死が招く―ツイスト博士シリーズ

Dr. Twist #2

by Paul Halter, 平岡 敦 (翻訳)

Did Harold Vickers, the best-selling author of impossible crimes foresee his own death, or did he possibly even arrange it? When two guests knock on her door with dinner invitations, Mrs. Vickers is dumbfounded, for her husband has been locked in his study for several days. Yet there are sounds and cooking smells emanating from the room, and when the door is broken down, a dead body resembling her husband is slumped over the fully-laden dinner table with its hands and face in a pan in which the oil is still boiling. The room is sealed and nobody could have got out of the room without being seen, yet the food is still cooking. A mysterious half-filled bowl of water sits beneath the shuttered windows. What connection is there with the death of his own father, who also died slumped over the table and promised to return from the grave to revenge his own death? Or the Lonely Hearts killer who recently terrorized London before committing suicide. This is LRI's eleventh Paul Halter translation. The author, a best-selling novelist in his native France, has written over thirty novels, almost all 'locked room' or 'impossible crime, ' and is widely regarded as the successor to John Dickson Carr. He appeared on BBC Radio 4's program 'Miles Jupp in a Locked Room, ' broadcast on May 21, 2012. An earlier novel 'The Crimson Fog' was named one of Publisher's Weekly's Top Mysteries of 2013. Locked Room International also translates and publishes the works of other international impossible crime authors past and present. For information about signed and lettered editions of all living authors please contact pugmire1@yahoo.com or go to www.mylri.com.

Genres: Mystery, Crime

197 pages

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Paul Halter is a writer of crime fiction known for his locked room mysteries. 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 presently 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. Throughout his nearly thirty novels 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. 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. He has now published more than thirty novels. Several of his short stories have been translated into English; by June 2010 six will have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; ten were collected and published by Wildside Press as The Night of the Wolf.

Reviews

[Fedra · Rating 2 out of 5]

You only have to think of ghosts for them to appear.

Read this for Halloween 2019, like I read The Fourth Door: The Houdini Murders for last year's halloween. I really liked the fourth door, so I gave this a chance. It wasn't nearly as good.

1. First of all, for such a short book, everyone is repeating everything. All the theories. The timeframe, the mystery, the impossibility etc.
2. I know that this is set to another past time, but constantly addressing females as the "weak sex" is really annoying.
3. The murderer was kind of obvious in my opinion.
3. Also, what kind of cover is this? I mean it's relevant, but...ugly 😱

[Gigi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another incredibly satisfying locked-room mystery by Paul Halter. I didn't see the clever ending coming.

[Irfan Nurhadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death Invites You, in my opinion, was an improvement from The Fourth Door. Although, the latter offered you an original and unique locked room mystery (also brilliant), I felt somehow that it hadn't reach its full potential. Death Invites You, on the other hand, gave me a bizarre setting; another unique locked room mystery; a (somehow) enjoyable pace; and quite a satisfying ending.

The premise alone would leave you scratching your head in bewilderment. A famous author of detective fiction, specialized in locked-room mystery, apparently committed suicide in his own locked-from-the-inside-study, where he just prepared a meal for a dinner appointment which is still hot. His guests, greeted by the author's wife who's absolutely clueless about the appointment, shocked to find the author lay dead on the table; his face and his hand lie on a frying pan, burnt of course; a gun on his other hand; a glove under his feet; and a strange looking bowl of water under the window. To top it all, the scene in which the author die is actually taken from the premise of his next book! I have nothing more to say than: What, in the name of sanity, was the explanation for all of that!

Ehem..
Anyway, the story felt a bit dragged in the middle, but found its own pace again about a quarter to the end. I loved the solution for the mystery, although it lacked a fantastic element as in The Fourth Door, it was simple and elegant. The best kind of solution there is.

So, definitely an improvement from the last book. 4 stars!

