Death Wore White

Is the ‘impossible crime’ story making a comeback? Fracture, a brilliant film of the recent past, was a masterly example of the genre. The Grinning Man was a splendid new episode of Jonathan Creek aired at New Year, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo describes part of the plot as a ‘locked room mystery’, though ‘closed circle mystery’ would be more accurate. And now we have Death Wore White by Jim Kelly, introducing a new detective duo, Shaw and Valentine. The publishers describe it as ‘the most ingenious thriller in years’ and the tag-line speaks volumes: ‘Nine people trapped in a blizzard. One brutal murder. Eight suspects who couldn’t have done it.’

And there’s more: ‘The crime scene is melting. The murderer has vanished. The body count is on the rise.’ Who could resist such a set-up? Certainly not me. Even the title of the book has a pleasingly traditional feel. And to cap it all, there’s a map of the crime scene!

I haven’t read Jim Kelly before, and the first thing to say is that he is a very talented writer. There are lots of good lines and neat similes in this book. His literary style appeals to me a lot. And he is very good at evoking place – the area around King’s Lynn.

The challenge he has set himself is to weld a classic whodunit scenario with a highly contemporary police investigation and an important sub-plot. It’s a very bold and ambitious concept, because of course, the ‘impossible crime’ story works most easily when it is far removed from the cold light of forensic science and painstaking police procedure.

I was impressed by the novel, although I felt slightly overwhelmed by the number of characters and the convolutions of the plot. Reading the book in short segments, due to pressure of work, I did find myself losing track at times, which was a pity. A cast list would have been very useful, as well as a further nod to the traditional whodunit. However, in the latter stages of the book the momentum was regained, and the disparate story-lines were pulled together rather cleverly. I shall certainly be reading more Jim Kelly.

The Grinning Man

No question about the highlight, for me, of the holiday season television schedules. It was last night’s episode of Jonathan Creek, a two-hour humdinger called The Grinning Man. It’s the first new Creek show for five years, but David Renwick, the brilliant writer who created Creek, has lost none of his flair for combining sharp wit with baffling murder mysteries. I’ve watched every Creek case, and I felt this was the best ever.

Alan Davies, of course, reprised the title role, but there was no sign of either Caroline Quentin or Julia Sawalha, his previous co-stars. No matter – he was soon involved in a complex puzzle involving the Nightmare Room in a spooky old mansion. Back in 1938, when the house was owned by one Jacques Futrelle, a Harvard professor spent the night in the Nightmare Room, which was duly padlocked and rendered totally inaccessible – but he disappeared, never to be seen again. It’s a classic set-up, which John Dickson Carr would have loved. Renwick also nods to one of the early masters of the locked room mystery by using the name of Jacques Futrelle – as fans of classic mysteries will know, the real Futrelle wrote a number of celebrated impossible crime stories featuring a cerebral sleuth known as ‘the Thinking Machine’.

The eponymous Grinning Man is a painting by Bosch, which hangs in the Nightmare Room. But even when the mystery of the fate of the professor (and of others foolhardy enough to overnight there) is solved, there is another apparently impossible puzzle to be unravelled.

For a 21st century television writer to display such mastery of the craft of the classic detective puzzle is in itself deeply impressive. But Renwick’s skill extends far beyond the technical – he knows how to entertain a modern audience and to keep viewers hooked from start to finish. This cunningly contrived story deserves to be recognised as a modern classic.