The Frankenstein Factory (1975) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch was the King of Short Stories, the Man of a Thousand Tales of Mystery and Detection, but, during his five decade run, Hoch also wrote a handful of novel-length mysteries like The Shattered Raven (1969), The Blue Movie Murders (1973) and a three-novel series of science-fiction hybrid mysteries – generally known as the "Computer Cops" series. You read that right. They're the back tracing Cyber Police you were warned about!

Carl Crader and Earl Jazine work for the Computer Investigation Bureau, headquartered at the World Trade Center in New York, whose "investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology" in the 21st century. So the C.I.B. are the "experts on computers, lasers, holograms, cryosurgery" and "new technology" handling "crimes the regular police forces aren't equipped for." Crader is the head of the C.I.B. ("...reports directly to the President") and Jazine is his field agent. They appeared in only three novels, The Transvection Machine (1971), The Fellowship of the Hand (1973) and The Frankenstein Factory (1975).

This time, I've a good excuse/reason (take your pick) to unchronologically start at the end of the series. The Frankenstein Factory had been recommended several times over the years for its qualities as both a science-fiction mystery and clever pastiche of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). That and the first two novels appear to be more science-fiction thrillers than science-fiction mysteries. The Frankenstein Factory seemed the safest choice and perhaps a candidate for that future followup to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries."

First of all, I skipped the first two novels making it a bit confusing when, exactly, The Frankenstein Factory is supposed to take place. The first chapter refers to "these early years of the twenty-first century," but, early on in the story, there were several hints the story could take place during the 2010s or even early 2020s – based on a reference to the fading memories of "the renewed moon flights of the late 1990s." And the age of one of the characters who took part in one of those return missions. But it became a lot clearer during the second-half and home stretch that it takes place roughly twenty-five years after the mid-to late 1970s. So probably somewhere around 2004, give or take a year. It could also be a bit later based on a references to that "seventy-year-old mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie," but that would still place the story within the 2000s. Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at the story.

The Frankenstein Factory begins with Earl Jazine traveling by hovercraft to Horseshoe Island, somewhere off the coast of Baja California, under the guise of medical photographer. Jazine has come to the island to film and document an experimental operation.

Dr. Lawrence Hobbes is the head of International Cryogenics Institute who freeze and store people's bodies "against a future time when they could be revived," but this goes hand-in-hand with their research into operating techniques at low temperatures. So underneath the research facility is also a cold storage vault with frozen bodies inside sealed cylinders. Dr. Hobbes is ready to take the next step and revive a young man who died of a brain tumor in the 1970s, but the tumor did a lot of damage to the body and other organs. So needs several organ transplants, brain included, before they can reanimate him. Dr. Hobbes assembled a crack medical team to carry out this secret and experimental operation. Dr. Freddy O'Connor, a brain surgeon, who had great success with brain transplants in animals. Dr. Eric MacKenzie, "only military surgeon to set foot on the moon thus far," and Philip Whalen assist him. This team is rounded out by Tony Cooper, a bone specialist, and Vera Morgan, a research chemist, who only arrived the day before Jazine. There are two more people on the island, the elderly Miss Emily Watson whose money has made the whole operation possible and a maid/cook, Hilda. And, well, there's the patient, or "shell body," who they call Frank.

The operation is a success, "we have heartbeat and pulse," but, while Frank is sleeping and recovering in the operating room, things begin to happen on the island. Miss Watson goes missing from her bedroom, leaving only a smear of blood behind, but she, or her body, is not found following a thorough search of the buildings and island – she had vanished from the island. However, this is not an impossible disappearance as has been suggested elsewhere. Miss Watson simply disappeared, but not impossibly, as the murderer could have thrown her body into the sea or buried it somewhere. That's not the solution to the disappearance, but it's not an impossible crime. Just a somewhat baffling disappearance, considering the circumstances and apparent lack of motive. But then the murder strikes a second time!

This time, they find the body and the killer stops trying to hide future victims. Even worse, the group finds they have been cut off from the mainland and marooned on the island until new supplies arrive by hovercraft. Jazine takes charge until then, but body count continues to rise as survivors, suspects and supplies dwindle. All the while, the rapidly dwindling survivors become suspicious and frightened of Frank apparently still sleeping in the operating room ("Hell, I'd much rather believe that Frank down there did it than consider the possibility that I'm sitting at a table with a murderer"). So did they create a modern-day Frankenstein's monster or is there a human hand behind it all?

