The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

In 2020, P.J. Fitzsimmons debuted his series of humorous, lighthearted historical locked room “cozies” about the bantering, snooping idler-about-town Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly – who's ever ready with a funny quip or unhelpful comment. I was aware of the series since The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) was published, but the series description "cozies" made me hesitant to give it a try. I've been tricked before!

I decided last December the season was appropriate enough to take a risk on a Christmas-themed locked room cozy, even it turned out the plot lacked any kind of substance. So picked up The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021), second title in the Anty Boisjoly series, which proved to be a pleasant surprise. Leo Bruce meets Jonathan Creek plotted around a handful of impossible crimes and inexplicable situations. It has everything from a murderer who leaves no footprints in the snow and ghostly visitations to the theft of the church's weather vane. The solutions are neither routine nor uninspired. I immediately added the first and third title to the big pile.

So anyone who's not a willfully, chronologically-challenged dipstick would have peddled back and started The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, but the third novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021), has a premise I found hard to ignore – not merely for its alluring locked room premise. Detective stories plotted around the classic tontine scheme tend to be good or at least a ton of fun. I always enjoy them!

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine begins at the Juniper Gentleman's Club, in Mayfair, where Anty gives his condolences to his fellow clubman, Tristian "Lager" Tenpenny, who recently lost his Uncle Ratcliffe and Cousin Hadley. Ratcliffe Tenpenny and Hadley Tenpenny were two elderly relatives and "rival beneficiaries" in "the vast, unfathomable wealth of the Tenpenny Tontine." A tontine that was established in 1825 and has been accumulating a fortune over the course of more than a century, but it's going to be dissolved upon the death of either Ratcliffe or Hadley. And the whole pile goes to the last survivor. Ratcliffe and Hadley "shared" a house, Wedge Hedge Square, which was cut in half. One half was for Ratcliffe and Lager and the other half for Hadley and Lager's cousin, Victoria. Another part "remained neutral ground" for receiving guests and shouting matches ("this was very much a house divided").

Ratcliffe and Hadley apparently decided to take matters into their own hands and settle the whole thing in a good, old-fashioned duel. They appear to have locked themselves into the reading room and barricaded the doors by slipping a candle stick through the handles. When they're inside, they take a shot at each other with dueling pistols with troublesome results. They both end up "lifelessly slumped into their wood and wicker wheelchairs" dead of gunshot wounds to the heart. So the problem starts out not as a double murder in a locked room, but a question as to whom dead first? If there's a despite over the legal claim, the court could award the whole lot to the crown instead of one of the heirs, Lager or Victoria. Lager asks Anty to do "that thing you do" and see if he can discover who died had first.

It doesn't take Anty long to turn a simple, uncomplicated case of an illegal duel with two fatalities into a full-blown locked room murder. Not the last, seemingly impossible murder, to take place in that room. A third murder sees the room barricaded with a chair with the added complication that the murderer appears to have left the room without leaving bloody footprints all over the place. I'll return to the locked rooms in moment.

Just like the previous novel, The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine very much is a continuation of the comedy mysteries and genre parodies of Leo Bruce, R.T. Campbell and Edmund Crispin. A story full of eccentric characters, witty dialogue and scenes in which two collide head on. I particular enjoyed the lot of character who turned up for this one. Like the family lawyer, Chauncey "Chancy" Proctor, who hails from a long line of "notoriously inept solicitors" known and dutifully maintained "the appallingly low standard of advice and care the firm had been offering its clients for generations" – not wholly unsuccessfully either. There's a maid who pilfers umbrellas and walking sticks and the crowd at the Swashbuckling Society with their glorious tales of adventure, daring-does and crooked duels, but the best character and hero of the book is Hadley's "wire-haired havoc on four legs." A Scots Terrier variably-named Satan, Lucifer, Diabolus, etc., who has it in for employees of His Majesty's Postal Service. He's the reason why they haven't had a letter-box delivery for months as the postman usually pushes their letters into the hedge, before fleeing in terror. But the devil gets to help Anty solve the case. So he really is the hero good boy of the story.

The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is a very amusing, highly readable and lighthearted mystery that's over before you notice it. I breezed through it at a leisurely pace. It therefore pains me to to say that the story, plot-wise, is not a patch on its predecessor. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning admirably balanced the lighthearted comedy with clever plotting and the locked room-tricks had some creativity behind them. I found that a bit lacking here with overall plot aiming for short term effect with the long term consequences causing the case to become muddled, which can work, but it didn't feel like it really held together here. Not convincingly. For example, the supposed duel in the locked room (SPOILER/ROT13) bayl jbexf orpnhfr ab nhgbcfl vf rire zragvbarq, cerfhznoyl abg cresbezrq, orpnhfr vg jbhyq erirny bar zna unq orra yrtvgvzngryl fubg naq gur bgure bar unq qvrq sebz n fgno jbhaq erfrzoyvat n thafubg jbhaq sebz n qhryvat cvfgby. The other locked room murder is fine, if you don't expect anything fancy from the solution, but it probably would have worked better had the room not been barricaded. Just the problem of the murderer crossing "the pool of blood between the body and the door" without leaving bloody footprints would have been good enough considering its solution.

So still enjoyed the hell out of it, but definitely expected more from the plot and its pair of locked room murders after the previous one. I was also a little disappointed. The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning has earned this series enough credit to not immediately abandon it. Every series has its dips. You can expect reviews of The Case of the Canterfell Codicil and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) in the near future. Hopefully, they provide me with ample reason to move to the fantastic sounding The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023). That first title is not misspelled with one of my redundant typos and the second one sounds like a long-lost episode from Scooby Doo, Where Are You? So don't let me down Fitzsimmons!

A note for the curious: I still intend to do an addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century," an excuse to talk about impossible crimes thinly disguised as a historical overview, to focus on the developments from the 2015 to 2025 period. I want to make it either the last post of this year or the first one of next year. Yeah, adorably optimistic and another thinly disguised excuse to sink into another locked room study. So expect a noticeable uptick this year of locked room reviews from the 2015/25 period and the 2000s in general.

Lord Edgware Dies (1933) by Agatha Christie

Last year, I revisited one of Agatha Christie's lesser-known, sometimes unjustly overlooked detective novels, Peril at End House (1932), because the plot turns on a craftily camouflaged motive rather than a well-hidden murderer or a cleverly contrived alibi – making it a whydunit. Nick Fuller pointed out in the comments "by that light, Lord Edgware Dies—another where the murderer stands out—might then be a howdunit." That just handed me an excuse to toss Lord Edgware Dies (1933) on the reread pile.

Before tackling the book, I need to point out Lord Edgware Dies is preceded by Peril at End House and followed by Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Three novels each plotted around one of the big three questions of the detective story, who (MotOE), why (PaEH) and how (LED). Has anyone noticed this patterned link between these three Hercule Poirot mysteries before? Murder on the Orient Express usually gets lumped together with Death in the Clouds (1935) and Death on the Nile (1937) as Christie's murder-on-land-sea-and-air themed mysteries, but liked the who-why-how pattern between these three successive novels a lot more. A bit meta-ish. But then again, that perception might be a side effect of an increased dose of shin honkaku mysteries over the past few years. Anyway...

