#232: Spoiler Warning – Coming in July: Rim of the Pit (1944) by Hake Talbot

Following on from the spoiler-filled deconstruction of He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr and Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, I’m going ahead with another spoiler-filled deconstruction in the next couple of months, this time of Hake Talbot’s impossibility-laden masterpiece Rim of the Pit (1944).

Dan at The Reader is Warned has kindly agreed to join in this time, and so he and I will, like before, be reading this, sharing thoughts, and then posting the spoilerific results here at some point in July.  And you, dear friends, are invited once again to come along with us: read the book and pitch in, sharing your thoughts and findings in the manner that has made the first two attempts at this sort of thing such fun.

Rim of the Pit — opening line, “I came up here to make a dead man change his mind,” — concerns a group of family and hangers-on isolating themselves in two snowbound cabins, and before long they find themselves dealing with ghostly visitations, flying murderers, demonic possession, and evil spirits on the march.  It was voted the second-greatest impossible crime novel of all time by a panel of people who know about this sort of thing in 1981, and could conceivably give the header of that list, John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man (1935), a run for its money.  It is awesome, and there will be much to discuss.

So, find a copy — Ramble House have reprinted it, available both as a tree-book and an e-book — get your reading, thinking, and analysing hats on, and we’ll see you here in July for the main event.  I mean, feel free to come back in the meantime, too, but whatever Dan and I come up with on this won’t be up until some time in July.  More news on that as, y’know, it happens.

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That list of 14 books would actually makes a great series for these Spoiler Warning posts, but I didn’t want to do a third Carr on the trot and so we’re starting at the next book along.  Expect other books on the list — possibly all of ’em, who knows? — to follow in due course…