Before getting to the plot, the science-fiction elements deserve a mention. It goes without saying Hoch's depiction of the early 2000s in 1975 is very different from what actually happened. For one, the World Trade Center is still standing, but the most obvious difference is absence of the internet and cell phones despite characters remarking how "everything's miniaturized these days" and "almost everything's done by machine." Jazine explains late in the story the C.I.B. tackles mostly "computer frauds" such as "stock-market rigging, insurance swindles, even some gimmicking of the race-track computers," but no crimes related to, what could be called, an internet – which does not detract from the novel at all. Just interesting to compare Hoch's vision of the early 2000s to what actually happened. Hoch's version of the early 2000s appears to be a lot calmer than our early 2000s, but hints through out the story makes it clear the world outside the green, sunny island has some dystopian characteristics. Some countries promote suicide among the elderly, while other countries want to ship their criminals and surplus population to colonies on Venus ("...Venus colony is still a good many years away"). Somehow, someway, they took laser guns away from Americans shortly after their introduction in the mid '90s and cities are covered in a thick, hazy layer of ozone purifiers sprayed from helicopters. On the up side, there are the advances in medicine and plans to construct searails to span the oceans. So that's something.

The science-fiction of this hybrid science-fiction mystery, beside the cryogenic and reanimation, functions mostly as story dressing. However, it gives The Frankenstein Factory a retro-futuristic, alternate history quality that's fun to speculate about. My take is that the humans in this universe tend to be slightly more pragmatic or utilitarian, tick less sociable, which is why there more interested in Venus colonies, searails and reversing death than an internet or smart phones. Not wholly unimportant, it gave what would otherwise have been an average "trapped on an island with a killer" mystery a distinct character of its own. Not that The Frankenstein Factory is a bad whodunit. You can leave it to Hoch to pen a fair play mystery involving experimental surgery, a reanimated corpse and laser guns. It's just that without a science-fiction trappings, The Frankenstein Factory would have come across as a pale imitation of Christie's And Then There Were None.

So it's unfortunate Hoch never really integrated those science-fiction components with the story's detective plot, because that would have made The Frankenstein Factory something more than this strange, zany send-up of Christie. Hoch wrote a good, old-fashioned murder mystery and a tale of science-fiction horror taking place simultaneously with the same cast of characters. That's why I kept second guessing myself even when only two suspects remained, because expected the science-fiction elements would some part or role to play in the solution. I had reasons to believe Frank was not the first person to have been reanimated, which needed to be kept under wraps for the outside world (perhaps that person was a murderer like was suggested of the brain donor). I had one name in mind (ROT13: "...vg tnir ure gur ybbx bs n lbhat tvey sebz gur 1970f") as that person being revealed as both a reanimated person and the killer would give the story a double, morbid twist for the prize of one. No such genre crossing twists, or solution, as Hoch only roamed around the borders and never crossed the line into full-blown hybrid mystery territory. That's a missed opportunity.

The Frankenstein Factory is unlikely to secure a place on my list of best and favorite hybrid mysteries, because the bar for hybrid mysteries has been set astronomically high, but long-time Hoch fans should take note of this rare, novel-length mystery from his hands. Hoch's The Frankenstein Factory is intriguing and not unrewarding mystery as long as you don't expect a classic like Christie's And Then There Were None or Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54).

Murder in the Tomb (1937) by Lucian Austin Osgood

Over the years, I picked up a curious collection of so-called genre curiosities, alternative classics and a couple of neglected gems along the trail of obscure, largely forgotten and out-of-print detective novels, but sometimes you find one hiding in plain sight – sporting a surprisingly up-to-date print status. Subject of today's review has been back in print for the past ten years and nobody has reviewed or even mentioned it. Not even an acknowledgment of its existence.

Back in 2016, Coachwhip reprinted Lucian Austin Osgood's Murder in the Tomb (1937) and going by the plot description on the back, you can't be blamed for assuming the book is a historical mystery with a Golden Age setting ("...by a newcomer in the field... set in the city of Minneapolis during the summer of 1932"). Murder in the Tomb was originally published in 1937 and Osgood, an American professor of English, had bigger ambitions than his one piece of now forgotten detective fiction suggests.