Lord Edgware Dies, alternatively published as Thirteen at Dinner, begins with Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings at a London theater where they spot a very famous face in the audience, Lady Edgware – better known to the world as Miss Jane Wilkinson. A young American actress currently enjoying success in London who had married the wealthy, slightly eccentric Lord Edgware three years previously. A choice she has come to regret. Jane Wilkinson intends to marry the Duke of Merton, but her husband refuses a divorce and "stands in the way of these romantic dreams." So she approaches Poirot asking him to try and pursued her husband to give her a divorce or she'll have to bump him off herself. She repeats several times before a number of witnesses she's considering to kill her husband. One of them remarks she's quite capable of committing murder, but "she hasn't any brains" as "her idea of a murder would be to drive up in a taxi, sail in under her own name and shoot."

Poirot wouldn't normally touch a divorce case, but now he has become intrigued and welcomes the opportunity to study Lord Edgware at close quarters. However, Lord Edgware informs Poirot he had agreed to a divorce months ago. He wrote and told her so, but the letter mailed to her Hollywood address never arrived ("extremely curious"). Poirot has the feeling there's still something to the affair which now appears to have taken care of itself.

Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard, arrives at Poirot's doorstep the following morning with the news Lord Edgware was killed at his house in Regent Gate. Stabbed with surgical precision in the neck and murderer appears to be his wife. Jane Wilkinson went to the house in a taxi, announced herself at the door as Lady Edgware and sailed pass the butler to see her husband. Ten minutes later, the butler heard the front door close shut and the maid discovered the body the following morning. But her motive no longer holds up. More importantly, she can present an alibi as incontestable as the constitution of her homeland. So they have look elsewhere for suspects, but those pesky alibis, bodies and complications are found around every corner. Sort of...

Lord Edgware Dies is a howdunit, not a whodunit, in which the murderer's identity becomes apparent long before the final chapter rolls around. Apparent to everyone except the characters. This time, it's not just Hastings who's as dense as a lead-lined brick wall and it really is the story's only real problem. So let's get that out of the way first, before moving on the positives.

The plot that's setup is better suited for an inverted mystery, however, the inverted mystery doesn't really fit Hercule Poirot and the only way to make it work is to dumb him down a bit to the point where Poirot is as baffled by the whole thing as Hastings – until he overhears a chance remark in a crowd. It has been remarked that the credibility problem here lies with the alibi-trick, but thought it more unbelievable Poirot (SPOILER/ROT13) qvqa'g guvax vg fhfcvpvbhf gung gur bar crefba va Ybaqba jub pna qb n cvgpu-cresrpg vzvgngvba bs gur zheqrere qvrq gur fnzr qnl nf Ybeq Rqtjner sebz na nccnerag bireqbfr, abe gung gur vzcrefbangvba pbhyq unir orra qbar ba gur nyvov raq bs gur zheqre. Something that could to the story's advantage had it been inverted, cat-and-mouse style mystery/battle-of-wits between detective and murderer. How the story's structured and presented, you have to go along with it and ignore the obvious.

So where the plot and some of its finer details are concerned, Lord Edgware Dies is the very definition of a second-string detective novel, but not one devoid of qualities of its own.

Having now reread Peril at End House and Lord Edgware Dies, they clearly represent a period in Christie's career when the training wheels were coming off. Christie not only knew then what she could do with the detective story, as she showed in her graduation project known as Murder on the Orient Express, but had now the confidence to wield them. One of her most admirable and endearing qualities is on full display here. A talented or even merely a good, competent mystery writer can lie through their teeth without uttering a single untrue word. Very few of her contemporaries could match her when it comes to simultaneously rubbing the truth in your face and pulling the wool over your eyes. To quote Poirot "facts that are concealed acquire a suspicious importance," while "facts that are frankly revealed tend to be regarded as less important than they really are." Lord Edgware Dies is not the best nor most successfully executed example of this talent, she did it with all the bravado and brazenness that would distinguish her best-known, most celebrated 1930s mysteries – a decade she punctuated with the publication of And Then There Were None (1939). After Lord Edgware Dies, Christie became the Agatha Christie we remember today. There's something else worth pointing out.

Last year, I compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" and seriously considered including Christie as a surprise entry or honorable mention. Not because she was in dire of reprints or had a reputation that needed a public overhaul, but because Christie wasn't an isolated phenomena. She took inspiration as much from her contemporaries as the other way round. Just compare The A.B.C. Murders (1936) to Anthony Berkeley's The Silk Stocking Murders (1928) or Sad Cypress (1940) to Dorothy L. Sayers' Strong Poison (1930). So having more of her contemporaries back in print gives more depth to her own work. For example, I kept thinking of Christopher Bush as Lord Edgware Dies is exactly the kind of detective novels he always tried to write with varying degrees of success. It has everything you often find in his work. A cast of characters filled with theatrical people. A handful of alibis with one of them potentially being fabricated, channel crossing alibi between France and alibi. A closely-linked pair of murders in the story's opening stages. So imagine Bush quite enjoyed and perhaps took inspiration from it.

I'm pretty sure Leo Bruce took inspiration from Lord Edgware Dies for M. Amer Picon ("Papa Picon") from Case for Three Detectives (1936). One of my favorite lines from that book comes when Sgt. Beef is complaining about the three titular amateur sleuths "with their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-screams-come-from" ("why they try to make it complicated"). Bruce was echoing Hasting's explaining to Japp how Poirot "always been fond of having things difficult" and "a straightforward case is never good enough for him," which is why Hastings believes Poirot always tries to make a case more difficult – especially when the solution comes out too easily. Sounds like Papa Picon.

So, in summation, Lord Edgware Dies is certainly not one of Christie's triumphs when it comes to plotting and you shouldn't think too deeply about the alibi-trick, but it's bravado and confidence in the shaky, less than perfect plot makes up for a lot. A mixed bag, to be sure, but an enjoyable and not wholly unimportant one. With the next novel, Christie really took off to become the embodiment of the Golden Age detective novel.

The Unbreakable Discussion on Impossible Alibis

 

Every few years, the topic of alibis and impossible crimes is brought up, "But is it a Locked Room Mystery?," "Impossible Crime and Alibi's" and "On A Defense of the Impossible Alibi Problem and "Doylist" Impossibilities," which were fruitless attempts to try and nail down what constitutes an impossible alibi – everyone had their own ideas and definitions. The line separating a regular, unbreakable alibi from an impossible one remained vague and undefined. So a consensus on the subject was never reached and to outsiders it must have looked like discussions on the detective story's equivalent of Big Foot or UFOs.

The question of impossible alibis was raised again following my review Christianna Brand's Tour de Force (1955) back in November. Tour de Force is a strong fan favorite and the new British Library edition won the 2024 Reprint of the Year. I personally think Brand's London Particular (1952) is more deserving, but Tour de Force is nonetheless a plot-technical marvel in how it constructs and then rips through half a dozen alibis. So understand why the book has its fans, but Brand has written better and disagreed that the alibis amounted to an impossible problem. I tried to explain why they weren't impossible alibis, but my arguments were scoffed at and rejected in the comments. What can you do?

