The Ghost Walks: Case Closed, vol. 99 by Gosho Aoyama

So, before getting to the 99th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, some fantastic news for those who have been reading reviews of this series on various blog various blogs, but have been hesitant to pick it up – mainly due to the growing size of the series. I can understand why not everyone wants to start on a new series with a backlog of nearly 100 volumes. Next year, Viz is going to re-release Case Closed in 3-in-1 volumes under its original title of Detective Conan with the names of the main characters restored. Shinichi Kudo instead of Jimmy Kudo. The first of these new omnibus editions, containing vol. 1, 2 and 3, is scheduled for publication in February 2027. Now let's take a look at Case Closed, vol. 99!

This volume starts, as usually is the case, with the conclusion to the story that closed out the previous volume. Conan, Rachel, Serena and Sera attend the birthday party of a classmate and her older sister. During the party, the room was darkened to show slide in the dark when someone collapsed. The victim of cyanide poisoning and someone, somehow, had written the phrase "Divine Punishment" on his forehead with permanent marker in the dark. Fortunately, the spot where the murder took place was "basically a fenced-off area" limiting the number of suspects to just four. A fairly typical Aoyama story with its mysterious poisoning at a restaurant and a pretty solid one at that, but honestly could have done without the complications of the written message. It would have made for much tighter case.

What adds importance to this story are developments and revelations in the ongoing storyline and storylines of the various recurring characters. Note that this story specifically mentions Jimmy Kudo's been missing for the past six months and a similar remark about only 6-8 months have passed since the first volume ("you haven't even been here a year"), which doesn't bother me at all. Who am I to disagree with Aoyama? If he says only about six months have passed than that's what we're going with. That's fine.

The second story is difficult to describe as it's quite an unusual one for this series. Conan and the Junior Detective League accompany their teachers, Kobayashi and Wakasa, to remote farmhouse to get two new chickens for their school – which the farmer donated to them. On the bus to the farm, they meet three, unsavory looking men heading in the same direction intending on making money out of something. Toru Amuro is also on the bus heading to the same destination. When they arrive, they find the farm abandoned, the chicken coop empty and damaged, but things get worse when investigating the wooded area surrounding the farm. Someone gets taken hostage, while others end up being locked inside a cellar with a corpse. And they can only communicate with those above through their detective badges. This story is more of a what-happened-and-will-happen than anything else. Not half bad either for such an unconventional story that took its time to take form. There are also more developments to the main storyline as Amuro discovers an unexpected clue at the farm directly linked to another major plot-thread.

So, on to the next story, which is another rather unconventional case for this series. If I remember correctly, this could actually be the first armchair detective story in the series. Yoko Okino, the famous Japanese idol, visits Richard Moore's office to consult him on something that had happened to her recently.

Yoko Okino is going to play the lead role of a ghost detective in an upcoming TV series joined the group scouting for locations, which included "a classic creepy old manor" where "a woman really, truly went missing" – never to be seen again. When they viewed the location, the manor house was being used as a summer retreat for the family owning it. They would become suspects when Yoko hears someone groaning, followed running down the hallway, which leads to the discovery of a trail of blood ending halfway down a dead end corridor. Someone of the family goes missing and sends a photo of playing cards spelling out a coded message, before being found in the locked attic with a crossbow bolt through his back. So the primary suspects are the victims three relatives, but there's a catch. One of them is in a wheelchair, one is walking on crutches and one has an arm in a sling. So no easy solution to the murder or coded message is found. And why send a coded message instead of a simple text or calling. Yoko came to Moore to ask him to solve the case, but Moore is trapped on the toilet without toilet paper and too embarrassed to call out. Even more so, when he hears the mystery-loving sushi chef Kanenorih Wakita has joined the party, fearing mockery ("...your brain spins as fast as your bathroom roll").

So it's Conan and Wakita who sit down to listen Yoko's story, examine the evidence and try to sort out the case. Surprisingly, the vanishing footsteps and locked attic were easily explained away, but cracking the coded dying message or answering why the victim didn't simply call for help take more work. But answering those two questions leads to a diabolical twist. Who did what and why seems to be the theme of this volume. I liked it!

This volume ends with the first chapter of a story that'll be concluded in the opening chapters of the next volume, but what a story it promises to be! Jimmy/Conan's father is Booker Kudo, a celebrated mystery novelist, who has a reputation as an amateur detective and quasi-official consultant to police – recently made the news. Kudo solved a phony Kaito KID case ("...too shoddy to be the work of the real Kaito KID") and is currently working on a serial locked room murder case. He practically solved the case and is going to reveal the solution on a TV special. But gets taken out by a case of food poisoning. So his wife and famous actress, Vivian Kudo, takes his place and drags in their son Jimmy/Conan to put the finishing touches to the solution. That locked room case is fascinating. Three different, apparently unconnected people were found murdered inside their locked apartment. Each time, the method of murder was different except for the locked apartments and "clutter around the door" showing nobody could have left without disturbing it.

Conan concludes one person committed all three murders using "the same trick to create the locked room," but then his mother goes down with food poisoning. Noboy to take Booker and Vivian Kudo's place. Only for an unexpected person to arrive at the Kudo home. What a great cliffhanger to lead into Case Closed, vol. 100!

So, yeah, Case Closed, vol. 99 is a great volume without a bad story and some exciting developments for long-time fans of the series. Very much look forward to that milestone volume!

The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) by Jamie Probin

Last time, I reviewed "The Episode of the Nine Monets" (2020) by Jamie Probin, a mathematician, who has written a short series of impossible crime and locked room mysteries about a mathematician-detective, Dr. Samuel Harris – who acts as a special consultant to Scotland Yard and Sûreté. "The Episode of the Nine Monets" and The Thirteenth Apostle (2020) form the "Le Fantôme Saga" with the former being a prequel to the latter.

