The Will o' the Wisp Mystery (2024) by Edward D. Hoch

The Will o' the Wisp Mystery (2024), introduced by Tom Mead, is the latest collection of Edward D. Hoch short stories from Crippen & Landru and covers two short, but complete, series with the first being "an incredibly audacious experiment in storytelling" – a short novel made up of short stories. Six short stories, "The Pawn," "The Rook," "The Knight," "The Bishop," "The Queen" and "The King," originally serialized in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from April to September 1971 under the name "Mr. X." The Will o' the Wisp Mystery was reprinted in complete form a decade later in the anthology Ellery Queen's Maze of Mysteries (1982), before descending into obscurity. A shame as it's one of Hoch's more inventive pieces of detective fiction. Not only for its storytelling structure!

The one-shot detective of this unusual mystery is David Piper, the Manhunter, who works for the fictitious, ambiguously-named and underfunded Department of Apprehension. Piper's department assists other law enforcement agencies in "the capture of escaped convicts, the location of parole violators" and "even on occasion the return of runaway teenagers to their parents."

So when a prison bus transferring six criminals to jail gets hijacked, the Manhunter has to track down and apprehend the escaped prisoners. Busting a prison bus that leaves two guards dead, one injured and half a dozen criminals being pursued by man nicknamed "The Manhunter" sounds hardboiled, but there's a traditionally, fairly-clued puzzle plot – cleverly hidden underneath its timely trappings. Over the course of half a dozen stories, Piper attempts to find a connection between Nick Bruno ("underworld king"), Hugh Courtney ("impostor and murderer"), Kate Gallery ("murderess"), Charlie Hall ("swindler and card cheat"), Jack Larner ("bank robber and car thief") and Joe Reilly ("forger"). And, again, why they were busted out considering the people who organized the prison van ambush paid big money ("...my theory that they're together on some sort of big caper"). Each of the six stories has a self-contained piece of the bigger picture, tied to each of the six escapees, but every story ends on a cliffhanger. And, of course, they start bleeding into each other.

For example, the second story, "The Rook," one of the escapees turns up dead and murdered in a hotel room, which is solved, but Piper has some lingering questions regarding the circumstances of the murder ("...we're being maneuvered into making exactly the moves that someone wants us to make"). So even with the killer in custody, the murder continues to cause trouble later on in the story. That makes for a very short, very compact novel of no more than six "chapters," but, as previously mentioned, The Will o' the Wisp Mystery is not merely a mystery novelty item. Solution to what lies behind the prison bust and trail of bodies, or what the hypothesized big caper could, is original, imaginative and fairly clued. Piper even tries to buy time in the last chapter by going over all six clues. I found one clue particularly ingenious and think many of today's detective fans would agree.

Let me tell you, I did some self-congratulatory back-patting when the solution I pieced together turned out to be correct. I half expected I got hold of a juicy red herring, but the modern-day Mycroft Holmes right on the money. When a detective story is actually good, like The Will o' the Wisp Mystery, the readers always wins whether you solve it or get properly hoodwinked – because both are satisfying for different reasons. For me, anyway. Just for its titular story, The Will o' the Wisp Mystery comes highly recommended.

This collection has more to offer as it includes all seven short stories in the short, but long-lived, series about an inner city priest, Father David Noone. Mead described Father Noone as "a decidedly off-beat creation," compared to other clerical sleuths, who deals with the grittier, urban crimes of modern America. Simply put, they tend to be more character focused stories than most of Hoch's mysteries. Well, they aim for that early post-WWII realism. Hoch himself has said in an interview Father Noone is a character he kept "around for just the right type of story" appearing only sporadically in his short stories. Father Noone's first three appearances were spread out over a twenty-some year period from 1963 to 1985, while the final four were published between 2002 and 2004.

"Game of Skill," originally published in the December, 1963, issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, introduces Father Noone as he takes over the duties of the absent Monsignor at St. Monica's. On a Monday evening, Father Noone gets a threatening phone call from a man, "I'm going to blow up your church on Sunday morning." The man calls back everyday with the same threat, but everyday with a bit more venom. Father Noone is, of course, much more interested in reaching out to this troubled soul and tries to engage with him every time the phone rings. This builds up towards the Sunday mass with, story-and character-wise, an effective ending, but otherwise not much of a detective story. Hoch's early work, especially from the 1960s, is a bit spotty as some stories were just typical, gloomy 1960s crime stories (e.g. "The Oblong Room," 1967).

The next story, "The Thing in Lovers' Lane," first appeared in the July, 1971, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and is a slight improvement on the first story published eight years previously. Father Noone's parish is rocked to its foundation when a young priest, Father Kling, is killed, under compromising circumstances, in a lovers' lane – dying in the arms of a woman named Stella. Both were "shot to death in the front seat of her car." Understanding the true relationship between the two victims is the key to solving the case. A marginal improvement over the first story with a little bit more meat to the plot, but the "clueing" here shows Hoch was more interested in the characters than the plot (ROT13: jul qebc gur X jura Y jbhyq unir orra fb zhpu orggre, orpnhfr Fgryyn Xvat fbhaqf orggre naq n yvggyr rnfvre gb zvff guna Fgryyn Yvat, juvpu whfg fgnaqf bhg).

I reviewed the third story in the series last year, but "The Sweating Statue" (1985) is the best of the three Father Noone stories published before the 2000s. Yes, it helped that has a solid and somewhat unique impossible situation to center the story and characters around.

"One More Circus," originally published in the May, 2002, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is the first Father Noone short story from the second, short-lived period in the series from the early 2000s. So you get a far more polished story from an older, experienced Hoch than the first two stories from the '60s and early '70s. And it shows! Father Noone is asked to take on the duties as temporary chaplain for the performers of the Breen Brothers circus out in Montana, because "the Catholic Church in America was besieged by an acute shortage of priests." Father Noone agrees as it's only a three-day job, "you wouldn't miss any Sunday Masses," but his stay at the circus ends with a terrible, tragic accident revealed to be a cleverly-disguised murder – before reverting back to being a tragedy. In some ways, “One More Circus” is a similar to "Game of Skill," but the ending is better handled and thus far more effective. Even though it's not much of a detective story.

"The Arrow of Ice," original to the anthology Murder Most Catholic: Divine Tales of Profane Crimes (2002), finds Father Noone's parish during a tumultuous period. A part of his parish, "clinging to the past," are in a uproar over the plans to renovate and modernized the church. They're demonstrating the plans and the architect, Porter Macklin, who's going to redesign the church. Meanwhile, the other parishioners are preparing for an upcoming festival featuring ice sculptures. Between all of this, the visiting architect is found murdered in the kitchen of the rectory with a sliver of ice sticking out of his bloodied throat. This is one of Hoch's lesser-known, rarely discussed stories and so hoped, based on the title, it would be some clever take on the impossible crimes with the normally trite icicle weapons, but no such thing. Just a competently put together, but unremarkable, whodunit. Same can be more or less said about the next story.

"The Hand of God," first published in the January, 2003, issue of EQMM, brings Father Noone to St. Joan of Arc college to attend a conference, but it gets cancelled when a sophomore student, Darcy Clemence, is shot and killed. A second body is soon found suggesting suicide with the victim having left behind a suicide note and confession on his computer ("I didn't mean to kill her"). So was it a murder/suicide or a double murder? I think the best aspects of "The Hand of God" is its college setting and Father Noone hitting upon the solution during a performance by college drama club of Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story. Both helped to prop up the plot and solution.

"Searching for Sammy Sand," originally published in the August, 2004, issue of EQMM, is the seventh and final story in the Father Noone series. There's still a shortage of priests and Father Noone is asked to act as chaplain at the county jail, until they have a permanent replacement. One of the prisoners, Roger Colone, claims to be innocent and asks Father Noone to help him find a man by the name of Sammy Sand. Colone is a landlord who rented one of his houses, off the book, to this Sammy Sand, but turned the place into a drug house. What's more, the refrigerator, "often contains chemicals used to manufacture synthetic drugs," was booby trapped with a grenade. However, it was a police officer who opened the fridge and died in the explosion. And, of course, Sammy Sand is nowhere to be found. So it was Colone who was left holding the bag. Father Noone can never ignore a plea for help and begins to snoop around. The plot behind the elusive Sammy Sand and the booby trapped fridge is not terribly complex, but Hoch created some pleasing plot-patterns out of this atypical situation for a detective story. I suppose its fitting this series ends with Noone telling the culprit, "I can hear your confession."

