The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) by Edward D. Hoch

The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) is the thirteenth volume of Edward D. Hoch's fiction, published by Crippen & Landru, collecting fifteen short stories from his series of police procedurals featuring one of his most enduring creations, Captain Jules Leopold – who appeared in over a hundred short stories. A not inconsiderable chunk of Hoch's output counting nearly a thousand short stories covering more than a dozen different series and standalone stories.

Captain Leopold is the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of Monroe, a fictitious town somewhere in Connecticut, who's a normal, competent and levelheaded policeman. So he's basically a modern-day Inspector French. Being one of Hoch's rare conventional characters doesn't mean his caseload is always normal or everyday. I know Captain Leopold from the odd anthologized short story which tended to be locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories. I suppose the known of these stories "The Leopold Locked Room" (1971) in which Captain Leopold is framed for the murder of his ex-wife, but not to be overlooked is "Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder" (1976) staging a locked room slaying in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam.

There is, of course, more to the Captain Leopold series than an excellent impossible crime story or locked room mystery every now and then. Roland Lacourbe illustrated this in his excellent introduction and detailed overview of the series, "The Best of Captain Leopold," which opens The Killer Everyone Knew. A insightful, non-spoiler introduction for those not overly familiar with the series or are new to it and a refresher course for those who might not have encountered Captain Leopold for while. After all, the last Captain Leopold story, "Leopold Undercover" (2007), was published seventeen years ago and The Killer Everyone Knew is the first Captain Leopold collection since Leopold's Way (1985). So this publication was long overdue. Even longer than that second Ben Snow collection.

Lastly, before delving into this collection, the stories in The Killer Everyone Knew originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1981 to 2000. Yes, this is a shoddy attempt to prevent another unnecessary long and bloated SSC review. So with that out of the way...

The first story, "The Woman Without a Past" (1981), confronts Captain Leopold with the double murder of an unmarried couple, Judy Thomas and Carl Forrester, who were gunned down on their own doorstep when returning home from a birthday dinner. She has a past going back only ten months before it goes completely blank and he has forty-eight cans of ether in the closet. So who was the killer after, Judy or Carl? A good and intriguing setup, but, in the end, not much of a mystery as the culprit is glaringly obvious in spite of wearing the garb of the least-likely-suspect. I think the next story would have made a better opener to this otherwise excellent collection.

"Captain Leopold Beats the Machine" (1983) is a neat little impossible poisoning mystery. Tommy Rusto is a two-bit criminal implicated in the fatal car bombing of Vice-Mayor Mark Prior, but now that his trial is coming up, he's ready to talk and name names. So the D.A. asks Captain Leopold to borrow their interrogation room and for him to be present as a witness, which is when things take a turn for the worst as Rusto asks for a cup of coffee – brought to him by Captain Leopold. Rusto takes a sip of the coffee, mutters something about the taste of the coffee ("this coffee tastes...") and drops dead from cyanide poisoning. The coffee came from the vending machine of the police squad, which is taken apart and closely examined, but is proven to be clean and not tampered with. So who poisoned the stool pigeon and how? Well, those are, admittedly, not terrible difficult questions to answer and it's strange Leopold is never considered as a suspect. Nevertheless, it's a good, timely example of the detective story exploring new possibilities technology can bring to the table (beside a cyanide laced coffee) and loved the clue that identified the murderer. To quote Leopold, "this is truly the age of the machine."

The third story, "Finding Joe Finch" (1984), begins with the announcement of Captain Leopold's engagement to Molly Calendar, a defense lawyer, who appeared in the previous story as Rusto's legal representative. A strain is placed on the engagement following a deadly payroll robbery at the Greenways factory. The primary suspects is one of the factory workers, Joe Finch, who's nowhere to be found. Not to mention that he's the brother-in-law of Lieutenant Fletcher. This causes some problems at home ("...you're all the same, aren't you?"). So more of a police procedural with troubled cops than a proper detective story, but the clueing is fair and the factory setting well realized. And added something to everything from the characters and storytelling to the plot.

I already reviewed "The Murder in Room 1010" (1987) back in June alongside Hoch's "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" (1987) and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991), but it's a small gem of an impossible crime story.

"The Crime in Heaven" (1988) boosts one of Hoch's most creative and original setups when a woman comes to Captain Leopold to report a murder far, far outside of his jurisdiction. Mrs. Roberts has been communicating with the spirit of her grandfather, dead for half a century, through the medium Madame Vane and her spirit guide, Grey Elk ("they're often Indians, you know") – whom she accuses of murdering her dead grandfather! During their last séance, Mrs. Roberts heard the voice of Grey Elk screaming at her grandfather and someone saying, "put down that gun," before a gunshot rang out. Nothing was heard after the shot and Madame Vane refused any more seances. Something weird or unusual happened, but where do you even begin to investigate when "the murder victim was a man who's already been dead for fifty-five years"? Captain Leopold's colleague, Sergeant Connie Trent, plays a big role in unraveling this criminal scheme gone horribly awry. Simply a great story with an original approach to presenting and picking apart a plot.

The title story of this collection, "The Killer Everyone Knew" (1989), begins when Captain Leopold is visited by a criminal psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Frees, who works with convicted murderers. Dr. Frees regresses them through hypnosis to the moment of the murder and he's convinced one of his patients is innocent. Five years ago, Ralph Simmons was identified by several witnesses as the man "who'd taken Laurie Mae Nelson out to her car in the parking lot and strangled her." So he was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to twenty years to life ("...still protesting his innocence"), but now Dr. Frees claims his hypnotic sessions uncovered Simmons was "nowhere near the scene of the crime that night." Captain Leopold is more than a little skeptical, but promises to look over the file. And the case notes don't look too promising. But, curiously, it turns out the witnesses have begun to die. This story is a bit of downer as it obviously leans more to the serious crime story/police procedural, but how Leopold uses a chain-of-knowledge, rather than evidence, to identify the murderer is not bad. That and it was interesting how Hoch decided to tackle the shopworn premise of a man innocently convicted of murder.

If you think "The Killer Everyone Knew" is a bit depressing, you haven't read "Captain Leopold's Birthday" (1990). Captain Leopold is not looking forward to his coming birthday as the department's mandatory retirement policy is "now only twelve short months away." On top of that, Leopold learns that an ex-colleague from the Arson Squad, Marty Doyle, died from a heart attack a year into his early retirement. Something that has unexpected consequences when one of the Doyles neighbors is shot to death with a target pistol and Leopold has to investigate a murder involving people he knows personally. A dark, gloomy and somewhat depressing cop drama/police procedural, but Hoch (SPOILER/ROT13) uvatrq gur jubyr guvat ba n pyrireyl uvqqra, grpu-onfrq nyvov hfvat gur pncgnva uvzfrys nf n jvgarff. So I didn't hate it, nor loved it, but definitely liked how it reads like a miniature version of a Roger Ormerod novel with its dead ex-cop and use of a target pistol as murder weapon.

The cover image of this collection comes from the next story, "The Retired Magician" (1991), which plays out over the course of several months. Captain Leopold learns that the famous stage magician, Rex Furcula, retired to Monroe and bought a house complete with a small carriage house to store his magic collection and memorabilia – nothing much was heard of him for several years. Two years later, Furcula sister is murdered when she caught a burglar in the carriage house and killer is killed himself during his getaway. So an open and shut case. Over the course of several months, Leopold and Molly become acquainted with Furcula and his wife. Leopold begins to like the Furcula's, but suspicion begins to sneak in when he learns about a one-million dollar life insurance policy. Just like in a magic act, "nothing is ever quite what it seems." I enjoyed the deliberate vagueness, but clued, of the setup punctuated by a new wrinkle on a classic idea. A solid Hoch short story!