I promised to return to the subject in the new year and dedicate a post to it. I'm not disillusion enough to think this is going to settle the issue, but at least it will give something to refer back to when it's brought up again in the future.

I always thought I had come up with a very easy, crystal clear way to distinguish between an ordinary, manufactured alibi and an impossible alibi – a difference depending on a tiny, devilish detail. An ordinary, non-impossible alibi is created with fabricated or misleading evidence like manipulated clocks, witnesses or paperwork (e.g. train or movie tickets). So an ordinary, non-impossible alibi involves retracing the steps of the murderer/suspects and not uncommonly involves breaking down one, or more, identities which is commonly associated with the Realist School of the Golden Age detective story. Mike Grost writes on his website "faked alibis and misleading trails often turn on a breakdown of identity" with "what seems to be a trail left by two, can really be the work of one" or "one person's trail can really have been left by two people" ("there are many complex variations on this..."). Mystery writers like Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts made their name with rigging up and tearing down such sort of alibis, but no fair minded person would seriously consider them a variation on the impossible crime. But when does it become one?

An impossible alibi, in my opinion, entirely relies on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the deed. Not because the murderer claimed to have been somewhere else, but because their was a hard, physical limitation on the murderer's freedom to move or act. For example, the murderer was imprisoned or undergoing surgery at the time of the murder or a physical handicap apparently keeping them from off the list of suspects. Like a wheelchair bound murderer with the victim lying on the first-floor landing or one-armed killer who found a way to break someone's neck. So the apparent physical restraints alibi the murderer. Not clocks, witnesses or train tickets. The TV series Monk had a couple of the best, modern-day examples of the impossible alibi (e.g. Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect, 2003). This distinction is not merely a personal, arbitrary one, but has some reasoning behind it.

The locked room mystery/impossible crime and the unbreakable/impossible alibi are both subcategories of the good, old-fashioned howdunit in which the focus is not on who committed the crime or why, but how it was done – which today are more commonly referred to as "perfect crime" stories. At it's most basic, the howdunit concerns a puzzling murder method or very thorough disappearances. Two classic examples include Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927) and Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) in addition to the works of R. Austin Freeman and John Rhode. The unbreakable alibi and impossible crime distinguished themselves from the regular howdunit by giving the murderer a seemingly incontestable alibi or make their crimes appear like a complete impossibility. A body inside a tightly locked or guarded room. A lonely trail of footprints ending in the middle of a field of unbroken snow. A ten-ton statue impossibly vanishing within the blink of an eye. You know the variations and they're immediately recognizable to everyone who can tell the difference between a closed circle and locked room.

So assumed applying the same principle of having to present an apparently physical impossibility, in order to weed out the garden variety alibis, made for an easy, tidy and logical answer to the question. But my reasonable take was rejected and dismissed several times. Since then, I've seen books like Bush's Cut Throat (1932) and The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) labeled as impossible alibi/crime novels. I famously overpraised the former and think the latter is a fine, Golden Age detective novel, but both fall squarely in the first category with their (SPOILER/ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. Brilliantly done in both cases, of course, but they're not impossible alibis/crimes.

I'm not a fan of this developing trend of lumping every alibi story, no matter how good or bad they may be, in with the impossible crime story. It simply dilutes, what's otherwise, a distinctive and somewhat unique subgenre/off-shoot by adding an untold amount of novels and short stories to the list. Every detective novel or short story that played around with simple or complicated alibi-trick suddenly becomes an impossible crime story. When nearly everything is an impossible crime, nothing really is an impossible crime. Just a whodunit with extra hurdles.

Why so many insist on counting alibis as impossible crimes without discrimination is a bit baffling to me. I suppose one of the reasons is that there aren't many actual clear cut examples of the physically impossible alibi outside of Monk. There's one rather famous and celebrated classic, but acknowleding it as an impossible alibi counts as a spoiler (ROT13: ntngun puevfgvr'f qrngu ba gur avyr unf n qbhoyr vzcbffvoyr nyvov nf bar bs gur zheqrere'f nccrnef gb or vapncnpvgngrq ol n thafubg jbhaq, juvyr gur bgure vf frqngrq naq thneqrq ol n ahefr). Another problem is that from the few genuine examples some are borderline cases (e.g. Arthur Porges' "Coffee Break," 1964) and, according my definition, the impossible alibi is inextricably-linked to the Birlstone Gambit – casting a character thought to be dead as the killer. One of the detective's story oldest tropes, but not a universally beloved one with more than it's fair share of critics.

So lacking some good, clear cut and non-spoilerish examples, the alibi-tricks from Bush's Cut Throat and The Case of the Missing Minutes might look like impossible alibis because they apply considerable ingenuity to the problem. The kind of tricks you would expect from a first-class locked room mystery, which is why I lavished so much praise on the former. But they still rely on (ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. I simply can't call them impossible crime novels.

Japanese mystery writer Tetsuya Ayukawa described the difference between impossible crime and unbreakable alibi as the former being an alibi in space and the latter as a locked room in time. I believe the important difference between an unbreakable and impossible alibis is the difference between external and internal. The unbreakable alibi depends on outside evidence like witnesses or tempered clocks (external), while the impossible alibi solely depends on the murder's physical state or whereabout (internal). But, once again, very few agree on what, exactly constitutes an impossible alibi.

The fact that this question was raised nearly a decade ago and we're still arguing when a cast-iron alibi becomes an impossible crime is perhaps the best argument against categorizing them as impossible crime. So propose to keep treating them as two separate, distinctly different, subcategories/off-shoots of the howdunit and put this muddied discussion to bed. Well, the comments are open. So you know where to air your grievances.

Check's in the Mail: "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" (1981) by Edward D. Hoch

I finished Edward D. Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne series when Crippen & Landru published its fifth and final collection of short stories, Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018), which gave closure to one of Hoch's most popular and long-running series – running from 1974 to 2008 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. So haven't visited the good doctor for "another small—ah—libation" since then and other Hoch collections beckon for my attention, but there's a short story I wanted to revisit.

A few years ago, "The Dark One," of A Perfect Locked Room, reviewed Hoch's More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2006) and it reminded me of a particular story that had inexplicably escaped my attention when compiling "The Updated Mammoth List of My Favorite Locked Room Mysteries."

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office," originally published in the June, 1981, issue of EQMM, takes place on October 24, 1929 – a day better known as Black Thursday. While the stock markets began to panic, the small town of Northmont is looking forward that day to the opening own, separate post office away from the general store. The brand new post office, "a pink post office," receives its last lick of fresh paint when the postmistress, Vera Brock, opens its doors for business. Among her first customers is Anson Waters, the town banker, who tells them about the panic down on Wall Street and needs to send his broker "a railroad bearer bond in the amount of ten thousand dollars" ("my broker can cash it at once"). Something everyone in the post office overhears and the registered envelope goes missing without a trace.