So how to rate The Will o' the Wisp Mystery as a whole? The titular story, or short novel, is the main attraction of the collection and worth the price of admission alone, but the Father Noone stories are the customary mixed bag. "The Sweating Statue" is the standout of the series and “Searching for Sammy Sand” is probably the only other story that'll stick in my mind, which probably not going to be true for the other stories – especially the first two. But then again, I'm probably not the right person to appreciate this series. So get the collection for The Will o' the Wisp Mystery and take the Father Noone stories as an extra.

It's About Impossible Crime (2025) by James Scott Byrnside

Last time we heard of James Scott Byrnside was a short story, "The Silent Steps of Murder," posted on his blog as an appetizer to his upcoming, then untitled collection of original short stories – nearly all were still developmental stage at the time. So it took about a year and a half for the collection to materialize, but early June finally saw the publication of It's About Impossible Crime (2025). A collection of five, relatively longish stories dedicated to MacKinlay Kantor and William Spier. The title of the collection is, of course, a nod to Kantor's short story collection It's About Crime (1960) which include his two impossible crime stories "The Strange Case of Steinkelwintz" (1929) and "The Light at Three O'Clock" (1930). Spier was the radio director who worked on The Adventures of Sam Spade and Suspense series. So the tone for these stories is set!

It's About Impossible Crime starts out with the aforementioned "The Silent Steps of Murder," but already reviewed as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 4" after it was published on Byrnside's blog. I'm not going over the story again, however, there are a couple of differences between the original and final version of the story. Byrnside originally intended It's About Impossible Crime to have an overarching storyline, concerning an enterprising serial killer who had already strangled seven women, which got scrapped. So references to that case do not appear in this final version and the fun little challenge to the reader was scrapped as well. Other than those changes, "The Silent Steps of Murder" is true to the original version I read and enjoyed last year. Simply a great retro-GAD story.

The second story is the intriguingly-titled "Where There's Smoke, There's Pazuzu" which begins with an ominous phone call to Rowan Manory, the best private detective in 1920s Chicago. A muffled voice tells him a man, named Burt Parnell, is about to be slaughtered in his office, on the third floor of the Pinnacle Place, but warns the detective there will be nothing to solve – because "this murder will be a completely supernatural affair." Manory and his assistant, Walter Williams, go to the building to investigate. When they arrive, the fire brigade is already present to put out a fire in Parnell's office, but the door is locked from the inside and they need to get out an axe to open it. Inside the partially burned office, they find what's left of Parnell sitting behind his desk without a head and his entrails spilled out on the floor. The office was turned inside out, but "no one other than the victim was found inside."

So another seemingly impossible murder for the two Chicago gumshoes, but Manory knows "the solution always lies within the bounds of reality" even when demonology rears its ugly head. In this case, the ancient demon Pazuzu of The Exorcist fame who came along with a curse placed on Parnell. This case has a personal, painfully grounded aspect for Williams, a veteran of the Great War. The daughter of Parnell is engaged to the son of an old friend from the trenches. And learns from him most of their friends who made it out have fallen on hard times or passed away, which gives Williams a pang of survivor's guilt. So a jam packed story and a pretty good one at that. I only pieced together the locked room-trick, but the murderer's identity and well-hidden motive took me by surprise. Another very well-done retro-GAD locked room mystery.

"Instrument of Death" is a non-impossible crime story, but, curiously enough, probably the best piece of detective fiction Byrnside has produced so far. Violet Reynolds, outwardly happily married, who fears her husband, Bobby, no longer loves her and decides to consult a spiritual medium. Madame Dunkel has some bad news: she sees a man standing over her corpse. A big, ugly man. And it will happen very soon ("your fate is sealed"). This large, ugly man is introduced to the reader as Dickie Daubert when he's busy hiding the body of Julie McPhee in her attic. Julie is a friend of Violet, who recently came into possession of a valuable violin, which Dickie wants to get his hands on – no matter the cost. What he has to find out is whom, of Julie's friends in the orchestra, is taking care of the violin as the bodies begin to stack. There are, however, only so many bodies you can litter across Chicago, before it attracts the attention of Manory. This time assisted by Officer Kegan, because Williams is out of town.

So without an impossible crime and a big, dumb violent brute strangling and stabbing people, "Instrument of Death" sounds more like something out of an hardboiled pulp magazine than a detective story proper. But rarely has appearances been so deceiving, even in our genre. When Dickie closes in on Violet, the story begins to twist and turn with the same brutality as the murders. I didn't see that ending coming at all and that final scene was very effective. Like a hardboiled Ellery Queen or a substantially-plotted Mike Shayne story. My favorite from this collection!

"The Preminger Curse" is an unapologetic throwback to the Gothic tales of crimes and suspense from the Doylean era of the genre. Manory travels down to Cairo, Illinois, to attend the reading of the will of two ex-clients, Dolph and Sophie Preminger. Manory is mentioned in their will and takes Williams along to the rundown Preminger mansion to see what's all about, because late changes to a will is never a good sign. When they arrive, they find a tensely gathered family and the reading of the will does very little to lessen the strain. Jasper Dunn, family lawyer, tells their daughter and younger son, Beverly and Timothy, they'll receive one hundred thousand dollars each ("that's... significantly less than it used to be"). Robert, oldest son, only gets a measly twenty-five thousand dollars. Their adopted brother, Simon, gets two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for giving his adopted parents so much joy when they were abandoned by their own children. Finally, there's their only grandchild, Ernest, who was the only child of their late son Cornelius. He gets the mansion, grounds and two millions worth in assets under one peculiar condition that comes with even stranger comments.

They must remain at Preminger mansion for the next twenty-four hours and should Ernest "commit the crime of murder against any blood relative," his "inheritance shall be forfeit" and the estate to be liquidated – to be "divided equally among the surviving heirs." Reasoning behind this strange condition is the Preminger Curse. In the 1700s, the Premingers were saddled with a burdensome curse, "one of the Preminger offspring will go mad and attempt to kill the rest of the family" every other generation. It happened twice already and the last time nearly wiped out the entire family. Which is why there's only one grandchild. Cornelius was the only one who defied his parents wishes and had a child. So the whole family were terrified of Ernest and was treated abysmally as a child, which included being locked away in room with barred windows and a padlock on the door. That left him with a personality disorder.

So the conditions of the will, frayed family ties, money needs and a less idyllic atmosphere nicely sets the stage for murder, which is why Manory was asked to be present – who's guaranteed a fat fee no matter what happens. Next twenty-four hours aren't uneventful with people getting killed or disappearing from locked and watched rooms. A barefoot, messy haired and almost ghostly figure of woman was seen dancing wildly in the rain. While the locked room-tricks are simple, straightforward affairs, the strength of the story is how it all folded together in the end cleverly (SPOILER/ROT13) haoheqravat gur zheqrere sebz fhfcvpvba. "The Preminger Curse" is the longest story in this collection, but not one that overstayed its welcome for even a single page. A great, very well-done homage to those Victorian-era mysteries from Doyle's days.

The fifth, and final, story is "Cue, Murder!" begins on New Year's Eve in the apartment of Atlee Burroughs, a stage director and teacher, who's entertaining a student, Paul Chase. They interrupted by an argument coming from the apartment below, "pipes in this building carry noise," where a former, Hollywood-bound student lives. Burroughs and Chase overhear Jonathan Keltner arguing with someone who brought a knife and a plan, "when they find your corpse, the door will be locked and the key inside." So they call the police and the responding officer kicks down the door to reveal Jonathan Keltner's body, but why was his body rolled inside a rug? And why is there a pile of celluloid strips lying on the floor? A locked room murder in Chicago naturally brings Manory to the scene of the crime. I don't think the central conceit is going to trick the seasoned, cynical armchair detective, but how it was done is a little trickier with an interesting, risky (ROT13) hfr bs n pbhcyr bs hajvggvat nppbzcyvprf juvpu urer vf creuncf cersrenoyr gb n pehqr erpbeqvat bs na nethzrag orvat cynlrq. On top of that, the locked room-trick is, given the circumstances, simple and practical without being routine or old hat. And it played on a locked room principle that has always fascinated me (ROT13: znxvat na haybpxrq qbbe be jvaqbj nccrne gb or gvtugyl ybpxrq). This all placed against the seedy, backstage world and goings on of the theatrical world and its crowd makes "Cue, Murder!" a solid story to close out the collection.

