Half-Mast Murder (1930) by Milward Kennedy

Milward Kennedy was an English civil servant, journalist, literary critic, reviewer and mystery writer, who was a founding member of the Detection Club, but the bulk of his novels and short stories have been out-of-print and largely forgotten about for decades – even during the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. So my only exposure to Kennedy's work has been through his small, modest contributions to the Detection Club's round-robin novels The Floating Admiral (1931) and Ask a Policeman (1933).

I have been aware of Kennedy and two of his mystery novels, The Corpse on the Mat (1929) and Death to the Rescue (1931), have been longtime residents of my locked room mystery wishlist. Kennedy's detective fiction is still waiting to be swept up by that reprint wave. Only two novels, Half-Mast Murder (1930) and Murder in Black and White (1931), returned to print over the years. I decided to just give Half-Mast Murder a shot to see what this forgotten Detection Club member could do on his own with a novel-length mystery novel.

Half-Mast Murder is Kennedy's fourth mystery novel taking place at Cliff's End, "a house of some social standing," situated on the coast and property of "one of the Big Noises of the world," Professor Paley, who's an authority on international politics, economics and war – playing "a big part in the creation of the Succession States to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire." Professor Paley's books and strong opinions make him "very unpopular with some people." Currently, the professor is working on his next book supposedly to contain some remarkable revelations about the Great War ("moral dynamite") and has come down from London to Cliff's End to write the book. Professor Paley has brought along a nice, close-knit group of future suspects.

There's his widowed sister, Mrs. Arkwright, and his niece, Cynthia, who has a brother, Julian, who works for an armaments manufacturer and is not on speaking terms with his anti-war uncle. Julian is in the neighborhood. A longtime friend of the professor, Bertie Trent, who was nevertheless overheard saying Paley's "only fit for heaven." And the sooner the better. George Shipman, a man of leisure, is only there for Cynthia. Finally, a visitor from America, a Mr. Quick, who came to see the professor as a representative of the Association for World Harmony (Inc.). This first chapter ends with the party rushing down to the octagonal-shaped summerhouse, where the professor has been working, after the butler failed the get an answer. So they break down the door to discover the professor slumped in a chair with a knife-handle sticking out of his chest.

Superintendent Guest and his men arrive at Cliff's End to take charge, but the problem facing them is a multifaceted, messy tangle of clued, red herrings and uncooperative suspects. For one, there's the problem of the locked summerhouse and why the murderer created a locked room puzzle, because, even without the locked door, it looked too dodgy to be suicide. And there are other puzzling peculiarities to the case. Why was the flag on the roof of the summerhouse flying half-mast? Why was there a bloodstained bathing suite stuffed into the safe? What's the stain of the sliver wood Guest too from railing? What's the significance of the camera and a spool of fishing-line found at the crime scene? However, the plot and Guest's investigation primarily revolves around picking apart everyone's movements around the time of the murder and making time tables.

So, yes, Half-Mast Murder is firmly rooted in the much maligned, so-called “humdrum” school of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode, but two chapters standout – Chapter XV ("EXAMINES EVIDENCE") and Chapter XXI ("AUGURS AN ARREST"). In Chapter XV, Guest tackles the problem of "how came the summer-house to be locked and the key inside?" Admittedly, the possibilities Guest considers and the actual locked room-trick could hardly be called original even in 1930, but have seen put to worse used than here. Chapter XXI ends with Guest giving the Chief Constable, what he then thinks is, the correct solution. Only for it to be reduced to a false-solution. I'm afraid Kennedy's Half-Mast Murder is a very bad case of the false-solution outshining the correct solution. More on that in a moment.

I should first mention Half-Mast Murder has a strange peculiarity that should have been a drawback, but ended up saving the book from becoming a total loss. Half-Mast Murder is still very much an early, 1920s drawing room mystery at heart as the crime scene resembled a busy thoroughfare with practically everyone popping in-and out at the time the professor was being murdered. So more than one person had a hand in creating the confusing crime scene, which is always a bit hard to swallow and takes some talent to pull-off convincingly. But here it safeguarded the story's best parts from the insultingly bad ending. Such as what happened to the missing material for the professor's next book and why the flag was half-mast. And I still enjoyed the (basic) locked room puzzle.

So I would have been perfectly happy with Guest's false-solution from Chapter XXI as it bundled those best ideas and plot-points in the best possible solution to the murder as it was presented – while using those last few chapters plugging the gaps. Sure, it would not have been a blistering original, rug-puller of a whodunit, but would have happily recommended it to fans of Crofts and Rhode. Kennedy thought the ending needed something more than mere competence and opted for pulling a "surprise twist" out of his ass. It stunk! I don't know what's the worse offense here: the flagrant lack of fair play (you can't even guess the who or why) or the solution to who and why. Something so cringe, you want to hide it from outsiders (SPOILER/ROT13: gur ohgyre qvq vg). I hope the Detection Club put Kennedy on trial for this faux pas and had to pay Rhode's bar tab as punishment.

Milward Kennedy has always been one of those notable gaps in my Golden Age detective reading and hoped more for Half-Mast Murder, but it ended up dampening my interest in Kennedy just a little bit. On the other hand, even the best of Kennedy's contemporaries had some terrible mystery novels to their name. Martin Edwards praised Kennedy in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), "a leading exponent of the village mystery," highlighting The Murderer of Sleep (1932), Poison in the Parish (1935) and the previously mentioned Death to the Rescue. A mystery novel based on a real-life case that was withdrawn from circulation after a libel lawsuit. So I won't write Kennedy off completely, but the next one better be good.

The Argentinean Butterfly Mystery: C.M.B. vol. 13-14 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 13 comprises of four, one-chapter stories starting with one of those human, heart-shaped puzzles, "The Grass in Summer," which begins when soaring temperatures end the school day early for the students of Meiyuu Private High School – leading to an unexpected discovery in the streets. Sakaki Shinra, Nanase Tatsuki and their friends accidentally stumbled across a small, empty plot of land that was practically hidden from sight ("...surrounded by buildings and is only connected to the main road by a small gap...").

What's really peculiar about that plot of land are the various plants and flowers growing on it. Such as arnoglossa, "a type of grass that grows on solid ground," growing in a straight line, morning glory wrapping itself around a water tap and much more. The plot is like coming across a desert oasis in the middle of a city or finding a botanical garden in your attic. When they return to the plot, they meet a woman who tells them the plot of land used to be belong to her late father. However, she had not seen or heard from him for seven years, until the hospital called to tell her he was dying. So why did her father disappear and what was behind the plot of land? Normally, the reason for the man's disappearance would be the crux of the puzzle, but this time that part is more of an after thought. The real puzzle is what that wild garden used to be. Shinra's explanation is as unusual as it's pleasingly original like a benevolent version of Uketsu without the horror. A strange plot indeed!

The second story, "Mountain Villa in Fog," has Shinra and Tatsuki lost in the foggy mountains during a study trip. Fortunately, they came across a mountain villa owned by a Kaeru Amagasa, scriptwriter of the O-Zap drama group, whose hosting a reunion of the once somewhat popular group – enjoying some low-key success only five years ago. The other three members are Chisato Hanamaku (actress), Tokuji Kirishima (actress) and their leader/lead star, Tamotsu Tsukiyama. Tsukiyama tells them O-Zap is making a comeback with an American tour, but the day ends with him being found dead on the living room couch with a rope tied around his neck. A familiar and classical setup for a closed-circle whodunit, apparently hinging on motive and opportunity, but Katou presented an uncharacteristically disappointing and uninspired ending to what could have been a fairly decent whodunit.

