Clyde B. Clason was an American copywriter, trade magazine editor and author of ten once very popular, critically acclaimed Van Dinean detective novels about a mild mannered Roman historian turned amateur sleuth, Theocritus Lucius Westborough – blessed with "the instincts of a ferret and the brain of a Holmes." Clason certainly was one of the more sophisticated, literate writers to come out of the Van Dine-Queen School driven by a genuine curiosity and knowledge of art, culture and science. Despite his weighty name and occupation, Westborough never becomes a lecturing snob like Van Dine's Philo Vance or early period Ellery Queen.
More importantly, Clason was not an incompetent plotter with a healthy interest in locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. Seven of the ten Westborough mysteries count as impossible crime novels making Clason one of the leading locked room specialists of his day, right alongside John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson. Clason's best locked room mysteries are admittedly fairly minor affairs compared to the best locked room trickery from Carr or Rawson. They tend to be practical tricks and smaller parts of a bigger, more complicated plot overall, not the focal point, but Clason usually delivers a cleverly constructed, often fairly clued mysteries. Clason regrettably believed "his kind of book had gone out of fashion with the emphasis on blood-and-guts hardboiled fiction during the post-World War II period" and exited the genre in the early 1940s.
Clason and his ten Westborough novels fell into obscurity for decades. Only people who remembered them were collectors of vintage hardbacks, genre scholars and feverish impossible crime addicts looking for their next fix. So, yeah, there probably was a point somewhere in the late 1970s or early '80s when only Bill Pronzini knew about Clason. Yet, Clason was among the first wave of obscure, long-forgotten mystery writers to return to print when the Rue Morgue Press reprinted his now most well-known locked room mystery, The Man from Tibet (1938), in 1998 – which slowly snowballed into a reprint renaissance and revival. Along the way, Rue Morgue Press reissued all but two of Clason's Westborough mysteries before closing down in 2015. The Death Angel (1936), second title in the series, was one of the last reprints Rue Morgue Press published.
So only The Fifth Tumbler (1936) and The Whispering Ear (1938) missed out on getting reprinted that would have given us a complete, uniform set of reprints. No other publisher has picked up the series since 2015, until recently.
Chosho Publishing, an indy print-on-demand outfit, has reissued a modest selection of slightly overpriced of Golden Age detective novels over the past two, three years. I reviewed their reprint of Isabel Briggs Myers' Murder Yet to Come (1929/30) last year, but they also reprinted Clason's The Fifth Tumbler, The Man from Tibet, The Purple Parrot (1937), Murder Gone Minoan (1939) and Green Shiver (1941). Just be warned The Purple Parrot is the weak link in the series and Murder Gone Minoan too text book-y. I gladly took their reprint of The Fifth Tumbler to get one step closer to that complete set of reprints and crossing another, once rare, title off the locked room wishlist.
The Fifth Tumbler is Clason's debut as a mystery writer and introduces the genial, mild mannered history professor as one of about half a dozen guests in the west corridor, on the third floor, of the Equable Hotel in Chicago – where one of the guests dies under bizarre circumstances. Mr. Elmo Swink is not the most esteemed or popular hotel guests, referred to by various characters in the opening chapters as "that fat mug," "dirty hog" and generally considered to be a bit nasty, who's found lying doubled up in the doorway of his room. Swink died from inhaling a strong whiff of hydrocyanic gas delivered by a booby trap attached to the inside of the door. When the victim opened the door, a test tube dropped containing chemicals that would mix and release the poisonous gas. So the immediate question arising from this situation is how the murderer manage to rig up the booby trap when the door, connecting doors and windows were all locked and bolted on the inside. And the door to the hall is out, anyway, as it could been used without disturbing the booby trap or knocking down the tube ("just like one of the 'murder in a sealed room' things that you read about in detective stories").
This strange murder is officially investigated by Captain Terence O'Ryan and Lieutenant John Mack, but Westborough uses the name of his dead brother, Jim Westborough, to get to sit on the investigation as a quiet spectator. Apparently, Jim Westborough saved Mack's neck when he was framed in "as dirty a deal as was ever cooked up." Westborough gets to sit-in on the investigation and silently begins woolgathering from an armchair in the corner. Even though Mack believes "crimes aren't solved by a guy sitting around on his fanny and thinking about 'em," but simply by old-fashioned legwork to chase the facts. However, I think this division between the leg work done by the police and reasoning largely from an armchair by the amateur detective is the most attractive, well-done part of The Fifth Tumbler. I appreciated "From the Notebook of Theocritus Lucius Westborough" was included early in the story.
