That Thing Upstairs: "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

I recently reviewed Fear of Fear (1931) and Blind Man's Buff (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, a husband-and-wife writing team, which I liked enough to bump the other two Jimmy Lane novels, Seven Suspects (1930) and Shadows (1934), up a few places on my wishlist – except that both remain obscurely out-of-print as of this writing. So turned my attention to their short stories to see if they wrote anything for my liking. Well, I definitely found something.

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements' "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" was published in the December, 1933, issue of Mystery and concerns an unnamed, two-year-old boy who's behavior has been disturbing his father ("...been going on for weeks").

Gessler has been to several, highly paid pediatrics and other specialists, but the boy is perfectly healthy and "normal in every respect." So why has the nurse packed her bags ("...she won't stay another day") and what was the reason for the changing the nursery twice? Gressler, tired and nervous, eventually finds his way to another specialist, Hallowell, tells him the boy plays Pease Porridge Hot after he's put to bed ("and other games like Peekaboo and Simon Says Tumbs Up"). Hallowell tries to assure him there's nothing abnormal about two-year-olds playing games, or prattling to themselves, but Gessler's convinced the boy is talking and playing games with his dead mother – who died six months ago. Gessler begs Hallowell to come to his home to witness the baby's unsettling behavior for himself.

So not a bad premise at all, but, considering the short length of the story, I expected the ending to take one of two directions: Gessler murdered his wife and the guilt is driving him out of his mind or the nurse has some sort of connection to his wife and is avenging her by making Gessler believe her ghost is talking and singing songs to their son. The implied threat there is making Gessler fear what her ghost might tell the boy when he gets old enough to understand. I personally preferred the latter as fear is an important driving factor and theme running through both Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff. It fitted both the tone of the story and the authors other work, but then the ending revealed I had been reading a ghost story all along. A better twist than the one the story threw up!

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements' "The Doctor Sees a Ghost" is exactly as described on tin. But, in my defense, Mystery is a detective fiction magazine and the December 1933 issue even carries a short story from Stuart Palmer's Miss Withers series. So assumed it had to be a detective story, not a ghost yarn, maybe even a detective story with a supernatural flavoring. That didn't turn out to be the case. That leaves only Ryerson's solo short story, "The Purple Shadow" (1925), as of possible interest. In the meanwhile, I'll keep an eye out for Seven Suspects and Shadows.

Blind Man's Buff (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

Back in March, I reviewed Fear of Fear (1931) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, a husband-and-wife writing team, who collaborated on novels, short stories, plays and movie scripts – notably several movie adaptations of S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance mysteries. Ryerson and Clements wrote a handful of detective and thrillers themselves, published between 1930 and 1937, starring playwright and amateur sleuth Jimmy Lane. Their detective novels had been out-of-print for nearly a century, until Coachwhip Publications reprinted two of the Jimmy Lane novels and the standalone mystery-thriller The Borgia Blade (1937).

I was interested in Fear of Fear ever since coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the story and plot has more to like than just a well-handled impossible crime. A must-read for fans of the Van Dinean detective story and writers like Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett. So picked up the reprint of Blind Man's Buff (1933).

Ryerson and Clements' Blind Man's Buff takes a different track by moving away from the brownstones and mansions that usually provide a backdrop for these Van Dinean detective novels. Instead, the story brings Jimmy Lane and his chronicler, Philip Carter, to Sycamore Island in New York – private domain of the Conroy clan. Lane and Lucia Conroy, a rising novelist, were working on a stage adaptation of one of her novels when she dropped their work to announce she has to leave for a month. A short while later, Lane receives a telegram from Lucia imploring him to come to Sycamore Island and bring "Northwest Mounted." Lane's nickname for Carter dating back to their college days. So it must be serious!

When they arrive, Lucia seems fine and tries to dismiss the telegram as a ploy to lure them away for a much deserved holiday. However, Lucia quickly admits to Lane she had reason to suspect her cousin Sally had been murdered the previous year.

Sycamore Island was the property of the late family patriarch, Nathan Conroy, who's tomb stands on top of the hill overlooking the Conroy home below. Nathan Conroy's slightly peculiar will shackled the Conroys to the island as the prospective legatees are required to spend "the month between September fifteenth and October fifteenth out of every year" on the island. At the end of the ten year period, Nathan's property and fortune will be divided among the surviving legatees. Last year, on their ninth reunion, Sally dies on the veranda after drinking tea-punch dosed with chloral hydrate. Sally's death was dismissed as a suicide, but this year, Lucia "discovers a note scribbled on the fly-leaf of the book she was reading the afternoon of her death" reading "MURDERED." Dr. Mark Dietrich, Sally's brother, convinced Lucia the note was written while she was in a delirium. Lane and Carter remain suspicion, which is why they decide to stay on. And, of course, murder is in the offing. But what happens before is just as fascinating. Not only for its introduction of the eccentric family full of "brilliance and charm."

