Today marks the release of All the Crime in the World: Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Puzzles from Across the Globe, edited by Gigi Pandian and Tom Mead, and I’m delighted to have my story “The Fourth Guest” included among its fourteen original impossible-crime tales.
This is a particularly exciting anthology for fans of locked-room mysteries. The editors have assembled writers from around the world, each contributing a brand-new impossible crime. The result is a showcase of the many different directions the genre has taken while remaining faithful to its roots.
My contribution, “The Fourth Guest,” is a new Rowan Manory mystery that begins with a murder mystery party built around a locked-room puzzle—only for the planned fictional crime to become a real one.
The anthology also features stories by Victor Bonini, Shelly Dickson Carr, S.A. Cosby, Anne van Doorn, Martin Edwards, Sulari Gentill, Paul Halter, Christopher Huang, Vaseem Khan, Josh Pachter, Masaya Yamaguchi, Ovidia Yu, and a brand-new collaboration by the editors themselves.
The collection has already received a starred review from Publishers Weekly:
“The cleverness and variety on display will thrill fans of classic detective fiction.”
The paperback edition is available now, with hardcover and e-book editions to follow.
You can order directly from Crippen & Landru here:
https://crippen-and-landru.myshopify.com/products/all-the-crime-in-the-world
James Scott Byrnside 
Very much looking forward to this collection!
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Me too. I haven’t read any of the other stories yet.
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This looks like something I might enjoy. 🙂
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Are you sure the subject isn’t too niche for you?
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Variety is the spice of life, James.
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My copy arrived today and I read your story, “The Fourth Guest” first. I smiled all the way through it. Putting Manory and Rowan into an inverted tale was brilliant. The locked room trick was clever and who would have thought that the solution would depend on the difference between shades of white. Well done.
I look forward to reading the other stories, including those from Martin Edwards, Paul Halter, John Dickson Carr’s granddaughter as well as Gigi Pandian and Tom Mead.
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I meant “Manory and Williams” in the above.
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That’s great to hear, Scott. It was a blast to write in that voice. I’d been watching a lot of true-crime interrogations and the narcissism on display was horrific and funny in equal measure.
The stories are VERY different–good examples of the potential for locked-room mysteries to be used for different purposes. SA Cosby’s story was probably the most traditional and I got a real kick out of it.
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