So, when it comes to the overall quality, the stories collected here range from solid to superb and even with only a handful of stories that's an accomplishment. You always have to expect one, or two, duds, but not It's About Impossible Crime. They're all Golden Age worthy whodunits in which Byrnside showcases he as skilled in hiding murderers as he's at getting them out of tightly locked rooms and impossible situations. That's also my only complaint. For a collection titled It's About Impossible Crime, it hasn't all that much to say about its impossible crimes. "Where There's Smoke, There's Pazuzu" and "Cue, Murder!" are the only two stories really deliver as impossible crime stories with "Silent Steps of Murder" underplaying its impossible situation and the two locked room murders in "The Preminger Curse" being very minor. "Instrument of Death," best story of the collection, has none at all. Not that it takes anything away from them as first-rate, neo-GAD mysteries, but was looking forward to picking apart a few meaty locked room puzzles. So take the locked rooms as a little bonus on top of five excellently written and constructed detective stories. I hope to see more of Manory and Williams in the future. Don't pull a vanishing-act on us, James! Remember, you promised to write Time Seals All Rooms. :)

This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943) by Timothy Fuller

Last month, I looked at Timothy Fuller's fifth and final Jupiter Jones novel, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950), which appeared after a seven year hiatus following the publication This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943) – reads like a soft, updated reboot of the series. Well, I remember Jupiter Jones starting out in Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) and Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941) as a lighthearted, wisecracking take on the Van Dinean, Ellery Queen-style detective. But those memories have become hazy over the years. I recall just enough to notice the leap from young, fresh faced college snoop to a middle-aged man living in the suburbs with a wife and children.

Keep Cool, Mr. Jones is not a success story when it comes to trying to reinvent a Golden Age character for the second-half of the previous century or relaunching the series, but enjoyed it enough to track down a copy of This is Murder, Mr. Jones. That proved to be an unexpected surprise as I expected nothing more than a fun, lightweight mystery with a radio background and locked room murder. It certainly is a nimbly-plotted mystery novel satirizing radio dramas, but This is Murder, Mr. Jones got more out of both than appeared possible at first sight. Among some other noteworthy touches to the story and plot.

Following his outings in Harvard Has a Homicide and Three Thirds of a Ghost, Jupiter Jones is getting a reputation as an amateur detective. Jupiter's status as an amateur detective landed him an invitation from Emerson West to attend to one-year anniversary live show of his radio program, This is Murder. West, "the poor man's Woollcott," plans to mark the occasion with an reenactment of the century-old, unsolved murder at Parker Hall, in Molton, Massachusetts, where "Felicia Parker was done to death" – presumably by her husband. Robert Parker had "ample grounds to murder his wife" and a reliable enough alibi to clear him from suspicion. So the case entered the annals of crime as one of those tantalizingly unsolved mysteries that has been discussed for decades. Jupiter gladly accepts the invitation and travels with his wife, Betty, to now abandoned Parker Hall where the cast and crew has gathered to prepare and rehearse for the broadcast.

West attracted three well-known actors, Carla Blake, Gordon Dane and Katherine Moore, to play to principle players in the drama ("...amazing what blackmail can do"). The people behind the scene is the director, Rocky Davenport, Foley, the sound man, and the announcer, Burroughs. West is further assisted by his personal ghostwriter, Grant, and lovely "feminine assistant" named Miss Terry Stewart. There are also several guests, beside Jupiter and Betty Jones. Elmo T. Gillespie, "a fellow criminologist," is a collector of murder weapons who actually brought the knife from the Parker case along. A Mr. Brown, real estate agent and current owner of Parker Hall, who's brought along his wife. Finally, Mr. Jerome, a representative of the show's sponsor, who's also accompanied by his wife. Show goes off without a hitch, but when they go off the air, West announces to the group he's going to present them with the solution to the Parker case. A private showing, of sort, requiring "a short re-enactment of the crime itself" in which West locks himself away in the bathroom. But never comes back out. When they break open the door, they find West lying in a pool of blood. His throat cut with the Parker knife. What appeared to be suicide quickly proves to be an impossible murder. Not only how the murderer vanished from the bathroom, but how the knife was brought into the bathroom.

I should note here that the impossibility is quickly resolved and the bare-bones mechanics of the locked room-trick is nearly as old as time, but how this hoary, time-worn trick is employed was pleasingly original – a new wrinkle to an old trick. Basically, (SPOILER/ROT13) Jrfg unq uverq n pnecragre gb pbafgehpg n frperg qbbejnl va gur onguebbz, orpnhfr gur ubhfr jnf tbvat gb or qrzbyvfu naljnl. Fb gur cyna jnf gb cergraq ur unq sbhaq gur tncvat ubyr va Eboreg Cnexre'f onguebbz nyvov, ohg hajvggvatyl cebivqrq uvf zheqrere jvgu n tbyqra bccbeghavgl. Genuinely enjoyed that aspect of the plot, minor as it may be. What makes This is Murder, Mr. Jones a noteworthy mystery is not its locked room murder, or how it was treated, but its radio background.

After the first shock, they realize they can make radio history by doing "a direct broadcast from the scene of the crime" and "put the investigation on the air." And triple their audience over night. This part of the story feels decades ahead of its time and, to my knowledge, not something that has been used during the Golden Age of Radio. By the way, Orson Wells and his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast gets a mention ("it made Welles" and "it didn't hurt the Martians"). But my favorite part of this plan is the discussion on whether, or not, it would be appropriate to break the show for a word from their sponsors. Because, you know, one of them probably killed the show's host. So, breaking the show with this killer of a line, "well, ladies and gentlemen, any minute we may find that the lovely Carla Blake was the one who slashed Mr. West's throat, but in the meantime eat Chummies, the dandy candy," is perhaps bad optics.

That the police not only play along, but even allow the first round of questioning to be aired to a nationwide audience is preposterous. But therefore not any less fun. Not only a fun, cleverly done slant on the normally routine questioning of suspects, but really something that feels ahead of its time.

So the broadcast is howling success with the audience baying for more. And, as that second broad is prepared, the case continues to develop off-air. Those developments include two additional bodies, however, they're not page-filling corpses dropped to pad out the story, but flow directly from the first murder – provide clues to the who and why. Fuller continued to show some innovation and creativity with the ending, especially how Jupiter solves and resolves the whole case. Firstly, the way in which Jupiter finally puts together all the pieces together is not exactly conventional and "may well open up a whole new field of criminal detection." I'm sure Ronald Knox would disapprove, but it fitted the overall tone of the story and piled on another memorable feature to the story. The traditional gathering of the suspects for the denouement is conventional enough, despite taking place live on air, but became worried at this point the century-old murder case was forgotten about and doomed to remain an unresolved mystery. Right before signing off, only half a page left to go, Jupiter quickly gives his solution to the historical case and reminds the listeners/readers "to invest in War Bonds and Stamps."

I think it goes without saying This is Murder, Mr. Jones is grand fun with some clever, creative and even memorable touches to plot and a couple of old, dusty tropes. Even the motive came across as fresh and original for the time. It all added up to something surprisingly good and unexpectedly rewarding. However, I do fear my enthusiastic rambling might be misinterpreted. So don't expect This is Murder, Mr. Jones to deliver a locked room mystery from the caliber of John Dickson Carr with an Agatha Christie-style rug pull of an ending, but neither should you expect a solid second-string mystery. It's a little too good, and too original in parts, to be relegated to second-tier status. This is Murder, Mr. Jones is very much in the tradition of the better American murder-can-be-fun mysteries Rue Morgue Press specialized in reprinting like Kelley Roos, Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice. That's not a bad company to be in.

