Nine Times Nine (1940) by Anthony Boucher

I previously reviewed H. Russell Wakefield's The Belt of Suspicion (1936), a not wholly uninteresting genre curiosity, but a curiosity nonetheless and one of a dubious, uneven quality – resulting in a lackluster review. So wanted to pick something good for the next one and settled on revisiting a classic.

Anthony Boucher's Nine Times Nine (1940), originally published as by "H.H. Holmes," is the first, of only two, mystery novels that make up the short-lived Sister Ursula series. A 1981 panel of writers and reviewers voted Nine Times Nine the ninth best locked room mystery up till that point. Not surprisingly as the book is pure, undiluted fan service for impossible crime addicts often grouped together with other non-John Dickson Carr fan favorites like Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938), Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944) and John Sladek's Black Aura (1974). Jim, of The Invisible Event, picked Nine Times Nine for his "Locked Room Library—One Hundred Recommended Books" calling it "pure detective fun from first to last” with "a very clever puzzle that hides its vanishing murderer well." Nine Times Nine was left off from my own "Updated Mammoth List of Favorite Locked Room Murders & Impossible Crimes" in favor of Boucher's often overlooked The Case of the Solid Key (1941), but have been second guessing that decision. So high time to give it second appraisal and see if it should be included in a future update.

Nine Times Nine is a detective novel written by a detective fan for detective fans is made clear from the start beginning with the dedication, "this locked room is dedicated to John Dickson Carr, facile princeps and prince of facility." Followed by a handful of excerpts from newspaper articles with a sort of pre-Challenge to the Reader to the "hypothetical Mycroft" at home to see how they fit in with, what the headlines, would come to call "The Astral Body Murder." After this, the reader is told how Matt Duncan, a freelance writer, came to be involved with the well-known Wolfe Harrigan and his household.

Wolfe Harrigan is a well-known author and authority on bogus, screwball cults and religious flavored rackets, a debunker, but the Roman Catholic Harrigan sees himself as "a lay crusader" combating heresy – desperate to reach the plain, ordinary lower-middle-class man and woman. The primary victims on which these cults and spiritualists prey. Duncan becomes his assistant/writing partner and takes him along to attend a meeting of the Children of Light. One of the latest pseudo-religious cults to spring up in California, but the leader of this cult is a bearded, yellow-robed and self-proclaimed immortal, Ahasver. In fact, Ahasver claims to be no less a figure than the Wandering Jew. During the meeting, Ahasver and his followers call upon the Nine Times Nine to curse and destroy their enemy ("free us from this evil man, O Nine Times Nine!"). The enemy in question is Wolfe Harrigan. Something that amuses the crusading debunker to no end. Well, not until later that day.

In the afternoon, Duncan notices the yellow-robed Ahasver standing in Harrigan's study, leaning over his desk facing his enemy, from the croquet lawn. And immediately smells potential danger. But their knocks on the study door remain unanswered. When they look through the french windows, they see Harrigan lying next to his desk with "the face shot half away." No one else is in the study, least of all a yellow-robed cult leader! So how did he manage to disappear from a room with every door and window either securely locked or under observation?

Nine Times Nine is Sister Ursula's first appearance, but she's practically a non-entity in the book who makes a couple of brief appearances before she gathers everyone to explain the apparent miracle murder. Halfway between an armchair oracle and a deus ex machina. So the book follows around Duncan as he goes from Harrigan's literary assistant to Lieutenant Terence Marshall's semi-official Watson. Marshall could use some help as he notes that “apparently this damned locked-room business is old stuff to mystery novelists, even though it's new in my police experience.” That's not the only detective story trope to turn up in the locked study. Such as an obscured dying message, “sort of thing Ellery Queen has so much fun with,” and Ahasver coyly admitting to having shot Harrigan while possessing a perfectly tight alibi – backed up by 108 witnesses. This, of course, results in the obligatory locked room lecture when Duncan sits down with Marshall and his wife, Leone, who's a huge fan of impossible crime stories ("...one hundred and eight sworn statements"). So they sit down to discuss Dr. Gideon Fell's "Locked Room Lecture" from The Three Coffins (1935) and try to figure out which locked room-trick can be applied to their impossible murder. Robert Adey called it one of the best locked room lectures/discussions of impossible crimes in fiction and find it hard to disagree, especially when a hint of Carrian brilliance is casually dropped (SPOILER/ROT13: jura gur jebat, ohg fgvyy fbzrjung pbeerpg, fhttrfgvba vf bssrerq gung gur inavfuvat svther pbhyq unir orra “n fgnghr nf ovt nf n zna,” ohg “ubj qvq gung trg bhg bs gur ebbz?”). Remembering parts of the solution, I immediately noticed how clever that is.

However, the seemingly impossible murder of Wolfe Harrigan and the involvement of the Children of Light is only part of the plot and characters. There are more characters and other subplots complicating matters, but decided for this one to concentrate purely on locked room fun.

So how does Nine Times Nine fare as a locked room mystery? Was the 1981 panel correct in voting it the ninth best locked room mystery? Yeah, kind of. I don't think Nine Times Nine should be considered top 10 material today, but back during the post-WWII locked room novel slump, it frankly deserved to be ranked a bit higher. Nine Times Nine is certainly better than either Rawson's Death from a Top Hat and Queen's The Chinese Orange Mystery (1934). Boucher's solution for the vanishing murderer certainly is not routine, original even, but it has to be admitted the killer was incredibly lucky it went off without a hitch. So much could have gone horribly wrong when trying to pull a stunt like that and suppose it was the reason why I picked The Case of the Solid Key for my best-of list. That aspect didn't bothered me as much this time around. Probably because I now recognize it as a cut, or two, above the average, non-JDC locked room mystery from the period. Back then, I mostly had Carr and a few other titles to compare it with.

Boucher's Nine Times Nine proved to be a lot better and more fun than I remembered. It's not a perfect locked room mystery, or detective story, but a pretty good, solid effort written especially for the enjoyment of locked room mystery fanatics – past, present and future. On that account, I can warmly recommend Nine Times Nine.

The Belt of Suspicion (1936) by H. Russell Wakefield

H. Russell Wakefield was a British civil servant, publisher and writer best remembered today for his short story collections of supernatural fiction, but Wakefield also took an interest in the world of crime – both real and fictitious. Wakefield published a pair of true crime books, The Green Bicycle Case (1930) and Landru: The French Bluebeard (1936), topped by three, apparently vastly different detective novels. Hearken to the Evidence (1933) seems to be a courtroom drama, while Hostess of Death (1938) apparently mixes a murder mystery with gangsters from the pulps. Wakefield's second novel, The Belt of Suspicion (1936), struck me as potentially his most conventional mystery. Something along the lines of Christianna Brand's Death in High Heels (1941).

I don't know if The Belt of Suspicion is the most conventional of the three, but this genre curiosity is not anywhere close to even an average Brand mystery. Although the comparison with Death in High Heels still stands, sort of. More on that in a moment.

