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Slightly frustratingly, too, reader is even possibly lied to so that the locked room method could be occluded — that’s up for debate — but at the same time there is a good attempt at providing some sense of the approach taken in resolving a puzzle of this ilk:

“So, either: one, there is a concealed exit, two, he was killed from outside, or three, the room was locked from outside after the killing.  There is no fourth alternative.”

The discussion around timings and placements isn’t rigorous by any means, but shows some consideration of approaching the matter of who and how beyond simply finding someone to pin the tail on come the finish…so it’s not that they don’t know how to detect, more just that we don’t see much of it.  And, honestly, Stone and Dehan are good company, and Banner has a knack for letting his supporting players shine from time to time — bringing about a sense of the closeness on the island by mentioning how the local pub is serving meat out of season, for instance — with not everyone being blown away in the presence of this apparently legendary pair:

“You Americans are forever telling stories about what your fathers ‘always used to say’ to you.  I wonder if any of them are true.”

Though, of course, in true modern style, you have to keep the best lines for the heroes:

I nodded a few times, considering the fact that there are few things in this world as slippery as a member of the British upper classes.

And as the psychology of living in such a small community begins to play an increasingly important part in the justifications of a lot of the actions we learn about, we also get some good reflections on the nature of these people — such as two of them laughing at a comment with Dehan reflecting that “[one] laughed more with pleasure and [the other] with trying to please”.  This, unfortunately, gets undercut when several aspects of the narrative don’t quite join up through, you can’t help but feel, editorial oversight given how prodigiously Banner has been putting these out — we get one witness telling us how “as fas as [a key player in events] was concerned, I didn’t even exist” and then, later, it’s revealed that ignorance of the speaker by the party under discussion would only be possible by the likes of severe hypnosis or serious head injury (I wish to preserve spoilers).  It could be that the speaker is seeking to minimise their role in proceedings, but it comes across like someone forgot what was written earlier.

It’s odd, and unsatisfying, how many of these little things add up and how a slightly more diligent reading would have tidied them away and left less for the attentive — or, yes, nit-picky — reader to be confounded by.  Even simple things, like Stone knowing the detective who investigated the original murder (and committed, frankly, a piece of oversight that would end most careers) committed forty years ago comes back to upset things when said detective turns up at the end and is “in his fifties”.  Was this an Encyclopedia Brown case we never got to read, then?  And for the second time in two weeks we get a self-published author mangling the spelling of the name of a beloved icon of cinema…c’mon, guys, this is what the internet is for.  Among, I understand, other things.

As I said up top, though, in spite of these flaws, and in spite of a murder method that won’t delight the meticulous when it comes to impossible crimes, I had a blast reading this.  The speed of Banner’s writing invests his prose and predictable setup with an undeniable energy, and so for once I’m not sublimating the urge to give something a kicking.  Murder Most Scottish (I don’t understand that title, is it some sort of pun?) is fun, swift, very easy to read, and a perfectly enjoyable time if you want something diverting and undemanding.  And I’m pleased to see that there’s another impossible-sounding plot in Banner’s corpus — Fire From Heaven (2018), the ninth in this series, sports a partially-evaporated corpse and no footprints on the surrounding muddy ground — and so you better believe I’ll be returning to these guys in due course.

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Previous and future Adventures in Self-Publishing can be found here.