Note for the curious: I don't have a brilliant and dazzling alternative solution for the Parker murder case, but a simple possibility that was never mentioned. Now the details of the murder itself are scant and a bit sketchy, but one thing stands out. West mentioned many pet theories emerging over the years, "even heard scholarly gentlemen suggest that the good gardener perpetrated the dastardly crime," but no mention of the proverbial chink in the armor – namely the nurse who alibied Parker. So here's how I figured it (ROT13 to obscure plot details): Eboreg Cnexre jnf fvpx ng gur gvzr naq arrqrq n ahefr. Jura uvf jvsr jnf fgnoorq, Cnexre jnf va gur onguebbz jvgu gur ahefr jnvgvat bhgfvqr gur qbbe. Cnexre qvq vaqrrq fgno uvf jvsr naq rfpncrq whfgvpr jvgu uvf uloevq ybpxrq ebbz-nyvov, juvpu znxrf vg n dhrfgvba bs ubj ur qvq vg. Guvf nyfb tvirf ebbz sbe na nygreangvir rkcynangvba, orpnhfr vg zrnaf Cnexre qbrfa'g gnyx gb uvf ahefr jura ur'f va gur onguebbz. Naq fur whfg jnvgf hagvy ur pbzrf bhg. Fbzrguvat ahefr pbhyq hfr nf fur jbhyq cebonoyl xabj ubj ybat vg gnxrf ba nirentr sbe uvz gb or qbar. N ahefr gnxvat pner bs vainyvqf, be frzv-vainyvq, vf svg rabhtu gb eha orgjrra gjb sybbef, xabjf jurer gb fgno naq abg znxr n zrff bs vg. V fvzcyl nffhzrq gurl jrer univat na nssnve naq nyvovrq rnpu bgure, ohg vg jbhyq or rira orggre vs gur ahefr unq gur rknpgyl fnzr, gentvp zbgvir nf gur cerfrag-qnl zheqrere. History never repeats itself, but it rhymes from time to time.

Dead to Rights: "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" (1974) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer," originally appeared in the August, 1974, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Leopold's Way (1985), starts out with a routine case for Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher – a simple case "without a hint of ghosts or impossibilities." Captain Leopold is ready to go home when a fatal shooting is reported on the 15th floor of the Grant Tower.

Martha Aspeth, a cleaning woman working at the Grant Tower, was shot by her estranged husband, Kurt Aspeth ("he wanted younger ones"). Leopold and Fletcher has plenty of eyewitnesses, "five women who work with her," who all saw it happen. Kurt came up to the 15th floor, asked for Martha and "pulled out his gun and started shooting" the moment he laid eyes on her. He then made his exit through the fire escape. So all they basically have to do is send out an alert, wait for him to be picked up and hand the matter over to the prosecutor. A simple, clear cut and uncomplicated case that turns into an impossible crime over night.

Following morning, Fletches has a good news, bad news situation for Leopold. Good news is that they found they found their suspect. Kurt Aspeth had crashed his car into a bridge abutment, on the Expressway near the Grant Tower building, which killed him instantly. However, according to the evidence, the smashup happened about thirty minutes before the shooting where Kurt was "positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses" – who all knew him personally. I liked how Hoch immediately dismissed the obvious, hackneyed explanations. A discrepancy in the records appears out of the question as the accident report is backed up by the medical report. No error due to daylight-saving time or faulty clocks. Kurt's body was identified by his older brother, Felix, who has a passing, brotherly resemblance, but couldn't pass for his twin brother. Fingerprints back up the identification! Felix believes "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident." 

Leopold and Fletcher are far too grounded and sober minded to take any stock in Felix's claims that "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident," but then what happened during those thirty minutes?

"Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" is one of Hoch's most John Dickson Carr-like impossible crime stories, despite not being a typical impossible crime or traditional locked room mystery. A cross between ghostly phenomenon and bi-location. Hoch brings more than his usual competent craftsmanship to the table in order to explain away this apparent miracle with an inspired solution both imaginative and completely satisfying. There is, perhaps, one coincidence some readers might find a little hard to swallow, but that's that Merrivalean cussedness of all things general for you. However, what I found even more impressive is the overall structure of the story. Hoch took an unfortunate, every day case of spousal murder without a hint of planning or touch of subtlety (i.e. manufactured alibis, locked rooms, etc) and turned it into a Carr-like impossible crime story by introducing an apparent "glitch" in the timeline. It worked. Mike Grost called "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" a "landmark in such time-centered mysteries" in the Chesterton-Carr tradition and I couldn't agree more. If there's ever going to be a Hoch best-of collection, "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" deserves to be included.

Strange Houses (2021) by Uketsu

Back in March, I reviewed Henna e (Strange Pictures, 2022) written by the pseudonymous Japanese horror and mystery Youtuber, "Uketsu," whose true identity remains a big question mark – hidden behind a white mask, black bodysuit and a digitally distorted voice. Strange Pictures received some mixed reactions, but I enjoyed and appreciated it for trying to do something different with both the traditional detective and modern crime story. So looked forward to see what Uketsu was going to do with Henna le (Strange Houses, 2021).

I thought Pushkin Vertigo was translating and publishing the "Strange Novel" series in chronological order, which is why I called Strange Pictures Uketsu's debut, but Strange Houses is actually the first in the series. Strange Pictures was considered "a more solidly structured, more confident work" appealing to a broader audience. There were also responses from people already familiar with Strange Houses through the manga and movie adaptations who were disappointed, because Strange Houses is a treat to mystery fans who love their floor plans, family trees and the odd time table. So, once again, I was looking forward to see what Uketsu was going to do with Strange Houses and compare it to Strange Pictures.

Strange Houses, translated by Jim Rion, comprises of four, longish chapters in which the first three introduce and investigate three different mysteries concerning bizarre floor plans of strange houses.

The first chapter, "A Strange House," introduces its nameless narrator, a freelance writer, whose specializes in stories of the macabre and people come to him with their personal stories of "the eerie and unpleasant." Strangest story came his way when a friend asked for advice. The friend in question is house hunting and found a place that's both spacious and bright, but a curious detail about the floor plan bothers him. There's "a mysterious dead space between the kitchen and living room" on the first floor. So the freelance writer promises to look over the floor plans with another friend, Kurihara, who's an architectural draughtsman. When they pore over the floor plans together, they notice more odd features to the house with the biggest, puzzling feature being the child's room on the second floor. A central, inner room without windows, a double-door vestibule and its own toilet – resembling "some kind of solitary confinement cell." The house, of course, hides more secrets than can be directly read from the floor plan.

Finding all those architectural oddities and hidden secret fires up Kurihara's imagination, "this house was built for murder," but the author's friend tells them he has lost interest in buying the house. A chopped-up body found in a thicket near the house felt like a bad omen. So he worked the story of this strange house into article which was read by Yuzuki Miyae.

Three years ago, Miyae's husband vanished without a trace and only recently his body, minus a left hand, was found on a mountainside in Saitama. Miyae believes his disappearance and death is linked to house similar to the house described in the article. She even dug up a floor plan of the house. So this second chapter, "Another Warped Floor Plan," examines another house with prison-like child's room, hidden features and a curious, triangular room that was later addition to the original house. Just as important is figuring out who lived in those two houses and where they're now. That brings Strange Houses to its third chapter, "Drawn from Memory," which takes a detour into the past to tell the story of a tragic family gathering told through floor plans sketched from childhood memories. So, this far into the story, I have to remain as sketchy about the details, but it's undoubtedly the best, most memorable portion of the Strange Houses – not merely because it included a locked room puzzle, of sorts. But it always helps. And while (ROT13) V abeznyyl sebja hcba frperg cnffntrf be uvqvat ubyrf svthevat va gur fbyhgvba gb n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel, guvf vf gur frpbaq orfg hfr bs n frperg cnffntr V unir pbzr npebff.

Uketsu pulls the threads together in the final chapter, "House of Chains," which is the wordiest chapter of the book as it has to do without the numerous floor plans and only has the odd family tree. It's also the chapter clearly demonstrating the fundamental difference between Strange Pictures and Strange Houses.