The epicenter of The Belt of Suspicion is Stephen Gallin's Glovfit's Products, specialized in producing luxury garments like belts, corsets and brassières, whose combination of creativity and commercial acumen made his garment company a success. Recently, Gallin hired his young, financially independent niece, Miss Lucy Bault, to do secretary work and some modeling – which didn't sit well with everyone. Miss Rosalie Caligne, head demonstrator, had "set her heart on being the chief's secretary" ("...she loathes me a bit more each day"). A much more serious problem is Lucy's brother, Arthur, who's developed into an alcoholic after the death of their father ("Arthur was a sip of the old bottle"). Dr. Reynolds tries to prevent Arthur from drinking himself to death by engaging a dance hostess, Peggy, to put medicine in his drink, whenever they visit the Pink Nightie Club.

Despite the attempts to make him drink less, Arthur's "heart was steadily losing its battle with the bottle," but even Dr. Reynolds suspected it would "surrender so soon." His death coincides with the first of several acute and severe attacks of gastritis nearly taking out Lucy. The first attack was dismissed as a simple, if unfortunate, case of food poisoning, but the second attack makes her fiance, Bob Carshall, suspicious on top of being worried. Suspicious enough to consult a friend and brilliant diagnostician, Anthony Faraday.

This short summary covers about half of the book and left out some details and characters, because they don't really matter to the overall story. Same holds true for roughly half of what has already been described of the plot, story and characters. So it's at this halfway mark that the plot begins to teeter and eventually fall apart. Only redeeming quality, plot-wise, is the method used to slowly poison Lucy, "there have been a few cases, but none to my knowledge criminal," which should have been the focal point of the second-half – because the who-and why are obvious at that point. An inverted, how-did-he-do-it-style mystery would have given the tight focus this messily-constructed, patently unfair mystery sorely needed during its second-half.

So, plot-wise, The Belt of Suspicion barely has anything to recommend, but its brash writing and characters have some noteworthy aspects. Moments when it almost feels like reading a crime novel from the post-WWII era of the genre. Not a supposedly sophisticated, 1930s British whodunit. For example, the Pink Nightie Club not only bribes policemen to sell drinks after hours, but is notorious for "harbouring prostitutes." Miss Lampson, an employee of Glovfit, is desperately in love with Miss Caligne and her crush is well-known around the office ("...it's the office joke"). So, in that regard, You can see the comparison to Brand's Death in High Heels. However, that same brash, casual attitude also works the other way round with certain references and remarks that are not taken as casually today as they were back in 1936. Peggy referred to a fight over politics at the night club as "a Yid scrap" at the other table and Arthur has a black cat with a Lovecraftian pet name.

I imagine scenes and lines like those have more to do why three crime novels from a fairly well-known author of ghost stories and supernatural fiction dried up after World War II than the failings of their plots.

So, in closing, Wakefield's The Belt of Suspicion is a curiosity and only of interest to genre historians or those with an acquired taste for obscure, out-of-print and necessarily good genre fiction. I'll try to pick something good for the next ramble. Maybe revisit an old favorite/classic.

The Devil's Pet Baits: "A Melee of Diamonds" (1972) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "A Melee of Diamonds," originally published in the April, 1972, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and collected in Leopold's Way (1985), begins with a crude, everyday crime – a simple smash-and-grab job. A man wielding a silver-headed cane smashes the store window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange to pocket a modest fortune in diamond rings and unset stones, but a patrolling police officer is immediately on the scene. And gets knocked down with the cane. Fortunately, a bystander chases the thief, wrestles him to the ground and hands him over to the police. So case closed, except for one small, all-important, detail: what happened to the diamonds?

The thief, Rudy Hoffman from New York, took $58,000 worth of diamonds from the broken store window before getting apprehended half a block away. From the time Hoffman smashed the store window to the moment he was tackled to the ground, "he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him." However, Hoffman didn't have a single diamond on him. The police searched him, the street and they "even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest" without finding a single diamond ring or unset stone. Hoffman isn't talking.

So when Captain Leopold hears a report the following days, he asks to have him brought down "to show you guys how it's done" with similar results. This apparently simple smash-and-grab from a store window is not one of Captain Leopold's finest hours as he's in full fallible detective mode ("this is my night for being wrong"). Even when the missing diamonds and the solution are literally gifted to him on a silver platter.

Captain Leopold pulls an impossible vanishing-act with the diamonds himself, in order to manipulate an accomplice in drawing out the main culprit, but it horribly misfires and, to use his own words, "I was trying to pull off a neat trick, and I got a guy killed" – "I bungled, that's what happened, Fletcher." Captain Leopold got it wrong one more time that night, before he can finally and successfully close the case.

So, while Captain Leopold was stuck in fallible detective mode, I played Mycroft Holmes and deduced the correct solution to the first impossibility. And, what exactly, happened the moment the store window got smashed. A not wholly unoriginal trick complimented by the smash-and-grab setup that allowed me to anticipate the identity of the main culprit. On the other hand, Leopold's trick honestly had me stumped and it's not even half as good or original as the first vanishing-trick. But it served its purpose. So, while not a perfect detective story, "A Melee of Diamonds" stands as another pretty solid, competently-plotted effort from the prolific Hoch enjoyably demonstrating the versatility of the impossible crime story outside the customary locked room and fields of virgin snow. Recommended!

Note for the curious: I also reviewed the short story collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) and the Captain Leopold short story "The Oblong Room" (1967).

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50

I reviewed the first volume, of fifty, in Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series back in 2018, reached the halfway mark (vol. 25) in May 2023 and posted "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25" a few months later – intending to have part two up by the end of 2024. You know how it goes with even the most vaguely stated, flexible of "deadlines" on this blog. I'm a traditionalist, if there ever was one. That being said, if my track through the first-half of this series was done at a snail's pace, the second-half was a sprint to the finish. Only a little a year and a half to get from vol. 26 to vol. 50. So not bad by my standards!

I reached vol. 50 last month and having reviewed every volume in addition to several specials, crossovers and sampling its sister series, C.M.B., Katou and his cast of regulars hardly need an introduction. Neither do I need to go over the points on why I started calling Q.E.D. the detective story for the 21st century. I have regurgitated all that over, and over, again in previous reviews. Just read the top 10 vol. 1-25 for a short introduction. I'll take a moment to go over the selection process.

This time, picking ten favorites was not as easy as the first time. I simply started compiling a list to whittle down to ten stories, but ended up with seventeen stories and kept moving them around between the candidate list and the final list – every story made the top 10 at one point. I wanted the list to reflect the scope of variety across this series. One thing I rarely mentioned is how Q.E.D. found a way to combine the advantages of a long-running series (familiarity) with the creative freedom afforded by standalones. So the stories and plots cover everything from traditionally-plotted whodunits, impossible crimes and alibi crackers to character explorations, slice-of-life mysteries and down right experimental fiction. And pretty much everything in between. You know me... there's always the risk I'll jump on my hobby horse and do a "Top 10 Favorite Locked Room Mysteries & Impossible Crimes from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D.," but managed to keep temptation at bay. I think I weeded out a fairly representative top 10 list from my original seventeen picks, which get an honorable mention at the end. Even if they didn't make the final cut, they're still technically top 10 material.

Before tumbling down the top 10, I want to assure those who don't care about Katou, Q.E.D. or manga mysteries in general, you'll be getting a break from them after this one. I don't think I'll get to Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 94 until sometime next month. I'll pick something a little different as a palate cleanser, before returning to C.M.B. or starting with Q.E.D. iff. So with all that poorly done blog-padding out of the way, let's begin.

