Straight to Your Heart: Case Closed, vol. 95 by Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama's 95th volume of Case Closed picks up where the previous, absolutely packed volume ended that was crammed with familiar faces, storyline developments and a cliffhanger to a tantalizing murder case featuring two imaginative impossible crimes – apparently committed the long-nosed Tengu of Japanese folklore. First a short recap. Conan has temporarily returned as Jimmy Kudo to attend a class trip to Kyoto to link up with Rachel complete with will-they-won't-they overtones, but their class trip runs into a class reunion of a university film club that quickly ended in bloody murder.

Their screenwriter is brutally murdered in his hotel room with a big pool of blood and bloody footprints staining the ceiling, which suggests the killer yanked the victim up in the air to kill him and then casually walked across the ceiling. And walked, or flew, out an open window on the 15th floor. A second murder is committed in the open street with another trail of bloody footprints walking sideways along the wall. In this closing chapter, the murderer attempts a third murder with footprints from an apparently invisible man approaching him on a bridge, but, by that time, Jimmy had already closed the net around the killer.

I think this story is far better for its long-awaited developments in the overarching storyline with all its character-arcs than the fantastically-staged series of impossible slayings, which are excellent in presentation, but poor and unconvincing in execution – especially the first murder and the last attempt are unconvincing. I suppose the trick for the first murder could have a whole lot more convincing in a smaller, more intimate setting, but not here or on this scale. I didn't think much about the other impossibilities with the inexplicable appearance/disappearance of the Tengu (SPOILER/ROT13), fbeg bs, tvivat njnl gur zheqrere, orpnhfr gur crefba jub jnf greebevmrq ol vg unq ng yrnfg gb or va ba vg. Lbh pna'g uvqr fhpu n guvat vafvqr fbzrbar'f ubgry ebbz, fhqqrayl fpner uvz jvgu naq znxr vg qvfnccrne, hayrff gung crefba vf chyyvat gur fgevatf be vf na nppbzcyvfu. A commendable attempt to weave four impossible crimes into a fairly short story, but again, far better for the storyline-and character-arc developments.

The second story deals with the direct fallout of the previous story, because Jimmy Kudo, "the top teen detective of the east," resurfacing to solve a murder case involving well-known filmmakers has started a buzz. Kudo's return ("Rumors of His Death Debunked") trended on social media, became the top news story online and attracted the attention of the news media. So now Conan is in deep trouble as reporters with camera crews besiege his home and everyone who knows Jimmy Kudo, which is bound to get noticed by the Black Organization. Meanwhile, Anita and the Junior Detective League go to the home of classmate who failed to show up at school that day. When they enter the home, they find the first of a trail of clue to an indoors treasure hunt and they fear the little girl might have gotten trapped somewhere while following the clues. So they retrace their girl's step by following the clues her grandmother left behind. Yes, a very minor story intended to break away from Conan's precarious situation and the growing interest in Jimmy Kudo's return, but by no means a bad story. Where, and how, they discovered the girl involves something I always imagined would make for a first-rate locked room-trick, but, to my knowledge, it has yet to be used. So overall a better story than the previous landmark story and Conan learns the name of the Black Organization's boss. We all know who he really is, right?

The fallout from Jimmy Kudo's headline grabbing return continues into the third story, but also has a pretty good, self-contained detective story to offer.

Richard Moore netted an aristocratic client, Gunzo Morooka, who received a threatening note to stay clear of the Black Bunny Club ("...if you value your life"). So they meet at the Black Bunny Club to discuss the case. Black Bunny Club is a "gentleman's club" where hostesses are dressed as scantily-clad bunnies raising the question how Conan and Rachel were even allowed on the premise. When food and dinner arrives, one of the bunnies is poisoned and hospitalized with only three suspects who could have poisoned her drink. So, on the surface, it's the customary whom-of-the-three-did-it staple of this series, but how the drink was poisoned is rather ingenious and makes the story standout. Case Closed is going to be interesting study material in the future for how the traditional 20th century detective story adapted itself to the 21th century. So good story that also has Toru Amuro as Moore's disciple to look over Conan's shoulder with a cliffhanger that would been a perfect conclusion to this volume.

The last two chapters begins a story that will be concluded in the next volume and deals with "a serial killer who targets female cops." More precisely, the female cops of the traffic division and colleagues of the series regulars Yumi Miyamoto and Neako Miike. At the end of the last chapter, the serial killer left three bodies behind and his second victim left a cryptic dying message: a bloody finger pointing towards a swing set on a child's playground. So we'll find out what that's all about in the next volume.

So, when it comes to the individual plots, this volume was a mixed bag, but very rewarding for long-time fans of the series as the game finally appears to be afoot. Like Ho-Ling said in his 2018 review, the stories show "Aoyama is busy moving his pieces for an event which might very well be the ending of this series." It really comes across like that, but then again, this volume was originally published in 2018 and vol. 107 was published earlier this year. So maybe not yet, but look forward to the next volume.

And Cauldron Bubble (1951) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's And Cauldron Bubble (1951), thirty-ninth novel in the Anthony Bathurst series, begins with Lady Blanchflower being summoned to the bedside of her elderly, dying husband, Sir Hugo Blanchflower, who needs to unburden his conscience – whispering a terrible, long-held secret into her ear. Sir Hugo passed away moments later and left behind more than a grieving widow ("...something like Terror had joined hands with Sorrow").

Over the following years, Lady Blanchflower was allowed to continue to live in the cloister apartments of Quinster Castle by the Duke of Quinster. Every evening, Lady Blanchflower is escorted to the Red Deer Hotel for dinner by one of its permanent residents, Mrs. Whitburn. She became Lady Blanchflower's "inseparable evening companion" in the Red Deer's dining room among the permanents, regulars, locals and commercial travelers. So nothing to indicate something suspicious was a afoot and "the two ladies were in better spirits" than normally, but, one morning, Mrs. Whitburn is discovered missing from the Red Deer Hotel and her bed doesn't appear to have been slept in. She was last seen escorting Lady Blanchflower back home, but nobody answers at the cloister apartments.

After several hours go by without a sign of life, a police goes around to have a look at the cloister apartment to make a gruesome discovery: Lady Blanchflower's body lying on the floor of the lounge with a silk stocking, belonging to Mrs. Whitburn, "twisted tight" around her neck and a man's wig is found under her body – no trace of her dinner companion. Even worse, the Duke of Quinster was in residence at the time his dear, old friend was dastardly murdered ("...this is an outrage") and refuses "to allow any damned local policeman to take a case of this importance" ("nothin' less than Scotland Yard itself for Lil Blanchflower!"). Scotland Yard dispatches Inspector MacMorran to Quinster Castle and he brought along that amateur meddler of renown, Anthony Bathurst.

However, the Chief Constable and the local police inspector, Guthrie, aren't exactly thrilled the Duke called in Scotland Yard over their head. And even less thrilled when learning MacMorran brought along an amateur detective to work on the case ("does he hold your hand—or do you hold his?"). But it adds a nice, welcome bit of friction to their joined investigation, especially when Bathurst gets it wrong a few times. In his defense, this is a particular tricky, multi-pronged problem.