First of all, let's get the family out of the way first (is what the murderer said). There is Lucia's drinking twin brother Lee and her fiance/adopted cousin, Douglas, who's a broker and sports fan. Dr. Dietrich's wife, Connie, who flirts with their Italian cousin, Count Roberto Patri. Tony Patri is half-brother and came along for the ride. Judith Conroy is their aunt and Hagar Conroy is their batty, mystery loving great-aunt. Finally, there's the grotesque caretaker, Henry Harker, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Prill, who both have a stake in the inheritance question. So, en route to the first murder, the topic of detective stories and fair play comes up.

Great-aunt Hagar has a temper tantrum over a mystery novel she has been reading, "swindling cheat," which amused everyone as "this was by no means the first time she had burst out." She had been reading a mystery in which a man is shot on page 12 and "along about a hundred and forty you're told the murdered man once had a brother who quarreled with him and went to Borneo in 1885," only to arrive "on page three hundred and fourteen" to "discover he did the killing" – basically robbing the reader of his time and money ("...writers oughtn't to be allowed to cheat like that"). So they have a spirited debate about fair play in detective stories ("all I ask is that the murderer be prominent in the story"), suggesting an International Code for Detective Fiction ("...death penalty for infringement") and agree to do a short story contest. Everyone is to write a short story following the agreed upon code of conduct to be submitted before eight the following night.

So, the next night, the short story contest is preceded by a game of blind man's buff while a storm was brewing outside. A not unimportant link in the chain of events, which becomes clear when they get to the stories. There's an extra, tenth story in the pile titled "Murder in the Conroy Clan" describing the gruesome murder of Roberto Patri. According to the story, Roberto's body will be found, hands and feet tied, lying on the floor of the breakfast room "shirt covered in blood" with "a gaping wound in his throat" and "a gory knife at his feet." The scene described in the story is exactly what they find when they go to investigate the breakfast room. And, of course, the raging storm cuts them off from the outside world for the next day or two. However, isolating the small island here is not merely a convenient plot-device to create a very tight, closed-circle situation without any possible outside meddling. More on that in a moment.

Jimmy Lane and Philip Carter, once again, have to play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but even the brilliant Lane is struggling with the multitude of puzzling aspects, possibilities and rising body count. Who wrote that tenth short story? Why was Roberto wearing Tony's torn, stained shirt? What is the connection between Roberto's murder and Sally's presumed suicide? Who wore the slicker? What happened to the dog, Truffles, when he briefly disappeared without a trace from the tiny island? Lane tries to take a strictly logical approach to these countless problems and demonstrates a pleasing ability to consider ideas that are the extreme opposite of each other. At one point, Lane compares himself with "a scientist in a laboratory who has a culture containing a thousand different germs and knows that one of them is responsible for a disease," only "by a process of elimination that he can find the culprit." This cold, clinical and logical approach is hampered by the murderer keeping a steady pace. Every murder is preceded by the discovery of a new, short chapter "Murder in the Conroy Clan" identifying the next victim. Curiously, this leads to several locked rooms and impossible crimes being teased, but never executed or immediately dispelled. Like the snoring corpse! Not that Blind Man's Buff needed any locked room murders or impossible poisonings as it has more than enough going for itself. Most has been barely touched upon or mentioned in this review. You can discover that for yourself.

So, there are a few things that stand out, having now read Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff. Firstly, Ryerson and Clements clearly understood what makes a detective story tick giving particularly this novel an Ellery Queen-like, meta-fictional quality (c.f. The Greek Coffin Mystery, 1932). I suspect EQ was in their mind when plotting and writing Blind Man's Buff. Lane even winked "A Challenge to the Reader" when telling Carter, "you're in possession of every fact" and "seen every clew" needed to come to the same conclusion. Blind Man's Buff could have just as easily been titled The Italian Shirt Mystery. More importantly, Ryerson and Clements had a knack for inconspicuously hiding their murderers among a small cast of characters. Neither the murderer from Fear of Fear nor the one from this novel had any right to be this inconspicuous. I eventually cottoned on the murderer, but even then had some things incorrect or not exactly correct. Either way, I had fun trying to put all the pieces together myself and got pretty far, before the final chapters rolled around. So, purely as a whodunit, Blind Man's Buff can more than hold its own against its contemporaries, but one aspect pushed it to be something more than a solid round of the Grandest Game in the World.

What earned Blind Man's Buff the status of minor classic, arguably one of the best stuck-on-a-island mysteries from the period, is the secret of the island itself and how it relates to Nathan Conroy's strange will. Now that's (ROT13) nccylvat gur neg bs zheqre gb pbzcyrgr, hggre znqarff. Honestly, something I have come to expect from Japanese mystery writers of today rather than from a good, old-fashioned Golden Age detective novel from the Van Dine-Queen School. I can recommend Blind Man's Buff for that part alone with the detective story surrounding it being quality bonus content. So, hopefully, Coachwhip decides to followup their 2023 reprints with reprints of the remaining two Jimmy Lane mysteries, Seven Suspects (1930) and Shadows (1934).

