In the summer of 1924, reclusive inventor Horace Cobb is found dead inside his fortress-like workshop. The door was locked from the inside, the windows sealed with iron, and no one could have entered or left. Yet Cobb lies shot through the heart—his killer apparently a six-foot automaton dressed as a cowboy, revolver still smoking in its hand.
Among Cobb’s bizarre collection of machines, the police discover a wax cylinder recording made only moments before the crime. On it, Cobb’s own voice names his enemy—before the automaton’s tinny drawl interrupts, followed by the crack of a fatal gunshot. The recording seems to solve the mystery outright, but Detective Rowan Manory isn’t convinced. Somewhere in those five minutes of wax lies both the explanation of the impossibility and the clue to the real killer’s identity.
To find it, Rowan must pierce through layers of deception, suspicion, and mechanical trickery inside a castle where nothing is what it seems.
I’ll need a couple more weeks to whip Killer Pete into shape, but everything (character, plot, the majority of the dialogue) is set. I should be able to begin a new story soon. If I have three stories by January, I’ll be thrilled.
It’s About Impossible Crime Vol. II
- Killer Pete
- ?
- ?
- ?
- ?
James Scott Byrnside 
Oh, a second volume of It’s About Impossible Crime! Sounds great and suppose “Time Seals All Rooms” is going to be a short story? Just being curious 🙂
LikeLike
Possibly. I’m still mulling over if time will be a mechanism that seals the room or a locked-room scenario that has repeated over the years. For the next story, I’d like to write something intimate with a small cast.
LikeLike