"Asado" is the third story and very wish-washy, non-mystery story. Shinra and Tatsuki's study group have to put together a stall for the school's cultural festival. So they decide to do a food stall and Shinra suggests to do an asado. Some fairly small problems arise during the preparations of the festival, but, like I said, it barely can be called a mystery story. Fortunately, this volume ends on a high note.

Mau Sugal, the black market broker, returns in the fourth and final story, "The Music Box." This time, she wants Shinra to solve the mysterious, borderline impossible mystery attached to an antique music organ. It used to belong to an aristocratic British family from the 19th century, but it was the lady of the manor who was obsessed with the organ. She wrote about her obsession in her diary, which drove her husband to shoot the blasted thing with two full barrels. However, there "no gunshot marks at all" nor any repair marks and "even the glass is original" and there's no question it's a different organ – begging the question how the bullet holes have disappeared. Sugal is willing to give Shinra a valuable piece of information in exchange for a solution. I'm not sure if this counts as an impossible crime, but the solution, based on the diary entries and why the lady played only particular piece of music, is excellent. This time, Shinra had a helping hand putting the pieces together. Hihimaru, the baboon, from "An Old Woman and a Monkey" (vol. 12) is now living at Shinra's museum and provides the missing link in the case.

So C.M.B. is a mixed bag with two weak, almost negligible stories, "Mountain Villa in Fog" and "Asado," stuck between the visually striking "The Grass in Summer" and the wonderfully done "The Music Box."

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 14 opens with a classic, two-part story, "World's End," which was setup in the previous story. Sugal's important piece of information turned out to be a photograph of a legendarily rare butterfly, Colias ponteni, better known as the Colias imperialis. A butterfly discovered on Captain James Cook's journeys, but less than a dozen specimens were collected and the circumstances or locations of their collection extremely muddled. And it has not been spotted or collected since the 1850s ("...a popular legend that they live in a giant hole in the South Pole"). So what they have to do is track down the person who made the photograph and that brings them to Argentina. This is where the story splits in two as one half takes a look at the crimes committed during the Dirty War by Argentina's military dictatorship. Katou convincingly ties the two together without breaking the butterfly on the proverbial wheel. "World's End" is perhaps not a detective story proper, but a very well done crime story with a fitting ending.

Next is up is another minor character piece, "Sugoroku," in which Shinra and Tatsuki stumble across a toy shop with old, vintage toys. Haru Nijima, an elderly woman, took over the shop after her husband passed away, but she has no idea how to run or manage it properly. She would like to close the shop and go on that long dreamed of holiday with her two friends, but, for some reason, her friends have stopped talking to her. She has no idea why or what she might have done to upset them. Shinra and Tatsuki take upon themselves to clear away the pileup of misunderstandings between the shopkeeper and her two friends. Not bad but very minor stuff.

This volume also ends on a high note with "The Woman in the Flower Shop." Kizaki Kousaku, a law student, is hopelessly in love with Sone Keiko and even spies on her with binoculars from his apartment completely unaware a colleague at his part time job, Wakui Chisato, secretly likes him. A situation that becomes terribly complicated when Kousuka discovers through his binoculars Keiko has a secret lover. Kousuka is the only one who knows about this lover and that becomes a dangerous problem when this lover brutally kills Keiko. So he decides to send the murderer a letter, "hurry up and turn yourself in," but the murderer returns it in person. What's more, he knows all about Kousuka spying on Keiko ("...sunlight will reflect off the lens and give away your position"). The killer is determined to make Kousuka the scapegoat for his murder, until Shinra turns up to save the day. Not a series classic, but still a good, solid story and closer to this volume.

C.M.B. vol. 14 is not so different from the previous volume, except this one has three instead of four stories with two best stories, "World's End" and "The Woman in the Flower Shop," sandwiching "Sugoroku." Not necessarily a bad story, but very minor, forgettable stuff. Those four stories book ending the weaker, slighter stories more than make up for them, especially "The Music Box."

Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912) by Victor L. Whitechurch

Rev. Victor L. Whitechurch was an Anglican churchman, author and creator of Thorpe Hazell, a vegetarian railway enthusiast, who's one of the oddest "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" appearing in a short-lived series of nine short stories from 1905 to 1906 – collected in Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912). Whitechurch started out as a turn-of-the-century mystery writer in the Doylean tradition, but also got the participate in the early Golden Age of the British detective story with novels like The Crime at Diana's Pool (1927), Murder at the Pageant (1930) and Murder at the College (1932). Not to mention being a founding member of The Detection Club and penning the first chapter ("Corpse Ahoy!") for the round-robin mystery The Floating Admiral (1931).

Whitechurch is best remembered today for the railway detective and thriller stories written during the first decade of the previous century, which extends pass the Thorpe Hazell series. That gives them some historical importance. Mike Grost pointed out Whitechurch's "stories appeared early in the Impossible Crime movement" and "very early in the Technological Detective movement" that "had already been piloted by L.T. Meade in this era, but just barely." Thrilling Stories of the Railway and Whitechurch's other railway mysteries were fairly obscure and out-of-print for decades, until they entered the public domain. They have since been bundled together and reprinted by different publishers. I wanted to finally take a look at this collection of pioneering detective stories.

The first story is "Peter Crane's Cigars," originally published in the July, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Ingenious Ruse of Mr. Crane," which briefly introduces Thorpe Hazell. A book collector, railway enthusiast and amateur detective "whose knowledge of book editions and bindings was only equaled by his grasp of railway details," but what made Thorpe Hazell an odd duck at the time was another one of his eccentricities – "a strong faddist on food and physical culture." A vegetarian to the extreme who was constantly practicing strange, outlandish physical exercises.

So this first story presents a fairly minor problem as Hazell has to deal with a tobacconist undercutting his competition by selling quality cigars at bargain prices ("...only paid fivepence each for them"). That brand can be "picked up very cheaply in Holland or Belgium," but not resold at those low prices unless they were smuggled into the country without paying the duties. Hazell dons a disguise to tail Crane on his monthly excursion abroad, but even the railway detective is baffled how Crane was smuggling the cigars. So you can categorize this story as a borderline impossible crime story and not something as banal or disappointing as the cigars being smuggled pass customs inside the books Crane was lugging around on his travels. Whitechurch came up with something more ambitious for the core solution, but its dependence on (ROT13) haxabja nppbzcyvprf detracts from the overall plot. Still a fun, enjoyable introduction to the series.

"The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern," originally published in the August, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with Hazell perusing the morning newspaper when a headline, "SHOCKING ACCIDENT ON THE RAILWAY," catches his eye and attention. An unidentified man was found leaning out of one of the windows of an express, on the London and Mid-Northern Railway, who had a wound on the back of his head and an ear torn off. So the authorities assume the man was looking out of the window and struck his head against one of several bridges over the line, but Hazell would like to know more about the incident. Between stretches and dumbbell exercises, Thorpe Hazell becomes Thorpedyke Hazell and follows a trail of physical evidence right to the murderer's doorstep. As noted before, these are early, pre-Golden Age mysteries that reads like a blueprint of what's coming, but often lacked fair play. So Hazell is as much as an oracle as an detective. Still a fun story.

Interestingly, Whitechurch's "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" appears to have been the blueprint for another impossible crime story from the same decade. This story sounded so familiar, I started looking over the "Train Mysteries" tag and came across "The Unseen Hand" by M. McDonnell Bodkin from The Quests of Paul Beck (1908) and anthologized in Ye Olde Book of Locked Room Conundrums (2016). "The Unseen Hand" was published in the December, 1907, issue of The Royal Magazine. So assume Bodkin had been aware of Whitechurch's story and tried to improve on it, because it doesn't seem like a blatant copy/paste job.