Murder in the Air (1931) by Darwin L. Teilhet

Darwin L. Teilhet was an American journalist, advertising executive, screenwriter and novelist who started out as a mystery writer, authoring seven detective novels from 1931 to 1940, four of which forming a short-lived series – featuring the irrepressible, slightly unhinged Baron von Kaz. Hildegarde Teilhet co-wrote three of the brave Von Kaz novels, but her husband began his literary career with three standalone mysteries.

The most notable, best remembered of Teilhet's trio of non-series mysteries is the prescient The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934), which takes place in Germany when the Nazis rose to power. It has the distinction of arguably being the first ever World War II detective novel beating Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936) by two years. A big reason why it was reprinted in 1985 by Polygonics. Death Flies High (1931) and Murder in the Air (1931), a pair of aviation-themed mysteries, aren't as well remembered today, but that can be put down to neither having ever received a reprint. So, you can say they flew under our collective radars. Murder in the Air is an interesting case as it's not only an impossible crime novel listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the central impossibility is based on a famous, real-life disappearance from the late 1920s. More on that aspect in a moment.

Murder in the Air opens with Peter Blue, a reporter for the Paris Journal, getting fired by editor, Henry Jackson, because he has "muffed every good story" given to him. Just when is ready to leave, the telephone rings with bombshell news. Dr. von Dolbenstein, "biggest financier in Europe," vanished from his tri-motored, Rhorbach monoplane while it was flying five thousand feet above the English Channel. There were five other passengers, not including the pilot and navigator, who saw Von Dolbenstein go into the lavatory alone and not coming back – no answers to their calls or knocks. So they broke down the door only to discover Dr. von Dolbenstein has vanished into thin air! What followed was a search of the small plane from cockpit to tail-end without finding a trace. They even tried to open the cabin door, to see if he might have accidentally fallen out, but "the blast of wind from the propellers was too strong" ("we couldn't budge it"). Only thing they can do is radio the police that a well-known, influential financier known on two continents has inexplicably gone missing from a sealed airplane in mid flight.

So, if this situation sounds vaguely familiar, the "fantastic disappearance" of Von Dolbenstein was based on a notorious, real-life disappearance under very similar circumstances. On July 4, 1928, the Belgian financier Alfred Loewenstein, third richest man in the world at the time, flew from Croydon to Brussels on his private air plane with a group of six people. They reported seeing Loewenstein going to the lavatory and not returning. Only difference is that when they checked the lavatory, they found the entrance door open and it was assumed Loewenstein had accidentally plunged to his death. However, the official reading didn't stop the speculations and conspiracy theories. Teilhet's Murder in the Air probably was the first fictionalized take on the case, but not the last as you might also be reminded of Franco Vailati's Il mistero dell'idrovolante (The Flying Boat Mystery, 1935) and Helen McCloy's short story "The Case of the Duplicate Door" (1949) collected in The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing (2003).

Back to Peter Blue and Henry Jackson. When news arrives, Jackson has no reporters on hand and dispatches Blue to the airport to report on, what could be, the biggest breaking story of the decade. Blue, as the on-the-ground reporter, learns the other passengers consisted of Von Dolbenstein's two secretaries, Frederick von Stallf and Miss Geraldine "Jerry" Howard, two other well-known financiers, Harvey Gerbé and Sir William Wallace, and a former secretary, John Carson – who forced his way onto the plane before it took off. Lastly, the pilot and navigator, Clarence Pierce and Erich Rask. Blue also learns there's another layer to the seemingly impossible disappearance as "a cordon of men surged around the monoplane even before its wheels had bounced on the ground" ensuring Von Dolbenstein couldn't have been hiding on the outside, dropped off and escaped. Shortly following the disappearance, the man who called in the tip to Jackson is murdered in one of the hangars. And the victim left behind a dying message suggesting a link with the disappearance mystery.

However, this murder is of peripheral importance to the story and plot as it's barely mentioned again until towards the end. The story that follows is more of a medium boiled, almost pulp-style mystery with the plucky, elusive Miss Howard and the hardboiled John Carston giving him the most trouble, which comes with plenty of physical altercations. For example, the fifth chapter opens with a bandaged Blue waking up in a hospital bed.

Beside a couple of unruly suspects, Blue also has to deal with George St. Armand, the newly appointed Chef de la Sûreté, who's convinced Carson and Miss Howard are behind the disappearance ("they are two of the most infamous criminals"). Much to Blue's dismay who has become very interested in Miss Howard and somewhat confused why she's protecting Carson. There is, of course, the inexplicable mystery of Von Dolbenstein's disappearance from an airplane and the trouble his disappearance is causing. Before he disappeared, Von Dolbenstein was ready to market a new technical marvel, "a new, secret Diesel airplane," but the plans vanished alongside the financier. So the investors are ruined and a newspaper report how "the crash of the von Dolbenstein bubble" has already resulted in two suicides.

I have mentioned on this blog before how the "financial wizards" of the early 20th century took over the role of popular villains and ready-made, murderable victims from blackmailers in detective fiction following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 – e.g. The Mystery on the Channel (1931) by Freeman Wills Crofts. Murder in the Air is another example, but with a slight twist bringing me to the solution.