Firstly, what happened to the missing Mrs. Whitburn? Should she be considered as a suspect on the run or another victim? If the latter, what happened to her body? Whom of the two was the primary target and who's collateral damage? A difficult problem that needs time and some spadework to resolve, but the real stumbling block in their investigation proves to be motive. Not a ghost of a motive can be found to harm either of the elderly, inoffensive ladies nor does the missing Mrs. Whitburn has a reason to kill Lady Blanchflower. That's both the biggest strength and greatest flaw of And Cauldron Bubble.

Steve Barge, the Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classical Mystery Novel, called And Cauldron Bubble as a return to the whodunits in his introduction to this new Dean Street Press edition, but it would more accurate to call it a whydunit to the point where it probably would have worked better as an inverted mystery – considering motive is the only thing obscuring the murderer's identity. Not locked doors, unbreakable alibis or false-identities. I can't deny Flynn cooked up a very clever, incredibly ruthless scheme in which the murderer is practically gifted a golden window of opportunity to commit an unsolvable crime. That's no exaggeration and the reason why not only Bathurst struggled with finding a solution, but everyone armchair detective looking over his shoulder. Flynn sewed it up so tightly, you either have to be Mycroft Holmes or a super-AI to reason the correct answer from the scant few nebulous hints (not clues). Sure, you can say in hindsight that the clue of the note saying, "Come quickly—Mistress away," is obvious when you realize Flynn plotted the whole thing, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. So that the very fallible Bathurst reasoned the too well-hidden truth from these nebulous hints is something of a Herculean achievement.

Flynn was being far too clever for his own good here and that came at the expense of the fair play, but not the only thing that irked me a little. Firstly, what was the point of opening the story with that deathbed scene? I'm still not entirely sure what that was all about. Secondly, Flynn overlooked an important consequence of (SPOILER/ROT13) ohelvat n obql ng gur obggbz bs n ynetr urnc bs jnez, fbsg naq fzbxvat znaher. Rira vs gur zheqrere jber birenyyf, ur jnfa'g tbvat gb pbzr bhg pyrna fzryyvat yvxr n ebfr tneqra. Ur jbhyq arrq obgu n tbbq fpeho qbja naq jnfu uvf pybgurf, juvpu pbhyq or qbar jvgubhg trggvat pnhtug, ohg gung fzryy jnf pbzvat jvgu uvz vagb gur ubgry. Gung fubhyq unir orra abgvprq be erzrzorerq nsgre gur obql jnf qht hc.

And Cauldron Bubble ended up being a mixed bag of tricks with some good, even brilliant ideas, but lacking in execution and can only be recommended to fans of the series on account of Bathurst trying to grapple with a murder without an apparent motive or viable suspects. If you're new to Flynn and Bathurst, I recommend starting at an earlier point in the series.

Murder as a Fine Art (1953) by Carol Carnac

E.C.R. Lorac's Murder as a Fine Art (1953), as by "Carol Carnac," is the ninth, or possibly tenth, title in the Chief Detective-Inspector Julian Rivers series and a novel listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) describing an unusual impossible murder involving a marble statue – a statue "too heavy for anyone to have moved from its plinth." So it was added to the locked room/impossible crime wishlist, but Murder as a Fine Art had been out-of-print for decades until fairly recently.

Martin Edwards and the British Library Crime Classics have done great work in revitalizing Lorac's legacy with their series of reprints, but hardly expected the obscure, practically forgotten Murder as a Fine Art to be reprinted anytime soon. I expected Lorac's best-known locked room mystery, Rope's End, Rogue's End (1942), to make it back to print before Murder in St. John's Wood (1934) or the other Carnac title, The Double Turn (1956). Not that I'm complaining as Murder as a Fine Art proved to be an excellent addition to the run of Lorac reprints.

Murder as a Fine Art takes place against the backdrop of the Ministry of Fine Arts, created "during that short period of optimism following World War Two," but, like so many fictitious British ministries, it was a bureaucratic disaster from the start. First of all, the ministry is roofed under "a white elephant of a building," Medici House, which had been vacated by another ministry ("you might have smelt a rat when the Ministry of Food agreed to vacate it"). Joyce-Lawrence, the first Minister of Fine Arts, wanted to put together a collection of art works of "National Importance," but he only had enough to rake together a collection of obscure, often unsigned contemporary paintings – referred to "the Minister's funnies." Joyce-Lawrence died in office and was replaced by an economic-minded, competent administrator who made a lot of cuts and trimmings to the ministry, before passing away himself. So the third and current minister, Humphry David, finds himself in charge of a bloated bureaucratic apparatus with an incomprehensible, practically worthless collection of modern paintings and an army of Civil Servants who don't know anything about art, but some pretend they do. Edwards aptly described this ministry as a "mildly Kafkaesque establishment" in his introduction.

One such Civil Servant is Edwin Pompfret, the Deputy to the Permanent Secretary, who likes modern art because it's modern to do so and dresses for the part. Pompfret has an artistic vendetta against the enormous, several tons weighing marble statue of Earl Manderby gracing the elegant stairway. Pompfret hates the marble monstrosity with a passion ("...labels us as Philistines") and has suggested more than once to topple it off its plinth, because it would be "a wonderful sight to see it bounce down the stairs." So when his broken, mangled body is found lying on the stairs surrounded by smashed, bloodstained chunks of marble, everyone assumed he had accidentally killed himself trying to topple Earl Manderby. Chief Detective-Inspector Julian Rivers arrives on the scene with Detective-Inspector Lancing in tow to announce Pompfret was murdered. How could anyone have moved that chunk of marble? Let alone tipping it down a staircase towards the obliging victim! This murder comes in the wake of Humphry David getting suspicious something very dodgy is going on, somewhere, in his ministry.

So an enticing premise to a story running along three different lines, neatly brought together. There is the well-realized backdrop and depiction of the fictitious, slightly satirical ministry and digs at modern art. Lorac basically smashed bureaucratic skulduggery together artistic shenanigans with amusing results. Not quite the Ministry of Administrative Affairs from Yes, Minister, but enjoyable nonetheless. And provides for an excellent backdrop for a good, old-fashioned and theatrically-staged impossible murder.

That impossible murder is the second line, or plot-thread, showing Lorac approached the detective story in her own way and the locked room mystery was no exception. Most of theorizing and proposing of false-solutions comes from gossip at the ministry with lunchroom theories covering everything from carjacks to vibrations from the basement accidentally toppling the statue. You know, the kind of solutions and tricks a normal person would suggest to such a problem, but Lorac provided a solution that's both bonkers and oddly practical (ROT13: “abj, zl znfgrecvrpr, Jvyr R. Pblbgr, Fhcre Travhf!”). Brutalism applied to the art of murder! What really deserves a chef's kiss is using such a trick inside a historical building housing the Ministry of Fine Arts. Even though the clueing is a touch spotty, simply as a long-overlooked impossible crime novel, Murder as a Fine Art is worth renewed attention from locked room aficionados. Lastly, arguably the weakest aspect of the story and plot, the rather plain procedural investigation from the dry, colorless Rivers and his many colleagues doing routine work, while Rivers and Lancing ask questions. They do a thorough, competent job showing Lorac's detective fiction can be classed as an ancestor of the post-WWII police procedural, but the investigative parts lacks the color and imagination of everything surrounding it. A routine approach to a decidedly non-routine case or ordinary murder. Something you simply notice while reading along, but not something to detract from the plot or diminish my enjoyment.