"Puzzle in a Smoke Filled Room" (1991) is another story with a premise as intriguing as it's original. The men of Fire Company 5 respond to a house fire and find a woman in pajamas on the doorstep begging to save her husband who went to bed early, but, when entering the burning, smoke filled bedroom, they hear the crack of an exploding cartridge. Firefighter Randy Dwyer is fatally hit in the chest by bullet. The victim of a bizarre, but not an unheard-of, accident in which "the intense heat of the fire had detonated the powder charge in several pistol cartridges stored in the homeowner's bedroom." However, the bullet that was removed from the body has lands and grooves on its sides proving "it had been fired from a gun barrel." Captain Leopold and his team go from a freak accident to a quasi-impossible murder. So it's unfortunate the solution doesn't hold up. I can overlook Leopold not immediately grasping (SPOILER/ROT13) gur fvtavsvpnapr bs na rkvg jbhaq gung fubhyqa'g or gurer, ohg jung nobhg gur cngubybtvfg? Fubhyqa'g ur, bs nyy crbcyr, abgvpr gur obql unf bayl bar ragel jbhaq naq bar rkvg jbhaq, ohg fgvyy qht n ohyyrg bhg bs gur ivpgvz'f purfg? Juvyr gur frpbaq ohyyrg jnf sverq guebhtu gur svefg ohyyrg jbhaq, vg qvqa'g sbyybj gur genpx bs gur svefg ohyyrg be gurl jbhyq unir pbyyvqrq. Naq gur cngubybtvfg jbhyq unir qht gjb fyhtf bhg bs gur obql. So loved how the story was presented, but its resolution left me unconvinced. Only just realized the method is basically a poor, simplified reworking of a rather elaborate trick from another and better Captain Leopold story.

"The Summer of Our Discontent" (1992) is not so much a detective story as it's an important character-arc. Captain Leopold has the long-dreaded retirement talk with Chief Ringold and agrees to retire by the end of the month. Everyone assumed Lieutenant Fletcher is going to be promoted to captain and appointed commander of the Violent Crimes Squad, but Chief Ringold tells him Lieutenant George Vivian, of the Burglary Squad, is picked as his successor – which comes as a smack in their face. Things get worse when one of Vivian's men, Sergeant Patrick O'Mera, is found shot dead in his patrol car with evidence suggesting bribery and corruption. The excellent and fitting motive behind the murder should have made this story a worthy retirement case for Captain Leopold, but everything felt mired in needless cop drama. So the story becomes more about how this murder is going to ruin Vivian's promotion and hand it back to Fletcher rather than allowing Leopold to tidy up his last case, before officially handing over the reigns to Fletcher. Why not do the same thing, except (ROT13) Ivivna trgf cebzbgrq gb pncgnva naq pbzznaqre bs gur Ohetynel Fdhnq? Gung jnl, gur zbgvir fgvyy jbexf jvgubhg gur fbncl qenzn gung pbhyq bayl raq bar jnl.

"Leopold at Rest" (1993) is a minor, but pleasantly surprising, story showing Fletcher in Leopold's role as head of the Violent Crimes Squad handling everyday routine cases like an attempted murder. Charlie McGregor was shot by his wife's lover, Tod Baxter, who's released after his brother backed the half-million dollar bail. Another story that's pleasantly mysterious about the direction of the story, but the ending delivered. Not a very happy ending, but unexpectedly good after the previous two stories. This series is strong on unexpected, original motives and cleverly-hidden criminal schemes. So even the stories leaning heavily in the direction of the dark, grim police procedural and character-driven crime fiction feel more substantial, because they have a plot to stand on.

"Leopold Lends a Hand" (1995) is another good one bringing together the classically-styled detective story and the modern police procedural. Captain Fletcher is short staffed, "more cases than the Violent Crime Squad can handle at the moment," which is why he asked Leopold to help out with some routine questioning of witnesses at the scene of a murder. Construction workers discovered the body of Vladimir Petrov, a Russian businessman, when they returned to work on his million dollar, partially finished condominium – shot twice in the chest. Petrov possessed a couple of antique religious icon, dating back to sixth or seventh century, which are worth a small fortune and considered to be potential motive. Only then Fletcher is shot and seriously wounded. Suddenly, Leopold is back on the job as "acting head of the Violent Crimes division," when another complication rears it ugly head. The woman who appraised one of the icons, Rachel Dean, is shot and killed behind the locked door and barred windows of her private office. She lived long enough to leave behind a dying message! A detective story with a dying message inside a locked room comes with certain expectations, regarding the solution, but Hoch delivers the goods. More importantly, it came with that jolt of surprise I remember from my first encounters with Agatha Christie. I need to nitpick a little here and point out the central idea behind the locked room-trick had been tried before, one or two times, but Hoch arguably employed it to greater effect.

I didn't like the next story, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" (1997), which brings a true crime writer to the retired Leopold to discuss one of his old cases. Nine years ago, Alex Clemmins received the death penalty for the car bombing that killed his wife and their two young children. Now that the execution is less than a week away, the case is getting renewed attention in the media with rumors swirling around about new evidence. Leopold begins to suspect "the evidence that convicted him might be flawed." The previous stories set the precedent that even the stories leaning more towards the police procedurals and crime stories aren't without plot virtues, but that's not the case here. If "Leopold Helps a Hand" shows what the traditional, but modernized, detective story could have been in the nineties, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" rubs the tripe we got instead in your face.

"The Phantom Lover" (1999) is another fairly minor, unusually structured story beginning as a missing person's case. Stanley Falkner is fairly well-known in the city, "a local Realtor who dabbled in politics," who had a very public, headline making brawl with Lynn at a restaurant ("she'd jabbed him in the neck with a salad fork..."). So she becomes a person of interest when her husband goes missing and is found shortly thereafter dead in a gravel pit. Surprisingly, Lynn comes clean halfway through and confesses she conspired with her lover, Gavin Stark, to dispose her husband – which gets her indicted on two counts ("second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder"). However, the so-called phantom lover is nowhere to be found and when she recants her confession, the case against her threatens to collapse. Lynn has a rock solid alibi for the time Gavin killed Stanley. So, unless the D.A. can produce Lynn's lover, there's "no way the D.A. can prove a conspiracy." Captain Fletcher has his work cut out as Leopold is "following this case closely in the papers." Like I said, the structure is unusual, for a detective story, but the truth behind the phantom lover left me unimpressed.

The final story, "The Emerald Expert" (2000), ends the collection on a high note. Leopold and Molly open their home to a French gemologist, Henri Scarlotti, who has come to the United States to testify as an expert witness on behalf of the defense in the Jaspar case. Jeff Shields and Beryl Constantine, his girlfriend, stand trial for the murdering and robbing of a jewelry salesman, Alex Jaspar. Both were caught in New York when they tried to dispose of the stolen emeralds, or so the prosecution claims, but they claim to be innocent. Scarlotti can apparently prove the emerald they tried to sell in New York were mined in a different location than Jaspar's stolen emeralds ("...a small sample from the gem's surface is measured for oxygen isotopes"). This provides the story with fascinating sidelight on emeralds and emerald mining, before the home of the Leopolds becomes a crime scene. Scarlotti was shot and killed in their home! The solution is pretty solid with a surprising killer and, once again, an original motive. So a fine and fitting story to close out this overall excellent collection of Captain Leopold stories.