"The Affair of the Corridor Express," first published in the September, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, is an interesting one. A distressed Mr. F.W. Wingrave, a master at Shillington School, comes to Thorpe Hazell asking him to help find a 10-year-old school boy, Horace Carr-Mathers, who's the son of a millionaire and impossibly vanished from a moving train – vanished right under the nose of the school masters! So the London express was thoroughly searched, every compartment, luggage rack and passenger, but Horace was nowhere to be found. Hazell can see "a distinct plot" in Wingrave's account and accepts the case. I think this is the first story with a plot that has aged surprisingly well. Not only does it indulge in some clueing and foreshadowing, but the visual image of how Horace vanished from the train makes for a memorable visual image. That poor kid! One of those rare detective stories that manages actually do something with a kidnap plot.

"Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," originally published in the October, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine under the title "The Car That Vanished" and anthologized in The Realm of the Impossible (2027), is another early highlight of the impossible crime story. A case that "found a prominent place in Thorpe Hazell's notebook" and for good reason. Sir Gilbert Murrell has three paintings on loan to an expedition, but they inexplicable disappear in transit, on a goods train, along with its entire waggon on a non-stop right. And to top it all off, the vanished waggon with the paintings was in the middle of the train! I don't know how feasible the disappearance-trick is or whether it can be pulled-off on a first try, but the idea is ambitious, original and light years ahead of its time when it comes to the impossible crime story. A good and entertaining impossible crime caper.

"How the Bank was Saved," published in the November, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Frustration of Kinch," begins with admitting "Thorpe Hazell always looked upon the affair of the Birmingham Bank from a distinctly humorous point of view" – "not worth calling a railway mystery or adventure." I agree. This is a mild crime comedy in which Hazell helps a bank thwart a plot to destroy their credibility over a personal grievance. A plot involving a robbery aboard a train, but Hazell has a counter plot. A fun, light, but forgettable, criminal farce.

"The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box," originally published in the December 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine and previously anthologized in Vintage Mystery and Detective Stories (2005). This time, Thorpe Hazell gets to play a cross between Arsène Lupin and James Bond. Hazell is approached by Mostyn Cotterell, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affair, who has an unusual request. How do you steal back stolen document from a German diplomat traveling from London to the Continent by the ordinary boat train? The documents in question being carried in a locked dispatch-box. So, on this case, Hazell is not solving a train heist, but organizing and carrying one out. A daring assignment on paper ("...the most daring case which he ever undertook..."), but, as the ending showed, not half as dangerous or impossible when you have the backing of the British Empire. Still an amusing yarn regardless and not half bad for the time.

"How the Bishop Kept His Appointment," originally appearing in the January, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, is a mild, humorous adventure story in which Hazell helps a bishop get to his important speaking engagement after their train derailed. So not much to say about this one except that it has one or two good moments.

"The Adventure of the Pilot Engine," first published in the February, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, takes place at "a juncture when European politics were considered by diplomatists to be in a very delicate state" when Count von Neglein arrived in the country – scheduled to have "an interview with the English Prime Minister" ("...in presence of the King"). A small group of spies, headed by a man named Dubourg, plot to prevent this meeting from ever happening and the plot he has hatched makes this the most technically complicated stories in the series. A complicated and fiendish scheme involving a particular stretch of railway with quadruple tracks and switch boxes. There's even a map of that stretch of railway line. Refreshingly, Dubourg admits "there are several weak spots in the plan" and "must trust to luck." Nobody could have planned on a certain railway detective playing deus ex machine to spoil their carefully laid out and executed plot. So not too bad for a vintage spy thriller.

Note for the curious: one of the characters involved in the plot is a Russian spy, named Koravitch, who's probably the same character from Whitechurch's The Adventures of Captain Ivan Koravitch (1925). That could mean Whitechurch could have written the first, or one of the first, crossovers in the detective genre. Something deserving of being footnoted.

"The Stolen Necklace," originally published in the March, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, concludes this short-lived series on an underwhelming note. A short story from the late 1800s or early 1900s about stolen or misplaced diamond necklaces, strings of pearls and gold rings tend to feel like filler stories – because rarely something really is clever is done with it. This story is no exception. Hazell helps a woman retrieve a diamond necklace she lost on a train, but turn out to have been stolen. An OK story by itself (and for the time), but forgettable and very weak to end this series on. At least Hazell was satisfied with his ending ("...glad to think that the last of my little investigations of railway mysteries has cleared a good man of suspicion...").

Hold on! There are six more, non-Thorpe Hazell thrilling stories of the railway in this collection beginning with another locked room murder aboard a train.

"The Mystery of the Boat Express," published in the February, 1912, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with a passenger of the Great Southern Boat Train paying the guard a half-crown to lock his compartment ("...I do not wish to be disturbed"). When the train arrived at its destination, the guard unlocks the compartment and discovers the passenger has been shot through the head. So it appears to be a case of suicide, but the evidence screams murder. How can a man alone inside a locked compartment, on a moving train, have been shot? The solution to that conundrum makes "The Mystery of the Boat Express" another footnote worthy title. I think the locked room aficionados has seen a variation, or two, on this trick before, but this story predates them all by more than twenty years. Other than that, very much a short story of its time.

"How the Express was Saved," originally published August, 1911, issue of The Royal Magazine, runs along similar lines as some of the previous stories. It revolves around a group of disgruntled railway strikers who were told by their employer to hit the road. So they hatch a plot to derail the train, on which their General Manager is traveling, pitching it straight into the river. In my opinion, the best written of Whitechurch's railway thrillers complimented by a beautiful map of the scene where the train is to be derailed.

 

 

I have very little to say about the last four, fairly minor short stories from The Royal Magazine. "A Case of Signalling" (1911) has a maid and her railway worker boyfriend spoil a burglary. "Winning the Race" (1911) is another affair of international intrigue and concerns trying to get one train to arrive before the other. "The Strikers" (1911) is much the same as "How the Express was Saved," but not as good. Finally, "The Ruse That Succeeded" (1911), in which the Russian spy Koravitch has to be smuggled out of Britain. I guess this story comes from The Adventures of Ivan Koravitch.

So, all in all, Whitechurch's Thrilling Stories of the Railway is an interesting, but mixed, collection of short stories. The best of these stories are "The Affair of the Corridor Express," "Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," "The Mystery of the Boat Express" and "How the Express was Saved" followed at some distance by "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" and "The Adventure of the Pilot Engine." You have to judge these stories by the standards (or lack of standards) of the pre-Golden Age period when the detective story of the 1930s and '40s slowly started to take its form. That's perhaps the biggest strength of Thrilling Stories of the Railway is showing this transition from one period to the other. Like the best from this period, they read like a blueprint or premonition of the coming Golden Age (e.g. Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air, 1917). Whitechurch's railway mysteries belong to that category with its technical, more ambitious and complicated plots, impossible crimes, diagrams and floor plans. Whitechurch was not the first to include floor plans and diagrams, but they were still far from a staple of the detective genre. So definitely enjoyed this collection and its historical window into the development of the detective story. Recommended not only to vintage crime fans, but fans of vintage fiction in general.

Murder at the End of the World (2022) by Akane Araki

I previously reviewed Ross Montgomery's The Murder at World's End (2025), a classically-styled, retro-Golden Age mystery, which is set against the backdrop of the Great Comet Scare of 1910 when Halley's Comet was making its pass by the Earth – believing the planet would pass through its poisonous tail. However, the apocalypse never happened and Montgomery exploited the historical panic to stage a locked room murder inside a grand mansion that was turned into a vintage doomsday bunker. Coincidentally, just when I finished writing the review, the perfect supplement arrived in the mail.