Murder in the Air is Teilhet's first stab at the detective story, a stab full of energy and enthusiasm, but a still inexperience hand at plotting reveals itself in the solution. First of all, Teilhet made a capital mistake confirming my initial suspicion was spot on. What was that mistake (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13): gur bcravat abgrq gur qbbe bs gur yningbel jnf ybpxrq naq unq gb or oebxra qbja, ohg gung ybpxrq qbbe jnf arire zragvbarq be pbafvqrerq ntnva nf n cneg bs guvf zhygvynlrerq ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel. Jul? Orpnhfr gur ybpxrq qbbe cynlrq ab cneg va gur fbyhgvba. Fb gur svanapvre unq gb unir unq n unaq va uvf bja qvfnccrnenapr. So that brought me halfway towards the correct solution, but muddled the method a little as I considered something a little different. Something silly that was rightfully mocked in the story itself. Teilhet deserves credit, given the limited scope the situation allows for locked room trickery, for not going full pulp and trying to deliver a somewhat detective-worthy solution to the impossible disappearance. The trick is a rather involved one, but not overly convoluted, but undeniably marred by (SPOILER/ROT13) qrcraqvat ba zhygvcyr pb-pbafcvengbef naq nppbzcyvprf. Jung vf guvf... na rcvfbqr bs Wbanguna Perrx? On the upside, while the dying message is only a small part of the plot, its solution shines with brilliant simplicity. It simply stands out against the involved vanishing-trick.

So, all in all, Murder in the Air is a diamond-in-the-rough written and plotted around the central idea of how a man can disappear from an airplane, but how that idea was executed caused the plot to experience some turbulence. Other than the rough patches on the plot, Murder in the Air is highly readable, fast-paced medium boiled mystery-thriller with pulp leanings and full of promise Teilhet would deliver on in future novels. It made me curious about Teilhet's second novel and aviation mystery, Death Flies High, which looks to be a classic, closed circle whodunit aboard a transatlantic flying boat. On the wishlist it goes!

Flower O' the Peach (1916) by W.A. Mackenzie

W.A. Mackenzie was a Scottish poet, journalist, illustrator, editor and writer who served in Belgium, France and Italy during the First World War, where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in combat, but committed himself to humanitarian causes when the war ended – serving as Secretary-General of Save the Children International from 1920 to 1939. Mackenzie even acted as the Pope's representative on the British Save the Children Council. Not a bad resume at all. Just as important as Mackenzie's war record and humanitarian work, if not more so, was his contribution to the early, pre-Golden Age detective story of the early 20th century.

From 1903 to 1916, Mackenzie produced eight novels of crime, detection and mystery of which four feature Sir Nigel Lacaita, K.C.B., of Scotland Yard. This series comprises of The Drexel Dream (1904), His Majesty's Peacock (1904), The Black Butterfly (1907) and The Bite of the Leech (1914), while The Glittering Road (1903), In the House of the Eye (1907), The Red Star of Night (1911) and Flower O' the Peach (1916) appear to be non-series, standalone titles. All eight are obscure, out-of-print mysteries that even in the public domain (Mackenzie died in 1942) stubbornly remain obscure and out-of-print. Somewhat annoying as Mackenzie last novel has been on my wishlist ever since reading about in Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991).

Adey made special note of Mackenzie's Flower O' the Peach on account of its memorable detective, "the rather common, aitch-dropping "Slow and Sure" Jackson," but also noted the book's connection to an untranslated, 19th century French short impossible crime story, "Le verrou" ("The Bolt," 18XX) – written by poet and author Armand Sylvestre. Well, my interest was piqued! Not merely because it's one of those tantalizingly obscure, out-of-print and reach locked room mysteries, which helps, but it's also one of those all too rare, World War I era mysteries. So was very surprised, and very pleased, when Serling Lake suddenly reprinted it back in February. I snapped up a copy faster than an old school pulp writer could crank out a short story.

Just one more thing, before getting to the story. I tried to find out if Mackenzie wrote Flower O' the Peach prior to the outbreak of WWI or between soldiering on the continent, but without result. I wondered as there's no mention of the war or allusions to a war anywhere in the story. On the contrary, Mackenzie wrote a piece of pure escapism blending crime, mystery and Ruritanian romance with all the flourishes of a French popular novel from the then turn-of-the-century ("we Britishers live on French literature today..."). So even though the story evidently takes place around the time it was published ("ain't you never h'ard of Flyin' Machines?"), it should be taken as an alternative cloud cuckoo 1916 where bad things do happen, but nothing as devastating as a global war. I wanted that cleared up as its status as a WWI era mystery was one of the reasons it attracted my attention. So... with that out of the way, let's get to the case at hand.