Lacourbe writes in the introduction that the stories have "verve and imagination" in their variation with "the weirdness of many of the situations" standing "in sharp contrast to the seeming banality of the cases themselves." Something all the stories in this collection can attest to, whether they're good or not, but it's also impressive when you hold the stories up to Hoch's other series. Lacourbe notes that Leopold is one of Hoch's most grounded series-character. Leopold is not a gunslinger from the Wild West (Ben Snow), a thief-for-hire (Nick Velvet), a locked room expert (Dr. Hawthorne) or an immortal detective (Simon Ark). Just a normal, everyday homicide cop who relies as much on his experience as he does on his intelligence and Hoch genuinely tried to create miniature versions of the then contemporary, character-driven crime drama's and police procedurals – complete with their dark, gritty tone and bleak endings. So not everyone is going to like, what Mike Grost dubbed, "The Gloomy Tales," but I admired Hoch craftily giving a classical twist to most of these bleak, gritty modern-day police procedurals. And with only four less than stellar stories, The Killer Everyone Knew ensured Leopold's Way is on its way to the top of the pile. Simply a must-read for Hoch fans!

A note for the curious: if you ever wondered what the mostly untranslated, Dutch police procedurals/detective stories by M.P.O. Books/"Anne van Doorn" are like, The Killer Everyone Knew comes pretty close to the short stories collected in De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen en andere mysteries (The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, 2018) and Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021). Just throwing that out as a reminder there's still some untranslated gold over here.

Death Croons the Blues (1934) by James Ronald

Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 7: Death Croons the Blues (2024) is, as of this writing, one of the recent additions to the ambitious, ongoing project to restore James Ronald's crime, detective and pulp fiction to print – scheduled to conclude next year with vol. 14. The headline novel of this collection is the second of three novels about the morally flexible, ace crime reporter of the London-based Morning World, Julian Mendoza. I wanted to start at the beginning of the series with Cross Marks the Spot (1933), collected in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 6 (2024), but remembered John Norris reviewed Death Croons the Blues (1934) in 2019. It sounded exactly like the kind of pulp-style, slightly off-the-wall whodunit I can appreciate.

Bill Cuffy is an ex-convict and reformed housebreaker with a gravely-ill, pregnant wife at home, no income and bills to pay. Molly Cuffy used to do char work for a well-known blues singer, Adele Valée, who's "rolling in jewels and furs." And her apartment is strewn with valuable knick-knacks. It seemed an easy enough job ("the softest of soft cribs") and Cuffy decided to pull the job on the night Valée is supposed to be away, but panics and leaves behind cartoon smoke when coming across her decapitated body in the bloodsoaked bathroom. Cuffy accidentally took the murder weapon with him as neighbors begin to ring the alarms and patrolling police constables blow their whistles.

An exhausted, frightened and Ghurka knife-wielding Cuffy fortuitously ends up at the boardinghouse of Julian Mendoza's housekeeper, Mrs. MacDougal. Mendoza immediately smells a story when he learns the famous nightclub singer has been brutally murdered. Suspects the housebreaker's story is not wholly untrue.

Cuffy not only took the murder weapon with him, but also an expensive, blood smeared coat belonging to a known troublemaker, the Honorable Timothy Brett – who's not the only man involved with Adele Valée. At the crime scene, Mendoza finds proof Valée had intimate relationships with three very rich, highly influential and powerful men. Sir Samuel Judson, an ex-cabinet minister, the department store magnate Neville Walls and the multi-millionaire Hugo Brancker. Their association is not without a hint of blackmail. Mendoza also has to contend with young Lady Constance Gay, who's determined to prevent Brett from hanging, while trying to piece together how the ex-boxer "Tiger" Slavin fits into the story. Not to be forgotten is Inspector Howells, of Scotland Yard, who frowns on Mendoza's shenanigans ("you're a rotten citizen—and a good newspaper man. That's why I don't trust you. You'd lie, cheat, or rob for a story"). So they go at it like rival detectives.

So a pleasantly busy, rollicking pulp-style detective story showing Ronald's towered over other writers when it comes to creating characters and storytelling, especially series-characters. Sketchy, short-lived as they may be. Similar to Six Were to Die (1932) and the other Dr. Britling shorter stories, Death Croons the Blues is carried by series-characters of Mendoza, Howells and Mrs. MacDougal.

John compared Mendoza to early Perry Mason who brazenly tempered with crime scenes, evidence and witnesses as long as it protected his clients. Mendazo takes a similar approach when it comes to chasing the next headline grabber, which he explains to Howells as follow: "That's where I score over you. You're bound up in red tape and regulations. The only tape in my life comes from a newsticker—and I make up my regulations as I go along." So the straitlaced Howells futilely trying to keep the breaks on the roving crime reporter's antics is the perfect foil and considerably livens up the story in addition to the characters, plot-threads and some actual detective work concerning several iron-clad alibis – even Lady Constance gets to play amateur detective. Ronald was smart enough to have Mendoza's cleverness get the better of him on several occasions and in the end he had to pay a hefty prize for his scoop.

Unfortunately, Death Croons the Blues went from the best the pulps have to offer to the worst with a ridiculous, weak and unconvincing solution. Firstly, the combination of murderer and method strikes a false, unconvincing note (SPOILER/ROT13) orpnhfr V qba'g ohl gung gur zheqrere, nf cerfragrq urer, jbhyq hfr n zrgubq erdhvevat uvz gb eha nebhaq anxrq ba n ebbsgbc be qrcraq ba fhpu n syvzfl, evfxl nyvov. N oevqtr-qhzzl nyvov pna jbex jura gur wbo pna or qbar va n pbhcyr bs zvahgrf. Sbe rknzcyr, Inyér vf nyernql qehttrq naq gvrq hc fbzrjurer va uvf ubhfr, fgnof ure juvyr orvat qhzzl naq gur obql vf yngre oebhtug onpx gb ure bja syng gb znxr vg nccrne fur jnf xvyyrq gurer. Ohg abg jura gur fpurzr erfrzoyrf n fznyy bofgnpyr pbhefr! Vg jbhyq yrnir uvz gbb ihyarenoyr ba nyy sebagf naq ab thnenagrr gur bguref jbhyq or fb nofbeorq va gur tnzr, gurl jbhyqa'g abgvpr uvf cebybatrq nofrapr nsgre zber guna gra zvahgrf. On top of that, (SPOILER/ROT13), gur zheqrere guerngrarq gb trg evq bs gur gebhoyrfbzr Zraqbmn naq Ynql Pbafgnapr ol qvffbyivat gurve obqvrf va npvq. Frr? Gung'f zhpu zber va punenpgre guna ehaavat nebhaq jvgu n Quhexn xavsr yvxr n qrzragrq ahqvfg gelvat gb chyy bss n zrffl senzr wbo. Why not do that in the first place?

So, plot-wise, Death Croons the Blues is not a patch on the excellent Murder in the Family (1936) or the superb They Can't Hang Me (1938), but it still stands as a fun, well written pulp-style mystery carried by its characters and storytelling – rather than a wildly imaginative premise or solution. Normally a hallmark of these pulp-style takes on the traditional detective novel. I'm still glad to finally have an opportunity to poke around the work of once truly forgotten mystery writer and hopefully the next one will be another Murder in the Family or They Can't Hang Me, instead of a repeat of Six Were to Die.

A note for the curious: Mendoza also appeared in a handful of novellas published by The Thriller Library and the first of these novellas, "Baby-Face” (1937), appears in this collection under the title "Angel Face." In addition to two non-series short stories, "The Other Mr. Marquis" (1930) and "The Joke" (1930). I'm not discussing them here, because I'm saving up Ronald's shorter work and review them separately in two, three compilation reviews.

The Time Traveler's Hourglass (2019) by Kie Houjou

Kie Houjou is a Japanese mystery writer who bagged the Tetsuya Ayukawa Award for her debut novel, Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019), which belongs to the emerging, third wave of the shin honkaku movement – currently in the process of evolving the traditional detective story. The first two waves of Soji Shimada, Yukito Ayatsuji and MORI Hiroshi revived, refreshed and rebuild the traditional, fair play detective to great success. After twenty years of dominance, there came a yearning for the kind of impetus that Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Hiroshi's Subete ga F ni naru (Everything Turns to F: The Perfect Insider, 1996) brought to the table. The stick to scratch this itch proved to be hybrid mysteries. Not merely as a gimmick!