Murder in the Tomb was published by Unique Mystery Novels of Columbus, Mississippi, which appears to have been their first and only publication. However, the introduction, of the Coachwhip edition, mentions the back cover of the original edition announced Osgood's The Ghost of Dr. Arnette and Death by Candle Light as forthcoming. It also listed I Wish You Glad Tomorrow and Heloise by one Robert Grayle ("...a complete mystery"). So it's possible Unique Mystery Novels "may very well have been a self-publishing venture by Osgood." If it was a self-publishing project, I guess not enough copies of Murder in the Tomb were moved to make printing The Ghost of Dr. Arnette, Death by Candle Light and the two Grayle novels financial viable – adding four titles to that already too long list of lost detective fiction. The introduction unfortunately doesn't mention how Osgood's Murder in the Tomb came to their attention or how they got hold of a copy to reprint, because not many copies appear to have been in circulation. Whatever lead to its reprinting, Osgood produced a mystery novel that can certainly be called unique for its time.

I hardly know where to begin, knowing where it ends and how it got there. The story is told by Winston West, currently in the employ of Howard Ralston, who recently returned from accompanying his boss abroad to Ralston's home, called Windermere, on Park Avenue. Windermere is the twin of the house next door, Fontainebleau, connected through a porte-cochere "above which was a glassed-in hallway that permitted easy communication" between the two houses. Ralston's next door neighbor and owner of Fontainebleau is his business partner, M. Henri Cornier ("...owned an entire city block"). Cornier is the reason for their trip abroad. Ralston had told Cornier about his intention to collect three prizes, a Borgia poison ring, a Chinese vengeance dagger and the mummy of Serapion ("...terrible founder of the still more terrible Brothers of Karnak"). Three rare, near impossible to obtain, potentially dangerous items to possess. Cornier scoffs at Ralston's plan leading to a fifty thousand dollar wager between the two.

Several months later, Ralston and West return with the ring, dagger and mummy, but those "three menaces" were not obtained fairly and trouble begins knocking at their door.

Firstly, the Chinese vengeance dagger belongs to the Scarlet Dragons, "an organization said to still function in China," who have been sending notes pressing for the return of the dagger or suffer the consequences. Secondly, the surviving Brothers of Karnak expressed similar wishes and death threats regarding their stolen mummy. Although their threats have a supernatural flavor ("...summon the ka out of that mummy to punish you with horrible death"). Thirdly, Ralston "borrowed" the Borgia ring from the Duke of Vedena by swapping it with a replica during a visit. A replica made by his new protege and skilled artificer, Pietro Martini, who has also become a member of the Windermere household – complete with a mention in his mentor's will. Duke of Vedena and a Lucretia Lansing, an agent for antiquarians, turned up at Windermere to demand the return of the ring, but without much success. Than there's the domestic troubles and tension. Ralston is engaged to the much younger daughter of his late friend, Mildred Manning, who has fallen in love with Ralston's son, Paul. More than enough to set the stage for murder!

So far, Murder in the Tomb sounds fairly conventional even with pulp material already cluttering the early stages of the story and plot, but then murder happens. And things start to get really weird.

Ralston's collection, including the three menaces, is locked away in a secure, high tech room referred to as "the tomb." A push of the button can hermetically seal the room with solid steel sheets sliding down to cover every door and window. During the night, while the house is rocked by a thunderstorm, Ralston goes to the tomb to challenge the curse of the mummy, but West has also gone to the tomb. What he witnesses can be at first taken as a nightmare scene or hallucination, "the lid of the mummy case swung slowly outward" and "stiffly old Serapion stepped forth" shooting "a ghostly green ray straight at Ralston's heart" from "a fleshless finger." The confusing doesn't end there, but it ends with a dying Ralston, vengeance dagger sticking out of his back, and unconscious West lying on the floor. When he regains consciousness, West is told Ralston's body and the mummy vanished from the tomb!