So, all in all, Murder as a Fine Art is a surprisingly good vintage mystery from the dying, twilight years of the Golden Age detective story and maybe my favorite Lorac, so far. Highly recommended!

By the way, I can already taste the disagreement in the air over the impossible crime, but, unlike Earl Manderby, I'm not budging an inch. Murder as a Fine Art is one of the ten best impossible crime novels from the 1950s!

The Hit List: Top 7 Most Murderable "Victims" in Detective Fiction

So over the past year, or two, the idea for a rogues' gallery of the classic detective fiction emerged from the comments left on some of my reviews by Scott, a regular in the comments, but not a comic-like gallery with the expected suspects – like Professor Moriarity, Arnold Zeck, Arsène Lupin and Renya Karasuma. A gallery of the most odious, morally reprehensible and murderable victims. The type that makes it entirely understandable someone went through the trouble of putting together a clockwork alibi or create a locked room illusion just to get a stab at them.

I started compiling a list half a year ago, but thought it too basic a list with too many recently reviewed titles on them reads on them. So it got shelved for the time being. It has been months since "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohir Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50" was posted and needed a filler-post. I really want to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorites from a Decade of (Shin) Honkaku Translations," but have to wait until everything published this year has been read and reviewed. Yukito Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991) sounds like it could become my favorite in the series and don't want to count out Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947) or Yasuhiko Nishizawa's Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995).

So probably won't get around to doing that list until January, February of next year. I didn't want to do a basic list with simple favorites from a specific author, publisher or go back to the locked room well again. Believe me, I could have easily done "The Hit List: Top 10 Locked Room Mystery Novels That Need to Be Reprinted" part two. That brought me back to this list of murder victims who made us either glance questionably at our moral compass or outright root for the killer to get away with it. Putting the list together was not as easy as thought.

I was dissatisfied with the original top 10 with too many entries feeling like filler-entries compared to the marque entries. So decided to trim the list down to seven and pair each entry to one of the seven deadly sins, but that proved to be too awkward and distracting. If you scroll down the list, you find a few characters who could be paired with gluttony and greed, but those sins would underplay the reason why they made the list in the first place. So ended up with just seven entries.

 

The malefactors are presented in order of appearance:

Charles Augustus Milverton from "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" (1904) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905)

Why not start out with Charles Augustus Milverton, "the king of all the blackmailers," who has the distinction of not only being one of the OG of "murderable victims," but the poster boy of "murderable victims" of the pre-1930s detective story – before financiers and bankers took over the torch. I can't remember how many times an old-timely mystery referred to blackmailers as bugs or vermin who deserved to be exterminated. So their murder is often likened with community service. Not without reason. Milverton planned to publicly destroy a young woman to ensure future victims are more compliant to his demands. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a knights errant, a spot of burglary, but they end up witnessing Milverton getting shot and killed. They do absolutely nothing about it. Holmes even tells Lestrade "there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge." That remained prevailing opinion on blackmailers for decades.

Mary Gregor from The Silver Scale Mystery (1931) a.p.a. Murder of a Lady by Anthony Wynne

Another common victim of the early 20th century detective is the cruel, penny pinching family patriarch, or matriarch, who make their relatives dance like puppets from their purse strings. Mary Gregor is different for two reasons: she's not the family matriarch, but the sister of the patriarch and her hold over the family is a very disturbing, subtle kind of evil. Mary Gregor acted like a benevolent dictator who could wrap the most spiteful slander in the kindest words and always willing to forgive people for sins she invented. That alone hardly warrants murder, but her project to destroy the bonds between her nephew, his wife and two-year-old son in order to take the child comes a lot closer. Mary Gregor stands out as a subtle piece of evil not only in this early Golden Age detective novel, but among Wynne's own work that can be marred by Victorian-era melodrama and histrionic characterization.

Sandra, the Fat Lady from The Fair Murder (1933) by Nicholas Brady

I'm not easily shocked and have even gotten some funny looks for laughing at the blunt, edgy try-hard shit of Michael Slade, but Brady's The Fair Murder managed to do it. A detective novel deceptively presented as a weird, offbeat whodunit about the murder of the Sandra, the Fat Lady, who's found stabbed to death in her tent and it falls to Reverend Ebenezer Buckle to catch her killer – which doesn't sound too shocking or off the beaten path. However, what Reverend Buckle uncovers towards the ends makes The Fair Murder one of the darkest, grisly 1930s mysteries and Sandra the most deserving character to have a dagger shoved down her gullet. A monster without the excuse of being an actual monster.

Samuel Ratchett from The Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

I'm sure many feel about Samuel Ratchett, an alias of Cassetti, the way I feel about Sandra and holds a similar "vintage victim" position as Charles Augustus Milverton. Samuel Ratchett, an American businessman, traveling on the Orient Express asks fellow passenger and sleuth extraordinaire, Hercule Poirot, to be his bodyguard. Poirot turns him down and after a restless night on the Istanbul-Callais coach, Ratchett is found covered with stab wounds in his berth. Poirot quickly figures out Ratchett's real identity and the shocking crime he has been running away from. Leave it to Christie to exploit the "murderable victim" trope up to the hilt to create its most infamous example.

Quentin Trowte from The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) by Christopher Bush

The reprint renaissance has, over the past ten years, unearthed several new names for this list and Quentin Trowte immediately stood out when I read The Case of the Missing Minutes back in 2018. An elderly, psychological sadist who has custody of his 10-year-old granddaughter and they live together in a dark, remote house – where she's home schooled and sleeps in a windowless bedroom. When the servants in their cottage hear screams comings from the house at night, Ludovic Travers goes out to investigate. Travers not only finds a dying Trowte, stabbed in the back, but a frightened, malnourished child with evidence something disturbing had been going on at night in that house. Quentin Trowte and Mary Gregor would be a match made in hell or a child's nightmare.

Miss Octavia Osborne from Murder in the Family (1936) by James Ronald

I was tempted to drop Miss Octavia Osborne in favor of Paul A. Moxon and Sydney Deeping (Freeman Wills Crofts' The Mystery on the Channel, 1931) or Jesse Grimsby (Bruce Elliott's You'll Die Laughing, 1945), but they felt too like filler entries. Miss Octavia Osborne almost feels harmless compared to the previous entries, however, I noted in my review she establishes herself as top 10 material for most murderable victim in a detective story. Someone who's described by her youngest relatives as an acid-tongued, sniffy-nosed old megalomaniac who takes great pleasure in nurturing grudges over years and even decades. She takes even greater pleasure in turning down her brother, who married against her wishes, when he's let go from his job. So needs money to carry over his family, until he finds a new position. Now turning someone down is one thing, but Miss Octavia does it by inflicting as much damage as possible to point where you'd think she's baiting her family in taking a swing at her. Again, not the worst offender on the list, but thought at the time she deserved to make the cut.