The idea is to take your normal, everyday shin honkaku mystery and incorporate elements from other, seemingly incompatible, genres like fantasy, horror and science-fiction. And the trick, of course, is to harmonize the two and make it work as a fairly plotted detective story. A tricky, slippery tight-rope to traverse, but Masahiro Imamura pulled it off with Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017) and Magan no hako no satsujin (Death Within the Evil Eye, 2019). Shimada called Death Among the Undead a possible revolutionary change for the genre, but should note here that the idea of hybrid mysteries itself is not revolutionary one. Yamaguchi Masaya's Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989) preceded Death Among the Undead by nearly thirty years and Takekuni Kitayama combed impossible decapitations across time with a reincarnation plot in Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders, 2002). Even over here there's a history of genre blending, especially science-fiction mysteries, but rarely produced a classic or actually went anywhere (except for the historical mystery that became a genre of its own). Now it feels like they have started in Japan to explore the potential and possibilities of blending and merging genres in earnest.

If there's one thing The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders and Death Among the Undead have demonstrated, it's that the inclusion of normally destructive (to the detective story) elements like zombies, reincarnation and time hopping can unlock doors to new possibilities previously unthinkable. All it needs is a good mystery writer who understands what makes a plot tick.

I've read about Kie Houjou, The Time Traveler's Hourglass and the Ryuuzen Clan series, but didn't expect to see two of her novel emerge from the first round of nominations for the new, updated "Locked Room Library" – translations provided by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmiicnana." You know their story from previous reviews. The Time Traveler's Hourglass is basically a literary descendant of John Dickson Carr's experiments with historical time travel mysteries, namely The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fire, Burn! (1957), taking the concept of time travel mysteries to its next logical stage. Houjou followed the example of Death Among the Undead by creating a fairly typical, recognizable shin honkaku premise and overlaid it with a time travel plot with sublime results. This year's best-of list is going to look weird!

The Time Traveler's Hourglass is the first novel in the Ryuuzen Clan series and introduces the Ryuuzens as a family living, and dying, under a curse. For nearly sixty years, everyone who "inherited the blood of the Ryuuzen clan began to rapidly pass away" from accidents, murder, suicides and natural causes. A string of untimely passings starting with the "Deadly Tragedy of Shino" back in 1960. At the time, the Ryuuzens gathered at their remote villa in Shino to celebrate the birthday of the head of the family, but they got wiped out in a landslide. When the victims were recovered, the "majority of the bodies found were proven to have been murdered" ("however, with so little evidence, there was little to do"). Kamo Rena is one of the last living descendants of the Ryuuzen clan, living in 2018, but she's rapidly deteriorating from acute interstitial pneumonia which leaves her husband in despair.

Kamo Touma is a magazine writer who used to write for a paranormal rag and met Rena following a flare up of the curse of the Ryuuzen clan, but they started dating and eventually married. She only developed a morbid fear for the family curse following the death of two cousins, which is the cause of her deteriorating health. Recently, Kamo has been working on an article about a new urban legend, "The Urban Legend That Brings Happiness: The Hourglass of Miracles." A trending topic on social media telling of an hourglass-shaped pendant granting a wish to whomever can get their hands on it. Kamo is contacted by someone calling himself Meister Hora ("...the name of a character from Michael Ende's Momo... the keeper of time...") offering him the hourglass and an opportunity to put the curse to rest by going back to 1960 in order to stop the murders. But when they arrive at the villa in 1960, the killing spree has already started.

Before returning to this gem of a detective story, I need to point out a couple of things about its presentation and translation. Firstly, Mitsuda Madoy opted to present all the names in the Japanese style of family name-given name order, which is something that never fails to confuse me. So the heads up from the translator is much appreciated. Secondly, this book has all those little extra detective fans love so much. A cast of characters, an elaborate family tree, two floor plans, a map of the surrounding area and an introduction by Meister Hora – ensuring the reader that they're reading a fair play mystery ("...I will tell no lies in the story, nor shall I lie to you, the readers"). And, of course, a challenge to the reader. Rarely has a challenge to the reader been as appropriate as in The Time Traveler's Hour Glass. The clueing, misdirection and general fair play on display here is of an incredibly high purity. More on that in a moment.

So when they arrive in 1960, the murderer is ahead of schedule in defiance of historical records and a bridge collapse ensured they're isolated from the outside world. The murderer also cut the phone lines to complete the picture of a classic shin honkaku mystery novel.

Kamo and his talking, hourglass-shaped pendant Meister Hora's arrival was seen by 13-year-old Ryuuzen Ayaka. Ayaka aids them by introducing Kamo to the family as a famous private detective she invited as a surprise for grandfather, because he's a veracious reader of detective fiction. Not something out-of-character as she previously invited a magician without telling anyone. So he can investigate the two murders that have just taken place with body parts found inside the house and near the river. One of the victims is Ayaka's father. Kamo's investigation pretty soon reveals why the family referred to the murders as an impossible crime. An impossible crime that boils down to the question how the head and torso were carried out of the house when the only exit was under constant observation. A very neatly done impossibility and the explanation delivers, which is not the last, slightly unusual impossible crime or locked room puzzle to come his way. I should note here the villa has an interesting feature as each of its twelve private rooms is named after one of the signs of the Chinese zodiac (Dragon Room, Monkey Room, Rabbit Room, etc). Kie Houjou went out of her way to keep things as clear and uncluttered as possible. Even suggesting "some mnemonics" to help remember who's staying in which room ("the Rat, the smallest animal of the zodiac, was the room belonging to the youngest person, Ayaka"). The care she gave to the plot is admirable.

So, being familiar with the historical case notes and old diary entries, Kamo spends the next night hiding in a hall closet to catch the murderer red handed, but the night goes by and the supposed victim emerges the next morning unharmed – suggesting that the timeline has been altered. This is where the earlier established rules of the time traveling hourglass starts playing a role, because even with "the existence of technology for space-time travel, this is still an impossible crime." The steadily growing pile of corpses, severed body parts, inexplicable disappearances and the impending landslide is still only a fraction of the plot. For example, Kamo suspects the bodies were cut to pieces to imitate a painting, hanging in the villa, depicting the Nue of Japanese folklore ("the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the tail of a snake, the limbs of a tiger, and a cry like a thrush"). The missing artist who made the painting is one of the many skeletons rattling around in the family closet. What about that strange night when the last two of prospective victims barricaded themselves inside the villa, while the rest waited out the night in a trailer with Kamo sitting with his back against the door. Only to be greeted by a horror show the following morning. A truly labyrinthine-shaped plot created out of space-time through which Houjou marched an "endless parade of horrors."

Ho-Ling Wong perhaps said it best in his 2020 review, "it's a very dense story, almost insanely so, but it holds together, somehow." And how! I mentioned in past review one risk of these kind of roller coaster-like hybrid mysteries brimming with impossible crimes, corpse-puzzles, contorted narratives and fantastical elements is running the risk of losing the reader along the way. The "Lapis Lazuli Castle" Murders ran into that problem towards the end. There's always the risk of the story getting entangled in its own overly clever, elaborate plot designs, but neither proved to be an obstacle for The Time Traveler's Hourglass. Even though the story concludes with a lengthy, Ellery Queen-style elimination of the remaining suspects full with twists, turns, false-solution and actual, crystal clear and very satisfying answers to the main problems – which in turn highlights just how fairly everything was clued and foreshadowed. Not a small feat to pull off when time travel, time paradoxes and altered timelines get added to the mix.