Flower O' the Peach begins on a pleasant, sunny May afternoon in Pall Mall as Sir Jacinth Coke ("K.C.B., K.C.V.O., etc, etc.") wanders into the Ambassadors' Club and spots an old friend, Baron Eskilstuna, who's former representative of the King of Gothland at the Court of Saint James. Baron Eskilstuna has come to London with a mission: to look for a wife. Not a wife for himself, but a wife for the youngest brother of the current King of Gothland, the Duke of Dalecarlia. A year previously, the Duke was in Brittany to visit Sainte Anne d'Auray when he saw the love of his life, but, before she vanished into the crowd, took a picture and has done everything within his power to put a name to that face as he intends to marry her – having already secured permission from his brother ("...the King is willing to permit a marriage"). That's not as easy a task as it would be today and the Duke finally commissioned Baron Eskilstuna to find her, but the Baron has about as much success as the Duke.

Sir Jacinth comes to the rescue as he recognizes the woman in the photograph. The woman is Brenda, daughter of his oldest friend Udo Dapifer, who can "show even better birth than your Duke." Udo Dapifer is currently staying at Dawling Hall and Sir Jacinth is prepared to introduce Baron Eskilstuna, but, while "the matchmakers were plotting and planning," Udo Dapifer died without knowing "a Prince of Blood Royal was seeking in marriage the hand of his beloved daughter." Shortly following Udo's death, his son and heir, Captain Godwin Dapifer is murdered in his bedroom "door bolted, window ditto." But the doctor dispels the possibility of suicide. So it's murder.

This is the point where Olaf, Prince of Gothland, Duke of Delacarlia enters the picture under the name of "Mr. Goodman" to place his services entirely at the disposal of Brenda ("I shall fight for her in this affair... and in the fighting I shall win her"). And, as Mr. Goodman, he mainly tries to get hold of a green, blood smeared ribbon and green dress belonging to Brenda rather than a proper detective in a country house whodunit investigating a locked room murder. But then again, that type of detective story was still very much in its infancy in 1916. So it really isn't worth mentioning the few other characters involved in this dance around the dress, ribbon and solution to murder, except the previously mentioned "Slow and Sure" Jackson.

Jackson is the local jack-of-all-trade who does everything from digging graves, gardening and delivering milk bottles to selling insurances and now grabbing the opportunity to play a "rural Sherlock Holmes." Or, as he calls it, "clim' the greasy pole of mystery an' bring down the leg o' mutton of truth." Jackson gets ridiculed for trying to outsmart both the police and a killer, "you have made yourself ridiculous, Henry Jackson, by interfering in your blundering way with the affairs of your better," but it's Jackson who finds an explanation for the problem of the bolted door – which honestly left me in two minds. The locked room-trick belongs to one of the categories of basic tricks from John Dickson Carr's "Locked Room Lecture" from The Three Coffins (1935), but with a small, stylistic difference. Normally, this trick is considered crude and not terribly imaginative. A trick usually suggested as a simple, throwaway false-solution, but here the trick appeared as smooth as French silk. I suppose that part of the trick is what Mackenzie found so attractive in Armand Sylvestre's short story "The Bolt."

I'm not a fan of copy/pasting other people's work, but fair's fair, Mackenzie gave Sylvestre all the credit for this version of the trick in a story-within-a-story, of sorts, sequence. Jackson finds an old news paper report about a murder trial in France where the murderer used Sylvestre's idea to leave a body locked away behind a bolted door, but a copy of the book was found in the killer's room resulting in an arrest and trial. Mackenzie praises Sylvestre through this newspaper report and even included a translated paragraph from "The Bolt" demonstrating how to work the trick as smoothly as possible ("...gently, oh! so gently"). While not entirely new, it made Flower O' the Peach feel somewhat ahead of its time as a locked room mystery with a solution that comes across as far more sophisticated than was still customary for the time. I really appreciated Mackenzie gave Sylvestre his credit, because it would been very unlikely we would have ever known.

Finally, I should mention the unusual and memorable ending without spoiling too much. Fittingly, Mackenzie gave Flower O' the Peach a fairy tale-like ending, but, like most European fairy tales, it's not without grimness. Believe me, those last two pages are a trip! It can even be argued it's the only time the war shows its influence over the story, but with the happy ending the real world never got. Like I said, Flower O' the Peach is pure escapism.

So, other than the neat, if ultimately simple, locked room angle and the character of “Slow and Sure” Jackson, Mackenzie's Flower O' the Peach is closer to the mysterious flight of fancies of Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc than the impossible crimes of Carr or the early detective stories of Sherlock Holmes. I can only recommend it, if you're in the mood for something light, off the beaten track on a lazy afternoon. I very much look forward what long forgotten, out-of-print treasure Serling Lake is going to reprint next.

The Foggy Past: C.M.B. vol. 11-12 by Motohiro Katou

The first story from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 11, "Phaistos Disc," returns to the two part, two chapter format in which Mau Sugal, the black market broker, invites Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to her antique shop in Santorini, Greece – one of a dozen shops she has around the world. Sugal promised Shinra to show him parts of her collection of historical artifacts, but, when they arrive at the shop, there's a man waiting for them.