I think most mystery fans prefer the examination of the floor plans and architectural anomalies over the armchair psycho-analyzing of drawings, which really is a treat for every detective fan who love maps and floor plans in their mysteries. My shoddy review barely gives you an idea just how many floor plans there are. But it's a lot. However, the answers behind these strange houses with their architectural anomalies is more along the lines of a horror mystery than a mystery with horror elements. Strange Pictures also straddles the detective and horror genres, but it worked as a detective story. Not the most orthodox of detective stories, but a detective story nonetheless. Strange Houses offers something out of a Wes Craven movie with an ambiguous ending, which is also more in keeping with the horror genre. Now a hybrid mystery, of sorts, is not the problem, but the horror elements driving the plot is unconvincing. And, to be honest, somewhat preposterous. Not helped by the fact that one of Kurihara's wild, illogical flight of fancies was closer to the truth than it had any right to be. That's bound to annoy or disappoint some mystery fans.

So was left with mixed feelings. I didn't expect Strange Houses to be a typical, traditionally-plotted shin honkaku mystery, but expected it to be ever so slightly more traditional and grounded, plot-wise, than Strange Pictures. Somehow, I figured floor plans would lend themselves better to this new type of visual medium horror-mysteries than a series of drawings. The floor plan puzzles were fun with the third one ingeniously using its hand drawn floor plan, but the reason for creating these houses underwhelmed. So, yeah, I think Strange Pictures is the better novel and Pushkin Vertigo made the right call, but both succeed in offering the reader something little different without being outright novelties or gimmicks. They're simply too good, not perfect, but too good to be ranked along past novelty and gimmick mysteries like the dossier novels or photograph mysteries. So look forward to Uketsu's third novel scheduled to be published sometime early next year. I'll be there!

The Laughing Buddha Murders (1944) by Richard Foster

Back in February, I reviewed Kendell "Ken" Foster Crossen's The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945), a fun and pulpy impossible crime yarn, which Crossen brazen employed as a vehicle to promote his novel The Laughing Buddha Murders (1944) – published as by "Richard Foster." Foster's The Laughing Buddha Murders is about to be published in The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints and an advanced copy, gone missing, figures in the investigation. Vulcan Publications even gets involved! Someone who has read it provides the story with a teaser, "a Buddha, weighing a ton, which apparently vanished from a locked room." Shameless piece of self-promotion, barely disguised as a plot-thread, but hey, it worked on me!

The Laughing Buddha Murders is the first, of only two, mystery novels starring the American-Tibetan detective and Charlie Chan of the Pulps, Chin Kwang Kham. The story takes place in Cuyahoga County, somewhere in Cleveland, Ohio, where an inquest is held on the body of the recently murdered millionaire, Horace Bailey Lawton. Nearly every face at the inquest "indicated satisfaction that Horace Bailey Lawton had ceased to live among them." Not without reason.

Lawton was a rich businessman, fanatical collector of Chinese art and somewhat of a cartoonish villain who was found slumped over his desk with an ornamental dagger sticking out of his back. Someone had knifed him from behind while dictating instructions to his secretary into his dictaphone and the recording is played in court, which gives the reader an idea why Lawton isn't mourned. Like instructing his lawyer to practically disinherit his daughter, Betty, if she dares to marry Theodore Challet. In case of a marriage, she'll still receive the princely sum of one dollar annually, "payable each year on the anniversary of her wedding," but everyone gets a good, old-fashioned shellacking from his neighbor and the local newspaper to his own servants – who regularly get their salaries docked for minor infractions and little oversights. So plenty of motives to go around!

However, the murder of the hated collector is not the only problem stumping Lieutenant John Payne. Entering the Lawton house is "was almost like stepping into another world" with Eastern art and Buddhas everywhere "ranging from a tiny ivory-dust Buddha on the desk to those three or four feet tall that were placed around the room." A prized piece in the collection is the solid gold statue of the Kum Bum Buddha, "one of the three most renowned early Buddhist sculptures in existence," which weighs a ton and has somehow gone missing from the crime scene. It didn't exactly vanish from a locked room, but removing a one-ton gold statue without being seen or heard poses something of an impossibility ("something that weighs a ton doesn't just vanish").

Chin Kwang Kham, a lecturer on Tibetan culture, was invited by Lawton to take a look at the now missing Buddha and subtly slips into the role of amateur sleuth when he begins to notice things. Not quite subtle enough not to be noticed himself and receives a warning surprisingly written in the obscure Pali language, which starts with the greeting "Kham, Pakkhandin." Kham explains pakkhandin roughly translates to "one who meddles in other people's business." So the greeting can be read as "Kham, Meddler." I thought that was worth mentioning and should also mention here that the story skips between the inquest, flashbacks to the investigation on the night of the murder and the ongoing investigation that includes a second murder – among other things. That all makes for a decent, if routine, pulp mystery with a murderer who stands out and a fairly underwhelming solution to the vanishing Buddha. So it really ends up being Kham who carries The Laughing Buddha Murders. And then only towards the end.

Firstly, the two murders and vanishing statue attracted some media attention bringing a larger than usual crowd bringing to Kham's lectures. When noticing all the potential suspects sitting in the audience, Kham decides to lecture on murder, "one of oldest habits of man," to lure out the murderer. And not wholly unsuccessfully. But it's not until the inquest resumes, Kham gets another opportunity to nail the killer... under somewhat legally dubious circumstances. Franklyn Williams, the Coroner, appoints Kham to deputy coroner of the county of Cuyahoga and tells the jury, "the questioning of witnesses will be conducted by Mr. Chin Kham." Going from Charlie Chan to a modern-day Judge Dee. During this last round of questions, Kham unmasks the murderer in front of a captivated audience. It regrettably sounds better than it ended up being and the only reason why it didn't really work is because there was not much plot to prop it up.

Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes notes that Kham is "a thoroughly unstereotypical" Asian detective whose only two recorded cases "stand apart as an attempt at something new." I agree, however, attempt is the keyword. This short-lived series was a well-intended attempt, but simply lacked the quality to deliver on its potential with The Invisible Man Murders (1945) reportedly not being an improvement on The Laughing Buddha Murders. More of the same with a little gratuitous torture scenes added to the mix. Ah, the pulps! So, yeah, unless you like obscure pulps or a locked room completist, you can give this one a pass.

Men for Pieces (1949) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's Men for Pieces (1949), thirty-sixth entry in the Anthony Bathurst series, marks Flynn's second return to print after Dean Street Press temporarily shut down following the death of Rupert Heath, but started back up last December – reprinting the first five of Sara Woods' legal mysteries. Recently, Dean Street Press resumed their reprints of Brian Flynn. Men for Pieces, Black Agent (1950), And Cauldron Bubble (1951), Where There Was Smoke (1951) and The Ring of Innocent (1952) are the first Flynn reprints to appear since the last badge was published in October, 2022.

I mentioned in previous reviews how you can never be quite sure what you get when you open one of Flynn's mysteries, because the style shifts from book to book. Bathurst can be unraveling a classically-styled locked room mystery in one book and the next finds him smack in the middle of a courtroom drama or turn-of-the-century thriller paying homage to the ghost of Conan Doyle. Men for Pieces is simply an old-fashioned detective story with a baffling crime, or rather a potential crime, allowing Bathurst and DCI Andrew MacMorran to take opposite views. So play up their roles as the theorizing amateur and practically-minded professional.

Their problem centers around a young man, named Peter Oliver, who works at the Lombard Street branch of Delaney's bank and recently got engaged to the beautiful cashier in Lambert's restaurant, Stella Forrest – giving him no reason to disappear without a word. First to notice his absence is the bank manager when he fails to keep their appointment to go over an important file and neither did he show up for his lunch with Stella. She begins to fear the worst when her investigation raises more questions than answers. Fortunately, she spots Bathurst and MacMorran at the restaurant and decides to plead for their help. They listen to her story and decide to look around his place themselves, but when they, more or less illegally, enter his house they make macabre discovery. Oliver's body, in full evening dress, lying on the bathroom floor with his throat cut from ear to ear and "in the dead man's left hand was an open, white-handled razor of the old-fashioned type." Oliver was left handed and "the cut is just what a 'southpaw' would inflict on himself."