 

"Summer Time Capsule" (vol. 26)

The first entry on this list appears on first sight to be minor stuff, a slice-of-life mystery, centering on a time capsule unearthed by construction workers with Kana Mizuhara's name on the lid – buried during her primary school days. Mizuhara's memories of her primary school days have already become hazy and the contents of the capsule poses a big mystery to her. Such as a group photograph with a kid neither she nor her friends remember. Mizuhara begins to suspect she might have done something very bad. Not to mention a mini-puzzle hidden inside the narrative. Where the story sets itself apart is using a simple, innocent childhood mystery to show how time ravages the memory, because you can't recall every single second of your life. So you leave more of yourself in the past than you take into the future. As an anonymous comment on my review pointed out, "Summer Time Capsule" is one of the best human drama mysteries in this series.

"Motive and Alibi" (vol. 29)

This second entry represents Q.E.D. at its most traditional and conventional, but an absolutely first-rate, classically-style whodunit. Sou Touma becomes involved in the murder of a celebrated, award winning painter, Kuromame Fukuzo, who's murdered at his home surrounded by three potential suspects. Only problem is that they possess rock solid, unshakable alibis. The murderer has every reason to be confident in their alibi, but Touma spotted a contrived set of circumstances that created a "golden window of opportunity" for murder. Even better than the ingenious and original alibi trick is how Touma's explanation built on Inspector Mizuhara's evidence and bare-bones solution. I like it when the brainy amateur and experienced, casehardened professional actually compliment each other.

"Magic & Magic" (vol. 32)

Similar to the first entry, "Magic & Magic" is one of the best character-piece this series has to offer and my personal favorite. Kurohoushi Manto, a magician, overhears Touma explaining his tricks to Mizuhara during a performance and proposes a challenge to the teenage know-it-all – wanting an opportunity to genuinely surprise Touma. A wonderful story full with magic tricks and the seemingly impossible disappearance of a book from a locked and guarded safe. However, the locked safe trick and magic trick is not the main draw of the story, but Manto's demonstrating there's a small, essential difference between fooling someone and surprising them. Bravo Katou!

"The Detective Novelist Murder Case" (vol. 33)

A return to the traditionally-styled detective story centering on a group of four published mystery writers discussing a plot idea for the perfect crime, a murder disguised as a domestic accident, but how's the murderer going to leave the scene locked from the inside? Someone obviously found an answer when one of them dies in exactly the same circumstances as they discussed and examined. Only difference is that all the doors and windows were found locked and securely fastened. What makes this story standout is the elegant, brilliant simplicity of the original locked room-trick and Touma not only revealing who, why and how, but also showing why the other suspects couldn't have done it. A detective story with a high purity plot!

"Christmas Present" (vol. 35)

Despite the story title, "Christmas Present" is not a seasonal mystery with the December festivities serving as background decoration for a clever piece of genre parody, playfully poking the shin honkaku mystery in the ribs – staged and presented as mock theatrical mystery. The notorious Detective Club of Sakisaka High School helps out making up the numbers of the Drama Club to prevent their Christmas Show from getting canceled, but under condition they stage a mystery play. Touma and Mizuhara naturally get put to work with the former having to write a script on the spot. Touma comes up with Murder at the Pentagon House about a murder in a small, pentagon-shaped house with the door and windows locked on the inside. While being tongue-and-cheek, the locked room-trick is actually quite clever and original. A trick that can actually be used in a comedy mystery play. So really fun and successful parody of the shin honkaku mystery.

"The Incident in Urban Hills Room 6" (vol. 39)

I constantly moved this story back and forth between the candidate list and the final list, before deciding to keep it in the final ten. This story takes place at a shabby, rundown lodging house where the landlady was found hanging in the titular room, dismissed by the police as a suicide. But left the place with a stigma as nobody wanted to apply for the job of housekeeping. One day, Mizuhara appears on their doorstep to take the position and immediately begins to asking questions, which she relies to Touma playing armchair detective in the background. However, this story is not nearly as conventional as it sounds and, like said in my original review, somewhat of an anti-detective story that's not really an anti-detective story at all. I really liked how Touma showed none of tenants have a motive only to turn around and show why one of those non-motives is a motive for murder.

"Secret Room No. 4" (vol. 40)

This entry undeniably is dictated by my personal obsession taste for locked room mysteries and every other kind of impossible crime fiction under the sun. Touma, Mizuhara and the members of the Sakisaka High School Detective Club partake in a test run for murder game, based on the works of a well-known mystery novelist, on behalf of the tour company – which brings them to the perfect setting for a murder, Sasakure Island. A game consisting of various locked room puzzles challenging the players to find out how the crime was carried out, not whodunit or why. Not unexpectedly, the test game is interrupted by an actual locked room murder. There are a total of four locked room mysteries in this story and an argument can be made Touma's solution revealed a fifth, neatly hidden, impossible crime. While not all the locked room-tricks carry that brand new car smell, they're brilliantly employed together to create a special treat for impossible crime fans like me.

"Tuba and Grave" (vol. 44)

The three disaster magnets of the Sakisaka High School Detective Club again get themselves into serious trouble when they foolishly mistook a sleeping drunk for a murder victim with their wildly incorrect, ludicrous deductions. So they find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when witnessing an actual murder and the body being hidden inside an abandoned, rundown factory. They call in an anonymous tip to the police who search the place from top to bottom, which include a freshly dug, filled-in hole and a tuba case. No murder victim is discovered. So they turn to Touma and Mizuhara to help them out of another hole. A really fun story, but the plot is great as well with an even better conclusion. Touma basically turns what appears to be the problem of an impossibly disappearing body into an inverted, Columbo-style breakdown of the murderer's alibi and trapping the killer with incriminating knowledge.

"Pilgrimage" (vol. 46)

Q.E.D. is not exactly a cozy mystery series, but neither is it excessively dark or disturbing and tends to find a happy balance between the darker and lighter sights of life. Usually done in colors rather than shades of gray. Not this unsettling, pitch-black story centering on a long-forgotten incident dating back to World War II. A forgotten incident rediscovered inside an unpublished manuscript from a dead non-fiction author with some cryptic words scribbled on the cover. Why did the husband of a murder victim traveling to Hanoi, under wartime to conditions, to confront the murderer court decided halfway through the journey to continue on foot? Why did he, following a track of 1000 km on foot, arrive at the court two months later to asked the court to spare his wife's killer by commuting his death sentence to a prison sentence? Why did it fail to save the killer? A story deceptively starting out as a human interest story with a dash of Chestertonian wonder, but the ending revealed a nightmarish horror plucked from the pages of of an Edgar Allan Poe or Edogawa Rampo tale.

"Escape" (vol. 50)

I realize I should have swapped this entry with any of the honorable mentions listed below, but enjoyed vol. 50 too much to not include one of its two stories. I decided to go with "Escape" over the global spectacle that's “Observation,” because enjoyed the former slightly more. A fun combination of the locked room mystery with a mystery thriller. Touma and Mizuhare receive an anonymous request and money to organize a private escape room game for a small group of people, but the participants soon find themselves trapped inside as a bomb is ticking down the minutes. This situation is tied to an unsolved, sixteen year old locked room murder dismissed at the time as a suicide. Three things make this story standout: the reason for staging the escape game, the original locked room-trick for a padlocked door and a plot unfolding itself through the escape game. Touma and Mizuhara have little else to do other than being impartial observers. Leave it to Katou to find a way to be unconventional in a conventional locked room mystery.