Bier Brust, of Europol, is "the head of the department that deals with stolen artifacts" and, sort of, plays the Jirokichi Sebastian to Sugal's Kaito KID. She just calls him a stalker. Brust is very surprised to see Shinra, holder of the C.M.B. rings, in the company of Sugal, but Shinra is even more surprise to spots "a first class artifact that's been undiscovered until now" among Sugal's inventory. A stamp from the Phaistos Disc! Sugal tells them the stamp has already been sold to Pan Sirius, younger, more outgoing brother of shipping magnate and family patriarch, Andreas Sirius. A family currently in turmoil as Andreas' mistress, Themis Treille, was nearly killed when her boat exploded and whispered rumors say his wife, Illias, tried to kill his mistress. So when Shinra and company accompany Sugal on her delivery of the stamp, they become embroiled in a murder investigation when Illias is shot aboard the family's private yacht with Pan standing over her with a gun. Pan claims he didn't shot her and Andreas was visiting Themis in a nearby hospital. What really happened?

Shinra compares the case to the failed attempts at deciphering the titular disc, because "quite possibly, this incident may not be solvable for the same reason." Shinra, of course, reveals the murderer in the second and concluding chapter showing the theme of the story and plan of the murderer dovetail, but take away historical trappings, the murderer is nothing more than a legendary, hall of fame idiot gambling (ROT13) ba n qnatrebhf oyhss – redeemed only by the motive. So, storywise, this is not a bad story at all with some fascinating sidelines on out-of-place artifacts, hoaxes, decoding ancient tablets and historical background details, but, plot-wise, not the best or terribly convincing.

The second, one-chapter story is "HATSUGAMA Case" and begins Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara from Motohiro's Q.E.D. series making a brief cameo. They dropped by Shinra to wish him a happy New Year, but find he's out and wonder what he's doing. Shinra was asked by Tatsuki's grandfather to join a gathering with a few of his old high school friends for hatsugama, a tea ceremony to ring in the new year, because the friend hosting the ceremony, Kurmatsu, is a terrible snob and bragger. So he wanted Shinra to come along to outsmart him when it comes to tea ceremony trivia. Shinra is far more interested in the other items, but during the ceremony the tea cups disappears from its box and replaced with another item. So who replaced the cup, how and why? This story ended up reminding me of Isaac Asimov's Black Widower short stories with its fairly minor problem and explanation that hinge on a piece of trivia. However, if you happen to be aware of it, there's one scene that will probably bring it back to mind and help you spot the culprit and method. So, yes, a minor story, but a good and fun one.

The third and last, one-chapter story closing out this volume is "Marujime Neko" and is one of those human interest, or heart-shaped puzzles, Motohiro has done so expertly in the Q.E.D. series, but this might be the first one to work in this series. Shinra acts here like a cross between a spoiled brat and an extortionist, but not without a good reason. 

An elderly, recently widowed man, Hiraya Hideyoshi, who had all kind of bad things happen ever since his wife passed away. A stone was thrown throw a window, fire crackers thrown into the garden and eventually an accident happened. Shinra is prepared to help out with the case, but demands Hiraya Hideyoshi's statue called Marujime Neko, "said to be an early prototype of the Maneki Neko," better known as the Beckoning Cat. However, the Marujime Neko was a gift he bought for his wife on their honeymoon and "full of memories," but Shinra refuses to take no for an answer. So the series of strange incidents is only a small side issue, but with a clever piece of visual clueing and reasoning. What makes this story is why Shinra appeared to be so cruel towards an elderly, grieving widower by demanding such a sentimental item as payment. More than meets the eye indeed! Another relatively minor, but very good, story to end this volume on.

"Clay Seal" is the first, one-chapter, story opening C.M.B. vol. 12 and digs a little bit into Shinra's backstory. Shinra was raised by the previous holders of the C.M.B. rings when his mother passed away, acting as his three stepfathers, one of whom Ray Black – a professor as brilliant as he's reckless. Ray Black was called in as an expert by the Louvre when it was discovered clay tablets had someone been stolen from ancient Babylonian pots sealed shut for millennia. Somehow, "the clay seals that had not been opened for thousands of years were bypassed" and tablets stolen. And, to make the situation even more impossible, the seals were marked with a cylindrical stamp rolled over the clay seal. Only kings and other royalty possessed such stamps, which means once it's opened it can never be resealed to its original state. The main interest of the story naturally comes from Shinra and Black's backstory, but enjoyed the archaeological conundrum that reunited them and Shinra's solution how the tablets were taken from the sealed jars is very clever. A solid opener to this volume!

The second story, "An Old Woman and a Monkey," is another one-chapter story, but arguably the best short from these two volumes and a personal favorite. Shinra and Tatsuki are helping out Hinogure Toki, an elderly, sickly and frankly dying woman, clean out and tidying her home. During their work, Shinra and Tatsuki become concerned for the elderly woman, but not for health reasons. They overhear her grandson, Hayao, arguing with his wife Chika over his inheritance ("if you don't get any inheritance from her, I'm divorcing you”). They're not the only ones concerned over her money. Tatsuki eavesdrops on a heart to heart talk between Toki and her accountant, Umiyama Takeshi, who has embezzled her money and appears to be unable to return it ("...sicker I get, the less forgiving I will be... so please, keep that in mind"). So they advise her to lock her bedroom door during the night and Tatsuki even keeps guards in the hallway, which comes with a great floor plan of the situation. When they fail to wake her, they have call the police to have locked door broken open. Hinogure Toki is lying dead in bed, poisoned, while her pet baboon Hihimaru tries to wake her up. The door, and windows, are securely locked from the inside and Toki had not eaten during dinner. There was poison found in the water jug, but neither the jug nor the glass had her fingerprints on it. Hihimaru had nothing to do with either the method of poisoning or locked room-trick.