For the practical-minded MacMorran, everything points towards suicide with the wound being the clincher ("it's that left-handed cut on the throat I can't get over"). Beside, the house was deserted at the time. Oliver's father is in Scotland to attend family business, his mother and sister are in Bournemouth holidaying and his younger brother is on a hiking tour somewhere. Bathurst believes it was murder without much to support his theory, until Oliver's sister Margaret returns home screaming blue murder that her brother had been deliberately killed. Reason why she believes that has all to do with her brother's bathing habits, the position of the bath plug and the water tap ("...the person who used this bath on Monday evening was not my brother Peter... it was my brother Peter's murderer"). Bathurst agrees, however, his evidence remains as infinitesimally small as the tiny piece of fabric discovered in the groove of the razor handle. A microscopic point for Bathurst, but not enough to sway MacMorran. Not yet, anyway.

So the friendly mental sparring and verbal bantering between Bathurst and MacMorran makes for a fun, first-half with an intriguingly-posed central puzzle, but the case doesn't remain static forever as new, unexpected developments begin to pile on – tipping the scales in favor of Bathurst's views. A noteworthy development is the disappearance, and reappearance, of £20,000 worth of San Jonquilo bonds from Delaney's bank. San Jonquilo is the fictitious South American country Flynn introduced nearly twenty years previously in The Orange Axe (1931). Bathurst mentions Sir Beverley Pelham and the Presidency of Sebastian Loredana in passing. This is one of those minor, but attractive, parts of Flynn's detective fiction. While the series wildly differ from book to book, jumping from a chase thriller or hunting for pulp-style serial killer to an old-fashioned drawing room mystery, Flynn always let his readers know they take place in the same universe. For example, the side-characters from his first novel, The Billiard-Room Mystery (1927), turned up or were mentioned in subsequent novels. One of those small touches to help the illusion the series takes place in a universe of its own. Not to mention how it was used to show how Bathurst's reputation grow by word of mouth.

Anyway, the ending and reveal of the very well-hidden, relatively fairly clued murderer was handled with Flynn customary deftness. Only two plot-points left me a little dissatisfied. Firstly, the real motive is hidden too well. You can still identify the murderer, if you pay attention, but most will probably look in a very different direction for the motive. Secondly, I wish there was a single clue to the "quary note" found on Oliver's body (ROT13: whfg fubj uvf ebbz unf n obbxpnfr penzzrq jvgu qrgrpgvir abiryf). That last one is a minor quibble that can be ignored. So other than the perhaps too well-hidden motive, Men for Pieces is an inconspicuously solid entry in the series showing Flynn was still going strong as the Golden Age detective story was about to enter its twilight years. So look forward to going over the other reprints!

Job Hunting: "The Man Who Talked with Spirits" (1943) by Herbert Brean

Last month, I reread Herbert Brean's Wilders Walk Away (1948), which disappointed the first time round, but turned out to be quite good when read on its terms without the unreasonable, highly stacked expectations build up over the decades – demanding a John Dickson Carr-like masterpiece. So wanted to return to Brean's work by sampling one of his obscure, rarely reprinted short stories.

Brean's "The Man Who Talked with Spirits" originally appeared in the September, 1943, issue of Thrilling Detective and reprinted, only once, in the July, 1954, issue of Thrilling Detective (UK).

The story opens with "Tick" Johnson and his partner/narrator, Fred Murphy, wake up in their one-room hotel apartment by "the devil's own door-pounding" coming from the hall outside their door. There they find a patrol man, a plainclothes detective and the hotel manager trying to break down the door to another apartment. When the door is broken down, they see the body of a man spread crosswise on the bed with a bullet wound in his heart and a .32 revolver lying on his chest. Sergeant McClelland is ready to call it a suicide, "door was locked and there's no other entrance," when Tick buds into the investigation and begins pointing out all the inconsistencies – which all tell him "that lad didn't kill himself." Tick introduces himself and his partner as a pair of private detectives, but Murphy confides to the reader they're not private detectives. They're disgraced newspaper reporters "hunting jobs on a new paper in a new town." Tick's decision to insert themselves into the investigation, to get an inside scoop, has consequences.

Not only was the hotel room locked from the inside, but the only other tenants on that floor when the murder was committed. The elevator boy swore nobody had come on or departed from that floor and "no killer escaped down those stairs," because they were being painted at the time. So now they have to find a solution in order to preserve their own necks.

That brings us to Mr. Sanda, murder victim and spiritualist, who on the previous night had conducted a séance on the floor above. Sanda had not been since he retreated to his room, until the door was broken down. So the potential suspects include Madam Vera Pool, consulting medium, who wanders around the hotel in a white garb and claims Sanda's ghost told her who killed him. But promised she would never tell. Ivan Karanovich, the Wire-Walker, who has a long-dragging feud with Sanda dating back to their days at the circus. William Holbrook, a young playboy and son of the late Senator Holbrook, had his own reasons to dislike Sanda. Who did it and how? Tick reveals all when he and Murphy crash a séance to hand the murderer over to Sergeant McClelland neatly wrapped in evidence. But how good is it?

First of all, the locked room-trick itself to get away from the crime scene is nothing special, or groundbreaking, but how it was employed under the given circumstances and allowed for a cleverly-hidden murderer was not half bad. I also liked how the locked room-trick ultimately proved to be the murderer's undoing. So, plot-wise, a decent enough short detective story, but it's the characters of "Tick" Johnson and Fred Murphy who steal the show. They recall Craig Rice's screwball mysteries about Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak, traveling photographers/conmen, who first appeared in The Sunday Pigeon Murders (1942). So if you like those American screwball mysteries of the murder-can-be-fun school, Brean's "The Man Who Talked with Spirits" is definitely worth a read.

Mathematical Goodbye (1996) by MORI Hiroshi

The BBB began serializing MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996), third novel in the S&M series, in the summer of 2024 with the complete edition being slated for release in late February, but technical issues with their distribution platform delayed its availability – a minor blessing in disguise. Technically, Mathematical Goodbye is a Christmas mystery. Yes, the middle of summer is still a little early, however, it's slightly more preferable than two months after the Christmas tree was unceremoniously shown the door.

That also helped making Mathematical Goodbye, translated by Ryusui Seiryoin, the most orthodox of Hiroshi's three S&M novels the BBB has published so far. According to the description, Mathematical Goodbye is the masterpiece that "cemented the popularity" of the S&M (Saikawa & Moe) series, "the most beloved master-disciple detective duo in Japanese mystery history." Let's explore!

Moe Nishinosono, a sophomore at N University, is invited by a classmate, Kazuki Katayama, to celebrate Christmas with his family at the home of his grandfather, Dr. Shozo Tennoji. The home of Dr. Tennoji, a genius mathematician, is Three Stars Mansion, originally an observatory, comprising of three domes with the planetarium serving as its central hall. It's the interior where the architectural peculiarities of Three Stars Mansion can be found. So, naturally, Sohei Saikawa, associate professor in the Department of Architecture, N University, is interested to come along to meet the famous mathematician and examine Three Stars Mansion in person. Moe, on the other hand, is interested in an unsolved mystery Kazuki told her about. When he was a child, Kazuki witnessed how his grandfather performed a magic trick that's better described as a minor domestic miracle.

Outside the mansion stands a gigantic, ten ton bronze statue of Orion big enough for the children to use the space between its legs as a soccer goal, but somehow, someway, Dr. Tennoji made the statue inexplicably disappear – before making it reappear the following morning. Dr. Tennoji promised "whoever solves this mystery will be the heir apparent to the Tennoji family." But nobody solved it. And the problem remained unsolved for the past twelve years.

So, after everyone arrived, Dr. Tennoji gathered them in the planetarium to greet them. Just not in person, because he's been living alone in the basement of the planetarium for the better part of decade. It's his voice booming from ceiling speakers who greets them. Dr. Tennoji begins the celebrations by giving them a few tough math puzzles, but Moe has a challenge/request for him, "can you make that bronze statue disappear, Doctor?" He reluctantly agrees and, when they go back outside, the statue has disappeared again ("there was nothing but concrete spread out before them"). Wait, there's more. The hermit mathematician has one more riddle for them, "what's the greatest trick in human history?" It's the seemingly disappearance of the statue giving the plot about half of its bulk with the other half coming from its reappearance.

When the Orion statue returns to its original place, it's accompanied by a body lying beneath it and second body found in the first victim's locked bedroom. This double murder, committed in close proximity of place-and time, represents something of a reverse, inside out locked room mystery with the first victim discovered outside the locked mansion with the key to the locked bedroom on their body. Saikawa and Moe have plenty to mull over without additional problems like Moe being shot at in the surrounding forest and discovering a skeleton.