Honorable Mentions from the Cutting Room Floor: "Pharaoh's Necklace" (vol. 28), "Promise" (vol. 31), "Paradox Room" (vol. 33), "Empty Dream" (vol. 38), "Escher Hotel" (vol. 42), "The Representative" (vol. 48) and "Observation" (vol. 50).

Obelists en Route (1934) by C. Daly King

C. Daly King was an American psychologist and mystery writer best remembered today for his Trevis Tarrant series of short stories, collected in The Curious Mr. Tarrant (1935) and The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant (2003), which fared better than his half a dozen detective novel – five of which have become exercises in obscurity. King penned two sets of three novels starting with his so-called "Obelists" series, Obelists at Sea (1932), Obelists en Route (1934) and Obelists Fly High (1935). Closed out his stint as mystery novelist with his three CAB mysteries, Careless Corpse (1937), Arrogant Alibi (1938) and Bermuda Burial (1940).

Obelists Fly High escaped biblioblivion courtesy of several inexpensive, easily available reprint editions in the Dover Mystery Classics series. Obelists at Sea followed at a considerable distance as it received a paperback reprint in the Penguin Green Crime series, but that paperback with wrapper is only marginally less rare than the Knopf first edition. Whenever a copy of Careless Corpse, Arrogant Alibi or Bermuda Burial turns up, it tends to cost an arm and a leg. The last copy of Bermuda Burial I saw for sale had a $1350 prize-tag on it. However, the most well-known of his obscure, out-of-print and practically unobtainable mysteries used to be Obelists en Route. In fact, I remember it being considered as one of the ten, or so, most sought out, out-of-print rarities around the late 2000s.

Last year, Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics reprinted Obelists at Sea and a few months ago, they released a brand new edition of Obelists en Route. This new edition marks its first reprint in over 90 years!

First things, first! King invented the word "obelist" and defined it as "a person of little or no worth" in Obelists at Sea, but changed the definition to "one who views with suspicion" in the two subsequent novels – which is a more suitable definition in the context of a detective story. Especially when they take place in confined locations like this series. Obelists at Sea takes place during a transatlantic voyage, Obelists Fly High is set aboard a passenger plane and Obelists en Route is a good, old-fashioned railway mystery. Agatha Christie and Stuart Palmer famously wrote mysteries that can be linked with the murder on land-sea-and-air motif, but King is the only one who wrote and published them as a set.

Obelists en Route takes place during a three-day, non-stop journey from New York City to San Francisco on an exclusive test run of the newly built, luxurious Transcontinental Limited. A coast-to-coast train constructed like a ritzy, stretched out luxury hotel on wheels complete with wireless phone boots, barber service and even a swimming pool car. Transcontinental Limited is the railroad's answer to commercial air travel ("extra luxury against extra speed"). A small, exclusive selection of guests are invited along on the first, uninterrupted run across the continent aboard the Transcontinental Limited.

There's a prominent banker, Sabot Hodges, his daughter Edvanne, his private secretary Entwerk and a valet, Hopping. Hodges also brought along a world renowned psychoanalyst, Dr. Mabon Raquette, to have himself psychoanalyst. Dr. Raquette is only one, of four, famous psychologist on the train journey. Dr. Iva Poppas, a Hormic psychologist, Prof. Dr. Gottlieb Irrtum, a Gestalt psychologist, and a Integrative psychologist, Dr. L. Reef Pons – whom previously appeared in Obelists at Sea. Noah Hall, an industrial engineer, is part of the trip as an argumentative representative of the "representative of Technocracy" and Hans Summerladd is the publicity director of the Transcontinental company. Last, but not least, is Lt. Michael Lord of the New York City Police Department, who's assigned to trip "just in case." That pertained more to the usual petty crooks or cranks. Not a suspicious death.

On the morning following their departure, Sabot Hodges is found dead at the bottom of the train's swimming pool without a wound or marks of external violence on his body. So nothing to indicate foul play. Lord's initial investigation seems to reveal a bizarre suicide, but when a medical examiner boards the train to perform an autopsy, it's reveals Hodges hadn't drowned at all. The cause of death is undetermined. Now he has a death on his hands that could neither be murder or suicide nor an accident or natural causes. A tricky problem complicated by a Wild West-like shootout targeting Edvanne Hodges, but leaves someone else critically wounded. And the unidentified shooter got away in the melee. However, the shooting convinces Lord there's something fishy about Hodges' death and begins investigating anew now that he has "something to bite on."

Michael Lord is an well-off, upper class policeman who "went into police work for fun" without having to rely on salary. I've seen Lord being compared to other upper class police detectives like Thatcher Colt and Roderick Alleyn, but thought him here to be closer to Inspector French than characters like Colt and Alleyn.

Lord is an intelligent and observant detective with an eye for detail, but not an infallible detective who makes brilliant deductions from the strangest of clues. Lord simply gathers information and evidence from which he tries to reconstruct the truth. More than once, those reconstructions collapse like a false-solutions when new facts emerge ("...his hardly won solution knocked clean from under him"). What should be noted Lord is assisted on several of those solution by ideas (i.e. pet theories) brought to him by the psychologists aboard. For example, Dr. Raquette believes Hodges fell prey to his own "death instinct," while Dr. Pons contributed a traditionally-styled false-solution with a method to sneak poison pass a medical examiner's attention under certain circumstances. So their psychological take on the case made for a distinctly different take on the false-solutions complimenting Lord's investigation and the overall story and plot.

Speaking of the plot, you always hope when finally getting your hands on one of these legendary, out-of-print mysteries, they have a plot to match their near mythical status – like a Death of Laurence Vinning (1928) or Death of Jezebel (1948). That's always a gamble. For example, Leo Bruce's once extremely rare Case with Four Clowns (1939) turned out to be the weakest entry in the Sgt. Beef series upon its re-release in 2010. Fortunately, Obelists en Route more than delivers when it comes to the plot. A small masterclass in simplistic complexity. There's an almost pleasant crudeness to the well-hidden, ultimately simple murder method employed on the banker and simply loved the explanation for the good, old-fashioned American shootout aboard. Something very nearly Lord's denouement with all the suspects gathered in one of the railway compartments. More importantly, King played fairly as can be attested by the inclusion of his patented "Clue Finder" at the end of the book. This comes in addition to half a dozen diagrams and a host of Van Dinean footnotes. So a real treat for Golden Age detective fans.

Only rough patch, or blotch, on this otherwise readable, engaging train-bound mystery are the economic lectures grinding it to a halt several times. No idea why they weren't edited out of the original edition, because they barely serve a purpose to the characters or plot. Well, outside of giving one of the characters a hint of a motive, but that could have been done without those lectures. So you can read pass or ignore them altogether without the risk of missing something essential to the story. That's really its only shortcoming. Not something to sour me on everything else it got right.

