Vegetable Duck (1944) by John Rhode

John Rhode's Vegetable Duck (1944) is the fortieth title in his lengthy, long-running Dr. Lancelot Priestley series and has been praised by many readers as a particularly clever, crisply written detective story with an ingeniously contrived method for poisoning a piece of vegetable marrow – making it a veritable chef-d'oeuvre of the series. So imagine my disappointment when this supposedly five-star mystery turned out to be a pretty average, middle-of-the-Rhode entry in the series.

I've only read an infinitesimal fraction of the Dr. Priestley series, but Vegetable Duck is a second-tier title compared to The House on Tollard Ridge (1929), Death on the Board (1937), Invisible Weapons (1938), Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) and Death in Harley Street (1946). However, my dissatisfaction has more to do with the excessive, undeserved praise than with the story's inability to live up to it. But it has negatively affected my reading.

So this is very likely going to be a short, poorly written and disappointing review, because I have not all that much to say about it. The reader has been warned.

Vegetable Duck begins with the return of Charles Fransham to his London service flat, Mundesley Mansions, who, earlier in the evening, had been lured away from his diner by a mysterious, unaccountable telephone call – leaving his wife to enjoy a dish of vegetable duck with potatoes, gravy and cheese. And in case you're wondering, vegetable duck is "a marrow, not too big, stuffed with minced meat and herbs" and "baked whole." A dish that was not only a personal favorite of Letitia Fransham, but also turned out to be her last meal. She's found in the dinning-room, unresponsive, when her husband returns. The doctor who examined the body suspects Mrs. Fransham had died from "the effects of a powerful dose of some vegetable alkaloid" and alerted the authorities.

Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, of Scotland Yard, is placed in charge of the case and initially focuses his attention on the husband as the primary suspect.

Charles Fransham tells Waghorn he had been called by a man, named Corpusty, who introduced himself as an employee of a private-detective he had hired and wanted to meet him immediately, because there had been developments in the case – only Corpusty never turned up. And when Fransham returned home, he found the body of his wife in the dinning-room. Yes, this is very reminiscent of the murder of Julia Wallace in 1931 and mentioned a number of times throughout the story. The Wallace Case had captivated the imagination of many mystery writers of the time and Dorothy L. Sayers even dedicated a chapter to the case in The Anatomy of Murder (1936).

Fransham had hired a private-detective because he has been receiving anonymous letters with shotguns drawings on them. An obvious reference to a fatal shooting incident that had killed his brother-in-law, but there are many people, such as the now retired Superintendent Hanslet, who are convinced Fransham had shot his brother-in-law. Simply made it look like an unfortunate hunting accident.

So there are more than enough potential leads to follow up on and then there's the genuinely clever method for introducing a lethal dose of digitalis into a piece of vegetable marrow. A problem clevery explained by Dr. Lancelot Priestley over the dinner-table and also solved the puzzling problem of damp, water-damaged envelope. Sadly, Dr. Priestley is only peripherally involved and acts more as a soundboard to Waghorn than as a armchair detective. Nonetheless, the poisoning method Dr. Priestley laid bare was as cunning and inventive as the unusual poisoning method from Gladys Mitchell's little-known The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959). But the poisoning of the vegetable marrow also happened to be the only aspect of the plot that lifted the story, ever so slightly, above average. Only very briefly.

Vegetable Duck has some good detective work with several interesting plot-threads, but, as a whole, the story has nothing to justify the inordinate amount of praise it has received over the decades, because the murderer really sticks out and can easily be pointed out the moment this character enters the story – becoming even harder to ignore when a second murder is committed. While the murderer's identity is obvious, you're not given sufficient clues to work out any of the (other) problems for yourself. So, even as a howdunit, you can hardly label it as a perfect, five-star mystery novel.

Admittedly, the book was not as poorly plotted as The Milk-Churn Murder (1935) or as dull a story as Death Leaves No Card (1940), but neither was it anywhere near as good or brilliant as any of the earlier mentioned titles. My unmet expectations killed any possible enjoyment I might otherwise have gotten out of it. Not entirely fair, I know, but I went into the story expecting a monument of the series. Evidently, this happened not to be the case.

Anyway, I have complained and rambled on long enough. Vegetable Duck didn't work out for me, but there's more where that book came from and will simply lift another John Rhode title from the big pile in the coming weeks or months. The Robthorne Mystery (1934), Mystery at Olympia (1935), Death at Breakfast (1936) and Nothing But the Truth (1947) all look very promising. So stay tuned.

