H.M. Faust is a Croatia-born mystery writer who "primarily specializes in writing impossible crime stories" and "his main goal is to push the limits of the mystery genre, merging bizarre storylines and modern narrative techniques with the tropes of the Golden Age period of detective fiction" – who previously published his fiction under the pseudonymous acronym "DWaM." Jim Noy reviewed three of his stories back in 2020 and Stephen M. Pierce compiled "The DWaM Top 5." So pretty much an underground phenomenon, but one that's beginning to claw its way to the surface.
Back in December, Faust published Gospel of V (2023) on Amazon with the intention to eventual re-release all his previous work starting with a short story collection and his longest work to date, An Odyssey to the Castle of Vampires (2023). Earlier this year, Faust dropped me an e-mail to ask if I wanted to read Gospel of V without strings attached or even expecting a review. Naturally, I wanted to the read his take on the locked room mystery. And, of course, I'm going to review it!
The first half of this dual narrative is the manuscripts part, titled The Fall of House Cosmigrove, which introduces the Cosmigroves headed by their dying patriarch, Joseph Cosmigrove – a genius scholar and "revolutionary voice of the century." Joseph Cosmigrove has four children with the oldest, Mundus, groomed from birth to become his successor ("Mundus' only crime was being born first"). His brothers and sisters were spared their brother's fate, but they were expected to excel in their assigned or chosen disciplines. Sofia choose music and became one of the most successful violin players in the world. Constantin took up the brush, "he, like Mundus, was forbidden from sculpting," to garner fame by "painting scenes of sculptures." Ishmael Cosmigrove became a writer, "a mystery writer of little renown," who presumably narrates the story, but curiously is never mentioned by name. Mundus remained with his father as his siblings scattered to pursue their disciplines, but returned when Joseph Cosmigrove became gravely ill. Cosmigrove told his son to sell the old house and move them somewhere more suitable to recover or die. But the moment the family reunites, strange things start to happen.
After their first night back together under one roof, the household discovers someone has dug a large, deep and rectangle-shaped hole in the garden with a human skeleton lying at the bottom of it! A garden surrounded by an electrified, ten-feet tall fence. So who buried it and why? When they bring the skeleton to the collection room for a closer examination, the door bell rings and find a young, disheveled man on their doorstep. The young man introduces himself as Lane Prospero and announces, "I'm a Great Detective." Lane Prospero urgently needs to speak to Joseph Cosmigrove, but the family immediately suspect the whole thing is a setup and begin banging on about the skeleton in the garden. But when they want to show the skeleton, it has disappeared from the locked collection room. This is not the last impossibility of the story!
The second half of the dual narrative follows Sparrow and Chariot, senior editors of "a niche venture dedicated to putting out amateur detective fiction" ("...Chief was a huge fan of Japanese writer Yukito Ayatsuji"), who are assigned to go over an unpublishable manuscript – The Fall of House Cosmigrove by Virgil Hesse. A one-day fly who made a splash a few years ago without ever writing a followup to his bestselling debut. Or so it appeared. Hesse delivered the manuscript of The Fall of House Cosmigrove to his editor with the urgent message to publish it "in case anything happened to him," before disappearing from the face of the earth. The chapters featuring the two editors are my favorite part of the book as they dissect the manuscript, throw out observations and critical comments or trying to construct their own solutions ("insert the obligatory locked room lecture here"). More importantly, they give a voice to the critical reader and armchair detective raising an eyebrow at how the manuscript unfolds. To quote Sparrow, "he's aware of the tropes. He understands the concept of impossible crimes. He understands the general flow of detective logic. But there's no – I don't know how to even describe it – mysterious events are happening, but that's about it." Those mysterious events in the manuscript begin to pile up quickly.
Most notably, the seemingly impossible murder of Joseph Cosmigrove. Stabbed to death in his bedroom, while his male nurse was standing outside the door. I also enjoyed how much Faust got out of the stabbing in the locked library and the skeleton's disappearance from the collection room by playing on some of the normally oldest, cliched tropes of the locked room mystery. A fantastic example of what can be achieved when you know, understand and are willing to built on the history of the genre your working in. Particularly if your intention is to take the detective story apart and reassemble it in a different order. In that regard, Faust delivered on the statement that Gospel of V is "built in honor and deconstruction of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction" to "keep readers guessing until the very end." Who knew you can use a deconstructionist approach to create, like cutting new shapes with a pair of hedge clippers, instead of being wielded like a sledge hammer to destroy? Purely as a locked room mystery, it's the solution to Joseph Cosmigrove's murder giving the book a future claim as one of the impossible crime classics of the 2020s! Now this specific locked room-trick is at its core-idea not brand new, but the previous examples that spring to mind are terribly basic and dressed down by comparison. Faust really went to work on it and something only made possible by the ambigious, often bizarre structure of the novel. My description of Gospel of V has so far done no justice to that important aspect of the overall story.