In July, Pushkin Vertigo released Akane Araki's Konoyo no hate no satsujin (Murder at the End of the World, 2022), translated by Jesse Kirkwood, which was awarded with the Edogawa Rampo Prize ("...Japan's most prestigious award for unpublished crime writers"). That award got her manuscript published. Araki's Murder at the End of the World is a completely different story from Montgomery's The Murder at World's End.

Murder at the End of the World begins normally enough as 23-year-old Haru is taking driving lessons from her instructor, of the Dazaifu Driving School, Isagawa, but something strange is going on with the world outside – deserted roads, empty streets and everything's unnervingly quiet. Haru tells Isagawa she's now living alone with her younger brother, because their mother run away early on and their father hanged himself two days ago. And that's before they come across dozens of bodies hanging from trees in the mountain forest. Not a mass suicide, but individual people who decided "dying wild" ("...carrying out the deed in some remote natural setting") was their best option given the circumstances. It turns out humanity has only three months left.

Four months previously, the Spaceguard Foundation held a press conference to announce asteroid 2021-NQ2 (a.k.a. Telos) is going to collide with Earth on March 7 and release "a kinetic energy equal to 45 billion megatons of TNT." The asteroid is expected to land in Aso District, Kumamoto Prefecture, south of Fukuoka. A doomsday broadcast that became known "Black Wednesday" resulting in global, large-scale riots in which "150 million people perished," but Japan and the whole Asia and Oceania got the brunt of it. There was a mass exodus that turned two regions of the world into a continent-sized ghost towns as everyone tried to get as far away from the projected impact site as possible. However, it was explained it didn't matter where you are in the world when the asteroid impacts ("...over 3 billion people would die in the initial shock wave... 5 billion who survived would then starve or freeze to death"). Haru's hometown, Dazaifu, is right in Fukuoka Prefecture. So why even bother taking driving lessons when the story of humanity is about to end? Haru has her own reasons, but Haru and Isagawa stumble across a real and very disturbing mystery.

The Dazaifu Driving School has an untouched, fully fueled fleet of forty-nine training cars. So they can pick and choose which car to take for their lessons without having to worry about fuel. But when they return for their next lesson, they find the body of a woman stuffed inside the boot of one of the training cars. She has been the victim of a brutal and savage knife attack! Isagawa is an ex-detective with an overdeveloped, sometimes dangerous sense of justice and is determined the find the killer of the woman, but where do you start when everything around you has collapsed and been practically deserted? Surprisingly, they find several police stations with a skeleton staff and learn there have been other murders. But the victims of those frenzied stabbings were two male high school students. Nothing was really done to investigate the murders on account of the problems the impending end of the world has caused.

The first-half of Murder at the End of the World is superb from the pre-apocalyptic aesthetics, existential dread and looming extinction to the problems arising from trying to carry out an investigation in a collapsed, depopulated society – like finding the link between the victims. Something that would have been routine before the Black Wednesday. This also count for the murderer. Why go on a killing spree near the end of the world? Why try covering up the murder by hiding the body in the boot of the car when a body beside the road would hardly be noticed, reported or acted upon? That being said, Murder at the End of the World is not a detective novel proper dealing with cleverly hidden murderers, impossible crimes, dying messages, clues and red herrings. Murder at the End of the World is ultimately a criminal character piece/crime novel telling the story of Haru coming to terms with the inevitable and Isagawa's uncompromising desire for justice, but also the stories of the survivors and small pockets of civilization they come across. The so-called holdouts who, for one reason or another, couldn't get out of the country.

So that's perhaps why I preferred the first-half to the second-half and ending, because it was building towards a more detective-esque possible solution. I thought I had at least gotten hold of part of the correct solution, but had to abandon that possibility at the halfway mark. That's where the book became a character-driven crime novel in a doomed world that has largely gone dark. A serial killer sub-plot was even introduced fairly late into the story. Not that the story became any less readable or captivating. I was hooked and actually wanted to know how it ended for the characters, before the asteroid arrived. So even without a detective-esque plot, Araki had my full attention with Murder at the End of the World from start to finish. It's at the finish where my only problem with the story turns up.

The character-driven crime novel is not my favorite type of crime fiction, but I'm not completely allergic to them when they have something good or interesting to offer in lieu of an intricate or simply good plot. Murder at the End of the World definitely found that hook with an asteroid hurling towards Earth, but (IMO) it should at least give the murderer a strong motive to kill under these circumstances. I thought the motive behind the murder to be weak, unconvincing and cheapened the characters and the story preceding it. I would have been happy enough if the murderer turned out to be cracked and was sacrificing people to heavens as an old world remedy to the asteroid. So that left me with mixed thoughts.

I guess you can compare Murder at the End of the World to the other disaster detective Pushkin Vertigo published earlier this year. For me, Haruo Yuki's Hakobune (The Ark, 2022) is the better, more satisfying of the two novels as The Ark is a fiendishly-plotted whodunit with a series of crimes that could have only arising from that situation. Murder at the End of the World is the better written novel with a bigger impact. The Ark only impacted the characters trapped inside that underground structure, while most of society has already collapsed months before page 1 of Murder at the End of the World. Araki very effectively showed the devastating effects of Black Wednesday by exploring the nearly deserted Dazaifu and the surrounding Fukuoka region. If only the motive had been better or slightly more convincing and I would have been happy with this departure from my regular detective fiction.

Araki's Murder at the End of the World is still a very good, hard to put down read. Basically doom scrolling for crime readers. If your taste is somewhat similar to mind, I recommend to adjust your expectations. Araki's Murder at the End of the World is an entirely different kind of "disaster detective" from Yuki's The Ark. The disaster is larger in scale, nothing short of apocalyptic, but not the plot. So this is one best read and enjoyed when you go along for the ride.

Note for the curious: the next review is not going to be of Stuart Turton's The Last Murder at the End of the World (2024). I wish I had thought and planned that far ahead. 

The Murder at World's End (2025) by Ross Montgomery

Last year, Ross Montgomery, a British author of more than twenty children's books, debuted with his first novel for adults, The Murder at World's End (2025), which is the first in a new series of historical, retro-Golden Age style detective novels – starring an unlikely detective duo. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, recommended The Murder at World's End as a locked room mystery taking place during the arrival of Halley's Comet ("you'd enjoy that, I'm sure"). Well, you know how easily I can be persuaded with the promise of a good locked room mystery or impossible crime.

Before delving into Montgomery's The Murder at World's End, I want to take a brief detour into the past of the retro-Golden Age mystery novel. A past that was until recently not as deep or rich as the original Golden Age mysteries of the pre-1960s era. Until recently, that is.

The retro-Golden Age detective novels and series of today came out of the reprint renaissance that started in the early 2010s, but the so-called clever send-ups, reinterpretation and subversive takes that came before are a different story. Rarely did they turn out to be as clever or hilarious as promised. There were exceptions like a Charles Forsyte, John Sladek or even a curious, short-lived revival during the 1980s, but, more often than not, the retro-Golden Age mysteries of the post-WWII decades lazily trotted out cliches and tropes – presented as clever, hilarious or brilliantly subversive. More than one had a killer butler escaping the scene of the crime through a secret passage or tried to reinvent the wheel by having an unreliable narrator. Catherine Aird's The Stately Home Murder (1969) is perhaps the best-known of these horrendous country house send-ups and arguably reached its nadir Gilbert Adair's indigestible smug The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006). A first in a trilogy that I believe was presented as something of an event at the time, but seems to have been overtaken by history and already forgotten about.