Le Fantôme is the classically-styled, phantom thief who has terrorized the museums and private collectors of France and Britain for years. Only real opposition came from Dr. Harris and Henry Toussante, Patrick Larson and Alain Noble of the Sûreté. The last three starred in "The Episode of the Nine Monets" as they try to figure out how their nemesis spirited away a valuable painting from a locked townhouse. They triumph in cracking the locked room problem and get back the stolen painting, but Le Fantôme is still on the loose and more popular than ever. The Thirteenth Apostle is the concluding chapter of this saga.

Before getting to the story and plot, I need to get one thing out of the way first concerning the story's pacing and structure of the plot. Probin pieced out the story in lumps, big and small, which tend to shift around a bit, chronologically speaking, leaving dramatic turns of event hanging to allude to a future crime or go over previous trodden ground – making it somewhat repetitive. I essentially agree with Jim a thorough editing job would have resulted in an ever better detective novel. Superb even! However, the pacing, structuring and lapses of repetitiveness surprisingly didn't bother me at all. The Thirteenth Apostle is a fantastical, seemingly impossible crime caper about a phantom thief toying with the combined police forces and a amateur detective of two countries. So the repetitive patches and the lumpy, dramatic and sometimes episodic nature of the plot gave it the air of a turn-of-the-century French feuilleton. I liked that aspect, but yes, Jim's point still stands. With that out of the way, let's begin.

Probin's The Thirteenth Apostle begins on April 21, 1935, when a dozen of prominent French and English citizens, under the cover of dusk, heading towards the Eiffel Tower. All of them received a politely-worded, but urgent, invitation punctuated by a veiled, hard to ignore threat to show up. Who didn't need to be coerced to come are Dr. Samuel Harris and Henri Toussante, head of the Sûreté, because they know Le Fantôme is up to his old tricks again. And their best shot to finally catch the notorious phantom thief.

Le Fantôme reveals himself to the gathering through a gramophone recording à la Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). The voice of Le Fantôme announces to them his intention to steal the twin Bombay Diamonds, "their acquisition would be the pinnacle of my calling," of which one permanently resides in the Louvre. Le Fantôme claims to have already stolen the other diamond that was on display at the Palais de Chaillot and informs the group gathered at the Eiffel Tower they're going to help steal the second diamond from the Louvre ("to put it bluntly, you all have secrets..."). Leaving them to deliberate and make a decision, but Toussante is already on the counter offensive and apparently one step ahead. Toussante has brought the diamond Le Fantôme claims to have stolen from Palais de Chaillot.

The setup to this first of numerous impossible crimes is a slow burner, but played to great effect and pay-off as the clandestine meeting on the Eiffel Tower culminates with the disappearance of the closely watched diamond and murder – a poisoning as inexplicable as it's shocking. And why I'm being sketchy on the details to avoid spoilers. So everything and everyone, "suspect and police alike," is subjected to a thorough search without finding the diamond or a even a hint how it vanished in the first place. The poisoning appears to be equally baffling and impossible, but there are more puzzling aspects to the theft and murder. Why was there an abnormally, almost unnecessarily, large dose of poison in the glass? Why did the victim picked up the glass and deliberately smashed it before dying? Why the hell did this dose of poison have such a flair for dramatic timing? You can perhaps count that last one as a third, borderline impossibility.

While a slow burner of a start, the setup to this impossible crime extravaganza is absolutely fantastic with false-solutions being bandied about during the initial investigation at the Eiffel Tower. I'm a sucker for false-solutions! So would have loved for The Thirteenth Apostle to have continued along these lines, while picking up the pace along the way, as it headed towards the next couple of locked room murders. This is the point where the story begins to move on to the next lump of plot as the dramatic, illusory crimes at the Eiffel Tower remain unresolved for the time being. A move bridged with an excerpt from the fictitious book, Ghost in the Machine: the extraordinary career of Le Fantôme, teasing Le Fantôme's "last and most infamous accomplishment" ("the murder in the Oglethorpe Crypt"), but first, there's another impossible crime. An impossible crime pushing Le Fantôme to near mythical status in the minds of the investigators.

Nearly half a year later, in November, everyone who was present "that most unpleasant evening at the top of La Tour Eiffel" reunite at Chateau Lambert in Montanix-des-Alpes, France. Their association with a notorious, unsolved case and status as potential suspects is becoming troublesome ("...our lives will be forever tainted..."), which is why they have decided to get together to try and solve the case themselves. However, the plan to pool their knowledge, go over the facts and attempt to weed out the truth gets ditched when they learn of the local legend.

Chateau Lambert has an ancient, austere and brooding tower, Chambre de Justice, which once served as a holding cell for condemned prisoners and, over time, the tower became the stuff of legend – basically a room-that-kills. A room sparing anyone who's truly innocent, but beheads any person spending the night the tower alone with a serious crime on their conscious ("a room with pretensions of being judge, jury and executioner"). So the gathering decides to let the tower decide who's innocent and guilty. That goes about as well you'd expect, only with a slight twist as the murder is not exactly what was expected from the tower room.

This poorly done, messy review only gives you a fraction of what happened between the prologue and the impossible murder at the Chambre de Justice. So when the story finally arrives at its end stage, The Thirteenth Apostle only has a handful of chapters left to go. I started to wonder what Probin could possibly do with the murder at the Oglethorpe Crypt, which had been alluded to in both the prologue and interlude. It turns out not all that much. Well, not in terms of creating the crowning achievement of that promised trilogy of impossible murders, but at least it served another, not unimportant, purpose. I can see why Jim was disappointed as it hyped as the story's main event.

So, as a locked room mystery, the impossible murder at the Chambre de Justice stands as the best of the three. I very much enjoyed how Probin set it up as a shin honkaku-style impossibility, only to turn around to deliver a very Paul Halter-esque locked room mystery. The inexplicable poisoning and disappearing diamond from the Eiffel Tower stand out more for its dramatic staging, iconic backdrop and some truly first-class misdirection. So two, out of three, is not a bad return for a mystery novel with multiple impossibilities. What actually did disappoint me is how blatantly obvious it's who's behind the Le Fantôme persona. For more reasons than one, Probin made it impossible to ignore this character as a serious candidate to the point I began to second guess myself. I even entertained the idea of two Le Fantômes. The original, happy go-lucky Le Fantôme who robbed museums and the person who usurped his identity to go on a murder spree. That also didn't turn out to be the case and robs the story of some of its mystification (ROT13: gur svefg zheqre naq gursg nera'g unys nf onssyvat jura lbh fhfcrpg gung punenpgre bs orvat gur cunagbz).