Even without the time travel shenanigans, The Time Traveler's Hourglass has all the makings of a more traditionally-styled, first-rate shin honkaku mystery with its isolated setting, gory corpse-puzzles and impossible crimes. A plot that would not be out of place in The Kindaichi Case Files (especially those penned by Seimaru Amagi), but the well-handled, time traveling hourglass and the character of Meister Hora allowed Kie Houjou to get more out of the premise than had it been a standard locked room mystery without a science-fiction artifact. Just like Death Among the Undead, the skillful way in which the fantastic is balanced with the rationale and fair play principles of the detective story unlocked doors to entirely new, previously undreamed possibilities for the genre. That alone makes it something of a modern classic and without question one of the best debuts in the history of the detective story.

There is, however, something about the characters and story I liked even more than the rich, densely-plotted web covering them (SPOILER/ROT13): Wncnarfr jevgref qba'g ful njnl sebz pbhegvat gentrql, ovggre be gentvp raqvat, xvyyvat bss punenpgref be raqvatf qrznaqvat n fnpevsvpr. Guvf fgbel nccrnerq gb trne hc gb qrznaq fhpu n fnpevsvpr sebz Xnzb. Bar gung pbzrf ng n terng crefbany pbfg, ohg vf jvyyvat gb npprcg vg sbe Eran'f fnxr. Fb, abeznyyl, hfvat gvzr geniry gb cebivqr n unccl raqvat sbe gur punenpgref vf ng orfg anhfrbhfyl purrfl naq fgbel-ehvavat purnc ng jbefg. Gur ernfba jul vg jbexrq urer vf orpnhfr gur ubhetynff bayl znqr gur unccl raqvat n cbffvovyvgl, ohg gur crbcyr Xnzb yrsg oruvaq va gur fvkgvrf rafherq vg unccrarq. Vg'f qvfthfgvatyl fjrrg naq urnegjnezvat, ohg, bapr ntnva, vg fubjf ubj tbbq Xvr Ubhwbh vf ng onynapvat naq znantvat n fgbel. Nyfb abgr gur rkpryyrag sberfunqbjvat va gur jbeqf Eran fcrnxf sebz ure ubfcvgny orq, “V xarj guvf jnf tbvat gb unccra. V'ir xabja sbe n ybat, ybat gvzr.” Just amazing!

Somehow, Kie Houjou pulled all of this off on her first try. She apparently is only getting started as the next two novels in the series are reportedly even better, more ambitious and audacious than this masterpiece of the neo-classical detective novel.

So, as you probably deduced from the tone of the review, lavish praise and length I really enjoyed The Time Traveler's Hourglass. The best detective novel of the year and already one of my all-time favorite locked room mysteries with the author already on the way of becoming a personal favorite. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for Kie Houjou, because something tells me she's one of today's mystery writers who will still be read, dissected and discussed a hundred years from now. If this trend continues, I can see this blending of the detective story, science-fiction and horror becoming an off-shoot/subgenre of its own. Similar to how historical mysteries became their separate thing. The Time Traveler's Hourglass would be seen as one of the first steps in that direction. Look forward to returning to the series as the third novel, Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022), was also nominated and translated by Madoy. I'm the most curious about the second, so far untranslated novel Katou no raihousha (Visitors on the Remote Island, 2020) because it sounds out of this world.

You can expect a review of Delicious Death for Detectives to pop up, one of these days, but first back to the Golden Age!

The Girl in the Fog (1923) by Joseph Gollomb

Joseph Gollomb was a Russian-born journalist and biographer, who wrote for The Evening Post, The Evening World and The New Yorker, but also contributed fiction to the pulp magazines of the early twentieth century – like The Black Mask, Detective Story Magazine and Flynn's. Gollomb's fiction seems to be barely remembered today as very little has been written about him or his work. Nobody has even bothered to compile rudimentary bibliography. I was only dimly aware of Gollomb because Robert Adey listed one of his serialized novels, The Girl in the Fog (1923), in Locked Room Murders (1991) with the following description, "death by throat cutting with, on the throat, fingerprints of a man found to have been executed days before." However, the book proved to be a bit obscure at the time and had forgotten about it, until recently.

Serling Lake is a small, independent publisher that popped up back in June and specializes in reprinting obscure, out-of-print impossible crime novels in the public domain. They have, as of this writing, reprinted five novels: Gollomb's The Girl in the Fog, Joseph Hocking's The Case of Miss Dunstable (1923), R.T.M. Scott's The Black Magician (1925), G. McLeod Winsor's Vanishing Men (1926) and Allen Upward's The Venetian Key (1927).

So similar, in spirit, to "Otto Penzler's Locked Room Library" series who recently republished Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air (1917), Arthur J. Rees' The Moon Rock (1922), Ronald A. Knox's The Three Taps (1927) and several other impossible crime novels from the pre-1930s era – going as far back as the 1800s. One difference between the two is that the quality, storywise, of the titles republished by Serling Lake is a little sketchy. I read through the plot descriptions and they're littered with reclusive scientists, vanishing maharajahs, super villains and Indian princesses. Hocking's The Case of Miss Dunstable sounds like the most traditional, straightforward of the lot, but opted for The Girl in the Fog as the plot description (a dead man's fingerprints) suggested something akin to Theodore Roscoe. I couldn't have been more wrong, but in a good or bad way? Let's find out!

The Girl in the Fog was originally serialized in Live Stories from June 15 to August 27, 1923, which begins when a "London particular" is developing alongside "a well-rehearsed scene about to take place in the fog" that "was to shock the great metropolis with its weird tragedy."

Dr. Ernest Goodrich recently returned from the United States to England with his daughter, Eileen, following his triumph in discovering "a new and cheaper process of extracting radium." So they voyaged home together with her teacher and companion, Naida Sangree, but on board she meets a dark, brooding young man named Hugo Malvin. And, of course, they fall in love. But she's haunted by his apparent unhappiness. Nothing out of the ordinary for schlocky pulp serial from the 1920s, but than Dr. Goodrich is savagely murdered on a foggy, London road and the bloody fingerprints on his throat match those of a known career criminal, George Holwick – except he was executed five days ago! This throws Eileen, Hugo and Inspector Hawley into a dark and trying adventure. Intertwined with their trials and tribulations are the activities of three shady individuals, Hutch, Dargan and Pete, who operate from a loony bin known as the nervous house. A trio of typical pulp villains with Hutch being a hulking, deaf-mute hunchback who communicates through sign language and Pete's full name is Pete Ennis. This is about all that can be said about the plot, story and characters as the wheels begin to come off, one by one, after this point.

The Girl in the Fog reads like Gollomb sold his editor on a story idea with no clue how to follow up, or deliver, on that idea and used the episodic nature of the serials to make things up as he went along. And leaned on some of the worst, badly dated pulp tropes along the way. The so-called impossible fingerprints is the most damning piece of evidence, because they make no sense in the context of the story. Firstly, there's no connection between the hanged man, the victim or any of the other characters. So why did his fingerprints appear on the throat of Dr. Goodrich? Just to muddy the waters? Apparently, it was done (SPOILER/ROT13) nf cneg bs gur cybg gb qevir Rvyrra penml naq gnxr pbageby bs ure rfgngr, ohg jul, jul va Cbr'f anzr, tvir ure fb-pnyyrq znqarff n culfvpny znavsrfgngvba va gur sbez bs n qrnq zna'f svatrecevagf ba ure sngure'f obql!? It makes no sense! On top of that, the trick is as disappointingly simple as it's preposterous. And not really an impossible crime at all. So decided not to use the "locked room mysteries" tag for this review. Just like I decided not to tag it as a "thriller."