So wish I remembered more of the previous two "obelists" mysteries, because I don't recall them being as well written or coherently-plotted as Obelists en Route. Jim, of The Invisible Event, famously gave Obelists Fly High zero stars and vaguely remember Obelists at Sea being a pleasant, but slow-moving, shipboard whodunit. Nothing more than that. Obelists en Route is a a different story altogether. A first-class Golden Age railway mystery and had it been reprinted as a Dover Mystery Classic instead of Obelists Fly High, King likely would have been remembered very differently today. Highly recommended!

Boundary Reached: Q.E.D. vol. 50 by Motohiro Katou

I started reading Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. in 2018 and over the years, despite some prolonged hiatuses and ill-fated restarts, it not only became one of my favorite manga mystery series, but one of my favorite detective series in general – regardless of medium or form. A new kind of traditional detective story for the 21st century and should have finished it years ago, because you would think the locked downs from a few years ago would have helped. But no. Well, I promised to have this series done, dusted and in the books before summertime rolls around. And here we are with time to spare.

Fittingly, I'll end this run how it started with a single review of the last volume. The last two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 50 present not only a return to form, but feel like a return to the stories from the earlier volumes with one subtle little difference. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara look slightly older than they were at the beginning of the series.

The first story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Observation," draws on Sou Touma's time as a teenage prodigy at MIT where he met another young genius, Sally Blythe. Years later, she has become the head of a company manufacturing instruments for observational experiments, "Blythe Inc. is pretty famous," but her company is being targeted by, what can only be called, an invisible enemy – who carries out seemingly impossible acts of sabotage globally. Providing the story with some recognizable and famous backdrops. First stop is the Large Hadron Collider, on the border between France and Switzerland, where an unknown intruder switched switched off the flow of liquid helium forcing a shut down. However, the intruder was caught on the CCTV and surrounded by two groups guards inside the circular tunnel. When the two groups bumped into each other, the intruder simply had vanished without a trace! A second and similar act of sabotage occurred at the Mauna Kea Observatories, in Hawaii, where the cooling process was interrupted during an observational experiment. But how did the culprit managed to tamper with equipment that had been securely locked and sealed away for ten days? The saboteur strikes again at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan by placing radioactive radium ore beside an underground detector.

Sally Blythe turns to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to not only help figure out how the culprit managed to sabotage their experiments, but who's behind it all and why. So we get a nicely-layered, intelligently plotted detective story and human touch to the characterization. Not black and white or shades of gray as exemplified by the ending, which is neither a happy ending nor a depressingly dark conclusion. Just something human under less than ordinary circumstances. I really enjoyed the various impossible situations perhaps showing the influence of MORI Hiroshi and novels like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996).

I think most of you already have a pretty good idea how the saboteur disappeared from the LHC. You would be particle partially correct, however, Katou pleasantly elaborated on that basic idea to create something more fitted for its special setting. The locked room-trick at the Mauna Kea Observatories is far more original, but not easily solvable for your average armchair detective. Even with a devious hint to its solution being dropped in your lap. Despite it being somewhat of a specialized locked room, I really liked it and appreciated its novelty. The sabotage at the Kamioka Observatory is not really a locked room problem, but serves another well-done purpose to the overall plot. So an all-round excellent opener to the final volume!

The second and last story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Escape," reads like a season finale adding thrills as frills to a good, old-fashioned and cleverly contrived locked room mystery.

"Escape" opens with a flashback, "16 years ago," to a warehouse used by an unnamed child as a secret hideout to read his favorite adventure series, Adventures of Brave, the Knight, but, one day, an intruder enters the barn – casually stringing up a body before leaving. This intruder leaves the barn locked from the inside with a padlock. The child disappears from the barn just as mysteriously, but not before taking the ring from the hanging body. So the police at the time are confronted with what appears to be a suicide inside a locked barn. So the case grew cold and was forgotten, until Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara receive an anonymous request and money to organize an Escape Room game. A game organized for the benefit of a small party made up of an ex-policeman, a fortune teller, a food sales executive, a mangaka (manga author) and a part timer.

All five received a personal invitation to take part in the game with an opportunity to win one million yen, but the mini-puzzles prove to be too cerebral for the participants. Suspicion rises when items like an old ring and a copy of Adventures of Brave, the Knight turn up in the game. And, eventually, the game becomes a dangerous one as they find themselves locked inside the labyrinth with a time bomb counting down the minutes they have left to escape. Even though it has been done before, the reason behind staging the escape game is still very clever indeed and wonderfully presented/executed through the escape game setup.

 

 

The solution to the locked room murder from 16 years ago deserves a special mention, because the trick offers something entirely new when it comes to impossible crimes in padlocked rooms or buildings. I'm sure I mentioned this somewhere before, quite recently, but the reason why padlocked rooms are even rarer than "taped tombs" is because padlocks are too unreliable, and too limited, for a proper locked room mystery. They're wide open to being picked, replaced or swapped around. So you won't find much scope or depth in the trickery in the, what, half a dozen known examples. That makes the locked room-trick here so refreshing and surprising, because it found a new way to get out of padlocked room.

I should also note here Touma has very little to do here, except help setting up the escape room and act as an impartial observer as the plot unfolds itself. Typical for this series to give its protagonist a passive role in its closing act. Nothing to detract from this splendid and fun locked room thriller. So, overall, a very strong volume to end this series on. Somewhat of an open ending, perhaps, to the series and characters, but this is, of course, not the end of the road for Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara – both of whom will return in Q.E.D. iff. I look forward to digging into that series, but first have to begin slapping together part two of "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25." I'll probably take a palate cleanser before returning to C.M.B. and starting on Q.E.D. iff, which might even include a return to The Kindaichi Case Files. Stay tuned!

The Garston Murder Case (1930) by H.C. Bailey

H.C. Bailey was part of the first badge of British Golden Age mystery writers who made his name during the 1920s with a series of longish short stories, featuring his famous series-detective Reginald "Reggie" Fortune, before making transitioning to novel-length mysteries in 1930 – publishing his last novel two decades later (Shrouded Death, 1950). Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976) notes that Bailey's Reggie Fortune was "perhaps the most popular sleuth in England between the World Wars" and influenced S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance. Although not everyone's a fan of Vance mimicking Reggie Fortune's speech habits.

I've sampled a smattering of Bailey's detective fiction over the years. Rue Morgue Press reprints of the excellent Shadow on the Wall (1934) and Black Land, White Land (1937) prompted me to hunt down a copy of the superb The Sullen Sky Mystery (1935), but interest began to wane after the messy The Great Game (1939) and the serviceable The Bishop's Crime (1940). Sort of forgot about Bailey until a copy of the first Joshua Clunk novel, The Garston Murder Case (1930), recently came my way. Bailey's first novel-length mystery introducing his other detective. So high time to return to one of the OG greats of the British Golden Age detective story.

