I
mentioned in my review of the third Joseph Spector novel, Cabaret
Macabre (2024), Tom Mead has been a busy bee with not only
working on the fourth title in the series, The House at Devil's
Neck (2025), but branching out in translating French detective
short stories and novels – starting with Pierre Véry's Les
veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed
Tower, 1937). Mead has been commissioned by Bedford Square
Publishers to translate Paul
Halter's impossible crime novels. Fingers crossed for a
translation of Le voyageur du passé (The
Traveler from the Past, 2012). But wait... there's more!
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Last
November, Crippen
& Landru published a short story collection with a selection
of Mead's own work. The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent
Entertainments (2024), introduced by Martin
Edwards, containing eleven short stories. Three of which
appearing in print for the first time. I thought it would make for a
perfect follow up to the previous review of John
Dickson Carr's collection of short stories The
Men Who Explained Miracles (1963). So let's dig in!"The
Indian Rope Trick," originally published in the July/August, 2020,
issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, finds Joseph Spector
refereeing a challenge between two magicians, Ferdinand le Sueur and
Doctor Gupta, who have been arguing about the Indian Rope Trick –
former claims to have come up with "a perfect mechanism for
working the trick." Something entirely new and revolutionary.
Doctor Gupta performs the trick under traditional circumstances,
inside a theater, but Le Sueur demonstrates his version of the trick
under an open sky! Even more, he pulls off the trick and that alone
should earn the story a spot in a future locked room anthology. But
murder interrupts the challenge when one of the magicians is
strangled without leaving behind a single footprint on the muddy
driveway. Spector is the impartial witness to the cast-iron alibi of
both suspects.
The
solution to the impossible murder is not bad. Just a bit skeptical
about one part of the trick, because I don't think doing that,
so casually, is as easy as the story suggests. Even with that
to help. Still a pretty good impossible crime story, overall,
succeeding where John Basye Price's abysmal "Death
and the Rope Trick" (1954) failed all those decades ago.
I
can only imagine "The Octagonal Room," originally published in
the anthology Millhaven Tales (2018), came about after Mead
read the shin honkaku mysteries by Soji
Shimada, Yukito
Ayatsuji, Takemaru
Abiko and saying, "I'll give it the old college try."
Spector is drawn to the home of Simon Eldridge, an American writer,
who moved to England and took residence of a reputedly haunted house,
Black Mill. Beside stories of robed figures, satanic rites and
"bonfires blazing in unoccupied rooms," Black Mill has an
architectural mystery. The place has a strange, octagonal room not
any of the original architectural plans and sketches, but nobody
knows who or when it was added to the house. Some malevolent,
otherworldly force or eldritch horror appears to reside in the
octagonal room and has taken possession of Eldridge. Spector is not
the only one who came to Black Mill to investigate, but the
magician-detective eventually has to solve another impossible crime
when Eldridge's decapitated body is found lying inside a pentagram in
the locked octagonal room.
I
figured out for the most part how the trick was pulled off and who
was behind it, but nothing to the detriment of this fantastic and
original locked room mystery, nor my immense enjoyment. "The
Octagonal Room" is the best short story in this collection and now
my favorite Mead locked room mystery.
"Incident
at Widow's Perch," originally published in the September/October,
2019, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, has a
great backdrop for a detective story with impossible crime to match
taking place at a house built into peak – known as Widow's Perch. A
desolate summit so remote "it was accessible only by cable car."
Giles Latimer's body was found by his wife, Margot, sprawled on the
rocks at the foot of the cliff. The police wrote it off as an
unfortunate accident, but Margot has good reasons to believe he was
murdered and now murderer is out to get her. So she turns to the
magician-detective, Joseph Spector, who quickly loses his client
under seemingly impossible circumstances. Spector is one of the
people who sees Margot enter the cable car alone, pulled the glass
door shut and began its descent downwards from the peak, but mid-way
through, Margot burst into flames. So another rock solid impossible
crime story, curiously more reminiscent of Arthur
Porges than Clayton
Rawson.
"The
Sleeper in Coldwreath," originally published in the March/April,
2023, issue of EQMM, wonderfully plays on that old, hoary
trope from the pulps. Hypnosis! Something that makes most of us
shudder whenever it turns up in a proper detective story or locked
room mystery, but Mead found a good use for it in this short story.
Forty
years earlier, in 1893, the house known as Coldwreath was the
property of a psychic researcher, Dr. Peberby, who specialized in
"sleep, dreams and hypnosis" ("a cocktail of
mysticism and blasphemy"). One day, Peberby locked horns with a
skeptic, Lester Brownlow, who challenged him to demonstrate and prove
his hypnotic powers. What happened next has haunted Coldwreath ever
since. Peberby invited Brownlow to Coldwreath to be placed in a
hypnotic trance, while witnesses were present, before being guided to
an upstairs bedroom – commands him to lock and bolt the door behind
him. Thirty minutes later, the house is rocked by an unearthly scream
and three men had to break down the bedroom door, but the room was
empty without a trace of Brownlow. Ever since, the place has been
haunted by an apparition with half-lidded eyes as though in a trance
("a phantom sleepwalker, wandering between the worlds").
Spector comes to investigate and naturally is present when somebody
else impossibly vanishes from a locked room and a body turns up under
equally impossible circumstances of the no-footprints variety. This
story would have made for a great Jonathan
Creek episode and enjoyed the solution to the disappearance
from the locked bedroom. A trick based on a locked room idea, or
concept, that always amuses me (ROT13:
qbbef gung nccrne gb or ybpxrq, obygrq naq frnyrq).