Nothing even remotely thriller-ish about this episodes story with its soapy romance, "gaspy" twists (ROT13: Uhtb vf gur fba bs gur zna jub jnf ehvarq ol Rvyrra'f sngure), dalliance with hypnosis and bouts of turn-of-the-century melodrama. Not to mention an embarrassing line-up of bottom-of-the-barrel pulp villains. Let me remind you that one of those villains is named Pete Ennis (who takes his last breath while in "deadly grip"). Gollomb knew what he was doing there. Although I suspect most readers today will be done with the book and toss it across the room shortly after "Jamaica" Sam enters the story (ROT13: ur'f erirnyrq gb or n oynpx, haqrepbire pbc jbexvat haqre Vafcrpgbe Unjyrl).

So has it any redeeming features? I guess the scene in which Naida drags Eileen to a séance is interesting as it plays out a little differently than you would expect from such a scene in a 1920s mystery novel. One of the slightly more memorable scenes in the book, in fact. That and The Girl in the Fog is not at the absolute bottom of the barrel, but separating Gollomb's The Girl in the Fog and the bottom of the barrel are the likes of Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927), Willy Corsari's De misdaad zonder fouten (The Faultless Crime, 1927) and John Esteven's Voodoo (1930). Some would argue that's even worse than just being the worst. Unless badly written, poorly plotted and aged pulp fiction is your guilty pleasure, you can safely give The Girl in the Fog a pass.

His Burial Too (1973) by Catherine Aird

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh is a British mystery novelist, known as "Catherine Aird," who started her writing career in the sixties with The Religious Body (1966) and published her most recent novel, Constable Country (2023), when she was 93 – bringing the tally to twenty-nine published novels and short story collections. All except the non-series, standalone novel A Most Contagious Game (1967) featured her series-characters, Inspector C.D. Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby of the fictitious Calleshire County.

Catherine Aird was a personal favorite of Tom and Enid Schantz, of the erstwhile Rue Morgue Press, who decided to break expand their own rules to include Aird's non-vintage, police procedural-like mystery novels. Rue Morgue Press reprinted the then already forgotten A Most Contagious Game and reissued eight Sloan novels, before closing down in 2016. I first learned of Aird through the Rue Morgue Press and an endorsement from the Schantz is good enough to try one out. Unfortunately, I somehow picked the worst possible title.

The Stately Home Murder (1969), originally published as The Complete Steel, sounded promising enough at the time. A modern rendition of the classical, Golden Age-style country house mystery, but ended up trotting out cliches (SPOILER/ROT13: obqvrf va gur yvoenel naq gur ohgyre qvq vg) that were presented as clever, funny and subversive takes on the genre. That left enough of a bad taste that I never returned to Aird and Sloan. Not even the fat carrot that has been dangling in front of me for years wasn't enticing enough to return... until now.

The fifth title in the Calleshire series, His Burial Too (1973), is one of the few, notable locked room mysteries to be published during the 1970s and shortly highlighted in "The Moderns" section of Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991) – only mentioning that it "incorporated an impossible killing." Worryingly, the only person who's beating the drum for His Burial Too is Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included the book in his "A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books" ("...one of the best methods of achieving this effect yet employed"). A red flag, if there ever was one, but His Burial Too came out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library." So finally moved it to the top of the pile to judge it for myself.

His Burial Too begins after one of the hottest days in the history of the shire with the discovery that a prominent member of the Calleshires village of Cleet has gone missing the previous evening.

Richard Tindall, of Struthers & Tindall, was supposed to be in bed that morning, but his daughter, Fenella, found the still made bed empty. Tindall failed to show up at the office and his car is later discovered in the unlocked garage. Not a sign of the man himself anywhere. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby travel down to the village, but their missing person's inquiry soon turns into a murder investigation when construction workers discover his crushed body inside the church tower. Tindall was flattened by a huge, marble statue ("a weeping widow and ten children all mourning the father"), known as the Fitton Bequest, toppled from its plinth a good few feet high and smashed to pieces – covering the floor with "a vast quantity of smashed marble." This wreckage not only ended up killing Tindall, but the broken pieces blocked both doors from the inside ("there must be all of half a ton of marble up against the back of it"). So getting inside to secure the crime scene and excavate Tindall from the debris resembles a small scale disaster relief operation taking several men and chapters. A great way to hammer down the impossibility of the situation! Once they manage to get inside and the body out, it becomes apparent Tindall had been deliberately killed. And how the murderer managed to stage this locked room scenery is not the only complication facing Calleshire's finest.

That "rather odd firm," Struthers & Tindall, is a research and development company specialized in doing research or analyses for companies without their own research departments/laboratories. Sometimes these are hush-hush jobs involving security, dishonest employees or industrial espionage. Tindall is not the only one or only thing that disappeared. A very important report, Mellemetic File, is nowhere to be found. Nor can they find the chairman of United Mellemetics, Sir Digby Wellow, who's known as "one of the country's more colourful industrialists" ("and vocal..."). A receipt is found on the body for pair of diamond and emerald clips, presumably a birthday present for his daughter, but they've gone missing too. Gordon Cranswick, of Cranswick (Processing) Limited, comes forward claiming Tindall was ready to sell the firm to him. However, it's the locked room problem that gives the plot its weight.

First of all, while His Burial Too is a genuine locked room mystery, it's closer in vein to Dorothy L. Sayers than John Dickson Carr. From the literary chapter headings and backdrop (The Nine Tailors, 1934) to the how being far more interesting than the who-and why. The locked room-trick is ingeniously contrived, original even, but not entirely convinced it could have done as described. Perhaps better suited as one of those immensely satisfying, false-solutions that fall apart under closer scrutiny (ROT13: gur gevpx fgevxrf nf qrcraqvat zber ba yhpx guna fpvrapr naq gvzvat va beqre gb xabpx bire frireny gbaf bs zneoyr). Despite not being wholly convincing, I still enjoyed it and appreciated Aird made real work of the locked room in both presentation and solution. It would have been disappointing if the statue had been pulled down with a rope that had been retrieved through the narrow slit window, crack of gap. So a little surprising His Burial Too failed to leave much of an impression in our niche corner as at the time it must have been like coming across a cool, tall glass of water in a scorching wasteland. Edward D. Hoch and John Sladek were the only two who made serious contributions to the locked room mystery during the 1970s, but failed to secure a place on the 1981 and 2007 ranking of best impossible crime novels – collectively known today as the "Locked Room Library." At least it got nominated this time around. Simply as a locked room mystery, it deserves the opportunity.

When it comes to the overall story, I can keep it short and simple. His Burial Too should have been either edited down to an excellent short story and potential anthology mainstay or expanded into a novel-length mystery in order to flesh out the underdeveloped characters, setting, motive and sub-plots. The latter option would have resulted in a gentler, kinder precursor of the more gritty, neo-traditional detective novels and locked room mysteries Roger Ormerod would go on to write in the years and decades ahead. The problem of the blocked doors reminded me a somewhat of the locked room problem from Ormerod's When the Old Man Died (1991) where shattered, undisturbed glass on the floor showed nobody opened or closed the door after the murder. It sure is an unusual way to lock and seal an open, unlock room and not something that has been fully explored, which is another reason why the trick feels satisfying. At least I know why Jim likes it so much. And why he finds it convincing.

So not a full throated recommendation, but, if you demand some ingenuity and work going into your impossible crime fiction, His Burial Too is worth a try. It's a short enough novel that you can breeze through in two hours.