Bailey's most well-known detective is often linked to the foppish, upper class dilettantes like Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey, which is not an association that has always benefited Reggie Fortune. I guess the relative obscure status of his secondary series-detective, Joshua Clunk, is why "the crooks' solicitor" is rarely mentioned in the same breath as Anthony Gilbert's Arthur Crook and Craig Rice's John J. Malone. A cunning hypocrite who sucks sweets, hums hymns and preaches every Sunday at his own established place of worship, Gospel Hall – while Mrs. Clunk played the harmonium. Behind the pious mask, Clunk "knew more of what was going on underground than any man in London" and the police believed "he was up to the neck in most of it." And not afraid to get his hands dirty. So, while far less likable than either Crook or Malone, I actually remember Clunk clearer than the plot of The Sullen Sky Mystery. The Garston Murder Case convinced me Clunk ought to be much better known to detective fans today.

The Garston Murder Case starts with introducing the reader to Joshua Clunk and several small, but different, incidents eventually coming together at Bradstock Abbey. Ancestral home of Henry Garstons, the first Lord Croyland and head of the iron and steel giant Garstons & Garstons ("anything from a needle to a battleship").

Firstly, Clunk is visited by the son of an old client, Anthony "Tony" Wisberry, who's father mysteriously disappeared without a trace twenty years ago. Clunk took care of his mother's financial interest and, when she passed away, Tony found papers from his father indicating he had completed a then new process for making hard steel from vanadium, right before he disappeared. Coincidentally, the formula is exactly the same as the one Garstons & Garstons began to use and now Tony wants answers from Lord Croyland. Clunk tries to dissuade him, "great firms don't murder inventors," they "prefer to swindle 'em" ("...easy and legal"), but Tony is determined to get the truth. Secondly, a Miss Morrow has her room at the Victoria Hotel burglarized and the thief took away a jewelry case, but the case contained more than just jewelry. It contained personal letters from her long-dead fiance, Alfred Garston, who drowned decades ago and she's been perpetual mourning ever since – fluttering between hotels years round. Inspector Gunn and Superintendent Bell arrest a well-known hotel thief resulting in some amusing courtroom scenes in which Clunk gets his client off at the expense of poor Bell. Lastly. May Dean, a young nurse, is engaged by her old school friend and Lord Croyland's secretary, Gladys Hurst, to look after Lord Croyland's elderly mother. A job that's not as easy as it looks and Miss Morrow often comes to mourn Alfred with Mrs. Garston. As we say in my country, klinkt gezellig. :)

So the first-half of The Garston Murder Case is, plot-wise, a bit slow moving as Bailey has to introduce the various characters and plot pieces, but never bores or drags. Bailey knows how to write characters and how to make them talk which especially allows Clunk to shine in all his hypocritical glory. And establish him as a character as well as his relationship with Superintended Bell. Who warns Inspector Gunn "when Josh Clunk starts giving evidence anything may turn up—except the truth." Clunk comes through true to form, not only in the first-half. Around the halfway mark, Bradstock Abbey becomes the scene of murder when old Mrs. Garston is throttled during the night. And a village constable on patrol in the neighborhood is killed the same night.

Throughout the double murder investigation, Clunk is an ever persistent presence in the background of the case who's constantly giving lectures, sermons, hums hyms or tut-tut-tuting Bell's "unfortunate distrust" in him – distracting the superintedent from the obvious truth. So the characterization and storytelling is topnotch, but what about the plot? The Garston Murder Case reads like a parody, or serious satire, of the Gothic novel. Bailey even provided a secret passage to go with its turn-of-the-century trappings, but treated and handled with all the skill and ingenuity of the 1930s Golden Age detective story. Notably the identity of the well-hidden, well-clued murderer is a minor technical achievement. Something several mystery writers tried before, and since then, but recall only a handful of successes. Bailey came incredible close to having one such success story on his hands with The Garston Murder Case, had the solution not been so obvious. The plot is technically sound and more than fairly clued, but, by the halfway mark, it's pretty clear from which direction the wind is blowing. So seasoned armchair detectives won't be fooled for very long, however, it's competently executed inside a pleasingly readable story introducing one of the most odious, but strangely compelling, anti-heroes from this period of the genre. Clunk's part in The Garston Murder Case alone makes me want to hunt down one of his out-of-print cases or give The Sullen Sky Mystery another look. So... to be continued.

Memory Fail: Q.E.D. vol. 47-49 by Motohiro Katou

The first, of two, stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Sun is Still Blazing," takes place at a secret and highly secured NSA research on a remote, isolated island near Indonesia – where an important file with research data went missing. And ended up destroyed. Only problem is that the research facility is tightly secured and closely scrutinized suggesting an inside job.

Was it the somewhat eccentric head researcher and "world-renowned expert in math and logic," Kurt Gidel? Or one of three members of his research staff, Carlos Balma, Walter Chapman and Judith Grey? Considering the stolen and destroyed data included sensitive, classified information, it was decided to hold an internal investigation in order to close the case as soon as possible. Sou Touma was asked to act as an independent investigator with Kana Mizuhara tagging along to the remote Indonesian island.

The theft of the file is something of an impossible crime. It apparently went missing in the meeting room, tightly secured, where Gidel and his staff gather to discuss ideas and work out problems on a blackboard. Gidel was sitting next to the backboard to listen to his staff members and judge their ideas, while the file rested on the blackboard's ledge. During their last meeting, the black book file was somehow swapped with a dummy file, miraculously smuggled out of the institute and destroyed – even though everyone was thoroughly searched. Another complication to the case is Gidel himself. A genius who only wanted "to sit back and relax at a beautiful island" to solve complicated math problems from a beach chair. He also provides a couple of confusing false-solutions and asks Touma if they were useful. Kana is ready to throttle him when answering, "yes, it was." What's most surprising is how simple, unvarnished and straight forward this story. No grand tricks. Touma's chain of deductions simply answers the three main questions: how was the file swapped, how was it stolen and whodunit with even the equally simple and unvarnished motive being a clue to the culprit's identity. A simple, straightforward, but good and effective little detective story.

Second story of Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Slope," is surprisingly a Kana Mizuhara-centric story hearkening back to her middle school days when she stood for a bullied classmate, Utagawa Aki. She returned to their first middle school reunion having become a promising young model with rising profile, but she always wanted to know why Kana trusted her unconditionally. Particularly during an embarrassing incident when a stolen video game was found in her desk. Kana was the only one believed in her innocence and stuck up for her, which saved her neck with the teacher. But why? Kana can't remember why she believed her. When Kana goes with a few other old classmates to her apartment an envelope with household money disappears, possibly mislaid by accident. But a thorough search of place turns up exactly nothing.

Kana calls Touma for help and advises her to search the apartment again, but, this time, she has to "search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately" – not simply gotten lost or misplaced. Finding the missing money raises more questions than answers. However, the missing money is only a vehicle to tell Utagawa's backstory and why Kana believed her. A decent enough story, but not nearly as good or memorable as that other Kana Mizuhara-centric story, "Summer Time Capsule," from vol. 26. So, on a whole, these two stories aren't standouts of the series, but put together, they form a pretty solid volume.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 48, "The Representative," begins with a police report of a
break-in at an empty house. When the police came to investigate, they discovered a bizarre scene: the body of man, partially wrapped in tarp, lying in the middle of a room next to an unfinished, half-dug hole in the floor. The victim is Kabuto Shigeki, a representative for authors, who worked for the Orange Copyright Agency. His most well-known client is a reclusive, bestselling author, Semi Ichika, whose Crater Bungee sold over a million copies. Kabuto Shigeki was about to receive the finished manuscript for his next book. Orange Copyright Agency, pressured by his publisher, is eager to get their hands on the manuscript, but Ichika is notoriously difficult to work with. And dislikes most of their staff members ("I tried too hard to impress him..."). So the new, young and completely inexperienced Tento Seiko gets to job of trying to handle and appease Ichika. She's friends with Mizuhara and Sou Touma eventually follows to "solve this series of unfortunate events," but not before another body is added to the tally.