Probin's The Thirteenth Apostle is that good, old-fashioned mixed bag of tricks. I think I enjoyed more than Jim, but have to agree there's definitely an even better, tighter-plotted detective novel lurking in there somewhere. That said, The Thirteenth Apostle is still an impressive, ambitious first stab at locked room mystery novel showing how much things had already changed by 2020. Not so long ago, novels like Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006) and Eric Keith's Nine Man's Murder (2011) were seen as events because they tried or pretended to write retro or modern locked room novels. We come a long way in a very short amount of time.

So definitely going to check out the other two short stories and hope Probin hasn't forgotten about that short story collection Six Impossible Things.

Note for the curious: just one more thing about that over hyped impossible crime in the crypt that was tucked away at the end. This impossible situation was described in the prologue as practically a hermetically sealed tomb with a door can be barred from the inside with a wooden, six inch thick beam that can be placed horizontally in two thick iron brackets. The prologue noted this can only be "done from inside the crypt" and Dr. Harris says "no amount of jiggery pokery could possibly allow the door to be locked from the outside." When I read the prologue, I immediately saw a very simple way to hermetically seal that crypt from the inside. Just place two pieces of ice inside the iron brackets, place the beam on top, step out and close the door. As the ice melts, the beam drops into the brackets barring the crypt from the inside.

The Glass Tower Murders (2021) by Mikito Chinen

Last year, I came across the work of fan-lator Mitsuda Konno, formerly known as Mitsuda Madoy, who's translating first-rate Japanese detective fiction with "cosmmiicnana" such as Kie Houjou's superb "The Ryuuzen Clan" series and Danro Kamosaki's insane "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series – which have become personal favorites. I keep my fingers crossed Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019), Katou no raihousha (Visitors to the Isolated Island, 2020) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) get official releases one day. I consider them to be the classics of tomorrow and a glimpse of what the detective story could involve into over the course of this century. That's a story for another day.

Mitsuda Konno has a few more pieces of forbidden fruit fanlations on his website and one title especially has been beckoning me for months.

Mikito Chinen's Garasu no tou no satsujin (The Glass Tower Murders, 2021) is described by Konno as "a mystery fan's mystery novel" that's "extremely tropey, and extremely self-aware about how tropey it is," which incidentally also makes it "good as an introduction to modern J-mystery" – dedicating "a lot of page time to explaining the appeal of its own genre." Ho-Ling Wong praised The Glass Tower Murders in his 2022 review for the meaningful way it used the genre's familiar tropes and concepts to create "a very entertaining puzzles that presented a surprising deep look at the genre" ("...basically a love letter to the shin honkaku subgenre"). Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders sounded like a trickier, more complicated and deeper shin honkaku version of Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936). Well, I'm game!

The glass tower of the title is the setting of the story and home to Kozushima Tarou, a retired professor of biotechnology, who invented TRIDENT that "completely altered the course of gene therapy." This invention also made him a very rich man and allowed him to built the tower. A towering, cone-shaped building erected on the slope of Mt. Chogatake with glass walls and a spiral staircase at the center linking together the floor and rooms. The point of this cone-shaped building is called the Display Room where the "Kozushima Collection" is kept. Kozushima is not only a biotech genius, but "a devotee of mystery fiction" and has accumulated a huge collection of detective memorabilia from across the world ("is this Columbo's coat?"). Fittingly, the normally reclusive Kozushima has invited a small group of people to the Glass Tower to make an important announcement.

First of all, there's Kozushima's doctor, Ichijou Yuma, who pulls double duty as a Dr. Watson narrating the story. Sakaizumi Taiki, a chef, who's always called upon to cook lavish meals for Kozushima's events. Aoi Tsukiyo, a self-proclaimed Great Detective, styles herself after Sherlock Holmes, but another guest, Kagami Tsuyoshi of the Nagano Prefectural Police, says she always turns down cases that look too difficult to solve. Kuruma Koushin is a celebrated mystery novelist who made his name during the early days of the shin honkaku movement and "particularly known for his skill at creating locked room mysteries." Yumeyomi Suishou, a TV psychic, is the star of the Psychic Detective Case Files. Sakyo Kousuke is the editor-in-chief of Super Mystery Monthly Magazine known for its "scattershot approach" by "placing proper honkaku stories of logic and reasoning next to unbelievable tales of the paranormal." Lastly, the loyal butler and maid.

So there you have a fairly basic and typical setup for a conventional shin honkaku mystery novel. Conventional to the point you almost get déjà vu, however, that's the point as the story slowly, and playfully, begins to take a different track with these classic, time-honored tropes. Yuma not only narrates the story, playing the witless Watson to Tsukiyo's Sherlock Holmes, but this Watson is also a murderer who has an urgent reason to slip his employer a poisoned pill loaded with tetrodotoxin – which is the poison in pufferfish. Yuma figured if he declared Kozushima's death the result of a heart attack, "it won't be considered a crime," but his plan is completely derailed when Kozushima cries out for help over the telephone. That gives Yuma precious little time to get out of the room and create a very basic locked room setup, which he hopes will do the trick. When the door is opened with the master key, Yuma discovers Kozushima left a clue before dying. The letter "Y" written on the floor ("it must be a dying message"). Tsukiyo, of course, rejects any notion Kozushima died from natural causes or committed suicide. She gets to play detective as an avalanche blocked the road and the police won't be able to get to them for another day or two.

Roughly, the first quarter of The Glass Tower Murders plays out like a darkly humorous inverted mystery in which the murderer finds himself assisting the self-appointed Great Detective investigating his own crime. Something that could have come straight from an Anthony Berkeley or Leo Bruce novel! Yuma is not the only murderer roaming the Glass Tower. A second locked room murder soon follows the second one as Oita Shinzo, the butler, is brutally stabbed to death in the dining room with the door securely latched from the inside. The door being latched from the inside is not even the strangest aspect of the case. Somehow, the dining table was on fire with a message, "SPIRITED AWAY FROM CHOGATAKE," written on the tablecloth ("...a reference to a series of murders that happened in this region over a decade ago").

