Locked and Loaded, Part 8: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

Back in 2020, I posted the first "Locked and Loaded" blog-post reviewing five, or six, randomly picked, usually uncollected short stories of the impossible variety and covered a 118 year period of short locked room mystery stories in the previous seven reviews – stretching from 1905 all the way up to 2023. So, as to be expected, the quality varies from story to story. However, the stories reviewed in the last two "Locked and Loaded" posts only had one really good short story, James H. Cobb's "Over the Edge" (2007). I wanted to do another one, before the end of the year, hoping to find another really good story or two. Fingers crossed!

So, before delving into the stories making up part 8, you can find my previous "Locked and Loaded" reviews here: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

The first story is James Yaffe's "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes," originally published in the March, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which he wrote when he was a 16-year-old locked room mystery enthusiast. Between 1943 and 1946, EQMM published six of Yaffe's short stories featuring the only member of the Department of Impossible Crimes ("...New York Homicide Squad's most obscure office"), Paul Dawn. This second story in the series takes place aboard the Florida Special where a holidaying Dawn is recognized by Dr. Howard Kiroshibu, of Kiroshibu Brothers Oriental Pottery, who's traveling with a black, copper urn – containing his late brother's ashes. Kiroshibu is afraid something is going to happen to the urn and asks Dawn to take urn to his compartment, but Dawn turns him down as he exclusively deals in impossible crimes. Shortly after their chat, Kiroshibu is shot behind the locked door of a railway carriage. Dawn has his locked room murder and excuse to start investigating.

Well, Yaffe was only sixteen when he wrote "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes" and so this story lacks the polish that comes with experience and maturity, but brash, youthful fallibility and the tact of a teenager has a charm of its own. I snickered when Dawn summarized Kiroshibu's story, "so you're traveling to Miami Beach to toss your brother's ashes into the Atlantic," or taking a peek inside the urn ("Henry Kiroshibu was of a non-descript, grayish color, and he only filled about half the urn"). Yaffe's choice of murderer and method aren't without interest, but failed to present the overall solution as something even remotely plausible or convincing. So not bad, but not great either.

Next up is "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys," published in the January, 1982, issue of EQMM, written by the author of the Lyon and Bea Wentworth series, Richard Forrest. Several novels from this series are locked rooms and impossible crimes, but Forrest proved to be an extremely frustrating novelist. Forrest had some good impossible crime ideas, such as the false-solution from A Child's Garden of Death (1975) or the whole locked room setup and trick in Death at King's Arthur Court (2005), but always mired in bad or mediocre novels. So was curious to see what Forrest could do with the impossible crime in short story format.

Forrest's "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys" reads like the introduction of a new series, but, apparently, this is the only appearance of the unnamed headmaster-detective of Greenfield Academy, New England – who helps out a student named Braxton. Braxton has serious problems back home as his mother is indicted for murdering her second husband, because she was the only other person inside their securely locked bedroom. So the headmaster decides to help his troubled pupil and begins to call in favors from ex-students to get his hands on information in order to solve the murder. It's funny how this short story is the exact opposite of Forrest's novel-length mysteries. This is a good, well-written short story with a fun detective who could have headed his own series, but the impossible crime and locked room-trick is rubbish. Forrest remains the most frustrating writer of locked room mysteries.

Bill Pronzini netted his first Shamus Award for best P.I. short story with "Cat's Paw." A short story originally published in 1983 as a hardcover booklet.

"Cat's Paw" finds the Nameless Detective patrolling the grounds of San Francisco's Fleishacker Zoological Gardens during a cold, foggy night when the fog "makes everything look like capering phantoms or two-dimensional cutouts." Nameless has been hired as an extra guard following the theft of several rare birds and some other endangered animals that go for premium prizes on the black market, but the zoo covers roughly seventy acres and difficult to police with only a few guards. This was still a few years before security cameras became more widely adopted. While patrolling the grounds, a gunshot rings out from the Lion House where Nameless and a colleague discovers the body of another night guard lying in an empty, locked feeding case – shot through the chest and clutching a gun. So it appears to be suicide as the building was locked up and they arrived less than 30 seconds after hearing the shot. That makes the only possible exit through one of the open cat-grottos at the rear of the Lion House, but "those cats would maul anybody who went out among 'em." Nameless knows this dodgy looking suicide is murder and, fortunately, he knows his way around a locked room murder.