Because what a difference a decade or two and flood of classic reprints can make! A renaissance that has been slowly turning into a revival with writers like Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian, Martin Edwards, Benjamin Stevenson and even a strong independent scene driven by names such as James Scott Byrnside and A. Carver. So the retro, Golden Age mysteries of today actually read like classically-styled detective fiction (e.g. J.S. Savage's The Mystery of Treefall Manor, 2023) instead of superficial imitations of Agatha Christie's work with all the depth of a game of Cluedo. That's something to be appreciative of considering nearly everything we got today was a pipe dream just 15, 16 years ago. Montgomery continues that trend with The Murder at World's End. So let's take a closer look at Montgomery's first stab at the classically-styled detective novel. And what he can do with the locked room mystery.

The Murder at World's End takes place in May, 1910, when Halley's Comet passed by Earth on its 75-year orbit of the Sun. And, on this specific fly-by, the Earth would be passing through the comet's tail and that ended up causing some panic when a spectrograph analysis detected cyanogen gas in the tail. Nothing civilization ending or even dangerous, but that didn't stop the headlines or some people from panicking ("people also lowered themselves into wells or sealed off their homes and papered over the keyholes..."). Montgomery used the comet panic of 1910 as the basis for his locked room mystery.

Lord Stockingham-Welt, the Viscount of World's End and founder of the Cometary Cataclysm Society, believes the world is going to end when the planet passes through the comet's tail ("your government has hidden the truth from you!") – turned Tithe Hall into a doomsday bunker. Tithe Hall stands on a remote tidal island, World's End, somewhere in Cornwall. Even without being turned into a temporary fallout shelter, Tithe Hall is an odd place designed by the Viscount's late father who believed "servants and masters should be kept apart." So the house is a rabbit warren of servants' staircases and "butler's mirrors" allowing "staff to check around corners, so they don't run into Lord Stockingham-Welt unexpectedly." By the way, the book has a gorgeous cross section giving a doll's house view of Tithe Hall.

The Viscount has invited a small group of people to Tithe Hall to weather the End of Days and emerge to rebuild the world. Among those "lucky few" are Edwin Welt, MP, who has an eye on the family fortune. Jolyon Welt, Rear Admiral, who's a red faced, bleary eyed drunk. Lettice Welt is there with her 7-year-old grandson, Gilbert, who's an orphan. The Viscount also invited another founding member of the CCS, Professor Wolff Müller of the Klatsch Institute in Hamburg, who's there to record the day with his camera for posterity. That only leaves the two detectives of the new series, Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham.

Stephen Pike, innocently convicted for a crime he didn't commit, is now a free and reformed man who has been send to Tithe Hall to work as an under footman, but ends up looking after Miss Decima – who the family has locked away in the old nursery. Miss Decima is the Viscount's octogenarian great-aunt and an absolute terror who curses like sailor's parrot ("never heard language like it, not from a lady or otherwise") and burned through the entire female staff. Stephen is tasked with keeping her company and comfortable, while everyone else busy to "completely seal the house, making it impermeable to the poisonous gases" ("tomorrow, we will rise to a changed world"). However, the next morning they have to break down the door to the Viscount's study when he doesn't answer their knocking. They discovered the Viscount sitting behind his desk, between oxygen tanks, shot through the eye with a crossbow bolt! The room was not merely locked from the inside, but boarded up, keyholes sealed with candle wax and every gap plugged with cotton wadding. A murder in a practically hermetically sealed room and the person who discovered the murder is an ex-convict who only arrived the previous day.

A predicament that gets even worse for Stephen when Inspector James Jarvis, of Scotland Yard, arrives on the scene. Jarvis has to be thickest cop to appear on the printed page since Lestrade. However, that prize goof grew on me after a while with his ludicrous, ill thought out false-solutions that get shot down, one after another, by Miss Decima and eventually Stephen. Chapter 45 is a Jarvis highlight and one for the scrapbooks! Miss Decima concludes she's "the only person in the house clever enough to solve the mystery" enlists Stephen as her Watson ("...you shall push my bath chair"). She also needs Stephen to investigate her "relatives, eavesdrop on conversations, threaten suspects, lie to the police, and maybe break a few fingers," but all joking aside, they end up making a formidable detective duo. A detective pair tailored for the conventions and rules of the upstairs/downstairs domestic situation of the British upper class at the time. Stephen has one foot in the servants' quarters ruled over by the head butler, Mr. Stokes, while Miss Decima has broken free from her confinement to torture her relatives. It made for an interesting dynamic between the two lead characters and the various puzzles the plot presents, but also a good way to setup the series and establish the lead characters without the plot taking a backseat. So the characters and newly established partnership of Stephen and Miss Decima that made the story rattle along at a brisk pace.

Montgomery wrote a very readable mystery novel and guess having written books for children and younger readers in general helped in writing The Murder at World's End. A detective novel also involves putting together a plot that holds up.

The plot of The Murder at World's End holds up for the most part, however, some rough edges and patches that are to be expected from someone playing the Grandest Game in the World. Such as the red herrings (ROT13: yvxr gur qrnq svfu) outnumbering the scant, sparsely-planted clues or that even without an intricate web of clues it's possible to make a pretty good, educated guess in which direction the solution is eventually going to head. Simply because the story and plot demanded such sort of murderer with that kind of motive. Not as bad, but still should be mentioned, is the explanation to the locked room problem. The locked room-trick is, what do you call it, a bit patchy as it reworks several old locked room dodges. Admittedly, the locked room-trick added a new wrinkle on those old dodges, especially the second-half of the trick, but the whole setup of locking and sealing everyone in their rooms demanded something more ambitious or original from the method. It's still fine as long as you don't expect John Dickson Carr-like fireworks or shin honkaku levels of meta-trickery.

So even though Montgomery's The Murder at World's End is still rough around the edges, I tremendously enjoyed as an auspicious debut of both a promising mystery writer and new series. I never judge a promising looking debut too harshly for its imperfections, because all they usually need is some time and experience. After all, Carr and Christie need time and experience before they could produce classics like The Three Coffins (1935) and Murder in the Orient Express (1934). They're the whetstone of talent and good detective fiction. So very much look forward to Montgomery's second Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham mystery novel, The Shadows of Kensington Gore (2026), which should be out in October.

By the way, on a final note, I have the perfect follow-up for The Murder at World's End. So stay tuned.

The Death of a Worldly Woman (1948) by A.B. Cunningham

A.B. Cunningham was an American teacher, professor of English and the author of over twenty detective novels featuring the backwoods Sherlock, Jess Roden, who's the sheriff of Deerlick, Kentucky – a county with a shockingly high bodycount. Cunningham's Sheriff Jess Roden series belong to the American school of regional mysteries with writers like Todd Downing and Eunice Mays Boyd. So each book in the series is basically a slice of locally flavored, small-town Americana and country noir.

Cunningham's appeared to have enjoyed some popularity and success with his Sheriff Roden mysteries during the 1940s. Anthony Boucher was a fan ("Cunningham's studies in Americana are unique in the mystery field") who praised "the solid reality of Cunningham's backwoods setting" and "Roden's uniquely effective sleuthing." However, the series has been out-of-print since the end of the 1950s and has regrettably remained out-of-print through out the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. I liked Cunningham's The Strange Death of Manny Square (1941) and Death Haunts the Dark Lane (1948), but it was not until recently I came across another one of Cummingham's mystery novels. In fact, I got my hands on one, of two, Sheriff Roden novels listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). More on that in a moment.

The Death of a Worldly Woman (1948) is the 15th title in the series placing Sheriff Roden, the best detective in the Kentucky Mountains, in a fish-out-water situation.