 

 

As said before, Mathematical Goodbye is the most orthodox of the three S&M novels translated, so far. So it's obviously not as experimental as Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996) nor as densely-plotted, highly specialized locked room puzzle like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), but astonishingly solvable. I expected my crude, roughly imagined armchair solution for how the statue disappeared, and reappeared, would end up being dismissed as a ridiculous false-solution. It seemed too easy and at the same time too complicated, but that was more, or less, how it was done. So don't be discouraged when Saikawa philosophizes, "this might be a mathematical problem rather than a magic trick." Of course, the problem with vanishing-tricks involving large, hard-to-move or even immovable objects like houses, trains and statues is that there are hard limitations on what you can do – which is why there are so few of them. I wasn't too bothered about the trick, but a little annoyed nobody thought of (ROT13) fvzcyl gnxvat n fgebyy nebhaq gur cerzvfr gb frr vs vg unq orra zbirq nebhaq gur cynpr, because that's what I would have done if I found myself in such a situation (yay, I'm the world's greatest detective!).

The solution to the double murder is much more interesting and tricky, but not exactly a classically-styled locked room mystery. It's not so much about how the doors and windows were locked and closed, but why there were locked and closed. This is demonstrated when Moe gives, what appears to be, a perfectly reasonable (armchair) solution accounting for every aspect of the murders. Saikawa points out it only work if the murderer had a reason for the bedroom to be locked. Or why the murderer decided to suddenly improvise by using a vase as a weapon. So it's more along the lines of those double murders closely linked in time-and place I have come to associate with Christopher Bush's 1930s novels (e.g. The Case of the Tudor Queen, 1938) rather than a proper locked room mystery, but gave the plot some much needed weight. It's the real meat of the plot even if the who and especially the why are a trifle weak.

Mathematical Goodbye appears on the surface to be another, Yukito Ayatsuji-like "weird house" shin honkaku locked room mystery and, plot-wise, a fairly average one at that, but it's a little more than that. What really lifts up the up book, as a whole, is the theme of inversion running through every aspect of the story, from the setting and vanishing statue to the murders. Hiroshi takes the concept "not everything is as it appears" or "more than meets the eye" as used in the detective story and pulled it inside out and back together again, which created some pleasing plot patterns to ripple through the story. That made up for what it lacked in expected plot complexity/ingenuity. So, Mathematical Goodbye is perhaps not the strongest entry, plot-wise, in the S&M series, but by itself, it's a pretty solid piece of detective fiction trying to do something pleasingly different with tried and tested recipe from the first wave of shin honkaku mystery writers. If you're looking for something a little off-beat for your December reading, you can take this as an early recommendation.

A few odds and ends: Ryusui Seiryoin is improving as a translator as the translation of Mathematical Goodbye is much smoother compared to the clunky translation of The Perfect Insider, but wish the BBB would translate one of Seiryoin's own mystery novels like Kazumikku: sekimatsu tantei shinwa (Cosmic: End of Century Detective Myth, 1996). Who here wouldn't want to read an impossible crime with a figure called The Locked Room Lord threatening 1200 people would die in as many locked rooms. In the mean time, the BBB and Seiryoin are working on the translation of the fourth S&M novel, Shiteki shiteki Jack (Jack the Poetical Private, 1997), in which a serial killer is working the college circuit. Lastly, I don't know how it could be done or who should do it, but a crossover between Hiroshi's Saikawa and Moe and Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series needs to happen. They already feel like they could take place in the same universe and a crossover between the two has all the potential to be the perfect crossover. Yeah, not likely to happen, but it would be great.

Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950) by Timothy Fuller

Timothy Fuller was a member of the class of 1936 at Harvard and the son of Richard Fuller, head of Boston's Old Corner Book Store, who reportedly (PDF) penned Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) as a bet with his father to get out of college – stating "he would have a book published within twelve months." Not only was Harvard Has a Homicide published, but "the first contemporary mystery story ever to be serialized" in The Atlantic Monthly. The book introduces Fuller's series detective, Edmund "Jupiter" Jones, who assists the police when his professor is murdered. Fuller returned to Jupiter Jones five years later with Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941), Reunion with Murder (1941) and This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943). A fifth and final novel, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950), appearing seven years later.

I read Harvard Has a Homicide and Three Thirds of a Ghost, but only dimly recall thinking they were decent, lightweight mysteries. Not enticing or quite good enough to immediately grab Keep Cool, Mr. Jones from the big pile where it has languished ever since. Recently, while tidying up my shelves, I came across my Dell edition of Keep Cool, Mr. Jones and the plot description caught my interest right away.

First of all, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones was published after the series apparently ended following the publication of This is Murder, Mr. Jones, seven years earlier, which reads like a soft reboot of the series – suggesting an intended continuation along modern lines. It's also why I wish I remembered more details about Harvard Has a Homicide, Three Thirds of a Ghost and Jupiter Jones. I believe Jupiter started out as a wisecracking version of 1930s Ellery Queen, but Keep Cool, Mr. Jones finds an older Jones living in the suburban Boston village of Saxon with a wife and three young children. Jupiter had hung up his deerstalker nearly six years ago, however, "much as the banker must bank or the preacher preach," Jupiter "had been grotesquely conditioned to deduce amateurishly." Something that had been suppressed for years when incident made the old urge to detect and deduce resurface.

This incident takes place at Jack Maney's second annual, old-fashioned barn dance to raise funds for the local library. In the barn's basement, Maney has installed a large, state of the art walk-in deep freezer stocked with food ("...the handiest symbol of the Dream..."). During the party, Maney goes down to the freezer to show Mrs. Parker Madison, Harry Dexter and Dr. Wren some birds, but never return. When they go out to investigate, they find the closed freezer door securely padlocked from outside and the four inside. Not dead or even seriously injured, but badly shaken and Jupiter believes the padlock proves intent to murder. However, if it was attempted murder, the murderer had a motive "powerful enough to account for the cold-blooded disposal of three extra, presumably uninvolved, victims." So identifying the primary target is key, but "the unharmed victims unanimously denied having enemies."

Following night, the investigation turns into a full-fledged homicide case when Howie Howland, Chief of Police, is found shotgunned to death in the cabin of the local character, Arnold "The Indian" Baxter – who's nowhere to be found. Jupiter takes Howland's place as acting police chief as the manhunt for Arnold begins, but the case is not as clear cut as it appears on the surface. And is there a link to freezer incident? So not your typical, Golden Age village murders or college slayings from previous decades peppered with social commentary and observations on America bracing itself as it's about to enter the second-half of the twentieth century. In this modernized, updated whodunit a decidedly classical trope is introduced concerning the local legend of old Hiram Potter and his fortune in buried gold. Something his family and treasure hunters have been digging for in the Potter woods the better part of a century. Only clue old Hiram left behind are six couplets found scattered through his diary. I instinctively knew where the gold was secreted away, however, it's solution is perhaps a bit tropey (SPOILER/ROT13: gur tbyq jnf ohevrq va gur przrgrel naq cebcbfr gb anzr guvf gebcr va juvpu n cybg cbvag unf gb or qht hc va n tenirlneq "ohevny cybgf"). Between acting as police chief and amateur treasure hunter, there are a few other minor plot-threads involving the various inhabitants of Saxon that need to be tidied up. Jupiter's basically plays a cross between a fairy godmother and a diplomat on a peacekeeping assignment.

All of this is packed tightly in a svelte 155 pages making for a compact, breezy story, but, needless to say, the plotting is not terribly complex and layered. Nevertheless, the way in which Fuller tied together the freezer incident, the shooting, the disappearance and the buried treasure made for a pleasant tangle with a light sprinkling of those good, old-fashioned fair play principles. Unsurprisingly, Jupiter finds himself trapped inside the freezer towards the end and how he keeps warm, and gets out, is genuinely clever (ROT13: abg gur fahttyvat hc naq xvffvat jvgu Fyvz Znarl, juvyr uvf jvsr naq xvqf ner ng ubzr, ohg gur znxrfuvsg vtybb cneg naq hfvat n pbva gb xrrc oybjvat gur shfrf gb nggenpg nggragvba gb gur serrmre). And had it been whittled down, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones would have made for an excellent, first-rate mystery novella. But it's fine as it stands. More substantial than most of these 1950s traditionally-rooted, but light-on-plot, mysteries (e.g. E.G. Cousins' Death by Marriage, 1959). More importantly, I enjoyed it.

