Translations
Tom Mead isn’t only known as a mystery novelist—he’s also an active translator. After establishing himself with his popular Joseph Spector “locked‑room” series, he’s applied his skills to translating foreign mystery fiction into English.
These translation projects complement his deep passion for Golden Age detective fiction, helping bring lesser‑known works to a wider English‑speaking audience.
The Secret Of The Pointed Tower
Pierre Véry (1900-1960) spent his life as a writer. He fell into mystery writing after winning a genre award for his work. Among his many creations was Les veillées de la Tour Pointue, a quirky collection that breaks the fourth wall. The narrator, who happens to be Pierre Véry, finds and publishes a series of mysteries.
While many of Véry’s works were made into films, this book has never been published in English. A few of his novels, including The Murder of Father Christmas, have been released in English.
But no more. Best-selling author and Renaissance man Tom Mead translated this book to English and wrote a fascinating look at Véry. He kept the humor and strange scenarios intact so the reader can see the talent of this little-known author.
The Fourth Door
The Fourth Door, the impossible becomes reality. A haunted room. An unbroken seal. A murder victim whose very identity is an enigma. And then, a second death in a house surrounded by untrodden snow. Both crimes defy reason—but master detective Dr. Alan Twist reveals that even the most baffling mysteries have rational explanations.
This international bestseller is a masterpiece of intrigue and misdirection, hailed as the French answer to John Dickson Carr and a modern rival to Anthony Horowitz (The Twist of a Knife). Fans of Sophie Hannah’s Poirot mysteries and the layered puzzles of Knives Out will relish this thrilling, twist-laden tale. Winner of the Prix du Roman Policier, Halter cements his place as a titan of the locked-room genre.
The Demon Of Dartmoor
A famous actor is sent to his death from a high window; eye witnesses say he was pushed by an invisible hand, thus mimicking another murder committed in the same house more than fifty years earlier.
Three local girls have also died in similar inexplicable fashion, propelled from the top of Wish Tor, a rocky outcrop. Is there an invisible creature roaming the sinister and forbidding landscape of Dartmoor? Or is there a human agency behind the murders and, if so, how is it done? The renowned criminologist Dr. Twist and the irascible Inspector Hurst of Scotland Yard are sent to investigate.
The Crimson Fog
In this fascinating novel, one of the masters of impossible crime fiction takes on one of the greatest criminals of all time. Sticking scrupulously to the facts, Paul Halter explores the Jack the Ripper murders and offers his own theories about the identity of the monster, what drove him, and how he was able to vanish under the noses of the police during the spree of escalating horror which sent the citizens of fog-ridden London into paroxysms of fear in the autumn of 1888..But the year before “Saucy Jacky” began his reign of terror, someone started to investigate an astonishing impossible murder committed in the country village of Blackfield nine years earlier.
That, too, involved a monstrous murderer who slaughtered witnesses and vanished under the noses of his pursuers. Is there a connection with the Ripper cases which followed?