre d’Horus (The Chamber of Horus) 2007
Other Novels: add Les Lunes Assassines (Killer Moons) 2006
Novels set in Ancient Greece or Crete: add La Nuit du Minotaure (The Night of the Minotaur). Set for publication 2008
In French
When You Eliminate the Impossible...PW Talks with Paul Halter
By Lenny Picker |
Oct 25, 2013
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In The Crimson Fog, French master of the impossible crime novel Paul Halter offers his take on the Jack the Ripper mystery.
When did you first become fascinated with impossible crimes?
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by mystery. The fairy tales, with the evil witches and horrible ogres, that my parents and grandparents read to me fascinated me but made me tremble with fear. And when I started to read, I always chose mystery stories. I didn’t discover locked-room wizard John Dickson Carr until later, but his books led to my own.
How do you go about writing?
The starting point may be a news story, a particular theme, a mysterious place, a trick for a perfect crime. I never start writing before I’ve mapped the whole story out, and become comfortable with the overall atmosphere of the book. Explanations of perfect crimes, sophisticated alibis, and locked room murders don’t just happen—they’re part of a carefully constructed plan. I also need to believe in my story, so that it makes me shiver just as the earlier ones did in my adolescence. In that sense, I’m not really a professional writer. I just can’t write a story dispassionately: I must believe in it.
Do you develop an impossible scenario and then try to figure out a plausible solution?
I always have a few ideas put aside, carefully noted on bits of paper I keep in an old shoe box. But it’s also very exciting to start with a challenge, to imagine the most impossible crime possible and to try to find a solution. In The One-Eyed Tiger, I attempted a triple-locked room—inaccessible, sealed, and an eye-witness to the crime. I owe one novel to a friend, who proposed a crime in a room in which the only exit was covered by a spider’s web. When I get what seems to be a clever idea, I make sure I test it out, using lighting effects, mirrors, locks, windows, etc.
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Why write about the Ripper?
The dark alleys with uneven cobblestones, the baleful light of the gas streetlamps, and the insidious fog hiding a lurking murderer—it’s the quintessential mystery. His crimes were hideous and revolting, arousing the voyeurism that lies dormant in each of us. A policeman stumbling on the steaming entrails of the murderer’s last victim, in a place where there had been no one five minutes earlier—that cannot leave you indifferent. On top of the horror, there is the mystery, elevated to a degree never surpassed. Which mask hides the identity of the monster? Why the terrible butchery? How can he escape capture when the whole of Scotland Yard is on his heels?
A version of this article appeared in the 10/28/2013 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: When You Eliminate the Impossible...PW Talks with Paul Halter
The Vampire Tree
263.44 (Oct. 31, 2016): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Vampire Tree
Paul Halter, trans. from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International, $19.99 trade paper (220p) ISBN 978-1-539139-35-5
First published in French in 1996, this exquisite entry in Halter's long-running Dr. Alan Twist series (Death Invites You, etc.) couples creepy atmospherics in an unlikely setting--an outwardly placid English village--with a sympathetic but troubled main character. Newlywed Patricia Sheridan is traveling from London by train to the quiet backwater of Lightwood, but after a disconcerting conversation with a stranger, she misses her stop. When Patricia, who has warned her new husband of her unpredictable mood swings, finally makes her way to the Sheridan ancestral home, she has a nightmare about being attacked by the old tree visible from her bedroom. That vision becomes more terrifying after she learns that a supposed vampire was buried under the tree, which was also the site of an impossible murder. Deeper characterizations than Halter's usual enhance this ingeniously constructed fair-play puzzle, which golden age fans will find hard to put down. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Vampire Tree." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. 54. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470462510&it=r&asid=10746095329300bda583ccaa6ef4f141. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470462510
Death Invites You
262.48 (Nov. 30, 2015): p41.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Death Invites You Paul Halter, trans. from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International (lockedroominternational.com), $19.99 trade paper (154p) ISBN 978-1-518668-75-3