Overall, Pronzini's "Cat's Paw" is a good and very fine P.I. short story making full use of its backdrop, especially in the lead-up to the shooting. Nameless likened walking around a zoo by night to a graveyard ("...ordinary enough during daylight hours... downright eerie after dark"). But as a detective story with a locked room mystery, it's neither spectacular nor particular fair. I still liked it as a P.I. short story and it's always fun to tag along with Nameless, but as an impossible crime story it was very little to offer. Fortunately, the next tale of the impossible by Pronzini is a different story!

Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" originally appeared in the anthology Mean Streets (1986) in which Nameless has to act as an armchair detective, while drinking beer and playing poker. Eberhardt had made a bet with the other guys around the table he could "make sense out of the Gallatin thing within twenty-four hours." Lt. Jack Logan, one of the man around the poker table, who nearly nailed Frank Gallatin for racketeering and extortion charges. What they needed was an incriminating file from an accountant, named Lamar Trent, but, when they went to Trent's office, they heard a gunshot behind his locked office door. Only two people were inside when the shot was fired: Frank Galletin and Trent slumped behind his desk with a bullet in his skull. Just a handful of problems. Firstly, the office is thoroughly searched without the murder weapon or incriminating files turning up. And no gunshot residue on his hands. There simply was no time to dispose of the gun, files and a pair of gloves ("locked doors, disappearing guns—screwball stuff"). Even worse, Galletin claims somebody came up or down the fire escape, shot Trent through the open window and disappeared the same way. They checked this story and nobody could have used the fire escape, unless they happened to be invisible. So they Galletin shot Trent, but nothing can be done unless they figure out how he made all the evidence disappear from a locked office with police standing at the door ("just your kind of case, paisan").

For the next two hours, or so, they play five-card stud and drink beer while Nameless mulls over the puzzle. And, of course, he pieces everything together and only left the poker table to get a cold beer. Nameless takes joy in drawing out his solution as payback for making him work instead of just playing poker. I liked how the simple locked room-trick and solution revealed the supposedly clever Galletin to have been prize idiot after all. Fantastically fun!

By the way, I think an anthology of hardboiled, pulp-y P.I. locked room mysteries and impossible crimes is long overdue. Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" or "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" (1980) would be perfect for such an anthology (Tough Nuts to Crack).

John Nelson's "Magwitch Returns," originally published in the April, 1986, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, is an odd one and perhaps not truly a locked room mystery – at least not in the traditional sense. The setup is conventional enough as it begins with the police being called to the scene of an unmistakable suicide. A neighbor of one Andrew Thornton heard a gunshot coming from his apartment and when the landlord unlocked the door, they found him with a bullet in his head and gun on the floor. Thornton, "a police buff and a Dickens fanatic," left behind a string of clues turning the police investigation into a scavenger hunt. I wonder if J.A. Konrath was aware of Nelson's “Magwitch Returns” when he wrote "With a Twist" (2005), because the premises are strikingly similar. Konrath got so much more out of the idea than Nelson. Still an amusing take on the detective story, but poor purely taken as a locked room mystery.

Finally, John L. French's "Open and Shut," published in the July/August, 2003, issue of AHMM, which is obviously product of its time when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation along with its spin-off shows were at the height of their popularity. French is a retired crime scene supervisor who wrote articles ("A Brief History of DNA," 2006) for Future Mystery Anthology Magazine and occasionally had a short story published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. "Open and Shut" is French's only impossible crime story featuring a crime scene technician, Grace, who's called the scene of a suicide in College Town. A student shot himself behind the locked door of his bedroom while his roommates were still in the house. So an apparently routine case of "another overachieving high school student who couldn't handle the shock of getting B's in college," but a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories gives a classical twist to the case. When it comes to the locked room problem, I don't think this story will excite the pickier of locked room fanatics, but I enjoyed the overall story and how (SPOILER/ROT13) gur cybg jrag sebz fhvpvqr gb zheqre naq onpx gb fhvpvqr ntnva, orsber frggyvat ba na nppvqragny fubbgvat. Like I said, this story is very much a product of its time.

This was another poor, unexciting and rather disappointing haul for this blog series. Not necessarily because the stories were bad, most weren't, but Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" is the only story that stands out and shines as a locked room mystery. So maybe the time has come to either retire "Locked and Loaded" or put it on hiatus for the foreseeable future. I'll try to pick something good, none-impossible crime related next. Stay tuned!