Battery Sergeant-major William George Yule from Subject—Murder (1945) by Clifford Witting

You would assume the worst character in World War II detective novel would be found on the Axis side, but Battery Sergeant-major William George Yule, “Cruel Yule” to his enemies, abuses his position at a training camp to abuse and bully everyone below him – physically and mentally. Some of his victims were transferred or demoted while others have committed suicide. Not even animals were sparred his tortures. A sadistic bully of the first water whose end comes with “the harsh, brutal justice of the Dark Ages” executed with all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective story. Brutal enough for a ping of pity even for character like Yule. Very much deserving of his spot in this rogues' gallery.

 

You know what, maybe I should have just done a top 10 favorite hybrid mysteries instead of holding a beauty pageant for corpses. This was a terrible idea, Scott. No idea why you bothered suggesting it. ;)

Notes for the curious: I didn't want to clutter up and derail this list with the first entry, but "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" feels like it could have been written by Doyle's brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung. If Hornung had written it, the story would have ended a little differently. Raffles and Bunny would have stepped over Milverton's body, pocketed the table silver and send a complimentary bouquet of flowers to a certain woman the next day.

Last One to Leave (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

Benjamin Stevenson's first two Ernest Cunningham novels, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2024), are not only the two highlights of 2025, but represent another step towards a Second Golden Age for the detective story – only the holiday theme kept from dipping into the third novel. I realize it has been a newly established tradition for Christmas to come earlier, and earlier, each year, but figured a review of Everyone this Christmas has a Secret (2024) would still be on early side.

So decided to hold off on Everyone this Christmas has a Secret, until at least the leaves start to turn brownish. Fortunately, the Ernest Cunningham series is not Stevenson's first stab at the detective story. Stevenson wrote two novels about disgraced TV producer Jack Quick, She Lies in the Vines (2019) and Either Side of Midnight (2020), of which the second is an impossible crime novel concerning a shooting on live television ("One million witnesses... One impossible murder"). That one is currently on the big pile, but there are also two short novels, Find Us (2021) and Last One to Leave (2022), collected under the title Fool Me Twice (2024). Last One to Leave sounded like an intriguing take on the classically-styled detective story with a modern framing. Or, to be more precise, the premise struck me as specifically tailored for playing the Grandest Game in the World.

Ryan Jaegan is a widowed father of a 12-year-old daughter, Lydia, who entered his name for competition thrown by a notorious Youtube channel, CashSmashers. A channel with millions of subscribers, hundreds of millions of views and a major sponsorship from a gambling company, providing them with ample resources to pull some outrageous stunts – like dropping parachutes with sacks of money from a helicopter ("they were chasing clicks and views, after all"). They also do competitions with big money prizes. Such "Last One to Leave" contests where a group holds on to a luxury car with the person who holds on to it the longest gets to keep it. Ryan has little money and has debts with the wrong kind of people. So reluctantly agrees to participate and finds himself competing with six other people for a clifftop mansion worth four million dollars.

This contest is similar to the car contest, but much more involved with more room and opportunities for shenanigans. The rules are deceivingly simple: each contestant places one of their hands on a wall and, from there, they're free to roam and move around as much as they like as long as their hand continues to touch the house. Last person to let go wins the four million dollar mansion. Ryan is not the only one there to win the game and the CashSmashers team aren't above manipulating the contest, because "they need high drama, big twists, to make things viral."

So two days and several eliminations later, sleep deprivation, muscle cramp and lack of food begin to take toll, but Ryan and the remaining participants get really tested when one of them turns up apparently dead – lying next to the bag of money with a knife sticking out of him. Is it really a real murder or simply the CashSmashers stepping of their game now that the remaining contestants are vulnerable? They told them over the speakers to keep playing, but what if the body is real? But how can "you commit a murder unseen in a house full of cameras" where everyone's movement is restricted to the length of their arms?

The solution to the impossible stabbing does not disappoint. Not merely as a clever new wrinkle on the "invisible assailant" impossibility, but the cleverly-hidden, fairly clued and foreshadowed murderer complete with a very fitting motive. That's impressive considering Last One to Leave is basically short, tightly packed novella/short novel playing out like a tale of suspense, but framing the story and plot as a closely controlled, constantly surveillanced contest allowed Stevenson to play up/exploit both the suspense and puzzle elements simultaneously. A good example is how the characters refuse to take their hand off the wall when faced with emergencies and even a possible murder, which also helps to enforce the impossibility of their situation. And makes for one hell of an ending when Ryan exposes the murderer!

What I liked even more than the superb blending of suspense with an excellently played out impossible crime, is to get another fine example of a good, old-fashioned detective story with a gritty, contemporary setting, characters and motivation – fitted together as naturally as a dagger, stingy patriarch and a locked library. Last One to Leave was very reminiscent of A. Carver's The Dry Diver Drownings (2024) in that regard, in which a bunch of YouTubers chase clicks, but, instead of a crazy contest, it's about shooting a creepypasta video interrupted by several locked room murders. So glad to finally see these type of (locked room) mysteries appear in the West, because it's something I have come to associate with Japanese shin honkaku mystery writers and anime-and manga mysteries over the years. Yes, whether you like suspense and thrillers or the puzzle-oriented detective story and locked room puzzles, Stevenson's Last One to Leave has it all in a compact, well-paced story. One for the 2025 best-of list!

Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss

For years, Jim Noy, of The Invisible Event, has been running an irregular, sporadic series of blog-posts, "A Little Help for My Friends – Finding a Modern Locked Room Mystery for TomCat," delving into the impossible crime fiction mostly published outside of the circle of the traditionalists crime writers – results have varied wildly. From the fairly average and interesting, but flawed, to the terrible and unspeakably awful (e.g. Andrew Mayne's Angel Killer, 2014). So you can Jim's reviews have been mostly "BEWARE OF HACKS" warning signs, however, one of the reviews looked promising.

Last year, Jim reviewed an ambitious, wildly imaginative hybrid mystery novel, Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss, which mixes the traditional detective story with futuristic technology and a drop of native magic.

If you have followed this blog in recent years, you know I've been bitten by the hybrid mystery bug. I suppose you can trace this newfound obsession back to discovering the science-fiction mysteries by John Russell Fearn and Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet (1942), but the Japanese shin honkaku hybrid mysteries really inflamed it. A trend that started with Yamaguchi Masaya's Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Death, 1989) and Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017) which tosses actual zombies inside, what would have otherwise been, fairly normal detective novels. Letting the undead loose inside a traditionally-styled, fair play mystery is not merely a novelty to put a new spin on things, but it allowed the authors to put an entirely new dimension on the detective story and its many tropes – like the isolated setting and locked room mystery. Takekuni Kitayama's time-bending reincarnation mystery Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders, 2002) and Kie Houjou's "Ryuuzen Clan" series that closed the deal and sold me on hybrid mysteries.