An incredibly bizarre, impossible crime distinguishes Halter's whodunit set in 1930s London featuring brilliant criminologist Dr. Alan Twist and Scotland Yard's Insp. Archibald Hurst. Hurst's colleague, Det. Sgt. Simon Cunningham, receives an unusual message from his future father-in-law, Harold Vickers, who's a bestselling mystery author specializing in locked-room puzzles. Vickers directs Simon to cancel any other plans and show up at his house for dinner without telling anyone, especially his fiancee, Valerie. When Simon arrives at the Vickers' home, the writer's wife, Diane, expresses ignorance about the invitation. After another guest arrives, Simon finds Vickers behind a locked door, slumped dead over a table set with food that has just been cooked, his face immersed in a frying pan, and his hand clutching a gun. Halter (The Picture from the Past) tosses in more murders and bizarre happenings before unveiling an answer that, while clever, isn't his finest. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Death Invites You." Publishers Weekly, 30 Nov. 2015, p. 41+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA436981927&it=r&asid=f24e2ab22e72fe2a86503b15e291bc10. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A436981927
The Phantom Passage
262.24 (June 15, 2015): p64.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Phantom Passage
Paul Halter, trans. from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International (lockedroominternational.com), $19.99 trade paper (168p) ISBN 978-1-511939-92-8
How can an entire street disappear? That seeming impossibility is but one of the challenges Halter sets for Owen Burns in the Oscar Wilde--like sleuth's ingenious third whodunit translated into English (after 2011's The Seven Wonders of Crime). One autumn evening in 1902, Ralph Tierney, an American diplomat, bursts into the London rooms of his old friend Owen, to whom he relates a bizarre story. After being mistaken for a fugitive by the police, Ralph fled, only to end up in a shabby passage named Kraken Street, where he encountered a lunatic, a blind man selling grapes, and a lady of the evening, who directed him to enter a building. Later, he emerged and walked to the end of the block, only to find that Kraken Street had vanished. When Owen goes to Scotland Yard, he learns that others have had similar experiences, which include visions of the future. Once again, Halter crafts a completely logical and plausible explanation for the fantastic. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Phantom Passage." Publishers Weekly, 15 June 2015, p. 64. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA418342399&it=r&asid=890b881793c304cf1b776fc4fe1fff92. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A418342399
The Picture from the Past
261.43 (Oct. 27, 2014): p72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Picture from the Past
Paul Halter, trans. from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International (www.lockedroominternational.com), $19.99 trade paper (180p) ISBN 978-1-502301-81-9
Halter (The Tiger's Head) neatly intertwines three distinct plot lines in this absorbing entry in his long-running crime series featuring Dr. Alan Twist. In 1959 Essex, England, Twist and Chief Insp. Archibald Hurst of Scotland Yard find the gruesome remains of the third victim of a killer who dissolves his victims' corpses in acid. Meanwhile, Londoner John Braid, a man who lies to his wife about his employment, is obsessed with a photo used for a banal romance novel's cover. The image depicts a "perfectly ordinary street. A row of modest brick houses, a small shop with its owner at the door." Under hypnosis, John mutters something about a "few notes of music," a "mauve flower," and death, leaving the reader to puzzle out the connection with a narrative set some years before the main action involving three men in black and a locked-room murder. The fair-play resolution will delight fans of impossible crimes. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Picture from the Past." Publishers Weekly, 27 Oct. 2014, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA388565028&it=r&asid=4e6aa16e5e948808f873cf01b9ff7e2e. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A388565028
The Invisible Circle
261.20 (May 19, 2014): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Invisible Circle
Paul Halter, trans. from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International
(www.lockedroominternational.com), $19.99 trade paper (152p) ISBN 978-1-497336-83-4
Set in 1936, this fiendishly clever standalone from French author Halter (The Crimson Fog) offers a neat variation on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Londoner Madge Pearson, accompanied by boyfriend Bill Page, travels to Cornwall to attend "a very important get-together" hosted by her creepy uncle, Gerry Pearson, at his remote castle. On arrival, their host reveals to the couple and an odd assortment of guests, none of whom Madge knows, that they are there to witness a death. Uncle Gerry assigns everyone identities from the King Arthur legend, and displays what he claims to be Excalibur and the Holy Grail. That's just a prelude to a locked-room murder, which begins a terrifying ordeal for the survivors. Halter piles impossibility upon impossibility before unveiling logical explanations for everything. Some readers will go back to the beginning to appreciate how fair the author was in planting clues. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Invisible Circle." Publishers Weekly, 19 May 2014, p. 52. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA369462348&it=r&asid=a7c27f58b55189ead60d2a691d29b59d. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A369462348
The Crimson Fog
