Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable

The Oscar Tremont Mysteries #1

by Cameron Trost

Introducing Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable.

Join Oscar Tremont on his first four cases as he tackles mysteries too strange for the police and assures his clients that a rational explanation lies behind what at first appears to be impossible. You will find clues, question suspects, don disguises, break into abandoned houses, solve codes and puzzles, and if you really have your wits about you, crack the case before our hero.

Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable consists of two novellas and two short stories that display the keen intellect of a private investigator who is bound to make a name for himself in the mystery genre.

◆ The Hunt for the Stayne Fortune
◆ The Ghosts of Walhalla
◆ The Witch at the Window
◆ The Secret of the Severed Hand

These four mysteries will challenge and surprise even the most experienced armchair detectives.

Are you up to the task? Yes? Then the game's afoot!

235 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2022

About the author

Cameron Trost is an author of mystery, suspense, post-apocalyptic, and horror fiction best known for his puzzles featuring Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable. He has written four novels, Dead on the Dolmen, Flicker, The Tunnel Runner, and Letterbox, and three collections, Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable, Hoffman's Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales, and The Animal Inside. He runs the independent press, Black Beacon Books, and is a member of the Australian Crime Writers Association and The Short Mystery Fiction Society. Originally from Brisbane, Australia, his home is now in southern Brittany, between the rugged coast and treacherous marshland.

I aim to rate every book I finish and I usually leave a short review. I rarely leave one-star or two-star ratings. If I don't like a book, I won't finish or rate it. I'm here to share good reads.

Reviewers: Send me a message if you'd like to receive ebook copies for review.

Authors: If you'd like to suggest I review your book, get in touch via my blog: https://trostlibrary.blogspot.com/p/b...

You can find me on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BookBub, TikTok, and other platforms. Complete links here: https://linktr.ee/camerontrost

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite things about reading works by indie authors is seeing how they take well-worn tropes and subverting them in delightfully original ways. Naturally, we are all familiar with Sherlock Holmes and his unparalleled intellect and skills of deduction. But what if we were take Holmes and make him more of an everyman? With a loving & exasperated wife, a home in the suburbs, and too much time on his hands? What would we get?

Well, the end product would be Oscar Tremont, an investigator specializing in bizarre and random mysteries. I think, as readers, that we tend to forget that not every mystery can (or should) be about high-profile murders. If the stakes are that high ALL the time, oversaturation will lessen the impact.

And what Cameron Trost has done is take the concept of a man with brilliant deductive skills and distill the narrative down to a slightly simpler approach. But simple does not mean unintelligent. Cameron revels in the smaller details and the subtler approaches.

I love how not every tale contained within this collection of four short stories is a ridiculously high-stakes affair. After all, outside of books and movies, murders aren't really an investigator's stock in trade. Those are matters best left to police, a point which they will strongly remind you of. No, a private investigator's day-to-day consists of quite a bit of research and a whole lot of waiting, and their main source of income is uncovering secrets. Cameron wisely steers clear of a PI's bread & butter (infidelity) and goes for more subversive fare with his four stories.

Between long-standing familial feuds, kidnapped children, missing collectibles, and window-based witchcraft, Oscar Tremont certainly runs the gamut of odd jobs. And considering that his sleuthing is essentially a side-job, much to the chagrin of his wife, he is far removed from the emotionally inert boozer detectives that readers are familiar with. In fact, he's a proper gent; devoted to his wife (though he can admire a nice rack from time to time), moderate in all he does, and pretty genial to boot.

The four tales contained within this collection vary in both length and detail, with the first two offerings being much larger than the bite-sized stories at the end. Unfortunately, my favorite story "The Witch at the Window" was over far too quickly.

The only tale that really didn't gel with me as much was the closing story "The Secret of the Severed Hand". Not for lack of a great setup mind you, but more because the foundation was established for a really cool whodunit and yet the mystery was solved so fast that it came and went in a flash.

My only real nitpicks were that a few of the stories had some really interesting wrinkles to them that don't necessarily get resolved. In the first story, "The Hunt for the Stayne Fortune", there is almost a supernatural tinge to one character that gets brought up in a relatively tense scene, but it never really comes back or gets resolved. There were a few other instances where a cool or exciting development isn't allowed to run its course. I only noticed a few issues with missing punctuation, and maybe one misspelled word. Nothing that was a showstopper.

I truly enjoyed my time with Oscar Tremont, and appreciated that he was a more down-to-earth problem solver than most. The mysteries are fun and varied, Oscar is delightfully human, and I can't wait to see what little conundrum he cracks next!

[Jim X Dodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found these stories to be easy reads with the right combination of fun and mystery. Oscar Tremont is a clever, cunning investigator that would rather solve an interesting mystery than to get paid for a boring one, much to his wife's consternation. The characters and situations are fun, quirky, and will leave you clamoring for more. Oscar Tremont is a perfect addition to that club of literary super-sleuths that includes C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. -Jim X Dodge, author of Theta House and The Bite

[Dalton Fisk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting short stories. There's enough going on to keep you vested in the cases but Oscar is not your typical crime solving private detective. He's more interested in satisfying his own curiosity than letting justice have its way. That, to me, makes him a flawed character but also gives a different and unpredictable edge to the stories. You never know what the final outcome of each case will be

[Stephen Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brisbane’s modern day Sherlock Holmes is a mystery solving maniac. These four short cases are entertaining, and unique. Trost makes the pages melt away with his tight writing style. Enjoyed this book.