Zombie Mail: "The Devil in the Summerhouse" (1942) by John Dickson Carr

Two months ago, John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, posted a review of Charles Ashton's annoyingly obscure, long out-of-print Death Greets a Guest (1936) in which a summerhouse during a storm becomes the scene of an impossible murder – an impossible that got compared to the works of Anthony Wynne. One of the early detective writers to specialize in locked room murders and other impossible crimes. I thought John's description of the inexplicable shooting in the watched summerhouse reminded me of a radio-play John Dickson Carr penned for the CBS radio series Suspense.

There are two versions of "The Devil in the Summerhouse." The first version, featuring Dr. Gideon Fell, takes place in England and aired on BBC radio in 1940, but the second version takes place in New York and Dr. Fell was replaced with Captain Burke of the New York police. I think this Suspense version, originally broadcast on November 3, 1942, is the better known of the two because its script received several notable publications. "The Devil in the Summerhouse" was printed in the September, 1946, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Dr. Fell, Detective and Other Stories (1947) and The Door to Doom and Other Detections (1980). So wanted to refresh my memory on this one after John's review of Ashton's Death Greets a Guest.

"The Devil in the Summerhouse" is a small, intimate affair bringing two men to the overgrown grounds of a small house near the Hudson with a spacious garden and "a summerhouse of evil memory." A place where twenty-five years ago Mayor Jerry Kenyon apparently committed suicide.

One of the two men is Captain Burke and the other Joseph Parker, a family lawyer, who received, what should have been, a dead, undelivered letter – dated November 2, 1918! The letter reads "if you want to know how Major Kenyon really died, look in the third drawer of the desk in the library" ("press hard at the back of the drawer"). Parker was present twenty-five years ago when Kenyon was found dead in the summerhouse with a scorched bullet hole in his head and the gun beside him. Others who were around at the time were Mayor Kenyon's wife, Isabel, her younger brother Paul and their maid, Kitty. Angela Fiske, "the other woman," unexpectedly dropped in before the body is discovered. Only these people could have pulled the trigger, but everybody has an alibi. So the police settled on suicide, the case was closed, time moved on "and now they're all dead." And nearly forgotten, until that letter from 1918 arrived. When they open the secret drawer, they discover something that makes the past come alive. More impressively, through Carr's words, it gets the quality of a ghost story with such lines as "don't look at it as if it were alive" and "don't talk back to the thing, man, or you'll drive me crazy."

Fortunately, Burke's reason for being there is to bring the whole case back down to earth, shooting an alibi to pieces to reveal a neatly hidden murderer and to bury the past. Yes, bury the past is a euphemism for covering up the truth in typical Carrian fashion, however, the murderer this time doesn't go unpunished.

I remembered "The Devil in the Summerhouse" being a fully fledged locked room mystery, but it really is more in line with the alibi-breakers of Christopher Bush and not a bad one at that either! A very well done, compactly-plotted murder-from-the-past puzzle calculated to intrigue, to stir your nerves, to offer a precarious situation and then withhold the solution until the last possible moment. In short, "The Devil in the Summerhouse" is a story to keep you in... Suspense!

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!