So now Yuma has a potential scapegoat and more than ever determined to help Tsukiyo find the murderer by being her Watson. However, the murderer is not done yet with creating locked room murders and other impossible situations. The Glass Tower Murders is not about its locked room murders and tricks. It's a detective novel about detective fiction with a cast of genre-savvy mystery readers who discuss various authors, novels, styles and history of the genre – particularly the development of the shin honkaku mystery. Not to mention the plot-thread about an mysterious, unpublished manuscript Kozushima's claims to have discovered that "completely overturn the history of the genre." And, of course, occasionally winking at the fourth wall ("maybe we are characters in a honkaku mystery set in a creepy mansion and just don't realize it"). Don't mistake The Glass Tower Murders for lightweight fluff or an excuse for Mikito Chinen to fanboy all over his favorite mystery writers, novels and series. The Glass Tower Murders is an incredibly dense, layered detective novel pulling off something truly amazing.

The Glass Tower Murders basically gives you three different, deeply intertwined mystery novels for the price of one. Firstly, there's the Berkeley-style inverted mystery involving Yuma poisoning Kozushima. Secondly, the conventional, classically-styled shin honkaku mystery ticking every box needed for such a novel. And that includes two challenges to the reader! This conventional portion of the novel concludes with Tsukiyo's equally conventional solution to exactly such a mystery, but the story is not over yet. So the last part offers an alternative take turning everything that happened before upside down. And brilliantly so! I can't say much more without risking serious spoilers, except how it reminded me just how popular and influential Ellery Queen is in certain non-English speaking parts of the world. Something that's not always appreciated or even noticed in the West.

Mikito Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders stands as a truly exceptional, self-aware meta-mystery novel that demonstrated you can have your cake and eat it too. You have, on the one hand, a typical shin honkaku mystery with a eccentric mansion, locked room murders, a dying message, cracking codes and a closed circle of suspects – completely shut off from the outside world. The solutions to the various mysteries of this conventional shin honkaku novel aren't half bad. Like the locked room-tricks behind the second and third murders, which give you everything you hope to get from a series of impossible crimes in a bizarre mansion. At the same time, the story goes much deeper than merely references to Hercule Poirot or the “Bizarre House Mysteries” series by Yukito Ayatsuji. Only to escape its own confines to prepare the firework show that would end the story. Simply fantastic!

I'm just not sure I would recommend The Glass Tower Murders as an introduction to the shin honkaku mystery, or the genre in general, because the plot demands some level of familiarity with the detective story. Not just for knowing who's who, or who wrote what and when, but in following the plot along as it twists and turns towards its inevitable conclusion. Today, it's easier than ever to read up on the Japanese shin honkaku mystery novel. Enough to fully appreciate The Glass Tower Murders.

So, in closing, all that's left to say is Chinen really took the meta-mystery to another level of consciousness with The Glass Tower Murders. Highly recommended.

Cardula and the Locked Rooms (2026) by Jack Ritchie

Back in 2024, I posted "Locked and Loaded, Part 5: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories," a series of reviews of randomly selected short stories, which included the misidentified, non-impossible crime story, "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" (1982), penned by Jack Ritchie – another long-gone giant of short stories. So even though "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" is not an impossible crime story, it's still a hilarious and clever mystery about Cardula (Dracula) who moved to the US to moonlight as a private detective. And the reason why Cardula had to flee to the US is fantastic in the literal sense of the word. To quote Mike Grost, "the throwing of his vampire detective Cardula out of East Europe after the Communists nationalized his castle is a great comic concept."

"Cardula and the Locked Rooms" not only has a genuinely funny and fresh premise for a private eye series, but it's also a pretty good, solid detective story in its own right. Cardula is hired by an art collector to retrieve a stolen Vincent van Gogh that got stolen a second time and compared it to Edward D. Hoch's Nick Velvet series. So jotted down the Cardula stories as a series of interest and even mentioned in the comments I would welcome a Crippen & Landru collection. Guess what?

In February, Crippen & Landru released Cardula and the Locked Rooms (2026), edited and introduced by Brian Skupin, gathering all nine short stories about the vampire detective and a whopper of a bonus – all six of Ritchie's impossible crime stories! What a clever excuse way to turn that misleading short story title into a descriptively accurate title for this collection by bundling the Cardula stories with Ritchie's impossible crime fiction. I admire how Skupin tackles and solves editorial problems. Like to see more, but let's take a look at this collection first.

Fittingly enough, this unusual detective series begins with a non-detective story, "Kid Cardula," which first appeared in the June, 1976, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Cardula, on the verge of running completely out of money, turns to a boxing trainer/promoter, because he has read in the papers "there's a fortune to be made in prize fights." Something that should be easy money for an undead vampire possessing the strength of ten men, but Cardula eventually figures out someone in his position probably can't afford to become a boxing champion or legend. No matter how big the prize purses get. So this story is hard to rate as there's no mystery to be solved, but it sure is a fun story and introduction to the character. I particularly enjoyed Manny having to arrange Cardula's fights like pro-wrestling matches, otherwise every fight would have ended in an instant knock-out. You have to send the crowd home happy.

These light, humorous touches and furtive references to Cardula being a vampire ("You got blue blood in your veins?" "Occasionally") would fortunately be carried over when the series went into private eye mode with the second story.

"The Cardula Detective Agency," originally published in the March, 1977, issue of AHMM, brings Olivia Hampton to Cardula's nighttime detective agency. Someone took a shot at her uncle, Hector, who had gathered his family to tell them he was going to cut them all out of his will and Olivia wants Cardula to ensure he's still alive when he sees his lawyer the next morning – after which the motive to kill him is removed. Cardula enters the somewhat eccentric household as a bodyguard to ensure Uncle Hector lives to see the sunrise. Hilariously, Cardula reads a book on hematology while sitting guard. During the night, Cardula finds out the case is not as clear cut as presented and gets to showcase his abilities as a detective and vampire-detective. But the ending demonstrates Cardula's not like other detectives. Not just on account of his fangs or ability to fly. This story also gives a bit of background on what happened Cardula's wealth ("what wasn't confiscated or nationalized was destroyed") and castle ("...east gallery has been converted to public restrooms"). So good reboot of the character and series.