The Elusive Bowman (1951) by Francis Vivian

Athur Ernest Ashley was a British novelist, who started out as a painter and decorator, but turned to writing popular fiction in the 1930s and balanced his literary career with being a circuit lecturer on a variety of topics "ranging from crime to bee-keeping" – two subjects he would later integrate into a detective novel (The Singing Masons, 1950). Ashley had furthermore worked as an assistant editor at The Nottinghamshire Free Press and was one of the founding member of the Nottingham Writers' Club. But what we are interested in here is his two-decade long stint as a now long-forgotten mystery novelist.

Ashley wrote under the name of "Francis Vivian" and produced nearly twenty detective novels in as many years.

One of his recurring series-detectives was Inspector Gordon Knollis, of Scotland Yard, who purportedly "never picked up an undisclosed clue" and appeared in ten mystery novels that were published between 1941 and 1956, which have never been reissued since their original publication – until now. Dean Street Press has the entire series scheduled for republication on October 1, 2018, and they kindly send me a sample of some of these upcoming releases.

The Elusive Bowman (1951) is the seventh entry in the series and has a plot, as the book-title suggests, which draws on the noble, time-honored sport of archery. I would call the book a better and stronger archery-themed detective story than either John Bude's The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937) or Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey's School (1967).

Michael Maddison is a robust, healthy man of thirty-five who, unaccountably, had buried himself in a small, unassuming place called Teverby-on-the-Hill. There he acquired the tenancy of the village pub, Fox Inn, which he turned into something more than a watering-hole for villagers and commercial travelers, because Maddison believed pubs should be "centres of communal life" and "homes-from-home for travellers." Something he succeeded in admirably. The remodeled place provides a club-home to the Teverby Bowmen. An archery club boasting twenty-six shooting members under the leadership of a passionate archer, Captain Saunders.

So everything appears to be quiet, peaceful and even prosperous in Teverby-on-the-Hill, but the reader soon learns there's a dark side residing behind the genial facade of Maddison.

Maddison has moved to Teverby-on-the-Hill together with his unmarried sister, Rhoda, and his young niece and ward, Gillian, who had been orphaned in the London blitz, but Maddison reveals he has a very private reason for preventing them to get married – even saying he would go as far to commit murder to prevent it. Or undoing it. He even hits Rhoda with his fist "clean on the side of the jaw" when he caught her eavesdropping. Nevertheless, Rhoda and Gillian intend to marry Captain Saunders. So they begin to think about murdering Maddison. And they're not the only one.

One evening, Captain Saunders brought two hunting arrows to the Fox, a bodkin-pointed one and a broadhead, capable of "piercing armour-steel from a respectable distance." Major Oliver had seen hunting bows in Mongolia that could "kill a yak at forty yards" and did believe there were modern, Western bows and arrows that could do that. So Captain Saunders brought two arrows to show him, but they go missing by the end of the evening and turn up again the following day when Maddison is found in the recently remodeled and enlarged cellar of the Fox – a green and white fletched arrow sticking from his rib. A second arrow, similarly fletched, was deeply embedded in the door of a cupboard.

The Chief Constable decides to ask Scotland Yard for assistance and they immediately dispatch Inspector Gordon Knollis to the village.

A map of Teverby-on-the-Hill

Inspector Knollis is assisted by Inspector Lancaster, of the Maunsby police, who'll probably endear himself to a lot of long-time mystery readers, because he constantly forces Knollis to explain his deductions. A fun, little rib-poke at the detectives who love to mutter cryptic remarks and keep their thoughts to themselves. However, you should not assume Lancaster is simply a plot-device that lays bare the detective's thought process to reader. One of the chapters, entitled "The Deductions of Lancaster," has him deducing the hiding place of "seven prettily feathered arrows" and Knollis had completely overlooked this place.

So they make a pretty good investigative team and are exactly the kind of policemen needed to disentangle this complicated mesh of deception and contradictions.

There are only four suspects, Rhoda, Gillian, Capt. Saunders and Maj. Oliver, who have closely-linked motives and suspiciously moved around the Fox at the time of the murder, which effectively muddled the water – keeping the reader moving between (combinations of) suspects. A problem further complicated by a hidden blackmail plot and the all-important questions why Maddison had converted the cellar for private archery practice and whom he had been plotting to kill. My only complaint is that the red herrings are so thick that they obscured the genuine clues and this somewhat diminished the fair play aspect of the plot.