Like I said, this is a short, one-chapter story and the plot is not terribly complex, but sometimes, there's something to be said for straight forward simplicity – particularly when it has a glimmer of originality. The solutions to the who, why and especially how aren't cliched, or routine, offering a new, simple way to have someone end up poisoned behind a locked door and still make it appear like an impossible crime. A surprisingly tricky thing to do, but Katou did it effortlessly here as in "The Detective Novelist Murder Case" from Q.E.D. vol. 33. I also liked how the story ended with Shinra adopting Hihimaru after finding him being sad in Toki's empty bedroom. Yes, C.M.B. can be a whole lot weirder at times than its sibling series Q.E.D. Nonetheless, this story is (IMO) a series highlight!

C.M.B. vol. 12 ends ends with a longer, two-chapter story, "The Actress Sees a Ghost," which is much more of a psychological thriller with supernatural overtones than a detective story. The story takes place in Hong Kong where a man, Wang Qing Yun, fell to his death from rooftop into a garbage container. So his body was not found until collection day, three days later. A death filed as a suicide, however, the victim used to be the boyfriend of a rising actress, Zhang Qian Lian, who has been slowly unraveling and ruining her career in the process. For some time, she's being haunted by the unsettling, watery ghost of a man and the haunting provides the story with some of its best panels. For example, the ghost manifests itself at a fish market through a wall of fish aquariums! Shinra and Tatsuki become involved, but the hook of the story how "the person who successfully forced the real culprit to confess was an unexpected one." So a very well done story in that regard, but have nothing much else to say about it.

So, on a whole, vol. 12 is overall better than vol. 11, but both volumes show Motohiro Katou is starting to get the hang of these one-chapter stories as they get better, and better, from "HATSUGAMA Case" and "Marujime Neko" to "Clay Seal" – culminating with "An Old Woman and a Monkey." Look forward to the next two volumes!

The Frankenstein Factory (1975) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch was the King of Short Stories, the Man of a Thousand Tales of Mystery and Detection, but, during his five decade run, Hoch also wrote a handful of novel-length mysteries like The Shattered Raven (1969), The Blue Movie Murders (1973) and a three-novel series of science-fiction hybrid mysteries – generally known as the "Computer Cops" series. You read that right. They're the back tracing Cyber Police you were warned about!

Carl Crader and Earl Jazine work for the Computer Investigation Bureau, headquartered at the World Trade Center in New York, whose "investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology" in the 21st century. So the C.I.B. are the "experts on computers, lasers, holograms, cryosurgery" and "new technology" handling "crimes the regular police forces aren't equipped for." Crader is the head of the C.I.B. ("...reports directly to the President") and Jazine is his field agent. They appeared in only three novels, The Transvection Machine (1971), The Fellowship of the Hand (1973) and The Frankenstein Factory (1975).

This time, I've a good excuse/reason (take your pick) to unchronologically start at the end of the series. The Frankenstein Factory had been recommended several times over the years for its qualities as both a science-fiction mystery and clever pastiche of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). That and the first two novels appear to be more science-fiction thrillers than science-fiction mysteries. The Frankenstein Factory seemed the safest choice and perhaps a candidate for that future followup to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries."

First of all, I skipped the first two novels making it a bit confusing when, exactly, The Frankenstein Factory is supposed to take place. The first chapter refers to "these early years of the twenty-first century," but, early on in the story, there were several hints the story could take place during the 2010s or even early 2020s – based on a reference to the fading memories of "the renewed moon flights of the late 1990s." And the age of one of the characters who took part in one of those return missions. But it became a lot clearer during the second-half and home stretch that it takes place roughly twenty-five years after the mid-to late 1970s. So probably somewhere around 2004, give or take a year. It could also be a bit later based on a references to that "seventy-year-old mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie," but that would still place the story within the 2000s. Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at the story.

The Frankenstein Factory begins with Earl Jazine traveling by hovercraft to Horseshoe Island, somewhere off the coast of Baja California, under the guise of medical photographer. Jazine has come to the island to film and document an experimental operation.

