"The Last Dance"

Unusually, this story appeared in print before the story to which it is a sequel. (Unusual but not unique in my experience: "Murder on the North Pole Express," my ninth story about Helmut Erhard, appeared in print between my sixth and seventh Erhard stories!)

"The Last Dance" is a sequel to "A Short Madness," which I wrote at the request of co-editors Gigi Pandian and Tom Mead for an anthology of impossible-crime stories that -- as of this writing (April 2024) -- hasn't yet been sold to a publisher. When I heard that Level Best Books was calling for submissions for a proposed book of stories with international settings, I decided to resurrect Dr. Guislain and Amandine Caekebeke, the Holmes and Watson of "A Short Madness," for a second case.

Like their first story, this one goes back and forth between two timelines and two points of view. The "modern" sections are set in 1917 and written in the third person, while the "historical" sections are set in 1858 and narrated in the first person by Amandine.

Both stories are set at the Hospice Guislain, Belgium's first psychiatric hospital, founded by the actual Dr. Jozef Guislain in 1857. The character of Amandine Caekebeke is fictional, though I named her after one of the students who took both of my courses at the University of Ghent in the fall of 2022.

In "The Last Dance," Amandine tells a reporter about a "locked room within a locked room within a locked room" mystery that Dr. Guislain failed to solve.

The book was published on April 23, 2024, and the story was my hundred and nineteenth to appear in print. You can order a copy of Mystery Most International here.

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