On a whole, The Elusive Bowman is a well-written, straightforward detective novel with a good, but relatively simple, plot stuffed with clues and red herrings complicated by the cross-actions of the small cast of characters. So a good and solid introduction to the work of a long overlooked mystery writer, who reminded me of Francis Duncan, but without frills and tighter plots. I'll definitely be coming back to Francis Vivian for a second serving.

Murder Behind Locked Doors (1988) by Ellen Godfrey

Ellen Godfrey is an American-born entrepreneur, living in Canada, who has a decades-long resume in business and technology, such as co-founding a software company in the 1970s, which she drew upon for a short-lived series of mystery novels about a corporate headhunter, Jane Tregar – who appeared in only two books. The first one in the series is the captivatingly titled Murder Behind Locked Doors (1988) and ended four years later with Georgia Disappeared (1992).

I don't believe regular readers of my blog need an explanation as to what and which book-title specifically attracted my attention. I think it's pretty obvious at this point. So let's jump straight into the story.

The setting of Murder Behind Locked Doors is a Toronto-based data-processing and software company, Brian Taylor Systems (BTS), which has been a trail-blazer as a technological innovator and is doing eight figures a year, but BTS stock takes a dip and rumors begin to fly when a key-figure in the company's top hierarchy unexpectedly died. Vice-President of Finance, Gary Levin, had been the financial guru of the company and, one evening, died of apparently natural causes in the computer room.

Jane Tregar is a headhunter who finds top executives to fill important, high-powered positions and is hired by CEO Brian Taylor to find him a new VP of Finance, but finding a replacement for the talented Levin turns out to be more difficult than expected – one of the reasons being the rumors that Levin had been murdered. Several of his colleagues believe he had been cleverly put out of the way. However, they're baffled as to how this could been accomplished, because Levin's body had been found in the proverbial, but up-to-date, locked room.

On the night of his death, Levin had been staying late and the computer he had been working on had crashed. So he had to go to the computer room to boot it up again and there his body was found the following morning, but the fact that he was found in the locked computer room seems to preclude the possibility of murder, because the room was protected by a (locked) steel door with an intruder-alarm and glass, passcard-controlled door – card-system log for that night shows only Levin had entered the computer room. And nobody had left the room after he had went in. Something that was withheld from the police is that a printed message had been found in the room saying, "that will teach the son of a bitch."

There are a handful of people, all of them BTS executives, who have a superpassword that allowed them to access every nook and cranny of their computer system: Martha Gruen (HR), Tom Henege (sales/marketing), Robert McDonnell (accountant), Martin Kaplan (customer support) and Taylor (CEO). So they all could have been aware what Levin had been working on. However, they also have iron-clad alibis.

Tregar comes to the conclusion that she has to find out what's going on behind the scenes of BTS, because it would be unethical to place an innocent person in the dead man's position without knowing if the replacement is in any possible danger of being murdered. After all, Levin could simply have been killed for what he had been doing as the VP of Finance. She soon learns that not everyone has been telling her the full story and a lot rumors are flying around about potential mergers, hostile takeovers and corporate business tactics like a greenmail plot – littered with phrases like white-knights and golden parachutes. Interestingly, there are excerpts throughout the story from The Toronto Daily News reporting on the business end of the case and how the stock-market is reacting to the death of Levin. And to the rumors of a possible merger or takeover. Those articles were a nice touch to the overall plot.

So, all of this made for a fascinating glance at a leading data-and software company that stood at the cradle of the modern-day computer era and the business end of the plot was well-conceived, which together with the locked room trick is strongest aspect of the story, but there's also a downside – namely the atrocious characterization. Godfrey is very much from the contemporary school of characterization.

A school of thought dictating that you can only have fully-rounded and relatable characters when they're portrayed as troubled, insecure and broken down people with more emotional baggage than a psychiatrist's file-cabinet. Jane Tregar is a text-book example of this. She had been brought up in a household where money had been tight and has been divorced from her much older, and very rich, husband who took their children with him. And she barely put up a fight to keep them. Later on in the story, the sister of a friend committed suicide and the reader is told that they came from a dysfunctional family with an abusive father.

None of this has any relevance, whatsoever, to the plot and reminded me why I prefer the traditional, plot-oriented detective stories from days gone by.

Regardless, Murder Behind Locked Doors still has a pretty good, adequately clued and traditionally-styled plot with an excellent impossible crime. A clever, multi-layered locked room trick that worked on all levels. There are technological and scientific aspects of the trick concerning the crashed computer and cause of death, but the linchpin of the trick are the personalities of the victim and murderer – who left the final execution of the locked room up to fate. Somehow, this really helped make the trick as believable as possible. I really liked the end result.