Dr. Lawrence Hobbes is the head of International Cryogenics Institute who freeze and store people's bodies "against a future time when they could be revived," but this goes hand-in-hand with their research into operating techniques at low temperatures. So underneath the research facility is also a cold storage vault with frozen bodies inside sealed cylinders. Dr. Hobbes is ready to take the next step and revive a young man who died of a brain tumor in the 1970s, but the tumor did a lot of damage to the body and other organs. So needs several organ transplants, brain included, before they can reanimate him. Dr. Hobbes assembled a crack medical team to carry out this secret and experimental operation. Dr. Freddy O'Connor, a brain surgeon, who had great success with brain transplants in animals. Dr. Eric MacKenzie, "only military surgeon to set foot on the moon thus far," and Philip Whalen assist him. This team is rounded out by Tony Cooper, a bone specialist, and Vera Morgan, a research chemist, who only arrived the day before Jazine. There are two more people on the island, the elderly Miss Emily Watson whose money has made the whole operation possible and a maid/cook, Hilda. And, well, there's the patient, or "shell body," who they call Frank.

The operation is a success, "we have heartbeat and pulse," but, while Frank is sleeping and recovering in the operating room, things begin to happen on the island. Miss Watson goes missing from her bedroom, leaving only a smear of blood behind, but she, or her body, is not found following a thorough search of the buildings and island – she had vanished from the island. However, this is not an impossible disappearance as has been suggested elsewhere. Miss Watson simply disappeared, but not impossibly, as the murderer could have thrown her body into the sea or buried it somewhere. That's not the solution to the disappearance, but it's not an impossible crime. Just a somewhat baffling disappearance, considering the circumstances and apparent lack of motive. But then the murder strikes a second time!

This time, they find the body and the killer stops trying to hide future victims. Even worse, the group finds they have been cut off from the mainland and marooned on the island until new supplies arrive by hovercraft. Jazine takes charge until then, but body count continues to rise as survivors, suspects and supplies dwindle. All the while, the rapidly dwindling survivors become suspicious and frightened of Frank apparently still sleeping in the operating room ("Hell, I'd much rather believe that Frank down there did it than consider the possibility that I'm sitting at a table with a murderer"). So did they create a modern-day Frankenstein's monster or is there a human hand behind it all?

Before getting to the plot, the science-fiction elements deserve a mention. It goes without saying Hoch's depiction of the early 2000s in 1975 is very different from what actually happened. For one, the World Trade Center is still standing, but the most obvious difference is absence of the internet and cell phones despite characters remarking how "everything's miniaturized these days" and "almost everything's done by machine." Jazine explains late in the story the C.I.B. tackles mostly "computer frauds" such as "stock-market rigging, insurance swindles, even some gimmicking of the race-track computers," but no crimes related to, what could be called, an internet – which does not detract from the novel at all. Just interesting to compare Hoch's vision of the early 2000s to what actually happened. Hoch's version of the early 2000s appears to be a lot calmer than our early 2000s, but hints through out the story makes it clear the world outside the green, sunny island has some dystopian characteristics. Some countries promote suicide among the elderly, while other countries want to ship their criminals and surplus population to colonies on Venus ("...Venus colony is still a good many years away"). Somehow, someway, they took laser guns away from Americans shortly after their introduction in the mid '90s and cities are covered in a thick, hazy layer of ozone purifiers sprayed from helicopters. On the up side, there are the advances in medicine and plans to construct searails to span the oceans. So that's something.

The science-fiction of this hybrid science-fiction mystery, beside the cryogenic and reanimation, functions mostly as story dressing. However, it gives The Frankenstein Factory a retro-futuristic, alternate history quality that's fun to speculate about. My take is that the humans in this universe tend to be slightly more pragmatic or utilitarian, tick less sociable, which is why there more interested in Venus colonies, searails and reversing death than an internet or smart phones. Not wholly unimportant, it gave what would otherwise have been an average "trapped on an island with a killer" mystery a distinct character of its own. Not that The Frankenstein Factory is a bad whodunit. You can leave it to Hoch to pen a fair play mystery involving experimental surgery, a reanimated corpse and laser guns. It's just that without a science-fiction trappings, The Frankenstein Factory would have come across as a pale imitation of Christie's And Then There Were None.

So it's unfortunate Hoch never really integrated those science-fiction components with the story's detective plot, because that would have made The Frankenstein Factory something more than this strange, zany send-up of Christie. Hoch wrote a good, old-fashioned murder mystery and a tale of science-fiction horror taking place simultaneously with the same cast of characters. That's why I kept second guessing myself even when only two suspects remained, because expected the science-fiction elements would some part or role to play in the solution. I had reasons to believe Frank was not the first person to have been reanimated, which needed to be kept under wraps for the outside world (perhaps that person was a murderer like was suggested of the brain donor). I had one name in mind (ROT13: "...vg tnir ure gur ybbx bs n lbhat tvey sebz gur 1970f") as that person being revealed as both a reanimated person and the killer would give the story a double, morbid twist for the prize of one. No such genre crossing twists, or solution, as Hoch only roamed around the borders and never crossed the line into full-blown hybrid mystery territory. That's a missed opportunity.

The Frankenstein Factory is unlikely to secure a place on my list of best and favorite hybrid mysteries, because the bar for hybrid mysteries has been set astronomically high, but long-time Hoch fans should take note of this rare, novel-length mystery from his hands. Hoch's The Frankenstein Factory is intriguing and not unrewarding mystery as long as you don't expect a classic like Christie's And Then There Were None or Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54).