Fortunately, Dr. Sam Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens are two of the seven people present at the post office when the envelope disappeared. Dr. Hawthorne states "there are seven of us here, and I can offer seven solutions." The fast moving procession of false-solutions and them getting shot down almost as quickly is one of the highlights of this short story, however, the false-solution serve an even more important purpose than merely entertaining genre savvy detective geeks.

"The Problem of the Pink Post Office" starts out as an Ellery Queen-style "hidden object" puzzle, which is impossible crime adjacent, but Hawthorne knocking down his own false-solutions and eliminating all the suspects turned it into a fully fledged locked room mystery. Next comes the tricky part as the story has to, fittingly enough, deliver an eighth solution to the problem that has to be a little more than good. Hoch more than delivered on not only the story's premise, but on Hawthorne's opening statement that "The Problem of the Pink Post Office" is "unique among all the cases" he helped to solve. A shrewdly clued solution of beautiful simplicity which yet feels satisfying and original, because the trick is tailor-made for this story. A small gem and one of my favorite impossible crime stories from Hoch!

The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) by James Ronald

James Ronald's The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) is the second, somewhat shortish, novel in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 11: The Sealed Room Murder (2024) originally serialized in Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser during the December month of 1931 – published in book form under the title The House of Horror (1935). The editor, Chris Verner, restored the original title as being more suitable for this lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek spoof of writers like Edgar Wallace and Carolyn Wells. A mystery of adventure and romance packing "enough secret passages and hidden doors to satisfy most readers for the rest of their lives."

The spacious house, or rather mansion, is the remote, richly historied Hunter's Keep belonging to a well-known, celebrated gentleman of leisure and thriller writer, Wilmer Basingstoke. A man of mystery who became interested in crime and "plunged into a wholehearted study of crime from every angle."

Basingstoke had acted first as a criminal, "two burglaries he planned and carried out alone were never traced to him," before becoming an amateur detective "running down burglars and handing them over to justice." Getting bored by the whole thing, Basingstoke toyed with the idea to commit a murder, but a timely discovered talent for writing contained his murderous ambitions to the printed page as he became a bestselling thriller author.

The story takes place during a house party thrown to liven up the place. Basingstoke has invited his two nephews, Percy Hyth and John Ridgeway and young niece, Lucy Halperin, who he hasn't seen since they were children. The cousins meet each other for the first time. Philip Lavery and Irma Dering are bored, flirtatious socialites who amused their host with their trivial conversations and "belief that their own silly little world was the centre of the universe." Reverend Cyril Wootton and his brother, Peter Wootton, who's a Scotland Yard detective ("...at present on holiday"). Someone in the first chapter mentions wonders how someone who can write such thrilling yarns can give such dull house parties, but that changes quickly when they hear bell ringing followed by the maid screaming, "the master—'e's dead" – saying she found him dead and covered in blood. But when they go to look, they find an empty room and a bloodstained dagger. Basingstoke's body is nowhere to be found.

However, The Secret of Hunter's Keep is not a locked room mystery about impossibly vanishing corpses. Basingstoke's body is not the only one to disappear under mysterious circumstances, but how the bodies disappeared is not some terrifying, unfathomable mystery. Hunter's Keep is known to be honeycombed with concealed passages, hidden doors, secret staircases and subterranean rooms. While their locations and entrances have been lost to time, someone has started to make use of them. Peter Wootton observes "Hunter's Keep was not one house, but two, and it was the house within the walls that held the secret they were bent on solving." It really does appear as if the main building is merely a front for the rabbit warren of hidden passages, rooms and staircases, but that probably makes it sound better than it actually is.

Ronald was an uneven plotter. For every Murder in the Family (1936) and They Can't Hang Me (1938), you have a Six Were to Die (1932) and Death Croons the Blues (1934), but one thing all have in common is their readability and sometimes surprisingly good characterization. The Secret of Hunter's Keep is no exception to the rule, which makes it better than most pulp mysteries of the time festooned with cliches and secret passages. It honestly little more than a very readable, sometimes amusing pile up of turn-of-the-century cliches and sniping at the thriller novel itself. More on that in moment.

The Secret of Hunter's Keep is not wholly an overly cliched, featureless but readable piece of pulp fiction. It has some points of interest. During his day as an amateur detective, Basingstoke helped Scotland Yard to catch a criminal known as "The Basher." Peter Wootton finds an unread telegram informing Basingstoke that John Albert Green, a.k.a. "The Basher," had escaped that morning from Dartmoor prison. And probably on his way to get his revenge.

Their backstory is told to the reader in the form of two excerpts from one of Basingstoke's novels based on him capturing Green. Yeah, it's blatant padding, but didn't dislike it and the only thing in the book to briefly throw me off my game. For a moment, I feared Ronald was lazily going for a variation on a well-known mystery novel (ROT13: fve neguhe pbana qblyr'f gur inyyrl bs srne, oevrsyl fhfcrpgvat onfvatfgbxr unq xvyyrq gur onfure naq jnf uvqvat, nybat jvgu gur obql, vafvqr gur jnyyf bs gur ubhfr). I'll get back to the solution. Another thing that stood out to me was the introduction of a plagiarism plot thread, when someone comes forward claiming Basingstoke plagiarized his work. How this plot-thread is revealed and eventually resolved is not without interest, perhaps the best handled part of the story, but couldn't escape the feeling Ronald was laughing here at his readers – not with them. I know pulp thrillers brandishing book titles like The Ho-Fong Mystery, The Eye of Cho-Fang and The Chinese Dagger aren't known for their quality writing or careful plotting, not without reason nor undeserving of criticism, but this came across as a politely-worded, but somewhat mean spirited, swipe at everyone who wrote and read them (ROT13: “turfr cybgf nera'g lbhef be zvar, gurl ner pbzzba cebcregl” nf gur npphfre vf pnegrq bss gb gur ybbal ova). No wonder John Norris panned the book in his 2019 review!

Well, there's the ending and solution. While I briefly entertained a slightly different solution, the final twist complete with a Scooby Doo-esque unmasking of the villain is not a rug puller of a surprise. You can see it coming from a mile ahead, but think most people will be irked that the solution (ROT13) jnyxf onpx rirelguvat gung unccrarq cerivbhfyl. Honestly, if I had bought The Secret of Hunter's Keep separately, I would have been a bit disappointed. I got this volume for the reprint of The Sealed Room Murder (1934) with The Secret of Hunter's Keep. So got to enjoy it for what it's. A lighthearted romp poking fun at the country house mystery that's fun enough, if you don't expect a serious detective novel.

The House of Snow and the Six Tricks (2022) by Danro Kamosaki

Last year, the first round of nominations for the updated "Locked Room Library," hosted by Alexander of The Detection Collection, introduced me to the fanlations from Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmmiicnana" – whose work got several novels on the nomination list. Kie Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) became instant favorites, Takekuni Kitayama's Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders, 2002) is close on their heels. All three are modern masterpieces of the hybrid mystery with incredibly imaginative, visionary even, plots and original locked room mysteries. I also enjoyed their translation of Jun Kurachi's excellent, non-impossible crime mystery Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). This duo also translated two novels from a series with a very alluring premise.