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Per ora è di sicuro il miglior Halter che abbia mai letto. Su questo non ho dubbio alcuno. Tanti sono gli aspetti del romanzo che mi hanno letteralmente affascinato: la complessità del plot, il macabro, il lato stravagante, persino una "succulenta" (come la definisce anche Hurst) camera chiusa. Mi sembrava di leggere un Carr, tanto era strana la vicenda dello scrittore Harold Vickers, assassinato da mano ignota in una camera chiusa a chiave dall'interno e, per giunta, accasciato su un bel tavolo (in particolare su un tegame pieno di olio bollente che ha ustionato mani e viso della vittima) ricco di luculliane pietanze, preparate per qualche impensata ragione dall'omicida. Straordinario. Dal punto di vista degli indizi è forse l'Halter più razionale tra i tanti letti, con una soluzione basata su prove e ragionamenti deduttivi, più che su intuizioni. Un finale che, sebbene sia prevedibile, è davvero molto teatrale (alla maniera di un Poirot e della sua leggendaria riunione in cui rivela il colpevole), e sbalestrante dopo la lunga sfilza di ipotesi e controipotesi che ribaltano ad ogni capitolo la situazione, in un costante turbinio di nuovi indizi e nuovi ( e presunti) colpevoli. La camera chiusa poi è davvero magnifica, di una semplicità sbalorditiva ma ben congegnata (dagli indizi pensavo sarebbe stata macchinosa, invece mi sbagliavo). Infine, mi hanno colpito le innumerevoli citazioni letterarie (alcune sottintese) di altri grandi autori del giallo: ho ravvisato un pó la Christie, per la difficile identificazione del cadavere; Carr lo si trova ovunque, nella stravaganza del luogo del crimine (ricordandomi un po' "I delitti da mille e una notte"), nella camera chiusa, nel nome dato da Twist al suo anatroccolo, Gideon.Davvero un eccellente libro.

[Umer Abbas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Halter is claimed to be the successor to the gap John Dickson Carr left upon his demise.

I being a fan of Carr and the golden age of detective fiction thought would give this a try.

Like Carr Paul deals with impossible crimes/locked room murders.

The misdirection used in this particular case has been used before.

I was able to guess the identity of the killer easily but that could just be me after reading an extensive range of locked room fiction.

To the author's credit there are plenty of red herrings and you will be lead down a garden path.

All in all not a bad read and a good nod back to the great times of detective fiction when it was in prime.

A good enough read for me to try his other works.

P.S. he mentions a lot of classic tropes in impossible crime fiction like the Mystery of the Yellow room.

[Zenandroid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, will re-read some portion because unfortunately i have a problem picturing and understanding explanations about keys and locks being manipulated and such.
Je n'ai pas trop aimé le caractère de Hurst, c'était certainement un choix intentionnel de l'auteur, mais je ne suis sérieusement pas d'accord.
Pas sûr d'avoir bien compris la solution (surtout les trucs par rapport aux serrures etc), mais la révélation éventuelle de l'assasin est pas mal, pas mal du tout.
Alan Twist était un detective ... moyen? rien de trop special, mais assez bon.
Vraiment VRAIMENT besoin de relire PERIODIQUEMENT la section à propos de l'explication des manip sur la serrure.
L'explication, maintenant que j'ai relue une partie à tête reposée, est bien satisfaisante.
Je recommande, je pense que je vais lire de prochains romans Paul Halter.

[Siler Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 Stars
Even when I guess the killer correctly (though to be fair, it was just a guess), I am still an idiot for not seeing the (cleverly hidden) obvious sooner! Death Invites You is a great follow up to The Fourth Door! True, it's not as ground-shaking as Fourth Door, but it's still very clever. If I had any complaints it would be that a little bit of the explanation of the Locked Room feels a little lost in translation (but that's just a nit-pick. The explanation IS clever, I just think It might have been better explained in the original French version) But in the end, don't let my nitpicks discourage you, this is highly recommended!

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

The quality of Halter's output varies greatly,but this one is one of his best.Again we find ourselves faced with locked room murders,red herrings and suspects aplenty.There is also a hint of the supernatural to keep us in the Dickson Carr style of writing that Halter has tapped into.
This will keep you guessing to the last page,
recommended!

[Rama · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one has a lot of mini-twists, and Dr. Twist extracts a tiresome one out at the end that Paul has set us up for. And the misattribution of Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of The Yellow Room to Arthur Conan Doyle on the part of a character was so easily predictable as something to be used for an intrigue that would show up later.

A passable one-time read.

[Siobhan M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another superb locked room murder mystery from the master, Paul Halter - lots of intriguing twists and I have to admit this one fooled me (I thought I had it until the very end!), it’s highly entertaining! I also really enjoy the Dr Twist & Inspector Hurst stories since, for once, the super sleuth’s sidekick is nearly as intelligent as him so they play off each other very well.

[Juan Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, the best book I read by Paul Halter. Fair play, interesting plot and clever solution.

[Tamzida · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things I liked
1.identity of the killer came as a complete surprise. Was expecting it the least
2. Explanation of how the killer left the locked room is simple and very satisfactory

[Silver Screen Videos · Rating 4 out of 5]

French mystery writer Paul Halter was born a couple of decades after the heyday of the so-called Golden Age of crime novels, but, if you didn't know any better and read one of his books, you'd swear he was born back in the 19th century. Halter specializes in locked room mysteries, and Death Invites You is patterned after the stylings of the master of the locked room, John Dickson Carr, for better and for worse.

