Murder of the Admiral (1936) by Steve Fisher

Steve Gould Fisher was an American pulp writer and ex-Navy officer, serving four years on a submarine, where he cut his teeth as writer by penning articles and short stories for publications like Our Navy and U.S. Navy – earning the moniker of "The Navy's Foremost Writer." From the 1930s until the '50s, Fisher prolifically contributed to the detective and pulp magazines of the day, notably The Shadow magazine. Fisher also wrote close to twenty crime, detective and thriller novels, screenplays and television scripts.

During the 1930s, Fisher created a striking series-character, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome, who's the U.S. Naval Intelligence's in-house ace detective. Doome is tasked with investigating crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the Navy like ships, dockyards and bases. Sheridan Doome is not a striking character on account of wearing a Naval cap, instead of the figurative deerstalker, but the scars and injuries he suffered in a ship explosion during the World War. Doome miraculously survived, however, the surgeons had to put permanent steel plates over his entire chest and back. But they could do very little to patch up his face. Doome's head is like "bleached white bone" with a "scarred face as hairless as a piece of worn velvet" with black blotched for eyes and "a grim slit" as a mouth. On the upside, the steel plates made him practically bulletproof. Doome has a talent that made him very valuable to keep around.

Sheridan Doome is a first-rate detective who possesses "a brain so cunning, so astute, that there was not a man in the service who could match it" shielded behind an expressionless face on top of six feet four uniformed man – which makes him a nightmare fuel personified. Doome appeared in two novels and fifty-four short stories published in The Shadow magazine, where Doome became a hit with readers.

Now, I probably would never have heard or even become remotely aware of this once popular series had Fisher's Murder of the Admiral (1936) not been listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). So it ended up on the special locked room wishlist, but, unbeknownst to me, Murder of the Admiral was reprinted a few years ago by Age of Ages. Their reprint edition just wasn't available in my country and overlooked it entirely. Very irritating, but hey, you know me where locked room mysteries are concerned. Unless they reside in a parallel universe or don't exist, I'll get a hold on them sooner or later.

Murder of the Admiral, originally as by "Stephen Gould," begins with Sheridan Doome being assigned a new assistant, Rush Evans, who does a bit of writing on the side and narrates this story. Evans had grown bored with the peacetime routine and relished the opportunity to work alongside the well-known Navy detective. Even with the knowledge that Doome's previous assistant was killed on the job and wanting "to leap for the nearest window" when meeting Doome for the first time, but they quickly solidify into a great team. There are several weeks between their meeting and Doome summoning Evans to fly with him to a battleship, somewhere North of the Panama Canal, which has become the scene of a curious suicide of the battleship division's commander, Admiral Brown – who appeared to have shot himself after performing poorly in a war game. A war game exercise ending with a very angry, frustrates Admiral Brown yelling threats of suicide, murder and borderline treason, before kicking his flag lieutenant out of the room. The lieutenant had only just left the room when the gunshot was heard and another lieutenant across the Admiral's room was immediately at the door. So nobody could have left the room without being seen by the two lieutenants, proving suicide, but Doome suspects murder. That's where the trouble really begins as the partnership between Doome and Evans embarks on its maiden voyage.

Doome first inspection of the ship finds two stowaways: a well-known, but disastrously bad spy, Sonia, who imagines herself to be the next Mata Hari ("she was a bit demented on it..."). The other stowaway is a 19-year-old woman, Miss Judy Morrow, who's an aspiring author with three published short stories to her name. She wants to write a novel about stowaways and tagged along with Sonia in slinking aboard the battleship. However, Doome and Evans have the most trouble with the rotten apples among the ship's crew who defy and frustrate them at every turn often at the cost of their own lives. Some of the characters in this book appear to have a damaged sense of self preservation. This enrages Doome enough to briefly make him loose his cool, "when you are safe, you run out the door screaming bloody murder and you get murdered," telling them "you can all go back to your rooms, wander around the ship or do anything else you please." Doome was done trying to protect them and getting to the murderer through routine questioning. A satisfying response to the ship of fools that's starting to resemble Charon's ferry.

I want to mention here that Sheridon Doome is not at all the grotesque, theatrical puppet that comes across from this cursory glance. There's a theatrical element in the way Doome presents himself in public and acts when on a case, but that's all it is. Theatrics. When in private, Evans and the reader gets a glimpse of the person behind scarred, skeleton-like features and not merely his traumatic baggage – like having a son who believes he died in the explosion. Doome takes a genuine interest in his new assistant, encourages him to continue writing, plays matchmaker and occasionally showed he still had a (melancholic) sense of humor ("for a monster with a face like a battlefield, I do all right, don't, Rush"). Doome never showed this side when out on a case, but showing those brief, private moments balanced out his character and enhanced the scenes when playing up the detective-from-hell role. A good example of this is when Doome finds that one of the rotten apples among the crew grew up on the notorious East Side of New York. In private, Doome reflects on the abhorrent living conditions on the East Side that turned its children into career criminals, drug addicts (“dope fiends”) and poor, broken labors ("...they are the products of the East Side"). A surprising bit of social commentary to find in this often typical, pulp-style mystery and what makes Sheridan Doome the backbone of the story.

Not that the plot is bad. I would even call it above average for a pulp-style locked room mystery, but the plot is not spotless due to the usual shortcomings of the pulps. First of all, the shooting of Admiral Brown is not the only (quasi) impossibility of the story. There's another shooting in a darkened room in the presence of multiple witnesses, however, their solutions wouldn't secure Murder of the Admiral a place on anyone's list of favorite locked room mystery and impossible crime novels. Better in presentation than in how they're resolved. There is, however, a third impossibility tucked away in the appropriately titled chapter “Ship's Morgue” that briefly makes you believe you're reading a Theodore Roscoe novel. Not much is done with it as an impossible situation, but serves as a not unimportant piece of the puzzle. Surprisingly, Fisher included an unusual challenge to the reader, "WHO IS THE KILLER?," telling the reader "all of the action, clues and questions have pointed out that the killer can be only one person" and gives you two extra hints – ends with asking the reader to "write the name of the person you believe guilty here." While there's some stretching going on when it comes to murderer's identity, you can actually work it out based on the clues and chain of events. It's also a bit of an old dodge. So not as blistering original or rigorous as its Golden Age counterparts from the mid-1930s, but, for a pulpy mystery, Murder of the Admiral is first-rate entertainment and a great introduction to an unjustly forgotten character from the pulps. And, to quote Rush Evans' closing lines, "I knew, not unhappily, that there would be others."