A thorough investigation narrows down the list of potential suspects down to the people along the west corridor of the third floor and an employee or two. Like the lovesick night clerk and chemistry student, Chris Larson. The lovely, currently unemployed stenographer, Yvonne Grant. A self-proclaimed broker named James Chilton. A commercial artist, Ronald Graham, who's staying at the hotel with his wife and son. An acid-tongued, gossip mongering hotel widow, Sarah Blakely, and a pair of questionable traveling salesmen, Fred Hammond and Ben Devon. So the problem is not a lack of suspects or even the booby trap method, but that there apparently is not "a motive worth a damn." That actually causes a problem with the solution, but I'll get back to the solution in a second.The Fifth Tumbler is Clason's first stab at the detective story and firsts rarely translate into classics or practically unblemished gems in our genre. Clason's maiden effort is no exception. For one, it feels much more of an imitation of the Van Dinean detective story than some of the latter books, which mostly comes down to establishing an amateur detective/official police working relationship and the story almost entirely taking place at the crime scene – a staple of the early 1930s Van Dinean detective story. Very different from novels like Blind Drifts (1937), Poison Jasmine (1940) and Murder Gone Minoan. A second problem is that despite the ingenuity shown in setting up an original locked room situation and various promising plot-threads, the solutions are routine and lack imagination. Something the author admitted when Mack groaned upon hearing Westborough's explanation, "the oldest trick known to detective story writers." If this had been all, The Fifth Tumbler would have been pleasant, competently routine first stab, but Clason tried to go for an Agatha Christie-style rug pull. Well, it's kind of impressive to see a mystery writer pull the legs from underneath himself. That's a trick I hadn't seen before!
Not that it did the story any favors. The problem is the extremely well-hidden, vaguely clued motive. There are, technically, "clues" to the motive, but they're just not very helpful and motive really is the key to solution. So what should have been a "surprise twist" to explain an apparent "murder without a motive" simply falls flat. John Norris likened it in his 2011 review to a kangaroo popping out to thumb its nose at the stunned, silent and cheated reader. I found the solution to be both disappointing and somewhat of a cheat, but up until that point, I enjoyed the story that definitely had its moments. Like the gossipy Mrs. Blakely giving a stunned Mack an unexpected demonstration of her psychometric abilities (predictable solution, but fun) or the Van Dinean mini-lectures on a variety of subjects (e.g. chemistry and locks). Westborough interestingly compares the case to "the mechanism of a pin-tumbler lock" with four of his five tumblers (i.e. suspects) in place, but "an obstinate fifth prevents the lock from opening." However, the lock analogies demanded a better locked room-trick.
So the routine plot and clumsily-handled, bungled ending makes it impossible to recommend Clason's The Fifth Tumbler to anyone, except completists or connoisseurs of the obscure.
Note for the curious: because the important motive is so well-hidden, I got hold of a red herring I thought offered a simple and practical solution to the whole mess and a murderer tailor-made for the story. My entirely wrong armchair solution (ROT13) crttrq gur rk-cbyvprzna naq pheerag ubgry qrgrpgvir, Wreel Fcnatre, nf gur zheqrere, orpnhfr uvf cnfg nf n cbyvprzna pbhyq unir oebhtug uvz vagb pbagnpg jvgu Ryzb Fjvax – n pbazna naq cneg gvzr oynpxznvyre. Fb gurer pbhyq unir orra bccbeghavgl sbe oynpxznvy naq cebivqvat gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir jvgu n zbgvir sbe zheqre. Vg'f rnfvre sbe gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir gb trg ubyq bs cnff xrlf gb perngr n cngujnl gb gur ivpgvz'f ebbz guebhtu gur pbaarpgvat qbbef guna vg jbhyq or sbe bar bs gur thrfgf/bhgfvqref. Abg gur zbfg fcrpgnphyne be bevtvany fbyhgvba gb n qrgrpgvir fgbel, ohg qrprag rabhtu naq yvxrq gur vqrn bs gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir orvat gur svefg zheqrere Jrfgobebhtu pngpurf. Maybe I wouldn't cut as an Ellery Queen or Philo Vance, but I would make one hell of Simon Brimmer!