I have read locked room novels from this period before, such as Kate Wilhelm's Smart House (1989) and Richard Hunt's Deadlocked (1994), which attempted to use modern, sometimes SF-like, technology to create an entirely new kind of locked room scenarios. But they all failed. Godfrey deserves praise for actually making this work and craft a locked room problem, using science and technology, that could have been imagined by John Russell Fearn or Arthur Porges.

So, all in all, Murder Behind Locked Doors has a well worked-out plot with an interesting background that looks at big business and a deviously clever locked room trick, but the overall product is marred by the dreary, modern idea of characterization. However, if you can look pass that dreariness, you'll find a far better than average (modern) crime novel in Murder Behind Locked Doors.

The Locked Safe Mystery (1954) by Norvin Pallas

Norvin Pallas was "a free-lance writer" whose "day job was part-time accounting" and is remembered today, if he's remembered at all, as the author of a series of intelligently written, well-characterized juvenile mysteries with "complicated, logical, adult-style plots" starring a high-school newspaper reporter, Ted Wilford – inviting comparisons with the Ken Holt series by Bruce Campbell. Campbell and Pallas not only had similar series-detectives, but also had "a high regard for children" and "their thinking abilities."

Pallas knew he was writing for children and, to use his own words, "respected them for it" and did not talk down to them. On the contrary, Pallas appeared to have treated his readership as his intellectual equals and that might have actually been a serious flaw in the series.

Mathematical puzzles, games and codes were Pallas' "consuming interest," writing such non-fiction books as Calculator Puzzles, Tricks and Games (1976) and Games with Codes and Ciphers (1994), which is reflected in the complicated plots of the Ted Wilford stories – designed like puzzles with "clues and bits of germane information." Apparently, even older readers were not always successful in anticipating the solution. This, coupled with a complete lack of action and excitement, probably made this series a little bit too dry and cerebral for its intended audience.

Nonetheless, I was intrigued when I learned of this series and one title, in particular, beckoned for my attention. You can probably deduce from the post-title what attracted my attention. What can I say? I have an unhealthy love for locked room puzzles.

But before I take a look at the book in question, I would like to point out that all of the background information was scraped from a single (PDF) article, "A Dark Horse Series: The Ted Wilfords," written by David M. Baumann and is perhaps the only credible, in-depth source of information to be found on this series – discussing the author, characters, plots and honestly assessing the strength and weaknesses of the series. A really well-written, informative and honest article. It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in juvenile detective fiction and this obscure series in particular.

The Locked Safe Mystery (1954) is the second title in a series of fifteen books, beginning with The Secret of Thunder Mountain (1951) and concluding with The Greenhouse Mystery (1967), which follows the exploits of a high-school student, Ted Wilford. Reportedly, he "grows older from one book to the next" and graduates from high-school halfway through the series with the last books taking place during his college years. This second title shows him taking his first, tentative steps over the threshold of adulthood and gets taste of the perks, and challenges, that come with the responsibilities trust upon him as a young adult.

The story begins with Ted receiving some bad news from his doctor: a nagging ankle injury makes him ineligible for the high-school football team, because his ankle is still vulnerable and not ready for the strain of a football game. So this naturally puts a damper on his mood. However, the Forestdale High School newspaper, the Statesman, unanimously elects him as their new editor-in-chief and his hometown's twice-weekly paper, The Town Crier, took him on as a special high-school correspondent – following in the footsteps of his older brother, Ronald Wilford. Over the course of the story, Ted learns (as editor) that you can't please anyone and (as a cub-correspondent) that you have to begin at the bottom of the ladder. But this is not all he has on his plate.

Ted is asked by the new assistant principle of the school, Mr. Clayton, to assist him with the annual charity fund raiser during the Fall Festival and the event netted a sum of $13,000, which is placed in a strong-box and locked inside the school safe. However, the money disappears from the safe and only three people knew the combination: the high-school principle, the assistant principle and a secretary, but only one of those three people, namely Mr. Clayton, has inexplicably disappeared. Ted is the only person who really believes him to be innocent and writes an editorial, accidentally published in The Town Crier, making a case in his favor. Something, in itself, that will prove to be valuable lesson to the aspiring newspaper reporter.

So the problem of the theft of the charity money from the locked school safe, if you believe those three aforementioned people to be innocent, presents the reader with a quasi-impossible situation.

