Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements were an American husband-and-wife writing tandem, "of varied and prodigious talent," whose output included novels, short stories, stage plays and film scripts like the 1930s Philo Vance movies – which lead to a brief friendship between Ryerson and S.S. van Dine. Van Dine credited her with saving the screen adaptation of The Canary Murder Case (1927) from the "Hollywood morons" and their propensity to mutilate the source material. However, they had a falling out years later when Ryerson suggested "Hammettizing" Vance for The Casino Murder Case (1934) to go for that Nick and Nora Charles movie charm. Van Dine was not thrilled as he "loathed the character Nick Charles."
Their first four novels, Seven Suspects (1930), Fear of Fear (1931), Blind Man's Buff (1933) and Shadows (1934), star author, playwright and amateur sleuth, Jimmy Lane, whose Van Dinean chronicler is Philip Carter – all out-of-print for over 90 years. Until a few years ago, when Coachwhip Publications reissued Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff with an always insightful introduction from Curt Evans. Ryerson and Clements' Fear of Fear happened to be on my specialized wish list ever coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). That and I really like the Van Dine-Queen School of detective fiction. Let's dig in.
Fear of Fear begins with Carter telling the reader "the time has come to tell the truth about the murders on Russian Hill" almost two years ago. Jimmy Lane had already achieved his first success as an amateur detective "during the ghastly week of the Lopez murders" (probably a reference to Seven Suspects) when he receives a message from Lane to come to dinner ("...bring pistols for two"). Lane had a chance meeting with Miss Norah Fallon, a film actress, who had a big problem. She had fallen into the clutches of a blackmailer and famed spiritualist, Harlan Grant, who "advised on business deals, drew up horoscopes and arranged love-affairs" at his house on Russian Hill. And, of course, raising the spirits inside his private séance room. Grant has "gone nutty" about Norah Fallon and is determined to drive a wedge between her and her fiance, Dick Stoddard. He's gotten hold of some "awful stuff" from her past that looks worse than it is depending on how it's explained. Lane, ever the gentleman, promises to help, but then the unexpected news breaks that Grant died from cerebral hemorrhage in his locked séance room. However, the promise still stands to retrieve the blackmail material.
Lane and Carter go to the trio of tilted, adjacent houses on the slope of Russian Hill where Grant lived with his family and next door to a long-time friend. There's his older brother, the Colonel, whose daughter Chanda is married to the wheelchair bound chemist Otto Steeb. They have two Indian servants, Singh and his wife Lalah. Dr. Waverly, a physician and spiritualist, lives next door. Lane worms his way into the household under the guise of writing an article for the Occult Review, but, before too long, Captain Hemming and Sergeant McCarthy return to the house to begin a murder investigation. A keen-eyed undertaker at the funeral parlor noticed an irregularity, called the police and an autopsy was performed revealing "Grant did not die a natural death" – although the doctors are "unable to agree upon the cause." So now they have a seemingly impossible murder on their hands!
First of all, Ryerson and Clements deserve a ton of credit for how they handled the locked room and attention given to the finer details. The only door to the séance room was bolted tight from the inside with Lane remarking "I don't believe even Philo Vance could figure out a way of locked it from the outside," but the floor plan of the crime scene included something immediately aroused my suspicion and a bit of preemptive, uncalled for disappointment. A subsequent and very thorough investigation of said something eliminated one possible disappointing solution to the locked room. Ryerson and Clements allow the curious and suspicious armchair detective to examine the whole room and everything bound to get them suspicious through characters, which allows for a series of false-solutions to be proposed and demolished. I should mention here, a little less than halfway through the story, it's revealed Grant was not entirely alone in the room. Mowgli, a tiny marmoset, was beside the body, but the authors had a very practical use the tiny monkey. Mowgli is "too small to have committed a murder" and not strong enough to have drawn the bolt. And Mowgli being unharmed disposed of another potential locked room-trick. A detail that should have been mentioned earlier, but very well and cleverly handled once it was brought up.
So both the first and second-half are full of interest, but for different reasons. The first-half for the investigation of the locked room and the second-half for going the John Dickson Carr-Hake Talbot route, atmosphere-wise. Ryerson and Clements tie everything together wrapped with an unusual motive and a murderer who didn't stand as much as they should have in this small cast-of-characters. There's a trace amount of pulp to the over solution, like the locked room-trick, but never anywhere near lurid levels of bad pulp fiction. Just a small dusting. Ryerson and Clements kept the story in detective story territory unmistakably belonging to the Van Dine-Queen School. Going by Fear of Fear, I would place Ryerson and Clements between Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett with this one being comparable to their best locked room mystery novels. A highly enjoyable and satisfying locked room mystery that should be better known among impossible crime enthusiasts. The reprint of Blind Man's Buff has been jotted down on the wishlist.
Note for the curious: Ryerson and Clements dedicated Fear to Fear to “Our Friend Willard Huntington Wright and His Friend S.S. van Dine.”
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