The Seven Wonders of Crime: Review

I was really looking forward to The Seven Wonders of Crime (1997) by Paul Halter. I got my hands on this book after reading reviews of his work over at the Puzzle Doctor's In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. Halter has been compared to John Dickson Carr for his abilities with locked room or impossible crime novel--and that made me quite giddy. I always enjoy a good impossible crime. I have to confess that I was pretty disappointed by Wonders. The premise is quite interesting. An "artist of crime"--so dubbed by our hero Owen Burns, whose vanity and opinion of himself puts Holmes to shame--has set out to commit the titular seven wonders of crime. The murderer has concocted seven impossible crimes based on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, so their artistry is two-fold: by creating the appearance of impossibility, whether it be the war-hardened soldier who dies of thirst with a glass of water right in front of him or the stabbing death of a man in a pergola surrounded by mud that shows no footprints but his own or the woman killed by a flowerpot apparently hurling itself off a high arch and landing on her head; and also by replicating in some form the details of the seven wonders. That's really quite an interesting premise for a crime novel.

My difficulties with the novel are several. Owen Burns is really quite insufferable. He is more full of himself than Sherlock Holmes. He goes on and on about his brilliance, how incompetent the police are, and what a dim bulb his friend (and chronicler) Achilles Stock is. In the Holmes novels, there are moments of warmth from the Great Detective--moments when the reader can tell that there really is some affection between the two friends. The few times Burns makes comments that are, I believe, supposed to indicate how valuable Stock's comments are (in the line of Holmes to Watson:  “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.” ), the compliments still come across as much more backhanded. I can't for the life of me figure out what keeps Stock hanging out with Burns--he says several times that Burns has "crossed the line" with a comment and, yet, he keeps coming back presumably because, like a moth with a flame, he can't stay away from the illumination. 

Except...to my mind Burns isn't particularly brilliant in this outing. Seven people die--quite horribly. Burns immediately spots what's going on, that is--the link to the seven wonders. But that seems to be the extent of his brilliance. He meets the possible suspects (and there aren't a whole lot of them to choose from...) and still has difficulty pinpointing the culprit and putting a stop to the killing. He couldn't figure out where the sixth murder was going to happen even though I (and, quite honestly, even though I read mysteries by the score, I still miss clues all over the place and don't make connections that many of my more learned friends out here in the internet do)--I spotted where it was going to happen as soon as the taunting message showed up and I had my eye on the culprit quite early on. And, finally, he seems genuinely shocked when the culprit admits their crimes and the purpose behind them. ("Owen deathly pale by now, waited a long time before turning his gaze from the setting sun." AND "...[the] words echoed strangely in Owen's ears. They had the ring of truth, yet his heart rejected them. His brain felt as if it were boiling, like the sea touched by the sun."). If he really had solved the crimes, then he should have had a nice sit-down session with Stock and explained the whole thing to his dim-witted friend. Instead he seeks out the culprit and, apparently, has details of the crime explained to him. There are moments when Holmes berates himself for being slow-witted, but I seriously think he would have figured this one out long before Burns and possibly saved a few lives in the process.

From what I gather from friends and other reviews on the internet, this isn't Halter's best work and that there are much better examples of his expertise with the impossible crime. The premise here was intriguing enough for me to give his work another try and to warrant giving the book ★★. I hope to enjoy my next taste a bit more. And would love to hear what you think is the best of his work to give me an idea of what might suit me better.