In fact, I enjoyed sufficiently to go hunt for copies of Reunion with Murder and This is Murder, Mr. Jones. After all, the latter is a locked room mystery and they have been a little neglected lately. So... very likely to be continued.

Notes for the curious: Firstly, yes, I hadn't forgotten or overlooked Jupiter Jones also happens to be one of the protagonists from Robert Arthur's The Three Investigator series, but don't believe it has ever been confirmed whether it was a nod to Fuller's detective or just a coincidence. It's not unlikely Arthur had read the books and perhaps was a fan. I can see him appreciating how Fuller handled the buried treasure and its clue, because it's Jupiter's daughter who makes an astute observation about the couplets. So, yeah, possibly. Secondly, it was never suggested in the story, but another possibility to the freezer incident is that one of the four people pulled "The Loubet Sacrifice" to take out the other three. That would have made for an interesting take on the classic locked room situation: how can someone inside a walk-in freezer leave the door padlocked on the outside with three other people present? Now there's a challenge for today's locked room experts.

Wilders Walk Away (1948) by Herbert Brean

Herbert Brean's debuted as a mystery writer with Wilders Walk Away (1948) and, according to Curt Evans, the praise it received from Anthony Boucher, critic and mystery writer, Brean "almost walked away with an Edgar" for best first novel – alongside with a cult status that lasted for decades. Wilders Walk Away was considered to be one of the great impossible crime novels not penned by John Dickson Carr. A reputation that wasn't tested too severely during the post-WWII decades as the traditional, Golden Age-style detective novels entered its dark age. That changed during the 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away remains out-of-print today, but used copies are neither ridiculously rare nor eye-watering expensive. When the internet began to offer a new, open market place copies of Wilders Walk Away began to circulate again and it's cult status began to unravel. Barry Ergang summed it up perfectly in his 2003 review posted on the GADWiki, "for a little while I thought I'd found in Wilders Walk Away a companion to The Three Coffins and Rim of the Pit for ultimate greatness." Somewhat of a shared experience as most of us were promised something like a Wrightsville mystery by Ellery Queen as perceived by Carr, centered on a series of miraculous vanishings across several centuries, but the explanations are disappointingly prosaic and mundane. Nor did the rediscovery of Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950), Brean's true masterpiece, do its reputation any favors.

So read it at the time anticipating an all-time great, unjustly out-of-print impossible crime classic and soured on the book when the impossible vanishings, generations and centuries apart, were explained away with plain, unimaginative solutions – which probably was too hasty a dismissal. Jim, of The Invisible Event, suggests in his 2017 review Wilders Walk Away is better read "as a prototype for the small town thriller" because it's "much more successful as that kind of book." I wanted to revisit Wilders Walks Away for some time now to see how the story lands without the high, somewhat unreasonable expectations of finding an impossible crime novel equal to the best from Carr and Hake Talbot.

The backdrop of Wilders Walk Away is the historical town of Wilders Lane, Vermont, whose history dates back to the mid-eighteenth century and named after the lane leading to old Ethan Wilder's log cabin. By 1775, a fairly sized village had grown around it that developed into the current town with the Wilders as its richest, leading family. There is, however, something curious about the Wilder family. Some of its members, through out the generations, have to habit of simply vanishing without a trace. Or, as it's locally known, they "walked away" never to be seen again.

Jonathan Wilder was the first to walk away, in '75, when going down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine, but his wife swears he never came back up again. There was no other way out of the cellar except going back up the stairs to the kitchen. Forty years later, Langdon Wilder disappeared from his bed and Walter Wilder was on the ill-fated Mary Celeste ("...people hereabouts think that whatever happened on the Celeste happened because Walter Wilder was aboard"). Wilders continued to walk away into the twentieth century. In 1917, John Michael Wilder was seen walking down a wet beach, before inexplicably vanishing from sight leaving nothing more than a trail of footprints, "plain as paint," stopping in the middle of the beach – "no concealment for yards around." Only the previous year, Fred Wilder disappeared from the supply room of his office under impossible circumstances on Columbus Day. These never-ceasing, strange and sometimes miraculously disappearances gave rise to a catchy jingle that became part of the folk lore of Wilders Lane:

 

"Other people die of mumps
Or general decay,
Of fever, chills or other ills,
But Wilders walk away."

 

In recent years, Wilders Lane has done a lot of work to restore the town to its colonial charm to attract tourists with families owning a Colonial house opening their homes to the public between two and five each afternoon. So visiting Wilders Lane was like a trip back in time to the days of the American Revolution. That brings Reynold Frame, a freelance writer and photographer, to Wilders Lane to do several picture pieces on the town, but soon finds consumed by everything Wilder. Particularly with the daughter of Fred Wilder, Constance, who, very much to Frame's horror, has a fiance. But there are other puzzling mysteries surrounding the Wilders and Wilders Lane. Such as a minor historical mystery, a hidden code, indicating where an old diary had been secreted away.

More importantly, Constance's sister, Ellen, disappeared shortly after Frame arrived in town and its him who eventually finds her, but that discovery turns a local legend into a full-blown murder investigation – first in the career of police chief Miles Maloney. Ellen is not the last of the Wilders to walk away and turn up dead, before the story draws to a close. Frame, "a faithful reader, and disciple, of Sherlock Holmes" is prompted to start playing detective to impress Constance, because she believes "someone else could do better than the police." The mysteries of the Wilder family not only involves strange disappearances and murder, but hidden treasure, skeletons and grave digging.

So, as you probably gathered, I enjoyed Wilders Walk Away a lot more the second time around and even got more out of the miraculous vanishings, especially the historical ones, out of this second read – even though they remain largely second-rate. A good example of the strength and weaknesses of these impossible disappearances is the 1775 vanishing of Jonathan Wilder from the windowless cellar with the exit under constant observation. The trick is old hat (n frperg cnffntrjnl), but why he never returned after disappearing has a great answer. So why they all vanished and who's responsible is more important here than how they disappeared, which always has a simple, unimpressive answer. I think Wilders Walk Away would have benefited from ditching the impossible nature of some of the disappearances in favor of their strangeness and habit of repeating themselves across generations. Frame even discusses the work of Charles Fort to explain to Constance that her family don't hold the patent on anomalous phenomena.

After all, "the idea that anyone can vanish off the face of the earth without leaving a trace is uncomfortable." Like the series of very odd, non-impossible disappearances from Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933). The impossible disappearances in Wilders Walk Away were less of disappointment knowing before hand that the importance is on why they disappeared, and by whom, rather than how. So, understandably, its reputation cratered when locked room fanatics started getting their hands on it in 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away has more to offer than a string of very odd, inexplicable disappearances. Beside being a fun, old-fashioned whodunit presented as a small town thriller, something is to be said about its style and structure. Something I completely missed on my first read. In 1948, Wilders Walk Away represented a perfect blend of the genre's past and present with glimpses of the future (see Jim's prototype comment). Some all-important elements of the plot would have been very much at home in a Victorian melodrama or Conan Doyle story, but hardly a throwback considering how Brean handled the plot and the answers waiting at the end. Speaking of Doyle, Brean was a Sherlockian and every chapter is headed with a quote from the Sherlock Holmes canon and the story is littered with Van Dinean footnotes – ranging from historical information to a recipe for "easy to make" Jokers. It never tips over to being too much and is surprisingly subtle in how it balances it various plot-threads and characters. Far too subtle for what I demanded from my first read. But it earned a place among my favorite, non-impossible Golden Age detective novels.

So, yeah, Wilders Walk Away proved to be far better than I remembered from my first read and even better than I hoped it would be on rereading it. It's undeserved reputation as an impossible crime classic has done it no favors, but if you don't expect any "Carter Dickson-effects" from the vanishing-tricks, it's going to be difficult for Wilders Walk Away to disappoint. A tremendously fun and enjoyable romp that comes with a heartily recommendations. Just don't expect a fusion between Queen and Carr, but more something along the lines of Theodore Roscoe's Four Corners series and Jack Vance's two Sheriff Joe Bain novels.