260.40 (Oct. 7, 2013): p32.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Crimson Fog
Paul Halter, trans, from the French by John Pugmire. Locked Room International (www. lockedroominternational.com), $19.99 trade paper (184p) ISBN 978-1-491244-23-4
First published in France in 1988, this brilliant fair-play mystery from impossible crime master Halter (The Seventh Hypothesis) showcases his ingenuity at misdirecting the reader and his unique approach to the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. In the first part, set in 1887, an openly unreliable narrator, Sidney Miles, returns to his hometown of Blackfield in disguise to solve a murder that "no one, absolutely no one, could have committed." The stabbing death of Richard Morstan as he was preparing a magic trick behind a curtain has spawned legends of a phantom killer. Miles's inquiries stir the pot, and other baffling murders follow. This section sets the stage for a suspenseful and historically accurate retelling of the Whitechapel slayings that focuses on the killer's seemingly supernatural ability to disappear after committing his butcheries. As in the best whodunits, the solution is both logical and surprising. Golden Age fans encountering Halter for the first time will want to seek out his other, equally artful puzzles. (Dec,)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Crimson Fog." Publishers Weekly, 7 Oct. 2013, p. 32+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA348452369&it=r&asid=c070f0f6ca80e0a73d4ec7ce376a9d5d. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A348452369
The Night of the Wolf
254.42 (Oct. 22, 2007): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Night of the Wolf PAUL HALTER, TRANS. FROM THE FRENCH BY ROBERT ADEY AND JOHN PUGMIRE. Wildside (www.wildsidepress.com), $12.95 paper (160p)ISBN 978-0-8095-6259-6
Most of the l0 outstanding stories in this collection from French author Halter, the first English-language edition of his work, center on an impossible crime, a still potent subgenre that was once a fixture of last century's golden age of detective fiction. Halter sets up puzzles for his sleuths that appear to defy any rational explanation and then provides logical and satisfying solutions that few, if any, readers will anticipate. John Dickson Carr fans should be particularly impressed by the variations Halter plays on the no-footprint-in-the-snow-near-the-corpse premise, especially with "The Abominable Snowman," in which witnesses see a snowman come to life and stab a man to death. Readers intrigued by such situations as how bodies in a locked vault could move around or how three people could be shot to death in a sealed escalator with no one nearby, will relish these tales. One hopes that Halter's impossible crime novels will soon be made available in English as well. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Night of the Wolf." Publishers Weekly, 22 Oct. 2007, p. 38. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA170508675&it=r&asid=d9c72663f7b912c70aebfdf47a31b9b0. Accessed 6 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A170508675
June 19, 2016
Death Invites You by Paul Halter
Death Invites YouAlan Twist’s friend, Inspector Archibald Hurst, is claiming boredom. After weeks of dealing only with “thugs”, he wants a meaty case. Be careful of what you wish for…
Meet Harold Vickers, the acclaimed mystery writer whose reputation is on the wane. But apparently he has one great book left in him. The mysterious tale of someone who receives an invite to dinner, only when they arrive, they discover their host’s quarters locked. On breaking in, they discover a freshly cooked meal on the table, with the host face down in a still-sizzling frying pan. And for some reason, there is a bowl of water near the locked window. DS Simon Cunningham, the paramour of Vickers’ daughter, received an invite from Vickers to come to dinner. On arriving, he finds his host’s quarters locked and… well, you can problem figure out the rest. Needless to say, Inspector Hurst’s spell of boredom is well and truly over…
Death Invites You (La Mort Vous Invite) is chronologically only the second Alan Twist mystery and the third book written by Paul Halter (after The Fourth Door and The Crimson Fog, which gets a rather clumsy, spoilerish reference early on). As today is Paul’s sixtieth birthday, this review is part of Paul Halter Day, as hosted by JJ over at The Invisible Event. In total, there are currently twenty one Alan Twist novels, of which six have been translated to date, including this one, by John Pugmire, in a rather ecletic order. It’s worth pointing out at this point that the fact that the book is a translation could pass the reader by – it’s an excellent job on his part.
As for the plot – I think this might be my favourite book from Halter. The set-up is utterly bonkers and the reader may well suspect that there is no way that the author can possibly come up with a solution that makes an ounce of sense. And things get even more complicated before there is even a hint of an explanation. And yet…
… it works. The machinations of murder, bizarre as it may seem, have a reasonably straightforward explanation – as long as you ignore the fact that nobody could smell the meal while it was cooking – and, like the best locked room mysteries, working out the how (and why) doesn’t completely signpost the who.