Unfortunately, this problem is resolved during a dry-as-dust courtroom scene when a lock-expert gives a technical explanation for this problem that you expect to find in Freeman Wills Crofts or John Rhode. You can hardly blame children, or even (older) teenagers, for not figuring out this trick. Which is a pity, since I can think of at least two tricks this particular thief could have used to open the safe. On the upside, this explanation revealed a second layer to the problem that's a genuine, full-fledged locked room puzzle. I can't say too much about it, because this development comes very late in the story, but the locked room trick was decent enough. A trick of the same caliber as Bruce Campbell's The Mystery of the Invisible Enemy (1959) and William Arden's The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972).

Well, this is all I can really say about The Locked Safe Mystery. The story is skillfully-written, cleverly plotted and realistically presented, especially the life and personality of the main-character, Ted, but the pace is incredibly slow and the story is completely devoid of action or excitement – actually making this some kind of crossword puzzle in prose form. Personally, as a plot-oriented mystery reader, I didn't mind too much, but I have to wonder how this approach was able to attract younger readers.

I have mentioned above how this series has been compared to the Ken Holt series, but Sam and Beryl Epstein, who were behind the Campbell penname, were far more successful in balancing intelligent plotting with exciting writing and more realistic characterization to craft engaging detective stories (e.g. The Clue of the Phantom Car, 1953). The Locked Safe Mystery had intellect and a heart that was in the right place, but had no energy and was missing that all-important spark of life. Something that's absolutely necessary in a juvenile detective novel.

Still, this was an interesting read and is yet another impossible crime novel from the juvenile corner of the genre that has been overlooked by such locked room experts as Robert Adey. I hope John Pugmire, of LRI, adds them to the forthcoming supplemental edition of Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) in 2019. They deserve to be finally acknowledged.

All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2017) by Edward D. Hoch

Originally, I had planned to use this particular blog-post for either Christopher Bush, Bruce Campbell or Paul Doherty, but my previous read left me with a stronger-than-normal craving for impossible crime fiction and one serving was not going to satisfy it. Naturally, this brought to one of the most prolific locked room artisans of all-time, Edward D. Hoch.

During his long, storied career, Hoch wrote close to a thousand short stories and created a dozen, or so, series-characters such as Simon Ark, Ben Snow and Nick Velvet, but my personal favorite will always remain Dr. Sam Hawthorne – a small-town country physician often called upon to solve seemingly impossible crimes. Dr. Hawthorne practiced as a country doctor in the fictional New England town of Northmont, but this unassuming town has a higher murder-rate rivaling that of Cabot Cove and Midsomer County. And to complicate matters, all of the crimes are utterly bizarre and usually appear to be impossible nature!

However, what makes this series amazing is not only the incredible volume of locked room and impossible crime scenarios, but also the sheer variety in original premises and solutions. Hoch was not just content with bodies found behind locked doors or in the middle of a field of unbroken snow or wet sand. Oh, no. He imagined such puzzling situations as a horse-and-buggy vanishing from within a covered bridge. Fresh corpses turning up in a long-buried coffins or metal time-capsules. A murderous tree with a penchant for strangling people or a cursed tepee that nobody emerges from alive. These are only a handful of examples of the miracle problems Dr. Hawthorne solved over the decades.

Crippen & Landru has published four volumes of Dr. Hawthorne stories and the most recent title in this series is All But Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2017), which is collection of fifteen short stories originally published between 1991 and 1999 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM). So let's dig right in!

"The Problem of the Country Church" was first published in the August, 1991, issue of EQMM and brings Dr. Sam Hawthorne to the Greenbush Inn, a popular mountain resort in Maine, owned by Andre Mulhone – who had married his former nurse, April (see "The Problem of the Snowbound Cabin" from Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014). They recently had their first child, a boy, who they named after Dr. Hawthorne and asked him to be the child's godfather.

During the baptism service, the baby is inexplicably taken from its bassinet and replaced by "a curly-haired Shirley Temple doll" with a fifty thousand dollar ransom note stuck it. I'm not too big a fan of kidnap stories, because they're rarely any good, but this was a pretty decent effort. The trick used to switch the baby for the doll was not too bad, but almost immediately figured it out as it reminded me of another impossible situation, also set in a church, from a TV-series. I can hardly lay the blame for that at Hoch's feet. So a fairly decent curtain-raiser for this fourth volume.

"The Problem of the Grange Hall" was first published in the December, 1991, issue of EQMM and Pilgrim Memorial Hospital is celebrating its eighth anniversary with a community dinner and dance at Grange Hall. Usually, eighth anniversaries aren't worth celebrating, but "the Depression had been hard on Pilgrim Memorial" and the hospital needs money for new equipment. So they used the anniversary as an opportunity to raise money. The committee has even brought in a big New York band, Sweeney Lamb and his All-Stars, for the dance.