"The Canvas Caper," originally published in the August, 1977, issue of AHMM, brings an unusual, anonymous client to Cardula with something more akin to a confession than a case. This man and his associates cut cards to see who had to kill their shared blackmailer and the man drew the low card. However, he couldn't go through with it and turned to Cardula figuring "any private detective whose office hours are from eight P.M. to four A.M. must be closer to the night world of crime than anybody else." So he offers Cardula ten thousand dollars to kill the blackmailer or find someone willing to do the job, but, once again, the assignment is not as simple and clear cut as it was presented to him. Simply as a detective story, "The Canvas Caper" is blatantly unfair, but, as a story about a vampire detective, it's as entertaining as all the others.

"Cardula to the Rescue," originally published in the December, 1977, issue of AHMM, casts Cardula not as a boxer, bodyguard or fangs-for-hire, but as a Good Samaritan coming to the rescue of a woman. A purse snatcher tried to take her handbag, but Cardula made short work of him. No good deed goes unpunished. The woman tells him to mind his own damn business, promptly disappears and the police want to arrest him for assaulting the purse snatcher! Cardula pulls a Batman to escape from the policemen, only for exactly the scene to repeat itself the following evening ("had I somehow inadvertently passed through a time warp?"). Not surprisingly, Cardula finds there's more behind the attempted robberies than just the daily routine of a purse snatcher and his victim.

"Cardula and the Kleptomaniac," first published in the April, 1978, issue of AHMM, is the longest story in the series and brings an unusual problem to Cardula's desk. Diana Weatherly is dying with curiosity to find out whom of her old friends is the kleptomaniac who has been stealing their trinkets since their schooldays. She has whittled down the list of suspects down to four friends and even prepared a baited trap, but, while trying to catch the thief in the act, she fell asleep – which is why she turned to Cardula. She wants Cardula to come to her house party, undercover, to identify the thief. You guessed it, Cardula pretty quickly notices there's more beneath the surface than a human magpie. So, plot-wise, this is one of the better stories, but the conclusion also show its hardboiled side.

"Cardula's Revenge," originally published in the November, 1978, issue of AHMM, is similar to the first story, "Kid Cardula," technically not a detective story. Cardula's old nemesis, "that beast Van Jelsing," is dead, but his grandson, Professor Van Jelsing the Third, carries on the torch. This new vampire hunter has become a real pain in the neck to the vampire community, but they can't get near him as he wears a magical collar around his neck. What's worse, Van Jelsing is currently in the US on a lecture tour to present his nephew and successor, Henrik van Jelsing. So what's a vampire detective to do? Not a detective story or mystery at all, but an entertaining comedy in which a vampire outwits two vampire hunters like a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd skit.

"The Return of Cardula," originally published in the February, 1982, issue of AHMM, brings a petty thief and burglar, Walter, to Cardula. Walter had a partner in crime, Albert, who had been in-and out jail together nearly their entire life, but something went terribly wrong when they hit the ball park to go through the locker rooms while the players out on the field. Walter stood guard at the entrance, of the corridor leading to the locker rooms, while Albert went inside to loot the lockers. Two minutes later, a dying Albert came stumbling back and uttered the cryptic words, "no snow." Yes, an actual dying message! Walter asks Albert to find the killer of his long-time friend and we get to see Cardula (getting caught) sneaking into the stadium, but solves the murder and dying message while watching the ball game. Skupin wrote in the introduction that this story "could have been an Ellery Queen tale" with "its baseball milieu and wordplay solution" (c.f. Ellery Queen's "Man Bites Dog," 1939). I agree!

The next story is "Cardula and the Locked Room," but already reviewed it as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 5." However, it should be noted it's arguably the best and strongest story of the series. Perhaps it would have been best if the series had ended here.

"Cardula and the Briefcase" appeared in the June, 1983, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (not AHMM) and has a premise similar to “The Return of Cardula.” Alvin Atkins, a burglar, turns to Cardula after burglary job has presumably gone wrong. He and his partner, Charley Whittle, burgled a posh apartment, but, when he returned from bringing a typewriter to their car, discovered the front door chained shut. Charly tells him through the locked door the home owner has a gun and is going to call the police, which is followed by a thud and groan. Alvin makes himself scarce, but the next day no news about what happened. So asks Cardula to find out what really happened and the case of the missing burglar becomes entangled with a briefcase full of money. I suppose this is not necessarily a bad story, but I found it instantly forgettable and struggled to remember what it was about. For some reason, this last story left no impression whatsoever on me.

So that concludes the first part of Cardula and the Locked Rooms. Obviously, the Cardula series does not entirely adhere to the traditional, fair play mystery format. There are three or four really good, solidly-plotted stories in this series, but their main draw is unquestionably the character of Cardula, the premise of the series and the vein of humor running through all the stories. I suggest reading this as a short series of stories about an unusual detective instead of a series of unusual detective stories and take the better plotted stories as an extra.

Now let's see what Cardula could do with the stronger, plot-driven locked room mystery and impossible crime story.

"Upside-Down World," originally published in the May, 1962, issue of AHMM, technically is a how-was-it-done, not an impossible crime or locked room, but a good one. Regan, an insurance investigator, is tasked with investigation the sudden death of a client, Robert Cramer, who died from a heart attack when visiting a friend. Nothing suspicious as the autopsy showed Cramer had died from heart disease, but the two-hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy obliges the company to investigate. Even more so when the beneficiary is not the widow, but a woman named Miss Helen Morland. Only clue or detail hinting at something resembling foul play is that fingers of Cramer's right hand had been "seared slightly" with fragments of glass embedded in them, but he obviously wasn't electrocuted. So what happened and how do you give a man a heart attack? Like I said, this is not an impossible crime story, but it definitely has some impossible crime features like the key-element of the solution. So a good and solid opening to this section, even though it's technically a howdunit.

