Edward D. Hoch was an American mystery writer who wrote nearly a thousand mystery short stories in his lifetime, primarily of the locked room mystery subgenre. His work Impossible Crime Diagnosis Book 4 continued the style of the previous three books, featuring 12 cases of seemingly impossible crimes being solved.
Hochs stories both focus on the tricks of the crime and the motives behind them. He discovers clues through seemingly insignificant details, scene reconstruction, reasonable imagination and assumptions, and thorough justification, successfully finding the truth each time.
Short mystery stories often require more thought to be put into trick design in order to attract and maintain readers interest and approval. Due to the limitation of space, character development cannot be as detailed, plot designs cannot be as complex, and the story background can only be relatively simple. In this situation, the only way to be outstanding is through the use of tricks. However, some authors consider using one trick per story is wasteful and prefer to write longer mystery stories rather than short ones.
The design of a trick requires inspiration, a seamlessly woven plot, intricate logical reasoning, not-too-obvious clues for the careful reader to find, an unexpected yet plausible truth, and other factors. Its not easy to achieve all these, but author Edward D. Hoch is exactly such a person. In the foreword of this book. His writing style is hailed as "the inspiration-driven writing style." Its no wonder he was able to create a large number of high-quality mystery short stories.
The protagonist of the book, Sam Hawthorne, is a small-town doctor. In addition to his medical work, he often assists Sheriff Loomis in solving various murders. Of course, in this book, Hawthorne has a new partner, a female nurse named Mary. The two get along well in work and life, and even have the trend of developing a romantic relationship.
Hawthorne possesses qualities similar to those of other detectives: patience, meticulousness, kindness, extremely strong logical thinking ability, determination to seek the truth, and perseverance in overcoming difficulties. He often discovers clues from overlooked details, dares to make bold assumptions, and meticulously verifies them. As a doctor, he is often able to assist in determining the cause of death with his professional knowledge.
Its worth mentioning that the story takes place between 1935 and 1937, and there were no dedicated forensic pathologists during that time. Determining the cause of death often had to rely on hospital doctors to perform autopsies, which is different from the practice of forensic science now.
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