Dr. Lincoln Jones of Pilgrim Memorial went to high school with the trumpet player of the band, Bix Blake, but their reunion ends tragically when they fail to come out of a locked dressing room during the dance. The door is broken down and, upon entering, they find Dr. Jones kneeling next to the body of the trumpet player holding an empty, hypodermic needle in one hand – which had been "full of codeine." Dr. Jones claims Blake began to have trouble breathing and that there was no needle in the room when this happened. This is, admittedly, a fascinating impossible crime scenario with an uncommon murder weapon that makes the murder look even more impossible, but the experienced (locked room) mystery reader should have no problem piecing this puzzle together. And perhaps do so even quicker than Dr. Hawthorne.

"The Problem of the Vanishing Salesman" was first published in the August, 1992, issue of EQMM and is one of the innumerable detective stories playing with Dr. Watson's reference, in "The Problem of Thor Bridge" from Conan Doyle's The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927), to the unfinished tale of Mr. James Phillimore – "who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world."

Mr. James Philby is a traveling salesman who returned to Northmont in the Spring of '37 to sell lightening rods, but pulls a vanishing act on the porch Abby Gaines with Dr. Hawthorne as the sole witness. Shortly thereafter, Philby reappears as if nothing has happened. However, Philby disappears a second time, on exactly the same spot, but this time its after shooting and killing a man. Dr. Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens watch him open the storm-door and vanish through a door that was locked and bolted from the inside! And he's nowhere to be found on the premises! The explanation for this vanishing trick is a little bit workmanlike, but this fitted the character of the murderer like a glove and made for a fun take on the inverted detective story.

"The Problem of the Leather Man" was first published in December, 1992, issue of EQMM and can now be counted as one of my favorite stories from this series.

The Leather Man is a remarkable character who really existed: "a laconic wanderer," rumored to have been of French decent, who dressed in a homemade leather suit and walked a 365-mile circuit between Connecticut and eastern New York State for thirty years during the late 1800s – which he did until his death in 1889. Hoch used the lore of the man in tattered leather to pen one of the more memorable entries in this series.

During the summer of 1937, the ghost of the Leather Man returned to Northmont and appears to have been involved with a fatal automobile accident. Dr. Hawthorne becomes fascinated by the story and assumes "someone is retracing the old route" for "reasons of his own." So he decided to follow the trail and eventually spotted "a slim, brown-clad figure." The man claims to be an Australian, Zach Taylor, who's "on a trek" and Dr. Hawthorne begins to walk along with the man. Along the way, they come across several of Dr. Hawthorne's acquaintances and, by the end of the day, they decide to stay the night at a Bed & Breakfast.

On the following morning, Dr. Hawthorne discovers that his leather-clad companion has disappeared from their shared room and the owners of the B&B tell him he had checked in all alone. Smelling of booze. All of the people, he had come across the previous day, swear they had not seen the Leather Man. Dr. Hawthorne had been walking by himself.

An absolutely marvelous, first-class premise with not one, but three, separate explanations that form together one single solution. Sheriff Lens has a point that this is "stretching coincidence a bit far," but, if you're going to use a patch-work of coincidences, this is the way how it should be done. A grand take on the 1880s urban legend of "The Vanishing Lady," which also inspired Basil Thomson's "The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser" (Mr. Pepper, Investigator, 1925), John Dickson Carr's 1943 radio-play "Cabin B-13" and Simon de Waal & Dick van den Heuvel's Spelen met vuur (Playing With Fire, 2004). Only thing you can say against it is that, technically, it doesn't exactly qualify as an impossible crime story. But, as you can see, that did not prevent me from enjoying this story.

"The Problem of the Phantom Parlor" made its first appearance in the June, 1993, issue of EQMM and, plot-wise, is one of the better and stronger entries in this volume. Dr. Hawthorne receives a twelve-year-old girl, Josephine Grady, in his office who staying a week in Northmont with her aunt, Min Grady – who, according to the girl, is "sort of spooky" and her house has a ghost-room. There's a large, elaborate china closet, but sometimes there's "a little parlor" behind the double doors with a sofa, chairs and pictures on the wall. A parlor that appears and disappears at random.

Dr. Hawthorne gives Josephine his home phone-number and tells her to call him whenever something strange has happened, but, when she calls him, it's to tell him that she has found her aunt's body in the phantom parlor. When Dr. Hawthorne and Sheriff Lens arrive, the body is lying in the hallway and the parlor, once more, is nowhere to be found. This is a truly excellent and original story with a cleverly constructed impossible crime trick.