Death Invites You, like many Golden Age books, features a "consulting" amateur detective who assists the police on tough cases. In this case, the detective is Dr. Twist, who, like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell, is a brilliant criminologist, but, unlike them, he is relatively quiet and nondescript. Twist's Dr. Watson is Scotland Yard Inspector Archibald Hurst. Unlike the "real" Dr. Watson, Hurst isn't a complete bumbler, but he has a habit of seeing only part of the problem in any crime and leaping to conclusions, propounding lengthy explanations of how the crime was committed, only to be proved wrong. Wrong or not, I liked Hurst better than the rather unobtrusive Twist, since the Inspector provided constant energy boosts to the book.

The actual mystery in Death Invites You is a good one, filled with flourishes and complications. A well-off mystery writer with a flair for the dramatic invites his daughter’s boyfriend (who is a police sergeant), and a newspaper crime writer to his house for dinner. When they arrive, they find the door to the dining room bolted from the inside and break it down, only to discover the dead body of the writer. who had been shot to death hours earlier, and they also find a freshly prepared hot meal on the dining room table. To make things even more bizarre, the staging of the crime scene recalls an unsolved murder from 20 years earlier involving a similar locked room.

As a locked room mystery, Death Invites You is quite good. I was able to figure about a third of the mystery out before the big reveal but did not guess the killer or how the crime was committed. However, when I checked back through the book, I noted that, like Halter’s mentor Carr and other mystery greats like Agatha Christie, Halter played perfectly fair with readers, revealing every single bit of evidence that later formed part of the solution.

Although the mystery in Death Invites You is good, the book isn’t all that great at character development. In fact, almost everyone is a stereotype there for the soul purpose of being parts of the mystery, much like the gun and the bolt on the door. There’s almost no humor in the book, unless you count Hurst’s constant well-meaning blunders, and the writing is extremely stodgy, old-fashioned, and overblown. For example, Halter foreshadows the crime in an early scene: “On that peaceful Saturday in September he had no idea that he was about to be handed ‘something really meaty’ that very evening, a locked room mystery to make him tear his hair out.” The book was originally written in French, so the style and language selection may be the doing of the translator, but it’s somewhat of a distraction.

A reader’s enjoyment of Death Invites You will pretty much depend on his or her liking for whodunits in general and locked room mysteries in particular. Fans of the genre will find Halter a worthy successor to Carr and that Death Invites You” includes a plethora of twists and complications, all of which are eventually explained. On the other hand, those who enjoy entertaining characters and stories that emphasize the human element will be disappointed. Fortunately, the book is short (under 200 pages) and reasonably fast moving, despite the stuffy writing. Since I do like this type of mystery, I’m rating the book at 3.5 stars rounded up to four based on the clever plotting and reveals at the end. I’m glad that I accepted Paul Halter’s invitation to read this book.

[Gregory Moses · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad that Locked Room International is making so many non-English mystery novels available in translation. Having said that, I'm less enthusiastic about Paul Halter than they seem to be; I always feel like his prose is a little stilted and unnatural. This particular novel has a fascinating premise, but the solution is pretty banal, and so is the detection; Dr. Twist really does very little until practically the last chapter, when a bit of dumb luck gives him the solution. And since the book description invites the comparison, Chief Inspector Hurst is no Masters; watching him repeatedly fail to identify a body is merely tedious, compared to the genuinely clever (but of course ultimately wrong) solutions that HM's rival could cook up in the better John Dickson Carr novels.

Also, it's hard to talk about without spoiling stuff, but I want to call out the actions of the murderer as being *impressively* incoherent. Finish the novel, and then ask yourself why he messed around the way he did.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it's a locked room mystery made spicier with a little hint of ghoulishness. Sooooo ....absolutely entertaining but the final explanation is more than just a bit complex ...but then what were you expecting?

It's a locked room mystery.

[March · Rating 1 out of 5]

A pretty straightforward locked-roomer, compared to the usual Halter custom of overdoing it. Dialogue and characterization are as usual very poor, especially the female characters (the artist Henrietta!). Halter writes characters and dialogue as though he had never in fact met another human being. As usual, preposterousness insulting to the intelligence reigns supreme, and some of the clues are clumsily transparent. And how pathetically incompetent when he strains for effect: “The painting of her father’s death had been given a touch of realism: it had been sprayed with [name redacted]'s blood.” The clue of the half-filled bowl of water peters out miserably.

[Jameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

FIRST READING 8/9/18: 4 Stars

Liked it. Great setup, great ending.

SECOND READING 11/25/20: 4 Stars

Liked it.

[Rajrupa Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

liked it.