They're also the reason why I hesitated picking up Morpuss' Black Lake Manor. Jim praised Black Lake Manor for "being mind-and genre-bending stuff in the best way" and the comment "not even sure if thus is an impossible crime novel at all" adding more intrigue. But could it be as good as Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022). Well, I was in the mood for a hybrid mystery and it was either Edward D. Hoch's The Frankenstein Factory (1975) or Black Lake Manor, but have already reviewed several of Hoch's short stories and collections recently. So why not take Jim up on one of his risky recommendations, but where to even begin?

Black Lake Manor takes place across a period of nearly 250 years, stretching from 1804 to 2045, but all take place around Black Lake Manor on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. So I'll gloss over a lot of background details and characters in order to avoid massive spoilers and keep this post from resembling a bloated canal corpse.

This sprawling, ambitious story begins in 1804 when a storm wrecked a ship, Pride of Whitby, in Pachena Bay and only seven men made it to shore, but they had guided their lifeboat into the mouth of the cave when "a roar from overhead had heralded the collapse of the cliff face" – which trapped them inside. The main storyline is interspersed with short, to the point chapters following their harrowing ordeal. The next dozen, or so, chapters skip between 2023, 2025 and 2045 to introduce the hybrid elements to this detective story with the two most important (for the purpose of this review) characters being Lincoln Shan and his ex-fiance, Ella Manning.

Lincoln Shan is a member of the Akaht First Nations band, of Vancouver Island, some of whom have a special ability, only once in their lifetime, to turn back time six hours by saying kuwitap ("...and the wolf ate time"). Lincoln used this one-time ability in 2025 to earn a small fortune and setup of his own tech company, Orcus Technology. Twenty years later, Lincoln has become a tech billionaire whose company owned half of British Columbia and "more oil rigs than most small nations," despite presenting himself to the world as an eco-warrior.

In 2045, Lincoln's company had made a huge breakthrough in hard light research. They had overcome the one major problem with hard light, "ridiculous amounts of power required to turn photons into something solid," which they succeeded in making portable. Now all you need to create a hard light, life sized copy of yourself is a small, white disk costing only five cents to produce. Lincoln calls them ghost dancers, a nod to his Akaht heritage, demonstrates them at an exclusive get together at Black Lake Manor. Where most of the hundreds of guests present are ghost dancers with the actual people being scattered all over the world, but a storm provides a far more effective demonstration of how realistic the ghost dancers are when it takes out the data connection. Just like that, the guests disappeared, "champagne flutes and wine glasses crashing to the floor, followed by a flutter of white discs," leaving only a handful of real people behind at the manor – nicely setting the stage for murder. Lincoln's body is found the next morning in his locked office under circumstances resembling a ritual sacrifice!

I already omitted a lot of details, and characters, and there's not much that can be told pass this point without treading into spoiler territory. So let me first try to answer Jim's question: is this actually an impossible crime novel? My answer: probably. Black Lake Manor obviously is not a straightforward impossible crime where locked doors, closed windows and CCTV footage create a locked room murder or impossible crime, but the circumstances surrounding and leading up to the murder. So more of an impossible crime in retrospect, when you get the full picture, which perhaps has gotten a bit lost in the wealth of ideas. I suppose you can compare it to the granddaddy of hybrid mysteries, The Caves of Steel (1953/54) by Isaac Asimov, which technically counts as a locked room mystery, but labeling it as one is sort of misrepresenting it. The Caves of Steel and Black Lake Manor blended genres which may, or may not, have led to an incidental impossible crime or two. For example, Lincoln was followed into his study by a ghost dancer, apparently providing an easy solution, but the ghost dancers have a no-harm constraint similar to Asimov's First Law of Robotics from The Caves of Steel. When you toss in some electronic, automatically sealing door locks, possibility of AI operated ghost dancers and time manipulations, you can understand why it's status as an impossible crime is not entirely clear.

That surprised and pleased me the most. I was a little bit skeptical and hardly expected it would be on the same level of the aforementioned Japanese hybrid mysteries, which have already spoiled me, but Morpuss and Black Lake Manor more than held their own! Morpuss deserves a ton of credit for the clarity he brings to an ambitiously structured detective story playing around with multiple timelines, time resets and futuristic technology by telling only what important to the story or relevant to the plot. So the story doesn't get bogged down by having to explain what can be done with the tech or how time-bending ability works at its core, which still got a banger of an ending out of it with a solution. Showing the hybrid mystery unlocks all kind of doors previously closed for the classically-styled detective story. Let me tell you, the nitty, gritty technical aspect of murder makes for a darkly comical visual image and the second time one of these bizarre detective novels made me laugh at someone getting brutally murdered. That's not even the best or most surprising part of the solution! More importantly, Morpuss didn't neglect to drop some clues and red herrings, while manipulating and toying around with time rewinds and hard light tech.

So the only thing to nitpick about is that Morpuss has not only setup a series, but a whole world, he's unlikely to return to. From what I gathered, Morpuss writes standalones exploring his favorite theme, "a twist on reality, and playing with the consequences," which started with Five Minds (2021) in which five people share one body – "possibly with a murderer." A Trial in Three Acts (2025) looks to be a cross between the theatrical, Golden Age-style mystery and a courtroom drama. Sounds suspiciously normal, but it's about an on-stage decapitation and may, or may not, be another impossible crime. Well, only one way to find out.

I know I'm risking creating a rift in the space-time continuum, but this has to be second or third time I end up 100% agreeing with Jim. Black Lake Manor is fantastic in every definition of the word. Highly recommended!

Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

P.J. Fitzsimmons' Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022) is the fifth, of currently nine, novels starring Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly, idler and sleuth, who accepts an invitation from his mother to join her on the Côte d'Azur – where he intends to have an awkward confrontation ("...did you arrange to pop off Papa?"). Anty travels to the Riviera Royale, "an ornate, Victorian-era hotel and casino," on the island of Cap Royale. When he arrives, Anty learns from his mother a violent death has taken and the killer is scheduled to be executed.

The victim is a clown, Malandrino the Magnificent, who was touring the Riviera by steam yacht as part of Deebee Digby's Cirque d'Azur. What remained of Malandrino, dressed in a mouse custom, was found in the cage of the circus elephant, Thumpy, where the animal had stepped on him ("repeatedly, by all evidence"). Deebee intends to recuperate the financial loss suffered from losing his center ringer by executing Thumpy in "the most spectacular fashion possible" and "sell tickets to the event." Previous novels shown Anty to be a friend to the animals, striking up a friendship with a cemetery crow in The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022), who's naturally appalled at the prospect ("has this elephant received due process under French law?"). Anty is determined to proof Thumpy's innocence and prevent Deedee from being publicly executing him.

Good on him, however, have to admit the following exchange between Anty and Deedee made me laugh when Deedee tells Anty electrocution is going to be the method of execution.

 

Anty: "you can't electrocute Thumpy."

Deedee: "I wouldn't have thought so either, but the manufacturer stands by his generator. I have a written guarantee."