"The
Footless Phantom," originally published in the March/April, 2022,
issue of EQMM, brings Spector to the dying mining village of
Greeley in the Cotswolds of western England. A village that had been
dealt a fatal wound when a mining accident killed numerous miners and
workers moved to others mines in the region, which left behind a
dwindling population who stuck around. So the village has problem of
its own and more problem is added to the list when the troublesome
Danny Snape is found dead with the back of his head caved in at the
foot of a cliff. There's only a single track of footprints going from
Snape's van to his body and if the weapon was dropped from the top of
the cliff, then what happened to it? So it appears the murder could
have only been committed by "a weightless, invisible assassin."
Not
a bad premise for an impossible crime story, nor is the backdrop of a
dying mining village, but plot-wise, it felt ropy – especially how
the whole impossibility was rigged up. So not the best impossible
crime story to be found in this collection.
"What
Happened to Mathwig," first published in the anthology Wrong
Turn (2018), is Mead's take on Herbert
Brean's The Traces of Brillhart (1961). A Harley Street
psychiatrist begins a relationship with one of his patients, Claire
Mathwig, who ends up agreeing to kill her husband, Chester Mathwig.
And how! Chester Mathwig ends up with three bullets ("...final
bullet hit him in the skull...") before disappearing into the
waters of the Thames. So imagine the murderer's shock when his victim
turns up, alive and well, with nary a scratch or flesh wound. Enough
to run to Spector to confess and ask him to explain how Mathwig
pulled a Rasputin. The solution is as grim as that historical,
hard-to-kill figure. One of the better and stronger plotted stories
in the collection with a tantalizing premise that has barely been
scratched by impossible crime and locked room specialists, past and
present.
The
next non-series short story, "Invisible Death" (2018), but
already reviewed
it a few years ago together with Mead's "The Walnut Creek Vampire"
(2020).
"The
Three-Minute Miracle," first of the three previously unpublished
short stories, which combines the problem of the unbreakable alibi
with the head scratching phenomena of bi-location. Spector is
consulted by his old friend, Inspector George Flint, who's
investigating the murder of a rich philanthropist, Mrs. Anthea
Wheeldon. She was shot and killed by her no good, criminally charged
nephew, Alec Mellors, whose little blackmailing enterprise is
possibly going to land him in prison. And his aunt is determined to
cut him out the will. Alec not only has a motive, but he was seen
entering the house and pulling the trigger by an impartial witness.
There is, however, another equally credible witness swearing he was
fifty miles away, three minutes before he was seen firing the fatal
shots!
I'm
in two minds whether, or not, the story qualifies as an impossible
crime. I think most of you are aware of my hesitation to qualify
unbreakable alibis as impossible crime, unless the alibi hinges on
the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having
carried out the crime. Not when the alibi turns on witnesses or
paperwork. On the other hand, the murder committed in front of a
witness in combination with the alibi gives it the appearance of
bi-location. Either way, Spector finds a way to break his cast-iron
alibi down with the only smudge on his ingenious solution is that
one, not unimportant, detail is impossible to anticipate. Other than
than, "The Three-Minute Miracle" will please fans of Christopher
Bush and Tetsuya
Ayukawa.
"The
Problem of the Velvet Mask," second previously unpublished short
story, takes place during Christmas, 1931, which begins when Juliette
Lapine comes to Joseph Spector on behalf of her father, Lucien Lapine
– a retired French diplomat. She believes her father is in danger
from their new next door neighbor, Eustace Dauger, who arrived in a
funeral car ("like the grim reaper himself") and always
wears a velvet black mask. Lucien Lapine reacted to his arrival "as
though he had been expecting him for many years." Eustace
Dauger possibly is Felix Duchesne. One of the two main players in the "the Duchesne Affair," an espionage case from some twenty-five
years ago, whose downfall came at the hands of Lapine. Felix
Duchesne, "accused spy," reportedly died as a prisoner on
Devil's Island. Or did he?
Lucien
Lapine is shot and killed in "an impenetrable room" with
the windows locked from the inside, the door locked with the key
inside the lock and the two detectives were standing outside the
door. Not the mention that the snow outside is unmarked.
Interestingly, there's a good amount of "the blinkin' cussedness of
things in general" going on, but not used to create the locked room
murder. A route Carr would have taken. Here it takes place all around
the locked room murder, which has a somewhat prosaic solution, but
also a good example a touch of cleverness and ingenuity can be
applied to a simple idea. I was entertained!
"Lethal
Symmetry," third and last of the previously unpublished stories, is
one of the shortest works in the collection and an unexpected gem.
Inspector Flint calls upon Spector to help him out with the strange
murder of Conrad Darnoe. A man who "prized symmetry above all
things" and got himself impossibly poisoned in a locked room.
The brilliant solution is a clever and even original variation on a
impossible poisoning situation/trick I've seen only once before. No
idea if Mead has read that particularly story, but this is a good,
new way to use that trick.
There's
one last story, "Jack Magg's Jaw" (2022), but reviewed it last
year as part of "Locked
and Loaded, Part 4." The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent
Entertainments ended on a high note for me with the strong, short
and excellent "Lethal Symmetry."
Strong,
short and (mostly) excellent perfectly sums up The Indian Rope
Trick and Other Violent Entertainments. A collection of a short
impossible crime stories representing another fresh and promising
page in the budding locked room revival and should entertain fans of
the Joseph Spector novels until The House at Devil's Neck is
released.
Speaking
of the locked room revival, I've accumulated a small pile of modern
impossible crime novels over the past two months and holidays. So
I'll begin decimating it presently, but first, back to the Golden
Age!