"Swing High," originally published in the May, 1965, issue of AHMM, arguably is the best overall short story from this collection. The policeman narrator is investigating the death of man, Thurmond Fraser, whose body was found beside the Medical Arts Building beneath three windows – third, fourth and fifth floors. If he didn't fall from one of those three windows, he must have fallen from the roof. However, the roof is covered in a thick, undisturbed coat of coal dust and each of the three windows is the waiting room of a doctor or specialist, which were either empty and locked or occupied. Nobody has seen anyone jumping or being pushed from one of those (locked) windows. So a neatly posed impossible crime with a credible motive on the murderer's part to create a confounding locked room situation. What makes "Swing High" more than just a very well done locked room mystery is the secondary plot-thread concerning the detective's marriage. Normally, I'm not exactly a fan of the post-Golden Age troubled cop trope, but here it complimented the traditionally-styled impossible crime plot and provided a superb conclusion. A conclusion that would not have been possible without the detective's private problems intruding on his work. So definitely a future inclusion for "The Locked Library."

"Pearls Before Wine," originally published in the August, 1968, issue of MSMM, is a three-page, short-short about an attempt of insurance fraud by making a string of duplicate pearl disappear from a locked and guarded room. Nothing much to say about this one other than the method is not bad and couldn't help but think how this short-short could have been the premise of a novel-length murder mystery. Just imagine (ROT13) fbzrbar fcbggvat gur inavfuvat-gevpx naq tenoorq gur bccbeghavgl gb trg evq bs fbzrbar ol fbzrubj znavchyngvat be thvqvat gung tynff bs npvq gbjneqf gur ivpgvz. But a fun and amusing short-short nonetheless.

I'm not entirely sure if "Play a Game of Cyanide," first published in the May, 1961, issue of AHMM, counts as a full-blown or borderline impossible crime story, but either way, it stands as one of the most original and entertaining stories of its kind. An exasperated policeman has to deal with a pair of clever and mischievous children, Ronnie and Gertrude, who got their hands on a dozen cyanide pellets – which they have hidden all over the house. A house that has been searched top to bottom by the police, but not with too much success. So they try everything from threatening to bribing the children, but they're determined to let police work their brains in order to find the pellets ("I always regarded the Children's Crusade as a great tragedy... not quite so certain now"). Some flashes of inspirations reveal a few of the cunning hiding places, however, what happened to last cyanide pellet is what makes this short story a little more than a monstrous Easter Egg hunt that could have been organized by Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. I begin to see why Ritchie counted so many short story writers among his biggest fans.

The next and penultimate short story is "Box in a Box" (1977), but already discussed it on this blog in my review of the Edward D. Hoch edited All But Impossible: An Anthology of Locked Room and Impossible Crime Stories (1981). Since it's the least interesting and successful of Ritchie's impossible crime output, I'm skipping it here.

Finally, "The Crime Machine," originally published in the January, 1961, issue of AHMM and anthologized in Alfred Hitchcock's Crime-Watch (1984), ditches the customary supernatural trappings when a locked room mystery evokes the other worldly to go for a science-fiction angle. Mr. Reeves is an outwardly normal man with a wife and an apparently good paying job, but Reeves source of income primarily comes from being a murderer for hire. So imagine his shock and surprise when, one day, a man named Henry visits him and tells him in intricate detail about his most recent murders. Henry claims to have invented a time machine allowing him to observe the past anywhere at anytime ("I cannot participate in any manner in the past... only observe"). So why not look at some recent, unsolved murders for a bit of extra pocket money. Reeves laughs at the whole idea and tells Henry to hop in his time machine to find out Jack the Ripper's true identity ("I'll do that tonight"), but how did he know about the murders down the smallest detail? Slowly, but surely, Reeves becomes convinced the time machine might be real after all. And wants to buy it. But not without a convincing demonstration. Henry gives a demonstration worth his money as he hops into his time machine and briefly vanishes from a sealed room.

"The Crime Machine" is, of course, not a hybrid science-fiction mystery, like Anthony Boucher's "Elsewhen" (1946) or Isaac Asimov's "Obituary" (1959), but a good, old-fashioned locked room mystery with a solid explanation for the disappearing time machine. The source of Henry's impossible knowledge is linked to the who and why, which is not overlooked in this excellent impossible crime story. I have mentioned this before, but never understood why the post-WWII detective story, especially the impossible crime story, rarely ventured outside the Victorian setups of haunted houses, cursed rooms and murder around a séance table. Just the still largely untapped potential for impossible crime stories and locked room mysteries involving possible time travel, apparent interlopers from parallel universes and outer space. As this story shows, it gives a new impulse to the classic locked room setup. Great story to end this collection on!

Cardula and the Locked Rooms can stake a claim to the title of best balanced anthology or collection of short stories. Cardula, the vampire-detective, is the star and main attraction of his own series, but with enough twists and turns to keep the demanding, slightly spoiled detective fans like myself happy. The stories with the gamey plots can be found in the Locked Rooms section. "Swing High," "Play a Game of Cyanide" and "The Crime Machine" being the standouts with "Upside-Down World" and even the short-short "Pearls Before Wine" following closely behind. So, to cut a long story short, Cardula and the Locked Room is a fantastic short story collection from Crippen & Landru and Brian Skupin that comes highly recommended.

I guess between Seishi Yokomizo's Yoru aruku (She Walks at Night, 1948), Locked Room Puzzles (1986), Carver's Death in 13 Rooms (2026) and this collection, I more than made up for the dry spell in locked room reviews last month.

The First Television Murder (1940) by Val Gielgud and Eric Maschwitz

Val Gielgud, an actor, director and broadcaster, was a pioneer of radio-and television drama at the BBC and served as head for both their drama departments – even directing the first ever drama for British television. Gielgud had a side hustle, writing detective and thriller novels, producing a respectable body of work from 1931 to 1975. I suppose his best known work today are his two collaborations with John Dickson Carr, collected in 13 to the Gallows (2008), but used to be better known for collaborating with another friend on a series of detective novels. 