 

Fortunately, true to his intrepid nature as a sleuth hound, Anty uncovers clues and evidence Malandrino was "murdered by human hand" with more than enough motives to go around – not only for torturing animals. Malandrino is one of those characters whom Scott, a regular in the comments, would probably nominate for the Hall of Shame of "murderable victims" who had it coming. Just one problem: everyone with a motive also have a collective alibi. Everyone was on a yacht out on sea enjoying a seafood barbecue and fireworks ("alibis all round"). They're the bunch of strange, eccentric characters you'd expect from a detective story with a circus background. You have Malandrino's replacement act, Norton Bean, who's better known as "Beano, The Astounding Bounding Bean." A bigger hack reviewer than yours truly, Max Minefield, who considers himself to be the circus critic. Bidelia Mimpley and Myrtle Biddicomb, known as the biddies, are two spinsters and circus fans ("camp followers") who never miss a show. Anty even meets two obscure relatives, Aunt Jacqueline Quillfeather and her daughter Chadwick. So even without a second body turning up and cheating going on in the hotel casino, Anty can't get around to having that sit down with his mother

This series is billed as a series of locked room mystery novels and Fitzsimmons comments in the afterword that Reckoning at the Riviera Royale has "one of the more original impossible murders that Anty has had to untangle." I agree that the solution to the murder of Malandrino is not only original, but ingenious, daring and absolutely hilarious – which perhaps not everyone's going to buy. Something straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, almost too preposterous to even take as a joke, had it not been for Fitzsimmons trying to make it sound plausible. Not an easy task when your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek. How the trick is made to look somewhat credible does have a touch of John Dickson Carr (phffrqarff bs nyy guvatf trareny). That being said, it's not an impossible crime or anywhere near something resembling a locked room mystery. It's a howdunit, an absolute bonkers howdunit, in which alibis have to be broken down instead of locked doors. So, plot-wise, more like Christopher Bush than Carr. Well, if Bush had been a longtime resident of a mental asylum.

That's just one murder. Anty still has to deal with a second murder, the shenanigans of his newfound relatives and find a minute to have that talk with his mother about his father's untimely passing. This is done with the customary light, humorous tone and witticism from previous novels, but Reckoning at the Riviera Royale has a plot that comes closer to matching the best in the series, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021). The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) and the already mentioned The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse all had the series trademark humor and genre spoofing, but their solutions lacked the imagination that made The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning such a promising introduction to the series. Not a criticism that can be leveled against Reckoning at the Riviera Royale. So, if you want a mystery with some color and imagination flashing out of its plot, Fitszimmons and Reckoning at the Riviera Royale have you covered!

I loved it enough to The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) up the pile, but first need to get around to a few other recently published locked room mysteries like J.L. Blackhurst's Smoke and Murders (2024) and Tom Mead's recently published The House at Devil's Neck (2025).

A Gumshoe with Sea Legs: "Death at the Porthole" (1938) and "The Eye" (1945) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick is best known today for creating one of the most successful blind detectives in crime fiction, Captain Duncan Maclain, who not only overshadowed his other creations, but completely eclipsed a character like Miles Standish Rice – a Miami-based detective character. Rice appeared in three novels and seventeen short stories published in Black Mask, Mystery Novels Magazine and The Saint Mystery Magazine. I remember enjoying The Eleven of Diamonds (1936) and The Iron Spiders (1936), but not nearly as good as the best Captain Maclain novels (e.g. The Whistling Hangman, 1937). So they form a clear example of a main series character and secondary one.

I recently stumbled to the fact Kendrick had a third, short-lived and practically forgotten series-character. Cliff Chandler is the dandy, debonair ship's detective whose job it's to protect "the welfare of transatlantic passengers on the S.S. Moriander," which is an interesting premise for a series, but Chandler appeared in only two short stories published seven years apart.

The first of these two short stories, "Death at the Porthole," originally appeared in a 1938 publication of Country Home Magazine and reprinted in the November, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. "Death at the Porthole" takes place during the tenth, uneventful voyage of the S.S. Moriander, departing Southampton for New York, when "even the usual run of petty cardsharps seemed to have deserted her" – not much "guarding the passengers' welfare" to do. Although there are some curious incidents. Chandler meets a lovely young woman aboard, Elsa Graves, who appears to be packing a gun, but why? M. Jean Martone, "manufacturer extraordinary of a select line of cosmetics," accidentally falls overboard and has to be rescued. Finally, the woman with whom Elsa Graves shared a cabin, Dorette Maupin, is found dead with a broken neck. Chandler is a man of action who "thrived on excitement," but he has to do some real thinking and a bit of detective work to crack this case.

Even without the presence of the famous blind detective, "Death at the Porthole" is unmistakably a Baynard Kendrick detective story. It has a foot in both the hardboiled private eye story from the pulps and the formal detective story, which comes on account of the well-played who and how. Particular the latter is a dead giveaway as it plays on Kendrick's favored method of (SPOILER/ROT13) oevqtvat gur qvfgnapr orgjrra ivpgvz naq zheqrere, hfhnyyl ol qebccvat be guebjvat fbzrguvat, juvpu graq gb perngr na vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba be nyvov nybat gur jnl. "Death at the Porthole" can be linked to the previously mentioned The Whistling Hangman and The Eleven of Diamonds when it comes the how, but, of course, not worked out to the same extend. So rather simple by comparison, however, the bravado of the (ROT13) frpbaq zheqre is appreciated.

Kendrick's "Death at the Porthole" is not a classic, criminally overlooked short story from the detective story's golden era, but it's a promising start to what could have been a fascinating and fun series of pulpy short stories.

The second, and last, short story in the series, "The Eye," originally appeared in the November, 1945, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and leans more towards the pulp-thriller than the detective story – giving Cliff Chandler all the excitement he wanted. Chandler is approached by a frightened VIP passenger, Moira Nelson, who's a famous screen actress making the crossing with her 12-year-old son, manager and bodyguard. Moira Nelson received a threatening call pressing her to wear a pearl necklace, worthy fifty thousand dollars, to the ship's concert the next night or her son will pay the price. Having listened to her story, Chandler does an impromptu piece of armchair reasoning and not a bad solution either. But his solution ends playing right into the culprit's hands. So, as the villains reveal themselves, "The Eye" turns into a pulp caper with a delicate hint of piracy and how the ship's detective resolves this case is notably different from the first story (oyvaqvat entr). I was entertained enough and the trap triggered by Chandler's false-solution a clever touch, but I'll probably won't remember any of it. Not without looking back at what I wrote here.

"Death at the Porthole" and "The Eye," while not a bad or outstandingly good, are understandably footnotes in Kendrick's work, but there was potential had the series continued. I suspect this would have been one of those series best read in a collection of twelve or fifteen short stories, because atmosphere and backdrop (i.e. shipboard setting) is as important as a decent plot. Something like James Holding's The Zanzibar Shirt Mystery and Other Stories (2018), but more hardboiled.

A note for the curious: Cliff Chandler has been called the only ship's detective in the genre, but there's Cutcliffe Hyne's "The Looting of the Specie-Room" (1900) and John Dickson Carr's 1940s radio-detective, Dr. John Fabian, whose cases are gathered in The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries from the Casebook of Cabin B-13 (2021).

