The Phantom Passage - Tapa blanda

In its starred review, Publisher’s Weekly says: “Once again Halter crafts a completely logical and plausible explanation for the fantastic.” It is 1902 and in London’s infamously haunted East End there are rumours of a strange passageway which can swallow up anyone who ventures there at night and make them disappear. Kraken Street can only vanish and reappear, it can also conjure up visions of murders past and predict future ones. Who better to address this astonishing state of affairs than Owen Burns, a dandy aesthete who appreciates murder as a fine art and lends his services to Scotland Yard? This is LRI’s tenth Paul Halter translation. The author, a best-selling novelist in his native France, has written over thirty novels, almost all ‘locked room’ or ‘impossible crime,’ and is widely regarded as the successor to John Dickson Carr. He appeared on BBC Radio 4’s program ‘Miles Jupp in a Locked Room,’ broadcast on May 21, 2012. An earlier novel ‘The Crimson Fog’ was named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Top Mysteries of 2013. Locked Room International also translates and publishes the works of other international impossible crime authors past and present. For information about signed and lettered editions of all living authors please contact pugmire1@yahoo.com or go to www.mylri.com.

Paul Halter was born in Hagenau, Alsace, in 1956. He pursued technical studies in his youth before joining the French Marines in the hope of seeing the world. Disappointed with the lack of travel, he left the military and, for a while, sold life insurance while augmenting his income playing the guitar in the local dance orchestra. Upon discovering the writings of John Dickson Carr, he gave up the guitar for the pen. He has since written over 30 novels, almost all “locked room,” including La Quatrieme Porte (The Fourth Door,) which won the Prix du Roman Policier in 1987, and Le Brouillard Rouge (The Crimson Fog,) which won the coveted French Prix du Roman d’Aventures in 1988, the prestigious Japanese Honkaku Mystery Award in 2005, and was named as one of the Publisher’s Weekly Top Mysteries of 2013. The Fourth Door and The Crimson Fog are both available in English, as are The Lord of Misrule, The Seven Wonders of Crime, The Demon of Dartmoor, The Seventh Hypothesis, The Tiger’s Head, The Invisible Circle and The Picture from the Past. M. Halter is a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: The Call of the Lorelei, The Tunnel of Death, The Night of the Wolf, The Robber’s Grave, Nausicaa’s Ball, The Gong of Doom, The Man With the Face of Clay, Jacob’s Ladder, The Wolf of Fenrir and more to come. In 2006 his collection of short stories ‘The Night of the Wolf’ appeared in English, to critical acclaim. It was reprinted in 2012 as part of the LRI series For more information and articles about Paul Halter, please go to: http://lockedroominternational.com/