Just to give an idea, Gospel of V has a rather useless "A Challenge to the Reader" after the halfway mark followed by an Intermission with the subtitle "The Jesus Christ Murder Case." It's a short story within a dual narrative rewriting the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as an unexpectedly good locked room mystery. Surprisingly, the sealed cave has very little to do with it! And a very intermission for a detective story with a biblical touch to the plot and characters. After all, the story begins with stating that the conception of Cosmigrove's children were all immaculate ("and so great was Joseph Cosmigrove that he had himself a different Mary for each of his four miracles'). Or the excellent chapter in which the gruesome crime scene described in the manuscript is finally discovered and the deduction chapters in which Sparrow and Chariot drag out the solution. I was immensely satisfied with the conclusion to this ambitious meta-detective novel and locked room mystery with multiple, well-handled impossibilities with one absolute standout or simply how it toyed with the role of the Great Detective. So it's almost petty to start nitpicking about a small, nagging detail, but I've to do it.
This contains a small, but not unimportant, spoiler (ROT13): gur fgbel boivbhfyl gnxrf cynpr va gur abg fb qvfgnag cnfg naq ebhtuyl jura vf, rknpgyl, n ovt zlfgrel, ohg abg bhgevtug fgngrq. Jura gur Terng Qrgrpgvir nccrnef ba gur fprar, Cebfcreb vf erzrzorerq nf univat orra “va gur zvqqyr bs Gur Erq Dhrra Zheqref onpx va '85” jvgu nabgure yvar fgngvat gung gur zheqref unccrarq guerr lrnef ntb. Vg'f riraghnyyl erirnyrq gur Fcneebj naq Punevbg puncgref gnxr cynpr va 1987 jvgu gur npghny znff zheqre qrfpevorq va gur znahfpevcg unccravat va 1985. Gung pbashfrq zr nf V fhfcrpgrq guebhtubhg gur fgbel V jnf orvat zvfyrnq nobhg gur lrne va juvpu vg gnxrf cynpr. Sbe rknzcyr, gur bcravat puncgre zragvbaf gur fvoyvatf bppnfvbanyyl r-znvyrq va gur gra lrnef fvapr yrnivat ubzr, juvpu frrzf hayvxryl sbe '85 be '87. V qba'g guvax vg jnf rira pnyyrq r-znvy hagvy gur rneyl 1990f. Va 1987, Lhxvgb Nlngfhwv'f unq whfg choyvfurq Gur Qrpntba Ubhfr Zheqref. Fb ubj pna ur rira or ersreerq gb nf n zlfgrel jevgre “jub serdhragyl rzcyblrq gur gebcr bs univat gjb cnenyyry aneengvirf unccravat va gur fnzr obbx”? Pbhcyrq jvgu gur ntrf bs gur punenpgref, V fhfcrpgrq gur fgbel ernyyl gbbx cynpr fbzrgvzr orgjrra 1995 naq 2005, juvpu sbe fbzr ernfba unq gb or bofpherq. That was a bit distracting at times as I keep looking how that could figure into the story. It didn't.
Other than that little inconsistency, Faust penned a fair play meta-locked room mystery as deceiving and ambitiously constructed as it's written with its "wishy-washy first person narration" belying its deviously original and tricky plot – expertly hidden underneath it all. Some knowledge and awareness of Golden Age-style detective fiction and locked room mysteries in general is required, because you won't fully appreciate Gospel of V otherwise. But, when you do, it's a fascinating and engrossing read from start to finish. Particularly in light of recent developments.
I'm seeing two different strains of impossible crime fiction, and writers, evolve from the current locked room revival in front of my eyes! On the one hand, you have, what can be called, the traditionalists who came out or can be tied to the reprint renaissance. These writers include Tom Mead, J.S. Savage and Gigi Pandian whose locked room mysteries aim to restore the fair play detective story to its former glory and cite John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson as their main influence. On the other hand, you have the as of now unnamed strain (mavericks?) influenced by the translation wave and especially the Japanese shin honkaku writers. A movement that revitalized the traditional detective story in Japan with their college-age detectives, corpse-puzzles, strange architecture and a fresh take on the impossible crime problem. You can find these ideas applied to the Western genre in the locked room mysteries by James Scott Byrnside, A. Carver, Faust and Noy's The Red Death Murders (2022). Interesting times, indeed!