The second collection of the cases of Dr Sam Hawthorne is a significant step-up from the first. That was a high quality set of locked room murders and impossible crimes, but as it detailed the first stories in the series, there was a certain roughness to the stories, which settled down towards the end.
More Things Impossible details the next fifteen of Sam’s cases, and the tone and quality is much more consistently excellent.
Each story is a perfect example of the fair-play mystery. Contained within less than twenty pages, you get the set-up, the clues and the solution to some excellent mysteries without it feeling at all rushed. I’ve said before that Hoch was the master of the short story mystery, and this book collects what I consider to be some of his finest work. He seems to have made a point of devising situations and/or solutions that are new, rather than rehashing old locked room tricks, and while a couple of the solutions are possibly a little contrived, there’s nothing of the standard of some of Carr’s machinations – the gadget involved in the solution of Fatal Descent springs to mind.
Highlights of this collection for me are The Problem of the Revival Tent – a man is stabbed to death in the middle of an empty circus tent with Sam himself being the only suspect; The Problem of the General Store – a twist on The Judas Window involving shotguns; The Problem of the Gypsy Camp – a man dies of a heart attack, only a bullet is found inside his heart during the autopsy and The Problem of the Tin Goose – a barnstorming plane lands safely only for the pilot to be found dead inside the locked cockpit.
I’ve read all of the stories that are in the next collection, but I hope Crippen and Landru hurry the next volume out anyway, as I’ll certainly be granting it pride of place on my shelf. This is an excellent series, and I heartily recommend it to any amateur sleuth.
UPDATE: It’s been out of print for ages, but an ebook version has finally arrived. Hurrah!
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
I’m really looking forward to the next collection from crippen & Landru – Doulgas Greene has been promising it for ages! Thanks for the Aficionado link – you inspired me to create another blog just to discuss all things detective over at: http://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/
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[…] with multiple suspects and often (indeed always in the Sam Hawthorne books – see here and here for more info) a locked room or impossible crime to figure out. Of course, you won’t find […]
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[…] the plot had been spoiled for me in another work – possibly one of the Sam Hawthorne stories by Edward D Hoch involving a… oh, can’t say that without giving a […]
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I would like to buy this book but cannot afford the book sold on Amazon. Used books starting from $203.00. Any suggestion where else to look for it? Thank you.
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Blimey. When did this get so expensive? That’s a real tragedy – all I can suggest is that you keep checking ebay or abebooks.com for an affordable one. Also the crippenlandru.com page, but until it comes back into print, good luck.
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[…] Impossible, which you can still find, but not cheaply, and the next fifteen are collected in More Things Impossible, which is out of print – Amazon has one used copy, going for over […]
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[…] including my favourite, the impossible crimes of Dr Sam Hawthorne – as collected here, here and mentioned here, he wrote a number of Holmes stories over the years and they have been collected […]
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[…] Sam Hawthorne. The first twelve are collected in Diagnosis: Impossible and the next fifteen in More Things Impossible, both, along with this one collected by Crippen & Landru. The second volume is also available […]
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[…] is the fourth collection of short stories featuring Hawthorne, following Diagnosis: Impossible, More Things Impossible and Nothing Is Impossible, featuring the run of stories from The Problem Of The Problem Of The […]
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[…] More Things Impossible […]
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[…] Puzzle Doctor @ In Search of the Classic Mystery praised the collection finding it improved a lot on the first volume. […]
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