Long or Short?

THE MYSTERIES OF REVEREND DEAN.
By Hal White.
Lighthouse Publishing.
2008. 258 pages.

There can be no good detective fiction which is not bound by the rule of fair play with regard to presenting the evidence . . . . real life is bound by no rule of fair play with regard to anything. —John Dickson Carr, The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936)

On the Criminal Brief weblog (July 1, 2008 and still online!), Hal White offers his reasons for preferring the short form as a conveyance for telling impossible crime tales:

I've always believed the best way to tell such a story was not in a novel, but in a short story. After the impossible elements of a story have been set up, the last thing I want to do is wade through 300 additional pages to find the solution. It's like sitting in a restaurant, eating an appetizer, then waiting three hours for the main course.

Category: Detective fiction