Department of Dead Ends: 14 Detective Stories By Roy Vickers
Very enjoyable. 😊 9780486236698 Long before there were 'cold case' TV shows, there was Roy Vickers's 'Department of Dead Ends', in which unsolved cases are dusted off years after the event and finally solved. Engaging, ingenious, and as enjoyable today as they were when first published. 9780486236698 This entire collection left me wondering if it was all brilliant, or a huge cop-out. A set of detective stories mostly focusing on the perpetrators instead of the detector, and where the crime is always solved by some luck and tenacity instead of leaps of logic. Strange. I did like quite a few of these--The Henpecked Murderer, The House in Your Hand, Marion, Come Back, and particularly Kill Me, Kill My Dog. Interestingly, while the focus on luck got on my nerves, that is apparently unrelated to whether I ended up really liking the story.
I think I'm going to land on 'brilliant.' I am tempted to give the book a 4, but some of the stories are dated or just too...British?...for me to really get into. So, a 3 it is, but fans of inverted mysteries will probably dig it. 9780486236698 I have found a new favorite murder author. I can't call his stories mysteries because he informs us of who the murderer is, as well as the murdered, in the first paragraph. His stories would be more accurately described as psychological drama.
The Department of Dead Ends is Scotland Yard's name for what we in the U.S. would call Cold Cases. These are unsolved murders that go dormant or cold because not enough evidence was garnered and too much time has passed. Vickers' detectives who work in the Department of Dead Ends usually by chance uncover clues that come together to solve a dead end case.
The stories are told mostly in third person narrator, limited. We read the thoughts and motives of the murderer shortly after we are introduced to him or her.
Sometimes we are listening to the reasoning of a psychopath, sometimes someone who, out of despair and perhaps temporary insanity killed someone but never meant to. Sometimes you are glad the murderer gets hanged (they all get hanged and you know that before you start the story), other times you wish it had turned out otherwise. Or rather, you wish they had not thrown their life away on someone who wasn't worth hanging for.
Sometimes the murders occur in a moment of passion; sometimes the plans are carefully set out. Even when the murder is impulsive, the cover up is still methodically planned. One finds oneself following the murderers steps and holding our breath as we wait to see how the Detectives (it's always Inspector Rason and Chief Inspector Karslake) put random facts together to discover by luck (usually) the incriminating evidence that convicts the guilty.
Sometimes the putting together of facts is a little too lucky or Inspector Rason's reasoning is a little stretching, but what makes these stories unique and worthwhile is the psychological study of the personality of the murderer. Vickers' insight is truly perspicacious. 9780486236698 Una lettura piacevole e leggera. 9780486236698
Highly entertaining inverted mystery stories (the reader knows who committed the crime, but the interest lies in how the detective solves the case) that appeared as a series in a British magazine in the 1930's. Vickers posits a (fictional) branch of Scotland Yard, the Department of Dead Ends, a repository for the unsolved cases of the yard. It's up to the brilliant detectives of this branch to solve these seemingly impenetrable mysteries. Vicker's characters are full fleshed and his plots ingenious. These are cracking good mystery stories, deserving of a wider audience. 9780486236698 Riletto per l'ennesima volta. I deliziosi racconti gialli di Vickers. 9780486236698 inverted detective stories -- a genre I had never heard of. Quite enjoyable, although I liked the stories better than I understood the endings. 9780486236698 A toy for Jiffy --3
The henpecked murderer --3
The yellow jumper --2
The case of the social climber --3
The rubber trumpet --2
A man and his mother-in-law (aka The man who could not hold women)--3
The house-in-your hand --2
Little things like that --3
Kill me, kill my dog --2
The nine-pound murder --3
Marion, come back (aka Wife missing)--3
The parrot's beak --2
A fool and her money --2
The man who murdered in public (aka The clue-proof murders)--3
***
Other Department of Dead Ends stories:
Dinner for two --3
The crocodile dressing case --3
The death position enigma --3
The man with the sneer --2
Blind man's bluff --3
The million-to-one chance --3 9780486236698 Fun inverted mysteries from the thirties and forties. I'd like to read one of his novels. 9780486236698
Highly entertaining inverted mystery stories (the reader knows who committed the crime, but the interest lies in how the detective solves the case) that appeared as a series in a British magazine in the 1930's. Vickers posits a (fictional) branch of Scotland Yard, the Department of Dead Ends, a repository for the unsolved cases of the yard. It's up to the brilliant detectives of this branch to solve these seemingly impenetrable mysteries. Vicker's characters are full fleshed and his plots ingenious. Department of Dead Ends: 14 Detective Stories