Well, the impossibilities, or locked room problems, aren't as clearly stated or half as obvious as my description suggests. Osgood and Murder in the Tomb have this weird love/hate relationship with the cliches and tropes of the detective story and pulp thrillers, simultaneously embracing them and trying to keep them at arm length. Osgood tends to talk, or write, around them and that doesn't always make for the clearest way to tell and plot a detective story. For example, the tomb and the twin houses have several secret passages and hidden doorways that aren't as secret or hidden as they should be, but the problem of timing and opportunity remains (I think). So the only true impossibility standing is old Serapion acting like a prop from a 1980s science-fiction flick coming back to life (I think). But more on him in a moment.

The investigation into this murder, disappearing corpses and hallucination witnesses is as unusual as the crimes themselves parred excellently with two relatively grounded detectives. Detective Hal Denny and Ben Bailey revel in the role of dumb, flatfooted cop and clever, cunning amateur with Bailey even being called a “college sleuth” by one of the characters – which is an interesting phrase to use in a 1930s mystery novel. A high school detective or college sleuth is something that has become synonymous in my mind with the Japanese detective story. Denny and Bailey playing rival detectives is arguably the best part of the book as they're not always playing nice which gives their rivalry a bite.

The bizarre twists, out-of-nowhere turns and other complications keep them busy enough like a mass poisoning incident when someone decides to sling various kinds of poison around the place. One of the people left incapacitated is behind a bolted door and its discovery is setup as another locked room crime, but that ended as soon as the door was broken down. Like I said, the whole story has this really weird love/hate relationship with its tropes.

So, as you probably gathered, I started to become a little bit skeptical during the second-half, but the unusual treatment of its tropes gave me hope. I hoped Murder in the Tomb would turn out to be one of those detective novels where you started to wonder how the author was going to pull it all together, only to show at the end everything had gone according to plan. You know, the Ton Vervoort approach to writing and plotting detective fiction. It was either going to be a so-called alternative classic or fall to pieces at the end. Yes, regrettably, Murder in the Tomb fell to pieces in a glorious, almost incomprehensible and, to be honest, impressive mess.

I'm not sure how everything happened, because how incredibly convoluted the solution turned out to be, but several things stood out. Firstly, Osgood employed an unusual, horrendously botched take on (SPOILER/ROT13) gur oveyfgbar tnzovg va juvpu gur cerfhzrq ivpgvz jnf fgvyy gur ivpgvz ybpxrq njnl va n uvqqra ebbz. Secondly, the (ROT13) ahzore bs crbcyr jub raqrq hc orvat vafvqr gur urezrgvpnyyl frnyrq gbzo ng gur gvzr bs gur zheqre. Jr fzvex ng zlfgrevrf sebz gjragvrf sbe univat pevzr fprarf erfrzoyvat n ohfl gubebhtusner, ohg guvf jnf whfg havagraqrq pbzrql. Thirdly, Bailey casually explaining the mummy attack in the tomb (ROT13: “Whfg n ebobg, gung'f nyy”).

So, yeah, the story shot itself to pieces at the end, but the mess honestly is impressive to behold. There was promise and some potential during the opening stages offering several directions Osgood could have taken into. After a few rounds the block, Osgood choose to just drive the whole thing off a cliff.

What more can I say? Osgood seems to have had good intentions, wanting to create a genuinely unique, baffling mystery novel, but sadly lacked the skills or talent to execute an ambitiously imagined plot like this one. In a perfect world, Osgood's Murder in a Tomb would have ended being a companion piece to Hake Talbot and Theodore Roscoe's impossible crime fiction and getting compared to John Dickson Carr and Paul Halter, but we're not in that world. So we have to do with this genre curiosity. Not recommended, unless you have an interest in obscure or alternative mysteries.

The Double Turn (1956) by Carol Carnac

Last year, the British Library Crime Classics reprinted E.C.R. Lorac's Murder As a Fine Art (1953), published as by "Carol Carnac," which proved to be an excellent accessory to their run of Lorac reprints with an unusual plot and memorable impossible crime – bringing brutalism to the fine art of murder. So was pleased when they announced a reprint of the Carol Carnac title, The Double Turn (1956), that has been a longtime resident on my wishlist.

The Double Turn, also published as The Late Miss Trimmings, begins when Jocelyn Truby takes his niece, Susan Truby, and her friend Peter Raven to an exhibition of Victorian era paintings in the long gallery of Verulam House. They're admiring a huge canvas by one of the period greats, Adrian Delafield, "shown in the Academy of 1898." Susan is impressed with the grandeur and age of the painting ("gosh, that was last century"), while Jocelyn tells them the Great Victorian is still alive. As they're discussing Delafield, they are joined by a young man, Roy Braithwaite, who's Delafield's grandson and pitched in the conversation when he overheard them.