The backdrop of The Death of a Worldly Woman is the young, bustling city of Norton, situated along the bank of the Green River, which normally doesn't take notice of a short newspaper report about "a woman dying from an overdose of sleeping powders" – until the primarily police investigation made them "sit up and take notice." Miss Dimple Guest, two-time divorcee and leading figure of the Norton smart set, died in her bedroom at Riverside Apartments of an apparent overdose. A bottle of sleeping powders was found on the bedside table. So all the policeman in charge, Myron Tyner, has to do is find out whether she took the overdose by accident or on purpose. Only for evidence to quickly point towards murder.

First of all, the cause of death was not an overdose of sleeping powders, but a classic case of cyanide poisoning. And, considering, how peaceful the scene appeared it obviously had to have been staged. So murder and Chief Polk decides to call in their specialist from the mountainous backwoods across the river, Sheriff Jess Roden, who's clearly out of his element on the streets of Norton and the carpeted hallways of the Riverside Apartments. Fortunately, the small pool of potential suspects were contained to the Riverside Apartments (“she was poisoned in her apartment after the house was locked for the night”). So the sheriff and chief have about nine people to consider. Kirk Leach, a young bachelor, Mrs. Blaze, a widow, the Haneys, Garry Wade and his mother occupying the first and second floor. The basement is occupied by the caretaker and her daughter, Stellie and Fay Mankin. They share their basement room with Stellie's brother-in-law/uncle, Vic Mankin, who even in today's fiction would standout as a Hall of Fame creep.

Like I said, Sheriff Roden is somewhat out of his element even though his (core) methods, or principles, don't differ all that much from most fictitious detectives. Sheriff Roden at one point explains to Chief Polk that "unless the murderer is a madman, he has planned his crime with the same sort of mind you and I have." So what he does is "examine the little group of out of which the victim was taken," because within that closed circle, someone had motive and opportunity – only difference is how the sheriff tackles these problems. Sheriff Roden is not your regular amateur sleuth or city cop and can understand how his character alone garnered Cunningham a fanbase during the 1940s. Even in an atypical novel like this one.

The Death of a Worldly Woman is essentially a Van Dinean-style detective novel, not a Kentucky flavored regional mystery, which is why the backwoods Sherlock's usual approach initially fail. Bumping into proverbial brick walls, getting thrown down the steps of the Riverside Apartments and finding himself in some uncomfortably tight corners. I found one scene rather emasculating when Sheriff Roden, hat in hand, had to ask Chief Polk to tell one of the characters at the Riverside Apartments to stop bullying him, but eventually pulls himself and the case together. So, on a whole, The Death of a Worldly Woman should have been a true vintage elevated by its decidedly non-Van Dinean detective and Cunningham's unvarnished depiction of post-WWII America. For example, on the very first page, Mrs. Blaze hysterically announced she was leaving Riverside Apartments and only for the various agencies to laugh at her ("...there were dozens of families living in tents and trailers and other dozens crowding in together..."). On the surface, it has enough to warrant a reprint. There are, however, a few imperfections and shortcomings keeping it from a place in the first-rank and why this series is never getting reprinted. Not until the copyright expires.

Firstly, the problem of the locked room that's not a locked room at all. This is not a problem, or shortcoming, because neither Cunningham nor Sheriff Roden treated the murder as an impossible crime. If anything, The Death of a Worldly Woman is a blunt example of the closed circle situation and never would have assumed otherwise had it not been for its inclusion in Adey's Locked Room Murders. I think Adey was a little unfair when he called it "the poorest solution of all," because it's not a locked room mystery. What's definitely a shortcoming is the rushed ending crammed into the last, 10-page chapter. I don't know if Cunningham was pleasantly writing along when he realized he had to conclude it and raced towards it, which made for a weak and unsatisfying ending. There were a few details that needed to be elaborated on and explained a little bit further. Cunningham just called it a day and ended the book on this short note, "I guess that's it."

The Death of a Worldly Woman has some points of interest, but the last chapter is too much of a rush job to recommend it. I know who reads this blog and what they want. They would be sore about how this ended. Unfortunately, that's not all.

I mentioned in the review of The Strange Death of Manny Square a recurring character in the series by the name of Big Nig. He accompanies the sheriff across the river to Norton and plays a peripheral role in the case. Let's say that the character has not aged gracefully and likely the reason why publishers have shied away from reprinting the series. So I wish I had something better to report back on, especially as The Death of a Worldly Woman had been on my locked room wishlist for ages. I remember Cunningham had a firmer grasp on the plot in The Strange Death of Manny Square and Death Haunts the Dark Lane. So I still keep an eye out for Who Killed Pretty Becky Low? (1951), the other title listed in Locked Room Murders, and any stray copies of titles like Murder at Deer Lick (1939), Murder at the Schoolhouse (1940) and Death Visits the Apple Hole (1945). Well, I'll try and pick something good next.

Murder in the Gilded Cage (1929) by Samuel Spewack

Samuel Spewack was a Ukrainian-born American journalist, Hollywood screenwriter and novelist who penned two detective novels, The Skyscraper Murder (1928) and Murder in the Gilded Cage (1929), before abandoning the genre – leaving behind two obscure, long out-of-print mystery novels. Obscure, out-of-print but not completely forgotten going by two somewhat modern and very mixed reviews. A 1990 review from William F. Deeck, posted on MysteryFile, dismissed The Skyscraper Murder as hackwork ("show biz has obviously taken its toll on our author"). Mike Grost, on the other hand, praised Murder in the Gilded Cage ("...an entertainingly written mystery story") and called Spewack "an absorbing storyteller." Even drawing an interesting comparison to Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. So on the wishlist it went.

Last year, Spewack's Murder in the Gilded Cage entered the public domain in the US and quickly became available again through sources like Project Gutenberg (free) or the Wildside Press reprint. So on the pile it went.

The story of Murder in the Gilded Case is recounted and told by a Mr. Abbott, an ex-newspaper reporter, who reported on the public and sensational "divorce case that startled the country." Mrs. Dora Breese made a spectacle of "the tortuous trials and appeals" that completely destroyed her ex-husband, Henry, who lost more than just the divorce case and a hefty settlements. Henry was publicly humiliated, abandoned by his children, lost longtime friends and was thrown out of several social clubs. Mrs. Breese loved every minute of it and became upset when interest newspapers, tabloids and the public stopped paying attention to her. So she organized a trip aboard her private yacht (part of the settlement) to her Havana "winter palace" (also part of the settlement).

Mrs. Breese sets sail to Havana, Cuba, accompanied by her two children, Henry Jr. and Countess Giering-Trelovitch, who had a short-lived marriage with a Russian nobleman, family friend Gordon Rice and Abbott – who was hired as Mrs. Breese's personal press agent. Controversially, she also brought along her boytoy, Guy Thomas, who also figured in the divorce trial. So the trouble begins during the voyage as Mrs. Breese announces her intention to marry Guy, Abbott resigns after refusing to play her attention craving, headline grabbing scheme and someone has to be rescued after falling overboard. Only gets worse when they reach their destination. For one, Henry Sr. and Count Giering-Trelovitch turn out to be Havana as well to complete the party. One of these people shot and killed Mrs. Breese.

Fortunately, there's also a Great Detective staying in Havana, Boris Sergeivitch Perutkin, who was "a big gun with the Czarist police" until the Bolsheviks threw him out. Perutkin has a reason to be there. Before the revolution, Perutkin was in Riga to investigate the murder Count Giering-Trelovitch's neighbor, Baron Peter Setovski, who was shot in his bedroom. Count Giering-Trelovitch was the number one suspect, but before Perutkin could draw his conclusions, the revolution forced both the Perutkin and the Count out of Russia. Now all the suspects have reunited in Havana. Perutkin believes the murders of Baron Peter Setovski and Mrs. Breese were done by one and the same hand.