Reunion with Murder (1941) by Timothy Fuller

Reunion with Murder (1941) is Timothy Fuller's third novel about Harvard man and amateur sleuth, Edmund "Jupiter" Jones, who appeared in a handful of mysteries starting with Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) – ending with the previously discussed Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950). A tightly-packed crime yarn clearly intended to modernize and reboot the series, but Fuller abandoned the series after its publication. Nonetheless, it rekindled my interest in the series and tracked down a copy of This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943). A mystery from the American murder-can-be-fun school that would have been right at home in the catalog of the Rue Morgue Press. I fortunately had the foresight to also get a copy of Reunion with Murder. Three times must be the charm as it's Fuller's most accomplished, fully rounded detective novel.

The titular event of Fuller's Reunion with Murder is the first reunion of the Class of '31, Harvard College, that brought over a hundred alumni to the Syonsett Beach Hotel.

On the second day of the reunion, two alumni out on an early morning round of golf find the body of Sherman North near the eleventh tee of the Syonsett Golf Club. North's body was still dressed in dinner jacket, color rumpled and black tie twisted, but more concerting is the gaping bullet hole in his chest. North was rooming at the hotel with fellow attendee Edmund Rice, a humorist, who wakes up that morning with a hangover and scraped, bloodied hands. No memory of what happened when he was blackout drunk. What's more, Rice has to be the best man next day at a wedding of his college chum, Jupiter Jones, currently teaching at Harvard's Fine Arts Department. That's when he remembers, "Sleuth Jones."

So the best man getting involved in a murder at his tenth college reunion a day is "damned inconvenient," but Betty Mahan joins her soon-to-be husband for a day of prenuptial sleuthing.

There's much more to the murder than an apparent drunken, motiveless shooting on the golf course under cover of night. Firstly, North was knocked unconscious, driven in his own car to the scene of the crime and shot, which is a reasonable precaution, but why attract attention by firing half a dozen of extra shots – which were noticed. Secondly, there's a trail of high heeled woman's footprints "coming across from the clubhouse and ending at the top of the tee" where they stop and vanish ("...must be some explanation for their disappearance"). Yeah, I didn't expect a (minor) impossible situation of no-footprints variety not mentioned in either Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) nor Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). But there are also slightly more traditional clues strewn around the crime scene. Like a broken watch and watch charm in the form of a miniature sword. So both police and amateur detective have their work cut out. Really enjoyed how Jupiter buttered himself up in order to slip himself into the investigation.

Reunion with Murder is as humorous and satirical in tone as This is Murder, Mr. Jones. Fuller lightheartedly poked fun at Harvard culture, detective fiction and reunions ("probably some Stone Age massacre had gone off rather well and the participants vowed to meet again in a year and talk things over"), but Reunion with Murder has a serious pall hanging over it in the shape of the war raging on in Europe and the feeling they'll be soon dragged into it. This comes especially to the front during the second-half of the story fueling discussions, but just as serious is Jupiter transforming into a White Knight for North's widow, Ann North. At one point, Jupiter even comes to see her as the "symbol of the Perfect Girl, the Dream Girl who didn't exist," while Betty is standing right next to her. Over the course of his private investigation, Jupiter breaks enough laws to potentially get him thirty years in prison simply to protect Ann. And he's very serious about it.

So not everything is played for laughs and the armchair detectives out there better keep that in mind when trying to piece together this "macabre puzzle." I think the conclusion, and the twisted path it takes towards that conclusion, is what makes Reunion with Murder Fuller's best contribution to the American detective novel.

First of all, there's the unusual and unforgettable circumstances of the denouement taking place right after the wedding and during the costumed parade closing out the reunion. Jupiter, dressed as Superman, gathers the principle players to explain what happened. Or, at least, the parts he knows about. Jupiter's ingenious, fractured solution is a Golden Age delight of plotting succeeding in having its cake and eat it too. You know what I mean when you read it. The core idea is admittedly not original with Fuller, but he sure did something different and original with it to make it his own. Something that pleasantly took me by surprise, but a lot made sense the moment the truth dawned on me. Of, course, how the murder is resolved among the Harvard boys is something most readers today will find hard to swallow and perhaps is easy to point to the looming war as a motive. However, I think Fuller simply had been reading a lot of John Dickson Carr at the time and got inspired. Everything from the murderer inexplicably attracting attention post-murder and the vanishing footprints to letting a cleverly hidden, but exposed, killer get away for morally dubious reasons just smacks of Carr – not to mention old-world chivalry streaking the characters and plot. No wonder I enjoyed it so much!

Fuller's Reunion with Murder is a first-class Golden Age mystery, one of the better American collegian detective novels, which deserves to be reprinted. It would be a great fit for Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics line of reprints. I suppose I'll finish the series, backwards, by rereading Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941) next and closing out with Harvard Has a Homicide. Stay tuned!

Note for the curious: while churning out this review, I stumbled across the fact Fuller wrote short stories and one of his stories, "The Second Visitor," features Jupiter Jones. “The Second Visitor” made its first and only appearance in the September, 1937, issue of The American Magazine. So it has slipped through the cracks and forgotten about, but perhaps a short story worth reviving for a future American Mystery Classics anthology. Fuller wrote a few more short stories that appear to be (possibly) criminal in nature: "An Acquaintance with Thieves" (Britannia and Eve, Jun. 1948), "The Husband Who Disappeared" (Cosmopolitan, Jan. 1950), "His Wife Cried Wolf" (This Week, Jul. 10, 1955) and "A Shot in the Dark" (Bluebook, Apr. 1956).

Hold on a second! Just one more thing: Just discovered "The Second Visitor”" was reprinted, only once, in the Spring, 1953, issue of Triple Detective. Strange that the only Jupiter Jones short story was never reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or any of the Ellery Queen anthologies. So it either was really overlooked and forgotten about or it's just shit.

The Case of the Curious Heel (1943/44) by Ken Crossen

Back in February, I reviewed Ken Crossen's The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1944), second and last novel in the Jason Jones and Necessary Smith series, which is an incredibly fun, pulpy impossible crime tale with Crossen fanboying all over his favorite mystery writers, characters and novels – complete with a locked room lecture ("...guess I can say a few words on impossible situations"). So pulp at its most entertaining. On the other hand, Crossen's The Laughing Buddha Murders (1944), starring the American-Tibetan detective Chin Kwang Kham, turned out to be a letdown. Disappointing since Crossen used The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints to promote The Laughing Buddha Murders and that raised certain expectations. Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel (1943/44) and Murder Out of Mind (1945) fortunately still looked very promising.

In fact, Anthony Boucher praised Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel as "a high-grade pulp yarn" about impossible murders piling up around an obnoxious ex-pulp writer "whose identity is fun to guess."