Danro Kamosaki wordily titled Misshitsu ougon jidai no satsujin – Yuko no yakata to muttsu no trick (Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms – The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, 2022) is the first entry in the "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series. I'll simply refer to it as The House of Snow and the Six Tricks.

Three years previously, the first ever, real-life locked room murder was committed in Japan. Fortunately, the murderer was arrested, put on trial and acquitted, because nobody could break down the killer's locked room-trick – protecting the murderer like an unbreakable alibi. So the locked room murder and impossible crime, "that common fiction trope so looked down upon for its unreality," became "preeminently practical" over night. Just a month after the trial, the police were faced with four more locked room murders and the numbers climbed over the following months ("locked rooms spread throughout society like a disease"). The counter stands at 302 at the opening of the story meaning "30% of the total number of murders committed in Japan in an average year are locked room murders."

Over the course of the story, the reader learns just how much this epidemic of impossible crimes have changed police work and given rise to new jobs. There are now specialized detectives to handle complicated locked room murders that do not involve any of the routine tricks, "like using string to turn the key in the inside lock or hiding inside the room," but a murderer with a fresh idea or using new, cutting-edge tricks. The so called locked room detectives aren't the only newly created experts to combat the rash of impossible crimes. Locked room appraisal companies specialize in finding secret passages, hidden doors and other such hiding places with ultrasound and x-rays. A service provided to both the police and private citizens to make sure their crime scene or house they intend to buy is free of any hoary, nineteenth century plot device. That and much more you have to read for yourself.

So that's the country 17-year-old high school student, Kasumi Kuzushiro, finds himself in when he's dragged along by his friend, Yozuki Asahina, to the famous House of Snow. Apparently, the hunt for UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animal), but the House of Snow, currently a hotel, used to be the home of the celebrated mystery writer, the late Byakuya Yukishiro. A locked room specialist who was years ahead of the locked room boom when he created one of his own. However, the locked room was a challenge, not a crime, thrown down during a house party.

Ten years ago, Yukishiro hosted a party where his guests, comprising of some well-known mystery writers and critics, were surprised with a mocked murder – which they would declare later that night a perfect locked room mystery. A doll with a knife in its chest is found a room with the door locked from the inside, windows either do not open or have lattices to prevent them from being used, but the finishing touch is that the sole key to the room was inside a bottle with the lid closed tight! This prompted a lively, all-night debate and "an impromptu deduction competition," but nobody that night had been able to solve the mystery. Nobody else had since. So the House of Snow Locked Room Case, "Yukishiro's true masterpiece," became an attraction when he died and his home was turned into a hotel.

 

 

When they arrive, Kasumi Kuzushiro and Yozuki Asahina find an odd collection of guests gathering at the hotel. Eiji Sagurioka, a Locked Room Detective, who came to the hotel to try and find a solution to Yukishiro's mystery for a magazine. Riria Hasemi, a famous teenage actress, who's accompanied by her downtrodden manager, Toshiro Manei. Fenrir Alicehazard, a British woman, who claims to have come to the hotel to hunt for another UMA ("I heard there are skyfish near here"). Satoru Kanzaki, a priest of the Tower of Dawn, representing a religious sect who worship and purify crime scenes with prayer ("...one they held in highest regard was the scene of a locked room murder"). Dr. Hironobu Ishikawa and Haruki Yashiro, president of a trading company, are the more normal guests. Kuzushiro is surprised to find a familiar face among the guests, Shitsuri Mitsumura, who was his classmate in middle school and were the only members of the literature club. She has talent for solving locked room puzzles. Something that comes in handy when people begin to turn up dead under seemingly impossible circumstances.

The first of the murders is practically a copy of Yukishiro's locked room challenge, but, instead of a doll, the knife is now sticking out of a corpse and a unique, hand painted playing card is found – linking the murder to unsolved case known as "The Playing Card Serial Murder Case." On top of that, the murderer cut the phone lines and torched the bridge to trap them in the remote hotel during the dead of winter.

Kuzushiro and Mitsumura have all the time to pick both locked rooms, past and present, over the course of several chapters. Mitsumura pieces together the correct solution and her reconstruction sets the tone for what's to come. The locked room-trick is a complicated, but original, one in both presentation and resolution coming with a clear cut diagram to show the trick worked. Danro Kamosaki loves technical and physical tricks, which is here on full display, but this merely the first of half a dozen impossible murders.

I commented before on these multiple impossible crime mysteries and that they tend to run into one of two problems. They either have one, or two, good locked room-tricks with the remaining being either filler, to put kindly, or downright bad and disappointing. Or they feel to crammed with all the good ideas not given enough room to breath. The magical number to perfectly balance quality and quantity appears to be three or four. The House of Snow and the Six Tricks goes over that margin, however, it maintains a pretty decent quality overall. Only two of them failed to impress me.

There's a rather gruesome stabbing in the dining hall at the time the only entrance was under constant observation. The solution is, visually, unintentionally hilarious and should have been used in a Takemaru Abiko story or some dark, comedic-style mystery (what a way (ROT13) gb hfr n uvqqra, nhgbzngvp qbbe gb n frperg cnffntr!). I hated the third locked room murder, a shooting in a bedroom, which is bad enough to actually slightly detract from the story's overall quality. One of the clearest examples of smearing lipstick on a pig trying to make it look more impossible than it really is. Had the trick gone off as planned, it would have still posed a similar problem in distance. The fourth impossible situation places the body inside a locked room surrounded by "a square arrangement of dominoes" extending towards the door continuing right up to the last one. So nobody could have left the room without toppling the stones. A clever enough solution and the situation demanded a dash of originality, but found the trick contrived and unconvincing.

Even after all they explain all the locked rooms and apprehend the killer, another murderer strikes with a fifth and final impossible murder. A truly ingenious variation on Yukishiro's masterpiece with added difficulties. This time, the only key to the room is found inside a jam jar and the thumb turn, "used to lock the door from the inside," covered with a gachapon capsule ("...the lid of a capsule toy from a gachapon machine") – which immediately eliminates several potential tricks. Kuzushiro, not Mitsumura, finally gets to solve one with a fresh treatment of John Dickson Carr's "Locked Room Lecture" (see The Three Coffins, 1935). Kuzushiro uses the Locked Room Classification List, created by the Ministry of Justice, which lists all "fifteen different types of locked room tricks in existence.” One by one, Kuzushiro's Ellery Queen-style reasoning eliminates every trick on the list, before revealing "an extremely simple trick that doesn't fit into any existing category." I think this fifth is the best of the half a dozen, or so, impossible crimes with clues to its solution dropped throughout the story and doesn't need a diagram to provide a clear visual image of the trick.

If you haven't had your fill of miracle crimes, the murder that started the locked room boom comes into play as it's linked to one of the characters. That murder is revealed to have been something of nestling doll. Locked rooms within locked rooms! A murder in a mansion surrounded by a high wall with the only entrance under CCTV surveillance. The body was found in the customary locked room with the key to the door locked away in a drawer and the key to the drawer was found in the victim's pocket.

