A Murder Coming

Chris Redmond is Director of Internal Communications at the University
of Waterloo.

Readers who are generally refreshed and amused by Ellery Queen’s
Mystery Magazine will thoroughly enjoy this book. It contains 14 stories
(12 of which first appeared in eqmm, and the other two of which may as
well have) by a Toronto-born author who has made his reputation crafting
mystery short stories with a twist. The collection’s emphasis is
“unconnected stories from Powell’s first decade as a crime
writer,” says Sellers in the introduction. The reader quickly starts
wishing for the 50 or so stories that didn’t find room here.

One story is a revised nursery rhyme. A couple are set in historical
eras, and a few in remote or exotic parts of Europe. “Have You Heard
the Latest?” is surrealistic, “The Eye of Shafti” is supernatural,
“The Ascent of the Grimselhorn” is delusional. There is a
locked-room puzzle, with nothing clichéd about it; and another story
depends on that time-honored cliché of the cryptic message left by the
murder victim. There is also “A Baksheesh from the North,” which is
not identifiably a mystery story at all, but a comedy with a hint of
crime and a layer of tragedy.

That the stories are not consistently set in English villages or
American suburbs is a pleasure; still more of a pleasure are the
occasional references to Canada, handled deftly enough that they do not
obtrude. Mr. Shaddock, the hero and victim in the tragicomic last story
owns a chain of stereo shops based in Toronto, although the tale takes
place somewhere in the mysterious East. More importantly, “The Beddoes
Scheme” is set in Cape Breton Island, and its central figure is Acting
Sergeant Maynard Bullock of the Mounties. Powell has told other stories
of Bullock’s slapstick incompetence: stuck three days in a tree while
on a stakeout; unable to get his superiors in Ottawa to listen to a
complete sentence in any of his reports. Corporal Renfrew could learn
much from this man, or perhaps has already done so.

Those who believe that detective stories should be light entertainment,
rather than intellectual puzzle or social commentary, will find—unless
they have already devoured his work in the magazines—that Powell meets
a long-felt need.