Some Die Hard (1979) by Stephen Mertz

Stephen Mertz is an American writer of popular commercial novels in a wide range of genres, such as action thrillers, supernatural suspense and dark noir, but embarked on his career as a full-fledged novelist with a cerebral, hardboiled locked room mystery titled Some Die Hard (1979) – originally published as by "Stephen Brett." The name was a tip of the fedora to "Brett Halliday," a pseudonym of Davis Dresser, who created the long-lived Michael Shayne series. Because in the years preceding the publication of his debut novel, Mertz has been selling short stories to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. So I thought that was a nice little acknowledgment. 

Some Die Hard is your typical hardboiled private-eye novel written in a similar vein as Manly Wade Wellman's Find My Killer (1947), Donald E. Westlake's Murder Among Children (1967) and Bill Pronzini's Hoodwink (1981).

All four of these hardboiled stories have a traditional locked room puzzle at the core of their plots that are cracked by the quintessential, tough-guy private eyes and this unlikely combination actually works. Well, usually, anyway. You sometimes run into duds, like Henry Kane's The Narrowing Lust (1955) or Eric Keith's Nine Man's Murder (2011), but normally, they tend to gel together and often are quite entertaining reads – most notably the impossible crime titles from Pronzini's Nameless Detective series (e.g. Scattershot, 1982). On which side does this particular hardboiled locked room yarn fall? Let's find out. 

"Rock" Dugan earned his nickname during his days as a Hollywood stuntman, specialized in "tricks that would've racked up most people," but he always walked away from the set in one piece. During the early seventies, Dugan settled down in Denver, Colorado, and drew on his military intelligence background to apply for a private-investigators license.

On an interesting side note, Dugan shares a passion for crime-fiction with Pronzini's Nameless Detective and Some Die Hard opens with Dugan reading a Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner. The book even plays a (minor) part in setting up the plot. 

Some Die Hard opens shortly after Dugan performed his part in a routine case for Lewellyn Sugan in Langdon Springs, Colorado, hopped on a bus back to Denver and a nervous, unsettled man takes the seat next to him, but eased the man out of his mind with the help of Perry Mason – until they arrived at the bus depot. The wiry man had become "a tensed bundle of nerves," ready to explode, which happens when they spot two bruisers at the depot who had been obviously waiting for the nervous man. He panics, bolts and, scared and careless, gets himself killed when he's hit by a taxicab. And that would have been the end of it. However, Dugan finds an envelope "nestled between the pages of Perry Mason" and had evidently been stashed there by his now "erstwhile traveling partner."

The dead man turns out to be one Stanley Hochman, a private-eye, who had been hired by Susan Court to get copies of the I.O.U's from her younger, good-for-nothing brother, Tom, to a man named Murray Zucco. A big-shot who runs a gambling club and her brother is in debt to him to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars. Tom promised Zucco to payoff his debt from the money he'll inherit from his terminally-ill father, Carlander Court, but his father recently had a change of mind. And is on the verge of altering his will one last time. A new will cutting out Tom and giving practically everything to his sister, Susan. So this gives Tom and Zucco a very strong incentive to help along the inevitable.

Dugan has a one-on-one talk with the dying millionaire and, as a mystery reader, is reminded of Philip Marlowe's meeting with General Sternwood in the hothouse at the beginning of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) – concluding that Court was the General Sternwood to his Philip Marlowe. Carlander Court offered Dugan twenty thousand dollar retainer to find his would-be murderer in case he died before the day ended and was unable to sign his new will. A retainer he had to work for only a short time later when his provisional client is murdered under impossible circumstances.

Court was "a heavyset, hearty and robust-looking man," full of life, but had been suffering his fatal illness in private and outwardly enjoyed as much of life as possible. One way he was going to enjoy life was with the acquisition of a private, single-seater sailplane.

A sleek, stiletto-thin reddish orange craft attached with a pull-rope to a jeep that carried Court to "the open, cloudless sky above" and people on the ground even see him wave at them at one point, but suddenly, the glider makes a very rough landing and when they reach the craft they find a dead man inside – a large hunting knife had been rammed into his gut. State Crime Lab inspected the glider, inside out, but they were unable to discover any mechanical device that could have jammed that knife into Court. So how did the murderer managed to stab a man who had been flying solo in a glider?

This impossible situation is, as Dugan, describes it "a variation on the old locked room puzzles of Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr."

However, you should not get your hopes up, because this intriguing and promising impossible situation comes with a hackneyed, time-worn and third-rate solution that strikes a jarringly false note in an otherwise well-written, nicely paced private-eye story. Robert Adey defined the discrepancy between the setup and solution perfectly in Locked Room Murders (1991) when describing the murder as a "neatly posed impossible crime" with "a solution scarcely up to the standard of a pre-World War I boy's story." Yes, the explanation for this fascinating impossibility is really that bad and dated.

So, before churning out the closer of this review, allow me to live up to my reputation as the resident locked room expert fanboy expert and throw out an alternative solution. Only part of the setup that has to be altered is the cause of death.

In my situation, Court is murdered with a quick-acting poison (take your pick) instead of being stabbed with a hunting knife. It was mentioned in the story Court refused to take any medication, which is actually a clue to the awful explanation, but here the murderer could have convinced him that, considering his declining health, it would be advisable to take medication before getting airborne – if only a pill to prevent possible airsickness. So the murderer gives Court a poisonous gelatin-capsule that dissolves within 10-20 minutes and instructs him to swallow it a couple of minutes before the glider is dragged into the air by the jeep. The murderer then slips a phial, or box, of the deadly, fast-acting poison (this time not in gelatin-capsules) in the victim's pocket or places it inside the glider. And the end result? On the surface, it would appear as if a terminally-ill man went out on his own terms by taking poison when he was peacefully gliding through the sky in a sailplane. A beautiful oblivion! 

You could make Dugan suspect murder in this scenario for exactly the same reason as in the original one: a lack of fingerprints on the murder weapon. Only here the phial or box of poison would be missing the victim's fingerprints instead of a knife-handle.

Anyway, as noted here above, Some Die Hard is a well-written, nicely paced hardboiled detective story with a plot that has more to offer than just a horrendously botched impossible crime. Dugan has to contend with Zucco and his lackey, a corrupt chief of police, as well with the extremely spoiled, short-tempered and even dangerous Tom Court – who may have already killed someone in a parking-lot brawl. There are a number of physical altercations, one of them between the sheets with Susan, and more than once has to stare down a barrel of gun. All of this culminates with Dugan confronting the murderer in an open field, where the glider crashed, which ends in a truly tragic shootout. 

Some Die Hard is very much in line with the earlier mentioned hardboiled (locked room) novels by Pronzini, Wellman and Westlake, but you should dial your expectations for the impossible murder all the way back to zero. Or else you're going to end up extremely disappointed. So, a long story short, this story was the proverbial mixed bag of tricks and suspect less demanding readers, where the locked room story is concerned, will probably get more out of this story than I did.

Finally, Some Die Hard has been reissued by Rough Edges Press and this new edition has a must-read afterword from Mertz, titled "From the Manor Torn," which details the ordeal he went through with the original publisher of the book. Manor Books was "a low-end New York publishing house in the 1970s" operated by "a pack of thieving scuzzballs." An outfit who scoured for writers "who were good enough to be published," but who wouldn't have "the clout or the resources to collect the money owed them." I like these bits of obscure, long-forgotten history and its inclusion here made up a little bit for the uneven story preceding.

Anyway, I hopefully have found a really good detective story for my next read that make up for this mixed bag of tricks and my previous disappointment. So, once again, stay tuned!