So, yes, the love of locked rooms and physical tricks is front and center of The House of Snow and the Six Tricks, but it's not all tricks, tricks and tricks. Just mostly. There's the intriguing backstory of the Japan's first locked room murder and how it's linked up to the main characters, but also a bit of gruesome meta-playfulness with the playing cards and their true meaning. It helped to make this densely-plotted, very technical and detailed locked room mystery fun and readable. Even though the story sometimes tried to be a little too clever for it's own good, The House of Snow and the Six Tricks comes highly recommended to rabid locked room fanatics and everyone who simply enjoys a meaty puzzle plot. You can expect a review of the sequel sometime in the not so distant future.

Crossover at the Borders: C.M.B. vol. 19 & Q.E.D. vol. 41 by Motohiro Katou

This took longer than planned, but after a year, or two, I finally arrived at the big crossover event between Motohiro Katou's two flagship series, Q.E.D. and C.M.B., which is an international affair bringing casting both series detectives in the roles of special envoys – dispatching them to my country! Now I know why some of you were so eager for me to get to this crossover event.

A crossover event officially beginning in Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Special Envoy of Balkia," but you don't necessarily have to read them order. More on that in a moment.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" centers around ex-president Suami Gareth, of the fictitious Republic of Balkia in eastern Europe, who's primary interest was "hoarding illegal wealth" in smuggled diamonds, money laundering and other criminal activities – which resulted in economic sanctions. So the Republic of Balkia rapidly descended into social unrest and ultimately a short, but bloody, civil war ("he shot his own citizens") killing over thirty thousand people. President Suami Gareth left behind "destroyed buildings and overflowing graves" as he escaped the country. Fortunately, the Belgian police arrested him.

So the new president of the Balkia Republic, Mantley Coudan, requested the ex-president to be extradited to stand trial in Balkia. However, the Belgian authorities refuse to hand him over and intend to hold the trial themselves, because of the danger his return to the country poses. The ex-president still has a lot armed loyalists with a diamond crammed war chest, which could reignite the conflict. And they don't believe Balkia is capable of holding a trial in its current state. Balkia disagrees, "it infringes on our sovereignty," who take the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands! Sou Touma is asked to represent and argue in the court on behalf of Balkia, while the group representing the Belgium is headed by Touma's cousin, Sakaki Shinra, from C.M.B. Yes, it's kind of awesome to see both of them wandering around my country. Netherlands mentioned!

Now this is where the story becomes a little tricky to discuss, because this crossover is a tale of two identical (copy and paste) stories with diverging endings. The first-half of the C.M.B. part of this crossover, "The Arrested President Affair," is practically identical as it copy/pastes the backstory from "Special Envoy of Balkia" and Touma's explanation of International Court of Justice – except it's from Shinra's perspective. A notable difference between the two is "The Arrested President Affair" giving a better picture of the crimes Suami Gareth committed during his presidency. Rampant corruption and triggering a civil war is bad enough, but his way of dealing with dissenters was forcing "parents and their children to kill each other." Most of the parents/dissenters killed themselves instead, which he referred to as "that boring incident." A crime deserving the kind of justice that can only be dispensed by a hangman, firing squad or a trip on the Orient Express.

So the two cousins and protagonists, Touma and Shinra, find themselves on opposite sides of the international court. Touma argues for Balkia's sovereign rights to be upheld, while Shinra argues to moral side the president must answer for his crimes and Balkia is not a position to make those guarantees ("Balkia cannot be trusted"). Where the stories differ is not in the conclusion of the hearing, but its aftermath which both take a thriller-ish approach. "Special Envoy of Balkia" ends with an out-and-out, anime-style fight scene with a loyalist faction that spills out to the rooftop of a church. It's sounds as ridiculous as it's fun! "The Arrested President Affair" aims with its ending for an international action thriller tying up several loose ends concerning the missing envoy, missing diamonds and bringing justice to war torn country. And no less fun than the epic battle of the other story.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" and "The Arrested President Affair" is certainly a fun, cross promotional crossover and, typical for these two series, not easily pigeonholed. I don't think you can call it a courtroom drama nor an action thriller in the traditional sense, but it sure was an entertaining way to pit Touma and Shinra against one another. That's also it's major drawback. The overall story would have been less repetitive, more effective and tighter had been told in go, i.e. contained to a single volume. But it something that had to be sacrificed for the cross promotion. What could have been fixed is order of the stories. "The Arrested President Affair" should have come before "Special Envoy of Balkia."

An anonymous comment left on my review of Q.E.D. vol. 37-38 pointed out reading the C.M.B. point of view of the case first is better, because you don't know what Touma thinks or why he's making certain moves – which makes for better storytelling. I agree. So far from a perfect or simply a very good story, even judged as one of Katou Motohiro's unorthodox mysteries, but still found it to be an entertaining one. Crossovers are my guilty pleasure and having one of favorite detective character visit my country is almost personalized fan service. That's probably the best way to sum up this crossover: a fan pleaser.

Hold on a minute, there's more. C.M.B. vol. 19 and Q.E.D. vol. 41 have additional, if minor, stories. C.M.B. opens with two shorter stories, "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" and "Dance the Night Away," which try to emulate the character-driven puzzles of Q.E.D. However, I found neither particular interesting nor memorable. Only notable thing about "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" is how inappropriate it's to ask someone of Shinra's age to probe a such a question. Although some would counter it's equally inappropriate to have a teenagers pawing around the scene of a murder or have them argue cases in the International Court of Justice.

The second story from Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Caff's Memories," is a substantial better, character-driven puzzle, but not the best the series has produced. Story begins with Touma visiting a federal prisoner, Caff Darby, in the United States on behalf of his wife. Lin Darby once was a successful fortune who brought her husband fame and fortune, "investor with God's Eye," who studied and wholly believed in her predictive powers ("Lin's predictions have come true 95% of the time"). But his financial windfalls brought him scrutiny from the authorities. And ended up in prison when Lin was wounded during a shooting. So what's Touma supposed to do? The story has an M. Night Shyamalan twist you can see coming the moment Touma slapped down the photograph of the old man on the table, but liked Touma's explanation why he thought Lin could predict the future.

So, yeah, I'm glad to finally have crossed this crossover off the list and continue with the Q.E.D. series, which has nine more volumes. I'll be interspersing them with reviews of C.M.B., until Shinra takes over from Touma on this blog. Rest assured, the reviews of C.M.B. will be interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. Stay tuned!

The Sealed Room Murder (1934) by James Ronald

I didn't expect the Moonstone Press reprint of James Ronald's The Sealed Room Murder (1934), originally as by "Michael Crombie," to be published before 2025, but Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 11: The Sealed Room Murder (2024) dropped in December – which was a seasonally appropriate surprise. For me, anyway.

This volume comprises of Ronald's ultra rare, long out-of-print The Sealed Room Murder and the serialized novel The Secret of Hunters Keep (1931). The latter is a parody of the country house mystery, containing "enough secret passages and hidden doors to satisfy most readers for the rest of their lives," published in book form under the title The House of Horror. First I'll be taking a look at the former.