Between 1933 and 1940, Gielgud worked on five Inspector Simon Spears novels with close friend and then former deputy editor of the Radio Times, Eric Maschwitz, who also wrote under the name "Holt Marvell." Three of the novels, Death at Broadcasting House (1934), Death as an Extra (1935) and The First Television Murder (1940), draw on their firsthand experience working behind the scenes of early radio and television. They have been out-of-print for ages and consequently all but forgotten today, which even without having read them always baffled me. Here you have a trio of mysteries taking place in the world of early radio and television, written by insiders, giving them at least an historical excuse to justify a reprint every now and then. Nope.

So have always been interested in Gielgud's early, media centered mysteries, notably The First Television Murder, because the title is no exaggeration. Prior to it, television sets only rarely turned up in detective stories as a background novelty (e.g. E.R. Punshon's The Bath Mysteries, 1936). The First Television Murder predates Pat McGerr's Death in a Million Living Room (1951) by more than a decade. I was very curious to see how Gielgud could do with television this early in the game.

Gielgud and Maschwitz's The First Television Murder, also published simply as The Television Murder, begins when Mr. Winthrop Bruce, the BBC Television Director, receiving a request to show Gloria van Zuyl around Alexandra Palace – where "the Television Service lived and moved." Gloria van Zuyl, known to the general public as "The Twenty Million Dollar Girl," is a rich heiress who's to receive a fortune upon the death of her bedridden grandfather, Abraham van Zuyl. She married an Italian nobleman, Count Benito Ferrari. And, recently, she purchased a "phenomenal ruby" called "The Peacock Throne" said to be cursed. The last owner, Van Zeeland, "died curiously, too, in Amsterdam" on the day he received the ruby. Bruce is not too keen to guide people around the studios "as though it were the Zoo on Bank Holiday," but couldn't turn down this request. However, the tour is a great success and Gloria even does a test screening on closed circuit. A test screening that goes so well, she's offered to be interviewed on the weekly program Picture Parade.

Gloria at first turns down the offer, but has second thoughts and accepts to be televised. It should be mentioned that between the opening chapter and Gloria's televised interview, the eternal triangle is established as Gloria is not a happily married woman and has a friend, David Calthrop, who's very interested in seeing her happy. So guess how that ends! While she's being interviewed on live television, Count Ferrari is shot and killed at their home and scene confronting Inspector Spears could have figured in one of John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell novels.

The shooting took place in Abraham van Zuyl's bedroom. The butler had heard, what he believed to be, was a car backfiring followed by the ringing of the bell at Van Zuyl's bedside. What the butler discovered was Count Ferrari, shot through the heart, lying on the floor of the bedroom with a small automatic pistol beside the body and Van Zuyl lay collapsed in the bed – shock causing "a paralytic stroke of the most serious kind." So is unable to tell them what, exactly happened, but the scene gets stranger. Count Ferrari is clutching a tube of lipstick which he used to scribble the letter "CA" on the wainscoting and the Count had an argument with Calthrop right before the televised show began. But that possibility is thrown for a loop when fingerprints found on the pistol are identified as belonging to Gloria van Zuyl!

So there's a prize suspects, who confessed going "to the house with the express intention of having a showdown" and "admits to being there until after the Countess first appeared on the Television screen," implicated by the victim's unfinished dying message. This simple, straightforward case against Calthrop collapses by the clear, tidy prints on the murder weapon belonging to Gloria. She can't possibly have fired the shot, because "she was five or six miles away, at Alexandra Palace, appearing in front of a Television camera, with about half a million witnesses to prove it." On top of that, the ruby has disappeared. Spears has his work cut out for him with this "stark raving impossibility."

I should mention here that the various characters working at the television studio remain involved in the investigation ("one day Spears would get into trouble for carting interested amateurs around with him"). From what I gathered, some also figured in Death at Broadcasting House and Death in Budapest (1937). The backstage snapshots of early, 1940s television is one of the main draws like the brief look at the big green O.B. (Outside Broadcast) Van with its mass of cables going from the van, cameras to some distant power supply – a sight new enough to draw a crowd to see television-in-action. In 1940, the medium of television was still in its experimental phase and was suspended in Britain for the duration of World War II. So placing a television broadcast central to the plot gives this detective story something of character, or personality, of its own. I can imagine the scenes related to the broadcast and its technicalities might have impressed readers as something out of H.G. Well rather than a good, old-fashioned detective novel. I also appreciated the unexpected excursion to my country, because Spears is convinced there's a link there with the murder ("...I'll lay you a hundred Dutch guilders to a Black Tulip...").

So it really is a pity the television background and trip to the Netherlands (for me) are what lifted The First Television Murder ever so slightly above average, second-tier mystery novel. Gielgud and Maschwitz were not incompetent plotters, but showed no imagination when it came to the bare bones of the plot and solution. Despite the tangled, knotted appearance of the impossible shooting, the solution is ridiculously basic to the point I shouldn't be tagging this review as a locked room mystery, but I'm not having that discussion again. It doesn't help that the solution packs, what's essentially, a double anticlimax that left me wondering what Carr could have done with this story. Sorry for nosediving this review in the end, but blame the authors for writing a historical curiosity instead of a historical curiosity that's also a first-rate mystery. If you're only interested in a good detective story, you shouldn't give The First Television Murder your top priority, but, for a historical first, it's well worth a read.

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!

Tim MacNab Seeks a Story (1937) by Marten Toonder

The concept of "lost media" is something of an obsession on parts of the internet and touched upon the subject myself, "Top 10 Works of Detective Fiction That Have Been Lost to History," covering everything from Jacques Futrelle going down with the Titanic to the lost collaboration between John Dickson Carr and J.B. Priestley – between a maddening number of unpublished, presumably destroyed manuscripts. Most famously Hake Talbot's third Rogan Kincaid novel The Affair of the Half-Witness and Joseph Commings' four novel-length Senator Brooks U. Banner mysteries. So the detective story, especially the classics, has had its fair share of lost media as well as number of recently recovered novels and short stories from the likes of Christianna Brand, E.C.R. Lorac and Anthony Berkeley.

