MARY MONICA PULVER – Original Sin. Peter Brichter #4. Walker, hardcover, 1991. Diamond, paperback, 1993.

    This is a mystery novel that fellow blogger TomCat recently reviewed on his blog. Not only was what he had to say about it rather positive, but (and this almost never happens, and I mean never) I found a my copy of it the very next day in a box of books I just happened to be going through.

    It’s also a book included in Brian Skupin’s recent update of Bob Adey’s classic reference book of of Impossible Crimes (and if you’re interested in Locked Room mysteries and the like, this is a book you absolutely need to have, posthaste).

    And even more than that, Original Sin has all kinds of ingredients in it to intrigue anyone who loves old-fashioned puzzle-type detective stories: (1) it takes place at Christmas, in (2) an old manor house with (3) a detailed drawing of all three floors. More than that, the group gathered there together are (4) snowed in, and at the crucial moment, (5) the lights go out.

    Luckily the story does not take place in the 1920s or 30s, since the house does have a backup generator that can take care of most of the house. Dead is an elderly second cousin of Kori Brichter, wife of police sergeant Peter Brichter, whose fourth recorded case this is. It seems that while remodeling the house the two of them have just bought, she has also been doing some genealogical research into her family tree.

    But as she is talking to her cousin in private, she leaves the room momentarily, and that’s when the aforementioned lights go out. When she returns, the woman is dead, struck in the head by some large (6) blunt instrument. Problem is, there is no blunt instrument in the room, and tracing the whereabouts of everyone in the house, no one could have been in the room but the dead woman.

    The big plus in this tale is how well worked out the woman’s death is. I would have liked more specific attention to have paid to the mystery, however. Perhaps the author believed that if too much emphasis were placed on it, it might have been unraveled too quickly, but I think the secret was sound enough to withstand a little more scrutiny by those involved in the story.

    Not so good, from my point of view, is that all of the suspects, save maybe one, seems to have been friends, relatives, and acquaintances for a long time, and Original Sin was just another group adventure for them. When the circle of would-be killers is narrowed down so much thusly, it not only makes the first time reader of one of their stories feel a little left out (me),but it makes the observant one (not me) think a lot more about not whodunit, necessarily, but howdunit a whole lot more.

   A quibble, perhaps. Original Sin remains a solidly constructed Impossible Crime story, a definite throwback to the days were puzzle stories were de rigeur.