John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, reviewed The Sealed Room Murder in 2019 noting that from Ronald's seven "Michael Crombie" novels, only "a handful of copies of four titles turn up for sale at outrageous prices" with other three being "so absurdly rare that only one copy each is held in the British Library." So was really looking forward to this reprint, because The Sealed Room Murder was until recently among the rarest of locked room mysteries with promise and potential. However, it has to be mentioned the book title is a little misleading as the sealed room murder is tucked away in the last twenty, or so, pages. That said, The Sealed Room Murder is a blast and blazed through it in one sitting!

The Sealed Room Murder is pulp-style thriller presented as an inverted mystery playing on, and freshening up, the wicked uncle trope from a bygone era. Godfrey Winter, wicked uncle in a question, is "one of the three leading K.C.'s of the day" who "has saved more than one client who, in the hands of almost any other counsel, would have swung," but his passion for racehorses will keep him from a judge – not without reason. Winter's expenses on his hobby has become greater than his income at the bar and compelled his nephew, Eric Winter, to change his will. A short time later, Eric unexpectedly dies and the doctor is satisfied he died of typhoid fever, but his sister believed their uncle murdered him.

Patricia Winter is determined to upset Uncle Godfrey's perfect little murder. She spreads rumors in the village, writes letters to Scotland Yard and Eric's best friend, Alan Napier, who's on his voyage back to England when he receives her message. During his voyage, Alan befriended Larry Milner, a reporter for the Morning Echo, who turns sleuth to help bring Uncle Godfrey to heel. Hilariously, Milner decided to test a colleague's theory and introduces himself to the barrister by whispering "I know your secret" in his ear. And not without consequences!

After neatly disposing of his nephew, Winter finds himself on the constant defense from his niece, her friends and village gossip. Detective Sergeant Evans, of Scotland Yard, has even come down to the village to question the doctor and gossip mongers. So first tries to imprison Patricia, threaten her with an asylum and eventually makes a serious attempt to kill her, which only makes his position more precarious as now he also has to deal with a blackmailer among his servants ("er... no tricks, sir. I'll be armed"). However, while the suspicious incident and scandal mongering continue to pile on, they have nothing substantial to go on and Winter's standing gives him another layer of protection. Milner is dismissed from the Morning Echo after a complaint from the higher ups to his editor ("his esteemed Lordship was at school with Winter, or something"). So the fight against wicked Uncle Godfrey proves to be an uphill battle.

Towards the end, an apparent suicide is discovered inside a room with the door locked, and bolted, from the inside and the only window securely fastened with a burglar-proof catch – a chimney barely wide enough to allow "the passage of a full-grown cat" ("...far less a man"). Solving this locked room-puzzle could be the final nail in Winter's coffin, but Milner is stumped and consults various mystery writers, a magician and eventually a model scale of the crime scene. There is, of course, only so much you can do with less than twenty pages to go, but appreciated the attempt and spirit in which it was done. I would have loved to have known the solutions proposed by his mystery writing friends. What about the solution to the locked room murder? Well, I wouldn't go as far as calling the locked room-trick routine. No keys turned with pliers, bolts drawn with strings or any shenanigans with the burglar-proof catch after the door was broken down, but you probably have seen the trick before.

But once again, Ronald's didn't allow himself much space to do something really good with the murder giving the book it's title. What surprised me the most about the impossible murder is the choice of victim. Considering the difficulty in gathering evidence against him and the scene in which Winter defended himself, it would have also been quite fitting if he had died in that locked room (SPOILER/ROT13: gur qeht nqqvpgrq ahefr pbhyq unir havagragvbanyyl fgnoorq uvz, juvyr ybbxvat sbe zbecuvar. Naq gur qbpgbe evttrq hc gur ybpxrq ebbz gb znxr vg nccrne yvxr fhvpvqr gb cebgrpg uvzfrys).

So wish more could have been done with the locked room, which is not unreasonable as its titled The Sealed Room Murder, but in every other regard, it's a first-rate pulp mystery. The story never drags or becomes dull as its twists and turn from one chapter to another without becoming a disconnected mess with the characters merely acting on the latest plot developments. James Ronald may be one of the better, traditionally-styled mystery writers to come out of the pulps. Not just as a storyteller, but also someone who had better eye for character than most of his fellow pulpeteers. I don't think The Sealed Room Murder is quite as good as Murder in the Family (1936) and They Can't Hang Me (1938), but it's a good, solid third. Definitely worth a recommendation.

The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945) by Ken Crossen

Kendell Foster Crossen was an American pulp writer of science-fiction, mysteries and a short stories during the 1940s before moving onto private eye and spy fiction in the '50s and '60s, which appeared under numerous different pennames – notably "M.E. Chaber," "Ken Crossen" and "Richard Foster." Just like other pulp writers covered on this blog, Crossen was a fan of impossible crime fiction and penned at least half a dozen of them.

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) lists only four novels. Firstly, the two "Richard Foster" novels, The Laughing Buddha Murders (1944) and The Invisible Man Murders (1945), featuring the Tibetan-American detective, Chin Kwang Kham. Secondly, two of four "Ken Crossen" novels starring Jason Jones and Necessary Smith, but know the Milo March novel Wanted: Dead Men (1965) should have been included in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Crossen also penned an excellent science-fiction mystery hybrid short story, "The Closed Door" (1953). So who knows what more is buried in his catalog of obscure magazine fiction and out-of-print novels.

In 2020, Steeger Books started reprinting the Milo March series in addition to several volumes with the pulp adventures of the Green Lama, but Crossen's pulp mysteries, especially his impossible crime novel, annoyingly remain out-of-print. Like the subject of today's review.

The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945), as by "Ken Crossen," is the second of only two novels, to my knowledge, starring Jason Jones and Necessary Smith – who first appeared together in The Case of the Curious Heel (1944). The book and particularly the two main characters read like a pulp-style send-up of Crossen's favorite mystery writers and fictional detectives. Detective Jason Jones, "fat beyond description," who has an agreement with the police department that they won't promote him as long as they hand him all the unusual cases. When he's not probing strange murder cases, Jones is growing geraniums in his rooftop hothouse. Smith calls him "the poor man's Nero Wolfe," but Jones can also be counted among Dr. Gideon Fell's literary relatives. Jones has a round, red face like Santa Claus that "rested comfortably upon three chins" and even launched into a locked room lecture of his own ("if Clayton Rawson, John Dickson Carr and H.H. Holmes can write long treatises on locked rooms, I guess I can say a few words on impossible situations"). The reason why Jones decides to do a poor man's version of Dr. Fell's locked room lecture is because this case presents the first time he came across a locked house mystery ("do you suppose it might start a whole new trend of methods in the impossible situation?").

The locked house in question a big, three-story private house in upper Manhattan belonging to a famous theatrical producer, Morris Block, who has set up a great and profitable racket. Block blackmails the best people in the theatrical world into working on his productions at "a reasonable salary," which guarantees money and success. But also a ton of enemies.