Perutkin is certainly an interesting and striking detective character to introduce in 1929. Mike Grost noted Perutkin has some features that reminds one of Christie's Hercule Poirot, "a flamboyant, good natured, slightly comical sleuth" who admires his own genius ("have I not done an extraordinary piece of detective work?"), but they couldn't handle their cases more differently. Perutkin's logic and reasoning has a blunt, bludgeoning and prefers theatrics and taking shortcuts. Perutkin not only tries to take a shortcut, but charges the chance at a shortcut like a mad elephant. This also makes it funny Perutkin sometimes foreshadows Miss Marple penchant for drawing comparisons to apparently unrelated incidents, but Perutkin's observations aren't about missing umbrellas or the butcher's son courting the maid working up at the big mansion ("I am reminded of the famous Sebastopol tragedy, where someone with a homicidal humor played just such tricks..."). Far from it.

However, Perutkin trying to rush and tackle that early shortcut provides Murder in the Gilded Cage with its most memorable scene and a stage for the second murder. They can't prevent a third murder briefly presented as an impossible crime, "nobody's invented an invisible gun or an invisible man," but that didn't last long as it was quickly revealed to have been ordinary shooting.

So the plot keeps Perutkin and the reader busy enough, but is it any good? I think it can be considered better than what can generally be expected from an obscure, 1920s mystery novel. The plot holds and hangs together well enough, however, it's über conventional, flirts with the odd cliche and barely poses a challenge to the seasoned, suspicious-minded reader – even with the spotty clueing and red herrings. Now, I don't want to sell Spewack short here. While I spotted the killer, there were enough red herrings to keep other options open and the story moving along. There's also a pleasingly clever, underlying logic to the series of murders.

When (SPOILER/ROT13) gur zheqre bs Zef. Oerrfr jnf qvfpbirerq, gur svefg guvat V gubhtug jnf, fubg jnf, fur? Bqq! Tbvat ol gur punenpgre bs Zef. Oerrfr, ure npgvbaf naq gur zbfg ivnoyr fhfcrpgf, lbh rkcrpg fur jbhyq unir orra fgenatyrq be oyhqtrbarq. Znlor fgnoorq, vs n sehvg xavsr be cnve bs fpvffbef jrer unaql. N pbby, qryvorengr naq rssvpvrag bar-fubg xvyy frrzrq bss va guvf fvghngvba. That hunch was correct and (ROT13) jul V jnf nyzbfg qrnq fher nobhg gur zheqrere nf gur zrgubq va guvf pnfg bs punenpgref ernyyl svggrq bayl bar crefba (“...bar-gvzr fbyqvre bs sbeghar”). Again, I don't want to sell Spewack short as he penned a very lively, entertaining and straightforward mystery novel that somehow doesn't read like the über conventional, slightly cliched mystery novel it really is underneath. I was never bored, enjoyed Perutkin's unorthodox detective work and have come across much worst mysteries from this decade. Just disappointing Spewack was unable to do something more with the plot and perhaps some of the characters.

But going by what has been written about The Skyscraper Murder, Spewack improved considerably with Murder in the Gilded Cage. At least it appears to have more consistency than his first stab at the detective story, which is not an unimportant piece of good detective fiction. So maybe it's to be regretted Spewack quietly bowed out of the genre after Murder in the Gilded Cage. I would have liked two, three more Perutkin mysteries to see if Spewack continued to improve or if Murder in the Gilded Cage was his ceiling. The potential was there.

So, all in all, Spewack's Murder in the Gilded Cage is an amusing mystery full with humor, social satire and a detective who believes he's the hype, but too lightly plotted to satisfy the more demanding fan who read detective stories for their plots. But if the light touch to the plot is no objection, it's well worth getting the cheap ebook edition or downloading it.

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Detective Novels from the 1950s

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction is generally narrowed to the interwar period, roughly covering the 1920s and '30s, because the World Wars make convenient bookends for the detective story's post-WWI boom period and post-WWII decline – not everyone agrees. Some have argued it started with E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) or even earlier with G.K. Chesterton's short story collection The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). It also ignores the 1920s was a decade of growing pains as the genre was still putting itself together. And, worse, it dismisses the 1940s. A time when established writers produced some of their best, most mature work and new names appeared on the scene.

I have changed my opinions on the start and end of the Golden Age several times over the years. Placing it first somewhere around the early '20s and coming to an abrupt end in 1949, but later included the 1950s. More recently, I have come to see the Golden Age as a life cycle rather than a clearly, or vaguely, defined period.  

1910-1919: I officially consider this period pre-GAD, but it can be seen as the GADs infancy/nursery

1920-1929: GADs childhood years of discovery, trial and error

1930-1939: GADs adolescence years full of dreams and wild ideas

1940-1941: GAD matured into adulthood

1950-1959: GADs twilight years

The 1960s is the decade when the traditional, fair play detective novel of the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s died with only a few holdouts persisting through the '60s and 1970s – until Gladys Mitchell and Michael Innes turned out the lights in the 1980s. This view is, of course, somewhat of generalization in itself as there were plenty of so-called Golden Age writers who never developed pass the nursery or childhood stage. It works for me and doesn't blot out two decades of which one is rather important and the other too often overlooked. I, too, was skeptical about the fifties, but that decade keeps surprising me. The '30s and '40s were definitely in the rear view mirror, but there was still life in the old thing at this point. So wanted to spotlight that too often ignored twilight decade.

A few years ago, it was all the rage to post top 10 lists of favorite mysteries from the 1920s, '30s and '40s, but doing a list of the twenties would comprise almost entirely of titles from the last three, four years of that decade and would need a top 25 for the other two. So decided to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Detective Novels from the 1950s," but my first version bumped into a problem as most of them appeared on previous Hit Lists. It looked more like a thematic copy/paste clipshow post than a top 10 post. I compiled a new list excluding every novel that has appeared on a previous Hit Lists.

So no S.H. Courtier's The Glass Spear (1950), Douglas Ashe's The Longstreet Legacy (1951), Stuart Palmer's Nipped in the Bud (1951), Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54) and Derek Smith's Whistle Up the Devil (1954). Worst of all, I had to scrap one of my all-time favorites, The Danger Within (1952) by Michael Gilbert, because it's already on both "Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels" and "Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Rue Morgue Press." This second iteration of the list was a little trickier to put together, but the result is far more interesting list and representation of what the 1950s had to offer (albeit in diminished quantity) than the original list. There were still titles that didn't make the final cut like Christianna Brand's London Particular (1952), Bruce Campbell's The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953), Christopher Bush's The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) and Asimov's The Naked Sun (1956/57). So you're probably wondering what the hell actually did make the list? Let's find out!

Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) by Herbert Brean

Until fairly recently, Herbert Brean was primarily remembered for Wilders Walks Away (1948), nearly netting him an Edgar for best first novel, but fans today consider Hardly a Man is Now Alive to have been Brean's best mystery novel – a minor classic of the American detective story. The pattern of the story and plot are as intricate as they're simple. Reynold Frame and Constance Wilders plan to get married in the historical town of Concord, Massachussetts, by the 104-year-old Dr. Annandale, but a strange disappearance, a ghost lamp, a phantom army, a historical mystery and a body in a disused well threaten to upset their plans. Jim Noy, of The Invisible Event, called the book "majestic and exhausting and wonderful" offering "a great picture of the genre at a time of huge change." I couldn't agree more and the fact it's has remained out-of-print to this day is baffling.