The Case of the Curious Heel was originally published in the May, 1943, issue of Baffling Detective Mysteries and opens with the introduction to that obnoxious ex-pulp writer, Johnny Bell, who got his start in pulp magazines like Detective Yarns Weekly – before getting moving on to the slicks and Hollywood ("writing pictures for Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, Rita Hayworth"). Bell is currently working on a mystery play written, directed and produced by himself. So every time Bell completed a scene, he gathers a group to act out the scene as a test run. The Case of the Curious Heel begins on the evening of one such rehearsal and it's a full house. There's his wife, Betty Bell, his private secretary, June Hayes, and his ghost writer, Bennett Barlay, who carries on the Johnny Bell magazine stories so his employer can concentrate on his movie scripts and stage play. Further more, there are Willard Duncan, a literary agent, Manny Ladd, press agent, Ray Martin, a Hollywood columnist, and the author of the Freddy Hack mysteries, Gregor Fain. Lastly, the actress Karen Russell and the man who coughed up ten grand to back the play, George Porter.

Before they play out the scene, the reader gets an example why some might consider their host to be a perfectly viable target for shooting practice. Bell calls everyone present leeches, parasites and sponges ("every one of you would starve to death if it weren't for me"). When everyone there knew Bell's "a real vampire" living "on the literary blood of others," among other charming personality traits and habits.

Surprisingly, it's not Johnny Bell who bites the dust during the rehearsal. The scene they rehearse has Karen Russell's character picking up a gun to shoot Manny Ladd's character, but, when she pulls the trigger, it actually goes off. Ladd getting fatally shot is the first (quasi) impossible situation of the story. The gun was not only supposed to be empty, but was proved to be empty when "Bell put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger five times" to show it was a harmless prop. Bell "then he tossed the gun to the girl" and "she held it until she pulled the trigger." They all swore the gun was empty when it fired a very real bullet. Another peculiar aspect is that only Bell and June Hayes knew beforehand what the scene was about and that it involved a gun. Only two people knew beforehand what was going to happen in the scene, Bell and June Hayes. So only they knew it would involve the gun he had brought back from Hollywood. That looks bad for Bell.. or was there a mix-up with him being the intended victim? Bell hires a private investigator, Necessary Smith, to look after his interests and work alongside the "poor man's Nero Wolfe," First Grade Detective Jason Jones. They're two characters who deserved a longer run than they got.

Jason Jones, round, red and jovial, has "a working agreement" with his superiors to never get promoted in exchange for solving those pesky cases "that the captain said couldn't be solved." That way, Jones can attend to his wife's cooking and tending his geraniums in his rooftop hothouse instead of having to worry about work floor politics and rivalries. This arrangement also allows Jones to handle cases according to his own unhurried, armchair methods. Jones believes the right technique is simply waiting rather than wear himself out chasing around or thinking deeply about clues, "murderer feels pretty safe as long as he sees all that activity," but when the detective sits around, ignores the clues and ask a few routine questions the murderer gets nervous – which is when they make mistakes. Jones very much admires characters like Nero Wolfe and Mycroft Holmes. Necessary Smith is your average, 1940s American gumshoe who legally changed when his ex-boss, Bruce Elliott (the Bruce Elliott?), regularly interrupted his verbal reports with the question, "was that necessary, Smith?" His boss thought that was funny. So, when he retired, handed the business over to Smith.

Jones and Smith make for a fun detective duo who have their work cutout for them as it becomes ever clear they're dealing with a killer who has "the fiction mind." Not only the dubious shooting of Manny Ladd and it's various possibilities, but also second body turning up behind the locked door of a lavatory and "a fly couldn't get in that room without the door opening for him." Boucher wasn't wrong to call this a high-grade pulp yarn, but I'll get to the plot in a moment.

The Case of the Curious Heel is still a pulp mystery. Even the best pulp mysteries lacked the rigorous plotting and polish of their Golden Age counterparts, because they were written at piece rate with much shorter deadlines. Every now and then, a pulp writer would deliver a more polished detective novel, like James Ronald's Murder in the Family (1936) or John Russell Fearn's posthumously published Pattern of Murder (2006), but they're the exceptions and The Case of the Curious Heel is not. For example, Crossen lightly rewrote/copied passages between Jones and Smith from The Case of the Curious Heel for The Laughing Buddha Murders. Jones even launches into a locked room lecture. So the story more than once gave me a light sense of déjà vu, but there's also the occasional sloppiness in details. In the first chapter, Barlay is scolded for pointing out the locked room murder from Bell's stage play is practically the same as the impossible shooting from his short story "Thumbs Up for Death." This story is referred to again later on in the story as "Thumbs Up for Murder." Something you can't help but notice. By the way, as an aside, Bennett Barlay is one of Crossen's pseudonyms.

Anyway, the plot is definitely a cut, or two, above the average '40s pulp yarn. Not for the usual reasons either. Normally, the impossible crime in a pulp-style locked room mystery is the most substantial plot piece with the who and why usually being obvious from early on in the story – which here was the other way round. I suppose that's on theme as 2025 has not been a great year for finding an abundance of excellent impossible crime and locked room mysteries. Crossen handled the murderer's identity and motive with more skill than expected going by my previous two reads. Solution is only really hampered by the trick used to shoot the first victim, which is dodgy from start to finish. So much could have gone wrong, (SPOILER/ROT13: jung vs, nsgre chyyvat gur gevttre svir gvzrf, chyyrq vg n fvkgu gvzr gb naabl gur areibhf tngurevat rira zber? Jung vs gur tha jnf cbvagrq ng fbzrbar ryfr gung fvkgu gvzr? Jung vs Oryy unq chyyrq gur gevttre n fvkgu gvzr juvyr gur tha jnf cbvagrq ng Ynqq be gur zheqrere? Jung vs Oryy fvzcyl unqa'g chyyrq gung fghag? Which would not have been out-of-character and would have tossed a huge spanner into the murderer's plans. The locked room-trick used in the second murder is perfunctory, but neatly used for a false-solution and providing an even neater twist to Jones' explanation.

Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel is indeed a quality piece of pulp fiction. Maybe not the very best locked room pulp, plotwise, but Necessary Smith and Jason Jones make up where the plot lacked. I would have like to have seen more of them or at least gotten a few short stories out of those apocryphal cases Jones mentioned. Jones' short teaser of "The Case of the Missing G-String" sounds like a trip!

Note for the curious: the locked room from the stage play is briefly described, but not in too great detail and no solution given. The gist of the locked room is that a man is found under circumstances giving "a perfect picture of suicide." A room with every door and window locked from the inside ("...impossible for anyone to get into the room without crawling through the keyhole"). Only real detail is the thumb print of one of the (innocent) suspects being discovered in the center of the ceiling. So not much to build an armchair solution around, except that the thumb print on the ceiling probably means a wire/pulley trick was involved to turn the key from the inside. A trick requiring a ladder to setup and that allowed for the artistic touch of the faked thumb print on the ceiling. Otherwise, it would be too inconvenient and risky to lug a ladder around the house just to put a thumb print on the ceiling. Why not simply put it on an untampered window catch to muddy the waters? But if a ladder was needed to setup a wire/pulley trick, the ceiling print would be even more incriminating for a frame job than a print on a window catch. There's no reason why people wouldn't leave prints on window catches. They were made to be handled, but the ceiling of a crime scene is a different. I'll shut up now. :)