Cabaret Macabre (2024) by Tom Mead

Previously, I revisited The Red Widow Murders (1935) by John Dickson Carr, writing as "Carter Dickson," which got a long overdue reprint from Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics and their new edition comes with an introduction from the rising locked room specialist, Tom Mead – who has been a busy bee lately. Beside writing introductions, Mead translated Pierre Véry's famous short story collection, Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937), published by Crippen & Landru in 2023. And, of course, working on the third title in the Joseph Spector series of historical locked room mystery novels.

I got off to a rocky start with the Joseph Spector series. I thought Death and the Conjuror (2022) was a promising debut with its heart in the right place, but not the second coming of John Dickson Carr. That opinion received some daggerish glares. The Murder Wheel (2023) vastly improved on its predecessor and a noteworthy locked room mystery purely on the strength of the third, brilliantly-staged impossibility of a body materializing inside a sealed trunk on stage. So hoped the next one continued this streak. I'm glad to report Cabaret Macabre (2024) not only continued this upward trend, but ended up being leagues ahead of Death and the Conjuror and The Murder Wheel as a modern-day, Golden Age detective novel. A detective novel that can be summed up as Brian Flynn meets Paul Halter.

Cabaret Macabre begins with the discovery of a steamer trunk washed ashore on Rotherhithe beach, "it smelt worse than anything the Thames had ever spewed up before," which contains the decomposing body of a man – his face turned to pulp from numerous blows with a hard object. Before Inspector George Flint, of Scotland Yard, can give the problem of the faceless man in the trunk his full attention another problem presents itself.

Miss Caroline Silvius comes to see Flint on behalf of her older brother, Victor Silvius, who has been locked away as a patient in a private sanatorium, The Grange. Nine years ago, Victor was a 19-year-old youth who attacked and nearly killed the infamous hanging judge, Sir Giles Drury. Victor was madly in love at the time with Miss Gloria Craine, who worked as private secretary to the judge, but she died under mysterious circumstances ten years ago during a Christmas gathering at the Drury's country retreat, Marchbanks. The police wrote her death off as a suicide, but why take your own life using strychnine? Victor believed Sir Giles had killed her and attacked him with a knife, which was a costly mistake ("men like Sir Giles Drury make powerful enemies"). Sir Giles is a member of an influential drinking club, "The Tragedians," whose members include the experimental psychiatrist and head of The Grange clinic, Dr. Jasper Moncrieff ("...also cheerfully performed the odd lobotomy on troublesome sons or daughters of his high-society friends"). Caroline is convinced they're now trying to kill her brother ("...started with slivers of glass in his mashed potato").

At the same time, Lady Elspeth Drury contacts Joseph Spector, retired magician and consulting detective, because someone wants her husband dead. Sir Giles has been receiving poison pen letters and she believes the person responsible is Victor who has resumed his campaign of terror against her husband. What's more, the whole family is gathering again at Marchbanks in the run-up to the Christmas celebrations. There are Sir Giles and Lady Elspeth's troublesome sons, Leonard and Ambrose Drury. Sir Giles' illegitimate son, Sylvester Monkton, and Lady Elspeth's son from a previous marriage, Jeffrey Flack. Leonard is accompanied by his secretary, Peter Nightingale, who recently returned after working abroad for the explorer Byron Manderby. Marchbanks is only a stone throws away from The Grange. What could possibly go wrong?

Spector is right there when the first body is found, lying in a rowboat, in the middle of a small lake frozen over with a thin layer of ice. That facts turns this murder into Schrödinger's crime. If the body had been placed inside the boat and shoved from the jetty into the lake, before it began to freeze, all the suspects "have fairly solid alibis," but, if it was done after midnight, the murder suddenly becomes an impossible crime – because the ice is "not solid enough to take the weight of two grown men." So was "it a problem of time or space?" Mead wrote in his acknowledgments that has been delving into "the byzantine complexity" of several Japanese mystery writers and Tetsuya Ayukawa was no doubt on that pile. The second impossibility, a brutal shotgun murder, has another wonderful setup that to my knowledge has never been used before. I'm not going to give anything away here, but it sure is one way to break open a locked and watched room. As far as the solutions go, I think I enjoyed the trick to the second murder better than the first (MILD SPOILERS/ROT13) fubjvat lbh pna tb onpx gb gur jryy naq ersheovfu na byq gevpx nf ybat nf lbh pna nqq fbzrguvat arj be qvssrerag gb vg, juvpu pregnvayl vf gur pnfr urer. And it worked like a charm! However, the solution to the first impossible murder is not to be overlooked (SPOILERS/ROT13), juvyr n grpuavpny-gevpx (gung graq gb or yrff fngvfslvat guna gevpxf cynlvat jvgu fcnpr/gvzr), Zrnq perngrq n yrtvgvzngr ybpxrq ynxr zlfgrel. Hayvxr gur cebzvfrq ybpxrq ynxr zlfgrel V erivrjrq rneyvre guvf lrne.

Jim, of The Invisible Event, once compiled a list with locked room mysteries where "the setup is baffling and the solution ingenious." If I ever put together my own version of that list, Cabaret Macabre is a strong contender to make the final ten. However, the two excellently handled locked room murders only represents one aspect of larger, incredibly elaborate webwork-like plot.

The challenge to the reader, or the interlude, notes Cabaret Macabre has thrown out "more bodies, more clues, more deceptions, than even Joseph Spector is accustomed to" ("a webwork of murder"). This is really a densely-plotted detective novel in the best tradition of webwork plotting, which also makes it tricky to give an idea just how dense without giving anything away. Just that the story, plot and even the characters turn, twist and curl right up until the last page like a bucket full of epileptic snakes and bringing it all to a convincing (enough, overall) conclusion is Mead's greatest accomplishment to date – which could have easily gone the other with an ambitious, webwork-like plot like this one. Particularly (SPOILER/ROT13) jura gurer ner frireny zheqreref ehaavat nebhaq. Some pieces of the overall plot are better, or more convincingly, presented and resolved than others. For example, the dark, bleak answer to what really happened to Miss Moira Crain showing that Mead, like Halter, is no writer of snug, cozy mysteries. Great stuff! On the other hand, there's the final, final twist (ROT13: ...tebff) In bringing this Swiss watch of a mystery novel together that fitted, Mead has delivered a glorious tribute to the Golden Age detective novel that perfectly captured the bright, vivid imagination and daring ingenuity of the 1930s locked room mystery.

Nearly as important, Cabaret Macabre showed my comments about giving this new generation of traditional, Golden Age-style mystery writers time to grow and hone their skills is better than rolling out blind praise Death and the Conjuror could never live up to. This is what nearly tripped Halter's entry to an international audience when the translation of Le roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule, 1996) failed to deliver on the years of hype and myth building. It took Carr himself a solid five to ten years and a dozen novels to go from It Walks by Night (1930) and The Bowstring Murders (1933) to The Three Coffins (1935) and The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939). Good news here, of course, is that it has only been three years and the third Joseph Spector novel can actually be compared to some of Carr slippery, early wire-walking acts, plot-wise, like The Plague Court Murders (1934) and The Unicorn Murders (1935). So there's much to look forward to! And I very much look forward to the fourth title in this series.

A note for the curious: I know some are worried whether this current renaissance can be maintained, but don't worry, that genie isn't going back in the bottle. Just look who took up the banner of the traditional detective story and locked room mystery: Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian, Martin Edwards and recently J.L. Blackhurst joined the party with her brand new "Impossible Crime" series. Not to mention a very strong, innovative independent scene with the likes of James Scott Byrnside, A. Carver, J.S. Savage, K.O. Enigma and H.M. Faust. So give everything time, space to breath and enjoy your front row seat to the blossoming of a second Golden Age.