Night of the Jabberwock (1950) by Fredric Brown

I never understood the popularity of Joel Townsley Rogers' The Red Right Hand (1945), a phantasmagorial crime novel, which somehow bagged the 2020 Reprint of the Year Award. Fredric Brown may not have been the first to try his hands at a criminal flight of fancy, but his Night of the Jabberwock is so much better and imaginative than The Red Right Hand. Doc Stoeger, editor of Carmel City Clarion, is putting the paper to bed as he wishes something newsworthy would happen for him to write about. He then steps out into the night and into, what appears to be, the Twilight Zone. Or, as the title suggests, tumbled down a rabbit hole into a different reality where rationality doesn't exist. A fantastic mystery novels!

Death in Silhouette (1950) by John Russell Fearn

Fearn is my favorite second-stringer, pulp writer and at times a surprisingly decent, sometimes underrated, mystery novelist. Fearn wrote some grossly underrated mysteries like Except for One Thing (1947), Flashpoint (1950) and the posthumously published Pattern of Murder (2006). Death in Silhouette is one such underrated novel which takes place in the house of a modest, middle class family whose members have ordinary jobs like a restaurant cashier or store clerk and no domestic servants. That creates notable change in tone and atmosphere when an engagement party ends with the discovery of the future groom hanging behind the locked door of the basement. Fearn is incredibly cheeky with his solution, but just as interesting as the locked room trickery (simple as it is), is the part the pulp magazines that litter the house play in the story. It has been pointed out this is "one of the best sociological portraits of the popularity of US crime pulps in England." Death in Silhouette deserves more credit than I have given it.

Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) by Seishi Yokomizo

I cheated just a little bit by including The Inugami Clan, because it came as my recommendation for Seishi Yokomizo in "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance,"  but that list was more about writers and their rise from near or total obscurity – not their works. So took that as good enough excuse and how could you not include it on a list of best 1950s mystery novels? The Inugami Clan is the Japanese detective novel taking place at the lakeside villa of a family of influential silk merchants, but the death of the patriarch throws the various, warring branches in a conflict over the inheritance. What follows is a string of grotesque murders as iconic as the book itself and the detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, who eventually solves those murders. A grandiose whodunit and one the grand detective novels from the second-half of the previous century.

The Sleeping Bacchus (1951) by Hilary St. George Saunders

This excellent, often overlooked and out-of-print impossible crime caper has an interesting backstory. Hilary St. George Saunders, who shared the penname "Francis Beeding" with John Palmer, found a copy of Pierre Boileau's Le repos Bacchus (Bacchus Rests, 1938) in Parisian bookshop and asked Boileau's permission to adept the book into English. So a rewrite rather than a translation. Nevetheless, The Sleeping Bacchus is a very fun caper about a debonair, snooty gentleman thief, called "Zed," who stages a series of impossible thefts and miraculous vanishings. I would love a twofer volume with a reprint of Saunders' The Sleeping Bacchus and a translation of Boileau's original version.

Murder Points a Finger (1953) by David Alexander

The dying message is a well-established, popular trope and one that admittedly works much better in short story form than inside a novel-length mystery where they're usually only a small part of the larger plot. There are, however, a few detective novels, not written by Ellery Queen, making real work of the dying message. Alexander's Murder Points a Finger is one of those rare novels in which an ex-policeman and fingerprint expert is shot and mortally wounded, but leaves behind a cryptic message naming his killer with a set of fingerprint cards. Like others, I have always been surprised at the lack of reputation of Murder Points a Finger as it's a very good, if somewhat unusual, mystery novel that has never been exceedingly rare or hard to find. I found my old paperback copy right here in the Netherlands. And that was long before Wildside Press reprinted it. A highlight of the fifties!

Black Widow (1952) by Patrick Quentin

I know crossovers are generally regarded as cheap gimmicks or promotional material, smacking of desperation, but they're my guilty pleasure. There have been some genuinely good detective crossovers over the decades. Notably Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice pooling their detectives in a series of six short stories, starting with "Once Upon a Train" (1950), collected in People vs. Withers and Malone (1963), but arguably one of the best crossovers remains largely unacknowledged. Black Widow takes Peter Duluth from the Quentin's flagship series and frame him for the murder of a young woman. A murder investigated by Quentin's secondary detective, Lieutenant Trant from Death and the Maiden (1939), who starts out believing Duluth guilty and really goes after him. So a legitimate case of when worlds collide, but even without the crossover element, Black Widow still would have been a very well done suspense drama driven by a clever persecution plot. Deserves to be better known.

Cake in the Hat Box (1954) by Arthur W. Upfield

Upfield was not known for creating intricate, maze-like plots or realistic, razor sharp characterization, but, as a so-called regional regional mystery writer, he was nearly unmatched in casting Australia as a backdrop for murder from remote cattle ranches and dying lakes to the desolate Nullarbor Plain – crimes committed there often feel native to the setting. For me, Cake in the Hat Box is the most striking of Upfield's mysteries bringing Bony to the small, dried up desert settlement called Agar's Lagoon. A strange place surrounded by an ever-widening ring of empty bottles and a great place for star gazing or watching meteor showers. Bony strolls into this settlement not long after the local police constable is found shot dead in his jeep. This is one of those novels in which Upfield pleasingly gave more consideration to the plot and harmonized it with the evocative, colorful backdrop. I don't know if there's such a thing as an outback procedural, but if there is, Cake in the Hat Box is a superb example of it.

Captain Cut-Throat (1955) by John Dickson Carr

For some obscure, never fully explained reason, John Dickson Carr's historical fiction is often overlooked or outright ignored. I suppose they're generally considered swashbuckling adventures full with duels and romance, which is not entirely incorrect, but they also have strong detective plots and great mystery hooks. My favorite of Carr's historical mysteries is unquestionably Captain Cut-Throat. A thunderous mix of ghostly murder, spy shenanigans and adventure when the figure of Napoleon loomed large over Europe. Captain Cut-Throat takes place in the summer of 1805 when Napoleon had gathered Armée d'Angleterre to invade England, but an apparently invisible entity is sneaking around the camp and killing sentries. There's also a lot of swashbuckling action and derring-do between the murders exemplified by the midnight chase through the Field of Balloons. I rank Captain Cut-Throat with Carr's best non-historical mysteries.

The Double Turn (1956) by Carol Carnac (a.k.a. E.C.R. Lorac)

I mentioned in past reviews and "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" how Lorac's return to print has done wonders for her once tarnished reputation, because her work dropped out-of-print when she died and was mostly remembered novels which were easy to get secondhand – which didn't include her best work (e.g. Murder by Matchlight, 1945). British Library remedied that by mostly cherry picking the work to reprint that garnered Lorac praise and a reputation during her lifetime. Recently, British Library have begun reprinting the novels publisher the "Carol Carnac" pseudonym and The Double Turn is currently my favorite. Lorac had her own ideas about the detective and preferred to plot her own route through what could have been fairly typical and conventional detective novel. In this case, the apparent locked room murder of the Miss Trimmings, a major-domo of an invalid's household, who's found dead at the bottom of the staircase along with half the ceiling. The problem of the locked house is not the central focus of the plot. This is, after all, still a Lorac novel, but still a solid locked room mystery and a fine example of her home brewed detective fiction.

So, as you can probably gather from the list and cut titles, the 1950s was not without its moments and even produced the occasional classic or noteworthy mystery novel, but after 1955 it undeniable began to taper off. Still enough to consider that decade the twilight years of the Golden Age detectives, before the fire was reduced to embers when the world entered the 1960s. Even then some of those embers were still glowing bright, but that's something for a future list.