My only complaint is that the solution to this story has somewhat diminished my high opinion on another contemporary locked room novel, because the central idea from that novel obviously came from this short story. Not only the idea behind the locked room trick, but also the clue of the previous, long-dead resident of the house. Hoch originated the idea with this wonderful story.

"The Problem of the Poisoned Pool" first appeared in the December, 1993, issue of EQMM and Dr. Hawthorne is invited to the clambake party of Ernest Holland, published of the Northmont Blade, who tells everyone to bring their bathing suits – because the pool is open. During the party, his brother, Philip Holland, miraculously emerges from an empty swimming pool and is challenged by Ernest to do the trick in reverse by diving into "the pool and disappear." Philip accepts the challenge and dives back into the pool, but dies almost immediately of cyanide poisoning.

Unfortunately, this is not a good story at all and pretty much cheats the reader, because the correct solution to the impossible appearance was suggested early on and rejected. Only to be brought back on stage as the correct solution with a minor addition used to explain the poisoning part. Hoch should have known better, because, if I remember correctly, Carr mocked a variation on this solution in A Graveyard to Let (1949) – which also involves an impossibility in a swimming-pool. So not one of Hoch's better impossible crime stories.

"The Problem of the Missing Roadhouse" first appeared in the June, 1994, issue of EQMM and is, regrettably, not much better than the previous story. After a night out, Jack and Becky Tober are driving home when they come across a roadhouse where they accidentally hit a man with their car. Or so it appears. At the hospital, they find that the dead man has a bullet wound in his head, but when they return to the scene of the crime, the roadhouse has disappeared. I think Aidan of Mysteries Ahoy! described this story best when he said it was "awkward and unconvincing." I concur!

"The Problem of the Country Mailbox" first appeared in the December, 1994, issue of EQMM and is an improvement over the previous two stories, but still has its problems. The story takes place in the Fall of '38 and Northmont is experiencing a population growth, which brings change to the town and one of these changes is a small, private college that's being built in a neighboring town – encouraged a man named Josh Vernon to open a bookstore in town. Vernon has an impossible problem for Dr. Hawthorne concerning one of his customers, Aaron DeVille.

Three times, Vernon has left books DeVille had ordered in his mailbox and they simply disappeared. Sometimes, the books disappeared in less than a minute or two. Vernon placed a book in the mailbox and DeVille immediately stepped outside, to get it, only to discover an empty mailbox. Dr. Hawthorne decides to take this hungry mailbox to the test and personally delivers a copy of War and Peace, but when the package is opened, which contained a harmless book moments before, DeVille is blown to pieces by a bomb! A good premise and story-telling with an interesting solution.

However, I have one (tiny) problem with the explanation: why, from all the books in the house, would [redacted] pick that specific book? I think that's one hell of a coincidence. Still, all things considered, this was a good story.

"The Problem of the Crowded Cemetery" first appeared in the May, 1995, issue of EQMM and was famously anthologized by Mike Ashley in The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000), which was my first exposure to this series and, I believe, even Hoch. So I have a particular fondness for this story.

Spring Glen Cemetery used to be more of a park than a graveyard, bisected by a creek, which sometimes overflowed and flooded the graveyard when the warmth of spring melted the winter snow on Cobble Mountain – slowly eroding the soil on the banks of the creek. This resulted in the lost of several acres of cemetery land. So many of the graves had to be cleared and reburied, but Dr. Hawthorne, who was to oversee the procedure, is soon confronted with another a baffling impossible crime. One of the recently unearthed coffins, buried for more than twenty years, turns out to contain the body of a recently murdered man. A baffling situation with an explanation as simple as it's practical. I liked it for more than one reason.

"The Problem of the Enormous Owl" first appeared in the January, 1996, issue of EQMM and is a minor story about a playwright, Gordon Cole, who's found in the middle of a field with a crushed chest and feathers found on the body – identified as belonging to a great horned owl. More of an howdunit than an impossible crime. Only interesting aspect of the story is that Sheriff Lens is the one who solved the how-part of the crime. A role usually reserved for Dr. Hawthorne, but he gets to correctly identify the murderer.

"The Problem of the Miraculous Jar" first appeared in the August, 1996, issue of EQMM and is a good, old-fashioned and uncomplicated locked room mystery. 

 

Proctor and Mildred Hall, two prominent citizens of Northmont, returned from a two month holiday in the Mediterranean region and brought back a stoneware jar from Cana where Jesus had performed the first miracle at the wedding feast – by turning water into wine. Hall's give this Canaanite jar to one of their friends, Rita Perkins, but the wonder it performs to its new owner is a poisonous miracle.