The Red Widow Murders (1935) by Carter Dickson

So the quality of detective fiction reviewed on here over the past two, three weeks have left something to be desired, even John Dickson Carr struggled to meet his own high standards in The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941), begging to be remedied by picking something good – which lead me right back to the master. Carr's The Red Widow Murders (1935), published as by "Carter Dickson," is the third novel starring Sir Henry Merrivale that marked the first time Carr applied his considerable plotting skills to the intriguing problem of a room-that-kills. I first read The Red Widow Murders in Merrivale Holds the Key: Two Classic Locked Room Mysteries (1995) and remember liking it without recalling too many details. Let's see how it stands up to a second read.

The Red Widow Murders begins, as so many of Carr's 1930s novels, by imagining London as a modern-day "Baghdad-on-the-Thames" where high adventure and strange mysteries awaits all who would seek it.

Dr. Michael Tairlaine had complained to Sir George Anstruther, Director of the British Museum, on the lack of adventure in his prim, buttoned-up life. So, one day, Sir George comes to Tairlaine with a somewhat unusual question, "do you believe... that a room can kill?" An unusual question coming with an even more unusual instrictions. Near eight that evening, Tairlaine has to be wandering the north side of Curzon Street wearing evening kit and keeping an eye out for "any sort of queer thing." When somebody approaches him with an odd remark or request, he has to agree or go along with it. That's how he eventually ends up at Mantling House to have dinner with Lord Mantling and partake in a possibly dangerous experiment. An experiment concerning a room, called the Widow's Room, that has been locked and sealed for sixty years. Not without reason.

During the 19th century, the room was the scene of four mysterious, often inexplicable deaths leaving its victims black in the face and no marks on their bodies. The room was turned inside out by architects and every stick of furniture and gimcrack was examined, taken apart or dissected by experts – none of whom found a poison-trap or hidden needles. When the grandfather of Alan Brixham, current Lord Mantling, become its fourth victim the room was permanently sealed. Lord Mantling ensured the room remained sealed by stating in his will nobody was allowed to enter the room until the house gets demolished. So now that the house had been sold and scheduled to be torn down, Lord Mantling takes the opportunity to test the room and has gathered a small dinner party. Afterwards, they're going to draw cards to decide who's going to spend two hours in the room-that-kills.

This party comprises of Lord Mantling's younger brother and family historian, Guy Brixham, and their elderly aunt, Miss Isabel Brixham. An old family friend by the name of Robert Carstairs and a French furniture dealer, Martin Longueval Ravelle, who's related to French expert who examined the furniture back in the 1800s. Ralph Bender is introduced as another of Isabel's protégés ("artist or something"). Sir Henry Merrivale is also present as an outside observer. This time, H.M. is in no mood for shenanigans or clowning around. H.M. is at his most serious here and fears the worst from this little game, but wants them "to play out this tomfool game" because he has no idea why he's so worried about what's going to happen next – only advising to let it alone without interfering. So a pack of cards, "new box, seal unbroken," is opened to draw cards to see which one of them is to die within two hours. Bender draws the ace of spades ("...some people would call that the death-card") and is left behind in the unsealed room at the end of a passage off the dining room. The rest remained in the dining room, sitting in full view of the passage's door, while occasionally calling out and getting answers. At the end of the two hours, the replies stopped and when they go inside they find Bender lying on the floor. Dead and black in the face from curare poison!

Somehow, someway, someone managed to jab a dose of the South American arrow-poison into Bender without leaving a fresh mark or scratch on him. In a room where the only door was watched, window covered with steel shutters "sealed with bolts rusted in the sockets" and a covered, soot chocked and impassable chimney. No secret passages or hidden doors. And, more importantly, not a hint of a long-forgotten, cleverly hidden poison-trap. What happened?

This is merely the setup of The Red Widow Murders, but what a killer setup! The problem is not only how the murderer transported a dose of curare into the victim's bloodstream, but who answered for Bender when he had been already dead? Why did the murderer leave behind the nine of spades and a strip of paper with an obscure phrase scribbled on it? And why take away Bender's notebook? Who had unsealed and cleaned out the passage and room before the party entered? What about the peculiar habit of the Widow's Room being "as harmless as a Sunday School" when it's occupied by more than one person, but kills anyone who's alone within two hours? Is there a madman in the family who already killed their pet parrot and fox-terrier? And how is any of it linked to Bender? H.M. eventually remarks, "I've met tricky murderers before, but Bender takes all prizes for being the trickiest corpse." Carr, H.M. and the corpse aren't the only ones who are in excellent form. Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters, officially in charge, gets to show why he was introduced in The Plague Court Murders (1934) as the supernatural debunker of the London police with a wonderfully contrived, somewhat technical false-solution – complementing the ultimately simple and elegant solution. More on that in a moment.

It has been commented elsewhere that the book is perhaps a few chapters too long, which could have been trimmed down and one, or two, unnecessary characters cut. Nothing that bothered me personally. I enjoyed the historical excursion into the death room's backstory reaching all the way back to Revolutionary France and the household of Monsieur de Paris. Admittedly, the historical excursion here didn't quite enhance the overall story, like the Plague-Journal from The Plague Court Murders, but it's the kind of quality padding/storytelling frills I welcome. Even more so when Carr is doing the writing! Lay on that gloomy, historical atmosphere as thick as possible!

Speaking of frills, The Red Widow Murders has a mild, fascinating crossover element. Not enough to tag this post as a crossover mystery, but it's definitely there. Tairlaine and Sir George previously appeared in the standalone novel The Bowstring Murders (1933) in which the alcoholic John Gaunt solved an impossible murder at a haunted castle. Gaunt is not only mentioned ("I should like Gaunt's opinion"), but Tairlaine remembers Gaunt had mentioned H.M. "almost (for Gaunt) with admiration." Crossovers are my guilty pleasure and love these small, throwaway lines confirming an author's series-characters share the same world, but they also make me wish Golden Age crossovers were done more often. Gold was left on the table! By the way, Chapter Sixteen has a teaser of a footnote referring to the unrecorded case of "the singular puzzle of the triple impersonation" in the murder of the American millionaire, Richard Morris Blandon, at the Royal Scarlet Hotel in Piccadilly ("...a record which may one day be published"). You could easily fill a collection with pastiches of unrecorded cases from Carr's work covering everything from Dr. Fell's curious problem of the inverted room at Waterfall Manor and the H.M.'s Royal Scarlet case to Colonel March's unrecorded cases of the walking corpse and the thief who only steals green candles. Anyway, back to The Red Widow Murders.

The Red Widow Murders is an intricately-plotted, beautifully layered locked room mystery which doesn't neglect providing the skillfully hidden murderer with a worthy and somewhat unusual motive. Not to mention the brilliantly handled, apparently messy, second murder or the shocking explanation to the problem of answers coming from a room occupied by a corpse. Every nook and corner of the story is crammed with clues and red herrings. A vintage JDC!! So, if there's anything to be said against The Red Widow Murders, it's that it still feels like it's a step below Carr's more celebrated works like The Three Coffins (1935), The Judas Window (1938), The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) and Till Death Do Us Part (1944). That can be entirely placed on the simple, elegant solution to the impossible poisoning. A solution that's perhaps a little too simple, too elegant for the murderer's purpose to be entirely convincing in the end. Simply put, this is another case of the false-solution ending up outshining the real solution as Masters going full John Rhode on the locked room puzzle of a room-that-kills was quite fun. Other than not being a full-blown, uncontested genre classic, The Red Widow Murders is a fine showcase why the period between 1934 and 1937 is generally regarded as the zenith of the Golden Age, when the detective story shined at its brightest. So exactly what I was looking for.

So immediately wanted to take a gamble with a murky, obscure mystery-thriller from the 1920s, but changed my mind. Tom Mead introduced the 2023 American Mystery Classic edition of The Red Widow Murders. So why not follow it up with Mead's Cabaret Macabre (2024). You're next, Mead!