So it comes as no surprise to the guests when their backstabbing, blackmailing host is stabbed to death during a house party. Fortunately, the murderer left his bloody fingerprints all over the place and the police identity the prints as belonging to Max Thale. A publicity man, for the Mailer Studios out in Hollywood, who came to do publicity work for Block, but Thale has impossibly disappeared from the house when every door was guarded by policemen and the windows couldn't have been used as a exit without disturbing the snow on the outside ledge. There "a good four inches of snow on the ground all around the house without so much as a bird track in it." How could their prime suspect have vanished from the house?

Jason Jones is joined by Necessary Smith, a private investigator, who's hired by Thornton Rockwood, the drama critic of the Morning Star, to investigate the murder because everyone involved are Broadway people – intends to cover the case in his column. So wants someone on the inside of the investigation and promises a five-thousand dollar bonus, on top of his five-hundred dollar retainer, if he can beat the police to the solution. Unfortunately, that possible bone of contention between Jones and Smith is not developed to its full potential.

What follows, plot-wise, is fairly typical fare for a second-string, pulp-style mystery as more bodies and bloody hand prints turn up, which only proves the murderer is a prize idiot. More on that in a moment. The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints still has its moments. Firstly, Crossen indulges in a shameless, but forgivable, piece of self-promotion barely disguised as a plot-thread. One of the clues figuring in the story is a missing mystery novel, Richard Foster's The Laughing Buddha Murders, which is about to be published in the story with only a few advanced copies floating around. So they get to ask the suspects if they like detective stories and have they read The Laughing Buddha Murders. They even find someone, beside the murderer, who loves "the locked room mysteries of John Dickson Carr" and has read an advanced copy. And explains it's about "a Buddha, weighing a ton, which apparently vanished from a locked room." Vulcan Publications even gets in on the action! Secondly, the plot-thread of the missing mystery novel and its significant on the murders is not solved by Jones nor Smith, but by Smith's sharp secretary, Elsie Poll. She solves the whole problem from her office chair in the fine tradition of the great armchair detectives.

There are one, or two, other bits and pieces I enjoyed, but if you're looking for a good piece of impossible crime fiction with preferable a flicker of originality, The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints is not for you. The fingerprint-trick on which the murderer balanced his whole evil scheme was lifted from a Carr novel and Carr got the trick from Hans Gross' criminology handbook. And he was not the only one to use it. I strongly suspect Crossen learned the trick from Carr and think most readers will immediately recognize the trick, especially impossible crime fans, which also exposes how the Max Thale character vanished from the guarded house surrounded by virgin snow. I did like the idea behind the motive for the murder of Morris Block. That's one way to do crime, I suppose. :D But even as a pulp-style impossible crime novel, there's not much to recommend. Very much to my regret.

I liked The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints like a guilty pleasure. I know it's a second-string pulp and not even the best kind of second-string pulp. There's something infectious about Crossen fanboying over his favorite mystery writers, promoting one of his books inside one of his books and doing it without taking itself too seriously. It gives the story the kind of charm making you almost want to overlook the ramshackle, less than original, plotting and one of the dumbest murderer's I have come across in a while.

So The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints is not a great piece of impossible crime fiction, but it's at least entertaining and will be on the look out for The Case of the Curious Heel and the pair of Chin Kwang Kham locked room mysteries.

Note for the curious: Crossen references Nero Wolfe and John Dickson Carr in The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints. Funnily enough, the fingerprint-trick used here can be linked to both writers. I already mentioned Crossen likely got the idea from Carr, but there's an episode of The Adventures of Nero Wolfe radio show, "The Case of the Phantom Fingers" (1951), employing exactly the same trick. Considering how self-referential Crossen is, he might also have made a reference to one of his short stories, "The Case of the Fugitive Fingerprints," published in the June, 1941, issue of Double Detective – as by "Richard Foster." Jones makes a reference to a criminal in California who, years ago, had come up with a fingerprint-trick of his own.

Murder Reeks: "John Archer's Nose" (1935) by Rudolph Fisher

Last year, I reviewed The Conjure-Man Dies (1932), "A Harlem Mystery," by African-American physician, radiologist and budding author, Rudolph Fisher, who died in 1934 at the age of 37 from abdominal cancer – assumed to have been caused by his x-ray experiments. Fisher's untimely death ended, what could have been, a fascinating detective series after only one novel.

The Conjure-Man Dies, as to be expected from a first try, is not without its flaws and particular the second-half betrays Fisher was new to the game. During the second-half, the characters, story and plot became increasingly more pulpy, culminating with a heavy-handed, labored ending and solution. So still an experienced writer trying to find his voice and footing in the genre, which would have made it interesting to see how he would developed and improved as a writer/plotter. Fisher was working on two sequels, one provisionally titled Thus Spake the Prophet, but the only glimpse we got of what could have been is a posthumously published short story.

"John Archer's Nose" was originally published in the January, 1935, issue of The Metropolitan, reprinted in Otto Penzler's Black Noir (2009) and included in the Collins Crime Club 2017 reprint of The Conjure-Man Dies – which reunites Detective Perry Dart and Dr. John Archer. I can already tell you I liked "John Archer's Nose" more than The Conjure-Man Dies.

Perry Dart, "weary of the foibles and follies of his Harlem," decides to drop in on his friend, Dr. John Archer, to provoke a good natured, friendly argument between pals. Dart begins with stating Harlemites are "the most superstitious idiots on the face of the earth," but, to his surprise and disbelieve, Archer agrees. Archer had an example in his medical practice of superstition, "of a very dark hue," which didn't end very well. And the day is not over yet. Dr. Archer is called to an apartment building where a young man, Sonny, has been stabbed. When they arrive, they find Sonny on his bed with the black-pearl handle of a knife sticking out of his chest and small, tightly-knit circle of suspects.

There's the victim's grieving mother, Ma Dewey, his sister, Petal, and his brother and sister-in-law, Ben and Letty. And their housemate, Red Brown ("all in the family, eh?"). Dart and Archer have to contend with a case throwing up multiple possibilities that include both an obvious and not so obvious solution. One "person is obviously guilty because everything points to him," while "another is obviously guilty because nothing points to him." And then there's the strange smell Archer noticed around the body. Dart and Archer eventually weed out, what appears to be, the least-likely-suspect and tragic motive from the cast of characters. Only to knock it down as a false-solution to reveal another well-hidden murderer and equally tragic motive. That's where the short story shows a noticeable improvement over the novel that was published two years previously.

One noted problem with The Conjure-Man Dies is that the solution comes out of nowhere. This is true of "John Archer's Nose," sort of, because the reader is not entirely left unprepared for the out-of-nowhere solution. In fact, I think most people will have a hunch from which direction the wind is blowing, but that leaves open the intriguing question how Fisher is going to make that leap... without horrendously crashing and burning. And he didn't! Fisher basically pulled a (SPOILER/ROT13) cynthr pbheg zheqref and just about made it work. So a small technical achievement, plot-wise, showing growing potential lamentably cut short. It would have been interesting to see if Fisher's plotting had improved or was simply better fitted for the short story format. Why does cancer have to ruin everything?

So, all in all, "John Archer's Nose" is a tighter, better written and plotted detective story than the novel-length The Conjure-Man Dies and well worth seeking out.