There has even been a recovered, previously unpublished, detective novel here in the Netherlands from the hands of one of the most celebrated Dutch comic book artists, Marten Toonder.

Marten Toonder created the beloved characters Tom Poes and Olivier B. Bommel, Tom Puss and Oliver B. Bumble in English, who appeared in the long-running Tom Poes series. A series praised for enriching the Dutch language with new words and playful phrases, which reportedly made Toonder's work tricky to translate into different languages, als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel. Toonder died, aged 93, in 2005. During his centenary, seven years later, it was revealed a loose-leaf, typescript manuscript was discovered in the Toonder archive of a never before published detective novel, Tim MacNab zoekt copy (Tim MacNab Seeks a Story) – originally written in 1937. It's unclear why the manuscript was shelved, but finally appeared in a limited print run of 1500 copies when publisher De Bezige Bij distributed the manuscript, "curiosum in facsimile," as a 2013 New Year's gift. Tim MacNab Seeks a Story received a proper publication in 2017, under the slightly modernized title Tim MacNab zoekt kopij, which came with a foreword from Dutch thriller author Tomas Ross ("a unique gem") and afterword from Toonder's grandson, Irwin M. Toonder.

I had heard of it before and jotted it down for future reference, but forgot all about it until receiving the gift wrapped facsimile edition last December. If you want to get the real feeling of reading a lost detective story, the facsimile of a typescript complete with handwriting corrections gets that job done. On the downside, the first three chapters have a lot of faded, hard to read pages of text, which fortunately improved to make it as readable as intended. How does it stack up as a detective story written during the Golden Age's golden window, the years 1935 to 1937? Let's dive in and find out!

Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is narrated by Captain Sixma, of the S.S. Wega, ferrying a cargo of "characters" from Rotterdam to Montevideo and Buenos Aires. There's the jovial, roving reporter from Chicago, Tim MacNab, who takes on the duties of shipboard sleuth. Otto Braun, a German stockbroker, gladly taking on the role of murderable murderee. Further more, there are William Jones, a fat cat from London, Juanita Lloret, a dancer from Vienna, Father Dominicus, a missionary from South Africa, Dr. Johan van der Steen, a sea sick botanist, Mrs. Wijers, a Dutch invalided widow and her private nurse, Tilly van Doorne. Finally, Gustav and Lotte Herchel from Zurich, Switzerland. So a nice, neatly packed cast of characters for an intimate shipboard mystery with Otto Braun setting himself as prospective victim. Not long after lifting anchor, Braun is shot through the head in his cabin while making notes in his diary.

Tim MacNab rises to the occasion, positioning himself as the detective, but Captain Sixma is a responsible, sensible down-to-earth Dutchman – who sees trouble ahead. Reasoning "a person who has committed one murder can very easily commit a second one." That fatal failure would be his responsibility as captain. Regrettably, Captain Sixma's prediction comes true when a second person is killed leaving MacNab and Captain Sixma to chase a murderer who left two bodies behind and littered the ship with clues and red herrings. Like the torn pages from a diary, a scrap of old newspaper, a rosary bead, a whiff of perfume, a dying message and an astonishing lack of alibis.

This all makes for a well-paced, entertaining enough whodunit and I'm sure you can breeze through the 2017 edition (i.e. finished product) within an hour or two, which is Tim MacNab Seeks a Story greatest strength as a story and greatest weakness as a detective story. Technically, the plot holds together well enough, but the plot is very prosaic and unimaginative. When the murderer was revealed, my response was, "oh, that fits, I guess." I would have been more impressed had it been written in 1927, because its brief experiments with false-solutions and a dying message would have made it somewhat prescient en route to the 1930s. What's more, once everything was revealed, all I could see was a better alternative solution than the one presented.

I still very much enjoyed reading Tim MacNab Seeks a Story, but that doesn't take away it's pretty basic and average for a 1930s detective novel. I genuinely wish it had been better than it turned out to be, because all my attempts to find another good, classic Dutch detective author like Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort has been less than inspiring. So, historically, Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is an interesting curiosity for sure, but not very satisfying as a detective story originally written in 1937. The reader has been warned.

Anyone interested in me re-reviewing Docter's trio of Daan Vissering mysteries or do you want to stubbornly go on, until finding something really good again? Let me know below.

Note for the curious: in case your curious about that better, more satisfying alternative solution (MILD SPOILERS/ROT13): fb gur svefg ivpgvz jnf gur hacyrnfnag Bggb Oenha jub jnf abg nobir n fcbg oynpxznvy, juvyr gur frpbaq ivpgvz vf Thfgni Urepury. Gung bcraf gur qbbe gb gur rgreany gevnatyr. Ybggr Urepury unf n frperg ybire naq vf orvat oynpxznvyrq ol Oenha. Fb gurl qrpvqr gb xvyy gjb oveqf jvgu bar fgbar ol xvyyvat obgu ure uhfonaq naq gurve oynpxznvyre qhevat gur gevc, juvpu jbhyq serr gurz hc va zber guna bar jnl. Lbh pna onfvpnyyl cvpx rirelbar nf ure frperg ybire/pb-zheqrere qrcraqvat jung xvaq bs fhecevfr lbh jnag gb tb sbe. Vqrnyyl, vg fubhyq or rvgure gur pncgnva (haeryvnoyr aneengbe) be gur ercbegre uvzfrys, ohg bar bs gur perj zrzoref jub'f nyjnlf va gur onpxtebhaq jbhyq nyfb jbex. Lrf, vg'f abg terng cybggvat vs lbh pna fybg nal ahzore bs punenpgref vagb gur ebyr bs zheqrere, ohg urer vg pbhyq unir jbexrq.

After typing that out, I realized Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is Deck Dorval's Een jacht vaart uit (A Yacht Sets Sail, 1947) all over again. I'll try to pick something substantially better next. I have something on the pile that'll do the trick. A locked room-trick!