Shortly after the jar is given, Dr. Hawthorne is called by Perkins to tell him she drank from the jar and is feeling "terribly dizzy." He rushes to her home, which is entirely locked from the inside and surrounded by unmarked snow. Dr. Hawthorne breaks a window and, inside the home, finds the body of Perkins. An autopsy revealed she had been pregnant and died from cyanide poisoning, but the question is how the poison was introduced into the locked house. The answer to this question also reveals the identity of the murderer.

So a pretty good, competently plotted locked room story and, had this story actually been written and published during the late 1930s, the motive and murder method would probably have shocked some readers.

"The Problem of the Enchanted Terrace" first appeared in the April, 1997, issue of EQMM and has, together with "Phantom Parlor," one of the best and most original impossible crime scenario and solution in this volume – a truly novel way to make a person vanish as if by magic. Dr. Hawthorne is one a long overdue, well deserved holiday together with his nurse, Mary Best, and two friends, Winston and Ellen Vance. They make a stop at New Bedford to visit newly opened Herman Melville museum and there they learn of "a haunted terrace" that attracts lightening strikes during thunderstorms.

Dr. Hawthorne experiences the paranormal quality of terrace first hand when he witnesses "a strange greenish light," which quickly vanishes, followed by the inexplicable disappearance of a man from the same terrace. The terrace was surrounded by walls or wet, unmarked brown soil. Somehow, a man had vanished from this place in the blink of an eye! As said above, the solution to this miracle problem is as novel as it original. You can almost say it was cartoon-like, but really appreciated the originality of the trick. Only weakness is the unconvincing motive. Granted, motives have always been a particular weakness of this series.

"The Problem of the Unfound Door" was first published in the June, 1998, issue of EQMM and is a pretty minor story about a miraculous disappearance during an inspection of an Anglican convent. However, the only notable aspect of this story is not the locked room trick, but how Hoch's attempt to invert the expectations of long-time mystery readers. A spirited attempt that has to be appreciated.

"The Second Problem of the Covered Bridge" was first published in the December, 1998, issue of EQMM and had the promise to be the standout story of this collection, but the story failed to live up to its premise and ended up absolutely hating it.

The story takes place in January, 1940, when Northmont celebrates its centenarian and the town wants to mark the occasion by dramatizing "the four most memorable events in Northmont history." One for each season. For winter, they want to memorialize the first impossible problem Dr. Hawthorne ever solved in Northmonth, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge" collected in Diagnosis: Impossible – The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (1996), which took place eighteen years ago – when Dr. Hawthorne settled down in Northmont in 1922. Mayor Sumerset is to drive through the covered bridge on a horse-and-buggy, exactly 18 years ago, but halfway through the covered bridge, watched from both sides, he's shot through the head at close range. A marvelous premise using the history of the series itself, but completely soiled by using the same kind of solution as the one from "The Problem of the Voting Booth."

An unimaginative, cop-out solution that stopped being clever after Conan Doyle used it and writers really have to stop using it. You're not being clever and the only thing it achieves is killing potentially good (locked room) detective stories. I hate this solution so very much.

Finally, we have "The Problem of the Scarecrow Congress," culled from the pages of the June, 1999, issue of EQMM and is a relatively minor story with a nifty impossible situation: a body of a shot man who, somehow, appeared inside a scarecrow that was part of a competition. The trick here is not bad, a play on a technique Hoch often employs for his locked room stories, and is properly clues, but marred by a poor and unconvincing motive. So this collection ended with a bit of whimper.

In summation, All But Impossible is the traditional mixed bag of stories you like, dislike or feel indifferent about in turn, but, as a whole, they still form a pretty solid collection of impossible crime tales with "Leather Man," "Phantom Parlor," "Crowded Cemetery" and "Enchanted Terrace" as the standout cases. Overall, a definite improvement over the stories collected in the previous volume (Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 2014) and very much enjoyed my return to Northmont. One of all-time favorite fictitious places. And it's always a pleasure to listen to Dr. Hawthorne narrate his old cases.

Lastly, Crippen & Landru have one more Dr. Hawthorne collection in the offing, apparently titled Challenge the Impossible – The Last Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (20??), but a definite publication date is, as of yet, not known. Personally, I think a book-title along the lines of Not As Impossible As It Seems: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne or Is It Really Possible?: The Last Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne is better fitted for the truly last collection of one of the greatest specialists of impossible crimes.