"The Representative" is a really good detective story, nearly an inverted mystery, but there's a pleasing, craftily applied a nearly invisible layer to the whodunit. So to truly solve this story, the armchair detective has to find answer to all the questions. From the murky motive and behavior of the author to the condition in which the first victim was discovered. A possible contender to be included in part two "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D."

The next story, "Fahya's Drawing Book," is undoubtedly a crime/detective story of today's age. It centers on a poor Moroccan child, Fahya, who's teenage cousin, Hamdan, has heard their uncle made a lot of money working in Spain and wants to join him – boarding a ship to smuggle him and others into Europe. Fahya's joins him as a stowaway, where she witnesses a murder from her hiding place, before the ship runs into the coast guard. That confrontation quickly dissolves into a shoot out killing seventeen people aboard the ship, but Fahya an Hamdan made it to the shore. Fahya disappearing from her home and the smuggling vessel has not gone unnoticed.

Alan Blade, the CEO of Alansoft, last appeared in "Disaster Man's Wedding" (vol. 34) when he got married to his secretary, Ellie, who founded a joined charity as part of their wedding gift. They wanted to provide a poor child from Africa with a scholarship to guarantee them an education and Ellie picked (surprise, surprise) Fahya. Alan brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara into the case to help find the little girl, but they're not the only ones looking for her. So an interesting enough premise for modern mystery, but nothing truly interesting emerges from it and feels more like a curiosity than anything else. Although I doubt that was the intention considering it tackles human trafficking, missing children and a shoot out on a boat with nearly twenty casualties. I was especially reminded of, what's perhaps, Edward D. Hoch's worst short story, "The Starkworth Atrocity" (1998), which tried to do something similar with even less impressive results. Sadly, this volume ends with one of the weakest stories in the series.

Regrettably, Q.E.D. vol. 49 is rather weak on a whole, but the first story, "Unrelated Cases," has its moments. Stanley Lau and Sammy Chow are the leaders of two opposing criminal organizations who have decided to meet at a dinner in Hong Kong, but the place is shot up and their bodyguards immediately form a human shield around the two mob bosses. Someone, somehow, shot Sammy Chow through the heart while surrounded by his bodyguards. The shot came from a deserted, dead end alleyway. Some time later in Japan, Tomashino Kyohei, a college student, is roped by his criminally optimistic friend, Sasaki Tatsuoka, to take some money from his workplace to help them along. When the arrive on the 21st floor of a dark, empty building, they discover Lau and his men torturing and killing a man. They managed to escape from the building, but now they have band of gangsters after them. Tomashino Kyohei's younger brother, Haruhiko, asks his school friends, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara, to help them out.

I said this story has it's moments and there are exactly two. Firstly, the impossible shooting of Sammy Chow in Hong Kong. It's a fine demonstration of the advantages a visual medium like manga (comics) has over prose when dealing with locked room murders, impossible crimes and complicated tricks, because it's just fun to see the murder being carried out during the flashback – fun enough to almost overlook how preposterous the trick really is. I think the trick would have worked better in a less risky, more controlled environment like a theatrical stage or movie set. Secondly, the final confrontation between Touma and Lau. Hardboiled brains, indeed! So not the best story in the series, nor anywhere near the bottom.

"Love Story" closes out Q.E.D. vol. 49 and is another heart-shaped, character-driven puzzles, but not an especially memorable one and struggled to remember anything about it as soon as I finished it. The main gist of the story is an unfinished, 45-year-old movie shot by the movie club of a private college starring a college student who's spitting image of Kana Mizuhara. How very Gosho Aoyama of you, Katou. Nearly half a century, two of the since then married, now elderly club members bump into Kana and the urge is immediately there to finish the movie. Only for the man to die of a heart attack while editing the movie. And he leaves behind some questions. This one just didn't capture my attention. Katou has done these human puzzle stories better before.

So an unfortunate weak ending to the penultimate volume in the series. Even more unfortunate, the overall quality of these three volumes is fairly weak. Only good two stories are "The Sun is Still Blazing" and "The Representative." "The Slope" is a fairly decent character piece and "Unrelated Cases" has, as said before, its moments. But the same can't be said of "Fahya's Drawing Book" or "Love Story." Let's hope I can end this series on an optimistic note with the coming review of Q.E.D. vol. 50.

Fear Stalks the Village (1932) by Ethel Lina White

Ethel Lina White was a British writer from Abergavenny, Wales, who started out writing short stories and mainstream novels, before not unsuccessfully trying her hands at crime fiction with Some Must Watch (1933) and The Wheel Spins (1936) earning her some lasting fame – which were both turned into popular movies. The Wheel Spins was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes. So her work tends to be linked to the atmospheric, character-driven suspense mysteries of American writers like Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mignon G. Eberhart and Mabel Seeley. Robert Adey even listed two of White's novels in Locked Room Murders (1991).

So you would think White's contributions to the impossible crime genre was going to be my first stop, but have been rather curious about one of her lesser-known, non-impossible crime mystery novels.

Last year, the British Library reprinted White's Fear Stalks the Village (1932) as part of their ongoing Crime Classics series. Martin Edwards wrote a short, but insightful, introduction describing the book as an early example of the poison pen letter depicting "the slow, remorseless destruction of bonds of trust and affection between the villagers" – complimented by "a pleasing slow-burn puzzle." I've read some good things about Fear Stalks the Village and the reprint was favorably received, which made the top 10 of the 2024 Reprint of the Year Award. It certainly is one of the most striking of the 1930s village mysteries.

The village in question is a remote, out of the way place with no railway connection, but the flower gardens, honeysuckle-twined lanes, cobbled streets lined with Tudor cottages makes it a small slice of heaven. It's said that "even Death seldom knocked at its doors, for the natives resented the mere idea of dying in such a delightful place." So a place where visitors become residents over time, but a snake has slithered into this garden paradise. A snake of the venomous variety who spreads its poison through anonymous letters.

Miss Decima Asprey, elderly spinster and queen of the village, is the first to receive an anonymous poison pen letter attacking her moral character. She shares it with the village priest and it was supposed to be kept between them, but they were overheard by the parlor maid. And, within a day, it was public knowledge Miss Asprey had received a poison pen letter slandering her character. The first to fall under suspicion is the local writer of schoolboy adventure serials, Miss Julia Corner, who's first garden party of the season ends disastrous when she brings up the anonymous letter. Miss Corner was the first to experience the "social frost" as invitations for tea or garden parties stopped coming, which made the initial fear and suspicion subside – until a second poison pen letter is delivered. Followed by a tragic death and an inquest. So the Reverend Simon Blake calls in his friend, Ignatius Brown, who's "one of the idle rich" and "rather fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes" to do a bit of sleuthing.