All in all, this is a bit of a cracker. I’ll say no more, for fear of spoiling anything, but this is a top-notch mystery from the master of the fantastic impossible mystery. Highly Recommended.
And be back later today for another Paul Halter post…
Review: THE DEMON OF DARTMOOR (1993) by Paul Halter
April 16, 2016Barry Ergang, Reviews
Over a period of several years, mysterious deaths have occurred in the English village of Stapleford—deaths apparently caused by an invisible man. Three of them involving teenaged girls occurred on Wish Tor, “the favorite spot for local lovers….A massive granite spur, at the foot of which a rushing stream splashed noisily against the rocks on its way to the village a mile below, some found its shape reminiscent of the Sphinx.” The fourth occurred in Trerice Manor when the woman of the house was pushed down a flight of stairs by an invisible entity. Witnesses to a couple of the events on Wish Tor saw the victims thrust out their arms, as if they’d been shoved from behind, to try to prevent themselves from falling a moment before they plunged to their deaths into the stream far below. At midnight on the day after Eliza Gold vanished, Basil Hawkins beheld a headless horseman ride into the sky.
Spring forward several chapters and a few years later to the story’s present, the mid-1930s. Actor and playwright Nigel Manson has a hit on his hands with the play he’s written and co-stars in with Nathalie Marvel, a comedy titled The Invisible Man, inspired by his past visit to Stapleford and, in particular, by a visit to Trerice Manor where he heard the story of the village’s invisible killer. Nigel surprises his wife Helen with the news that he has purchased and renovated Trerice Manor, and that they will be spending a couple of weeks there. Joining them the first weekend, he tells her, are Nathalie Marvel and Frank Holloway, the man who promoted Nathalie to stardom.
When the invisible murderer strikes yet again, claiming another victim in front of several witnesses, chief constable Superintendent Weston requests help from an old friend, the head of Scotland Yard, who in turn assigns Inspector Archibald Hurst to investigate the crime. “He had a knack—all his colleagues were unanimous on this point—for being stuck with all the most complex cases.” Hurst calls upon his friend Dr. Alan Twist, criminologist, who “often lent a hand in the investigations,” to accompany him to Stapleford.
The solutions to a couple of the murders struck me as a bit of a stretch, although they weren’t entirely implausible.
Thanks to John Pugmire’s translations, I’ve now read four of Paul Halter’s exceptional novels—two starring Alan Twist, two starring Owen Burns—and a collection of his short stories. I am certain the great John Dickson Carr, were he alive and thus able to read Halter, would not only admire him but also conceivably envy him for his inventiveness in concocting and solving seemingly impossible crimes. Halter’s oeuvre is invariably compared to Carr’s, and this is as it should be because Halter has readily admitted in interviews that impossible crime stories are his favorite kinds of detective stories and that Carr was his inspiration.
But there are significant differences between the two. Carr’s prose was richer—lusher, if you will—undoubtedly a product of the era in which he was raised, and influenced by the stories he read growing up. Halter’s narrative style is much leaner, and he has a fondness for using dialogue as much as possible to advance the story. Although Halter succeeds in creating an eerie or sinister atmosphere when one is called for, he’s no match for Carr, who was probably as good at atmospherics as anyone who has ever written. Carr has sometimes been criticized for weak characterization, but in that aspect he is definitely superior to Halter. The latter’s characters often have traits or interests that are vital to the story, but otherwise they are rendered in the sketchiest manner imaginable. Halter is more purely concerned with the puzzle elements in his work than any other mystery writer I can think of, and some of the puzzles he devises are very original.
My criticisms of Halter’s weaker qualities are not intended to dissuade readers. I have enjoyed every one of the novels and stories of his I’ve read, and I look forward to reading more of them if Mr. Pugmire continues to translate them. His work is eminently worth the time of any fan of Golden Age-style impossible crime stories, and should in fact be considered essential reading. And with that, The Demon of Dartmoor is strongly recommended.
For much, much more about Paul Halter and his work, see http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/p/paul-halter.html and http://www.mysteryfile.com/Halter/Locked_Rooms.html