Ignatius Brown arrives in the village to witness firsthand how the atmosphere of fear, suspicion and a morbid dread of scandal has on the social fabric of village life. Everyone is suspicious of their own neighbor. Social gatherings come to a grinding halt "as though they knew subconsciously that so long as they did not gather together in numbers they were safe from the herd-instinct to panic at a chance shot." This is slow-burn suspense mystery and Brown is not able to prevent more tragedies from happening as the village continues to unravel, before he can put a stop to the "secret sadist" terrorizing a once nearly fairytale-like village.

However, while there are a number of deaths, White boldly decided to make this 1932 mystery novel completely murderless. Fear Stalks the Village focuses entirely on the poison pen letters and their corrosive effect on not only their recipients, but on the village community as a whole. So this village mystery is more about the salting and poisoning of the social strata of a small, isolated village sparring nobody than the effects of a murder of an individual on a close-knit community. Fear Stalks the Village is something off the beaten path for an early 1930s village mystery, which had only just began to emerge and perhaps the reason why it reads like a book written decades later. Shirley Jackson's short poison pen story, "The Possibility of Evil" (1965), comes to mind. That's also reflected in the ending.

Fear Stalks the Village is, as noted before, a very slow-moving story taking place under lazy summer sun or "flushed in sunset afterglow" as the anonymous letter writer slowly poisons the village – one letter at a time. Something you can only get away with when there's a worthy payoff at the end and White delivered as Brown revealed there was more complexity behind how the poison pen letters started. That earned it a status as an oddly cut gem of the British village mystery. On the other hand, Brown can only prevent further damage and precious little to get justice for the people who took their own life. Whatever the ending suggested, it's unlikely the end of the poison pen letters restored the village to its previous state.

Fear Stalks the Village is one of the most unusual, leisurely-paced, but strangely mesmerizing, mystery thrillers from the British Golden Age. Recommended as something pleasantly different. But let the reader be warned... if you want your detective story to get on with it and present a clearly murdered corpse in the first couple of chapters, you're best advised to give this one a pass.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

Last time, I looked at P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), first in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, which just like The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) proved to be another entertaining send-up of the Golden Age detective story – recalling Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin and P.G. Wodehouse. And better plotted than you would expect from a series labeled "locked room cosies." But the devil is always in the details. The execution of the plot, as a whole, left me in two minds. So decided to immediately move on to the fourth title in the series to see how much priority I should give to Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022), The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023).

Like previously said, Fitzsimmons is not a writer to be caught in the act of being boring and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) is no exception. It reads like a send-up of Paul Halter's Le diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor, 1993) and L'homme qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds, 1999).

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse takes place in 1929 and, similar to the first novel, starts with a telegram delivered to the Juniper Gentleman's Club. A telegram with an ominous warning, "THE CURSE IS ONCE AGAIN UPON THE CARNABY FAMILY-(STOP)-DO NOT RETURN TO HOY-(STOP)-ONLY DEATH AWAITS YOU," addressed to W. Carnaby of the Juniper Club. However, Carnaby is not a member of the club, but "London's finest club steward" who has failed to return from his holiday. Anty decides to launch a rescue campaign and travels with Vickers to the village of Hoy in the Peak District to have at least one question answered, "how is it that Carnaby the club steward's ancestral home is, apparently, a castle?"

Hoy is an ancient place populated with Carnabys, two distinct family lines, divided in two groups, Castle Carnabys and Town Carnabys, of which the first is comprised of the direct descendants of Ranulf Carnaby – whom own Carnaby Castle and surrounding land. However, they only have use of the castle with the eldest descendant holding executive powers "limited to maintenance, upkeep and persecuting witches." That persecuting-of-witches thing saddled the Castle Carnabys with a curse for the past four hundred years targeting the young brides who might bring the Castle Carnabys its next heir. A curse that had been suspended by employing a local witch to counter the curse. Cecil Carnaby, "castle despot," recently returned home with his Italian bride, Ludovica. Cecil is determined to shake things up at the castle and showed his resident witch the door.

Some time later, Ludovica is seen walking on the promontory above Hoy Scarp when "the mists rose from the river, raised her in the air, and flung her into the gorge." Six people witnessed it happen and swear no one was near Ludovica when "the mists carried her right over Hoy Scarp" ("...like the curse used to do in the old days..."). Anty learns of this impossible murder from Inspector Ivor Wittersham, of Scotland Yard, who bump into each other on the train en route to Hoy and Carnaby Castle, but, of course, it's not the only complication facing them. First of all, there's the intricate, crossed family relationships of the Carnabys twisted and intertwined through every aspect of the case. Secondly, Ludovica is a widow with a dead and a missing husband, which is why the other Carnabys considered her a mere gold digger. But her former stepson turned up believing she disappeared his father. And, before the mist carried her away, another member of the family had several near fatal accidents ("you'd almost think that the castle or someone in it was trying to kill her"). Not to mention a string of thefts from locked bedrooms and uncovering a rabbit warren of secreted doors, hidden passageways and underground catacombs.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is as entertaining and breezy a read as the previous three of Anty's outings, but the plot is regrettably thin and feels less fair. I spotted the murderer early on and tried to be too complicated in trying to find an explanation for Ludovica's impossible murder, which turned out to be something of a letdown. I honestly would have been happy if the solution turned out to be that Ludovica was hit in the back by a crossbow bolt with a rounded, padded tip – making it appear as if she was lifted and flung over the edge. The solution for the thefts from the locked bedrooms practically suggested itself, but perfectly serviceable for a minor subplot. Fortunately, there's a third impossibility somewhat redeeming the book as a locked room mystery. A second murder behind a locked door, what else, but inside is a normally hidden, now open doorway leading to several rooms in the castle. All occupied during the murder and nobody was seen creeping out of one of these hidden doorways! If this impossible murder had a slightly more ambitious locked room-trick, I would likely have placed the book alongside The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning on its strength alone.

You can chalk part of my disappoint up to having come across more than one locked room mystery this year toying and playfully subverting secret passages. Normally a big no-no for both the traditional detective story and me personally. So when the scene presented itself, I hoped the book would (plot-wise) pull itself together and deliver a noteworthy impossible crime during the final stretch.

So, once again, Anty sleuthing shenanigans leaves me in two minds. The humorous characters, storytelling and generally having a run of the place remain the series' strong points. And the primary reason to pick up this series. A highlight of The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is Anty forging an endearing friendship with a cemetery crow he christens Buns. Even having a few small adventures together along the way ("poor weather for aviation, Buns old man"). But the plots remain uneven and some good ideas undeveloped. Such as the second impossible murder here with its open secret passage or the first locked room murder from the first novel. This time, the who and why all felt a bit muddled and, on a whole, decidedly less fair.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse regrettably stands as the weakest in the series, so far, but think I'll stick with the series for at least two, three more novels. I simply enjoy Anty, Vickers and the humor too much to dump this soon, however, I do hope at least one of them has a plot that can measure up to the second novel. First, I'll return to a few other contemporary locked room specialists. I still have Gigi Pandian's The Raven Thief (2024) and J.L. Blackhurst's Smoke and Murders (2024) on the big pile with the new James Scott Byrnside and Tom Mead looming on the horizon. Next up is a return to the Golden Age!