Adrian Delafield, now practically an invalid, lives at "Firenze" in St. John's Wood where he's looked after by an old maid and religious maniac, Miss Trimmings, who's "the power in the house" acting like its "ménagère and major-domo," but she takes good care of both the house and its owner – as she's absolutely devoted to Delafield. Delafield's only surviving daughter and Roy's aunt, Virgilia, lives in his old, detached studio and allowed the situation, because she didn't want to deprive her father of Miss Trimmings after depending on her for more than thirty years. Virgilia kept an eye on Miss Trimmings to make sure things don't go off the rails again like last time. Miss Trimmings had kept Delafield locked away to such an extent people thought he had died. Roy invites Jocelyn, Susan and Peter to visit Firenze to see the paintings in Delafield's former studio, meet the family and Miss Trimmings.

During their visit, there's an incident that in a Victorian-era novel of sensation would have been described as a portent of evil. A week later, the doctor comes by to see Delafield, but finds the house locked up, dead bolted from the inside and suspiciously quiet.

When they break their way into the house, they find part of the recently plastered ceiling had come down and the body of Miss Trimming lying at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway ("...her head was twisted on her neck..."). A tray with broken pieces of crockery and glass lay near the body. Adrian Delafield is discovered lying unconscious on the stairs of the second floor landing. So the local policeman in charge works on the assumption the crash of the falling ceiling caused Miss Trimmings to trip down the stairs and Delafield "heard her fall and tried to reach her." But why is the plasterer who worked on the ceiling nowhere to be found. That's one of the details drawing Inspectors Rivers and Lancing, of Scotland Yard, into the case. And, to be honest, they really had no reason to interfere in what looked like a normal, everyday domestic accident. It unquestionably made for a better detective story that they did.

The Double Turn is listed in Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but, as other reviewers have pointed out, Lorac was not John Dickson Carr who would turned the locked up, bolted house the hinge that made the plot move – somehow found a way (ROT13) gb znxr gur byq cnvagre gur xvyyre. A possibility I was trying to work into an armchair theory myself. Lorac focused on the enigmatic duo of Miss Trimmings and Adrian Delafield. Miss Trimmings' identity can be verified for sure as she made a surprisingly thorough job in blotting out her past. Not even a snippet, or two, left over from a destroyed paper trail. At the same time, questions are raised about Delafield's identity as most of his family is either dead or hadn't seem him for decades before they reunited. So part of the plot also turns on the age-old question of identity complicated by the fact "family histories are generally on the squalid side," which here is no exception. Even the family yarn how Miss Trimmings got Delafield out of France when the Nazis invaded is blurry. Rivers and Lancing still have to consider the problem of the missing plasterer and the possibility of miser's fortune stowed away somewhere, but they inevitably return to the problem of the locked house.

First of all, while the locked house itself is not given the same attention as the well-drawn characters, their domestic circumstances and potential motives, a possible (false) solution is briefly explored. A solution discounted as the killer would have had to cross the plaster debris without leaving footprints. The actual locked room-trick is not exactly routine, but neither is it blistering original. However, the somewhat unusual scene of the crime helped to prop it up and ended up doing the trick most satisfyingly. I preferred it to the lame armchair solution I had pieced together. More importantly, the trick revealed the murderer who was surprisingly well hidden among this small cast of characters lacking any of the obvious or least-likely-suspects making The Double Turn Lorac's most accomplished, well-clued whodunits. Particular (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13) gur pyhr uvqqra va gur tbqqnza obbx gvgyr vgfrys is the kind of clueing usually expected from Lorac's better remembered, often more highly regarded contemporaries. Only, tiny smudge that needs mentioning is how Rivers could have (SPOILERS/ROT13) ceriragrq gjb, znlor guerr qrnguf unq ur tvira gur ceboyrz bs gur ybpxrq ubhfr uvf shyy nggragvba rneyvre ba va gur fgbel. Not that it detracted too much from this otherwise excellent detective novel. Just something I couldn't help noticing and nitpick about.

So, I know I lavished praise on the previous two Lorac's reviewed on here, calling both Death of an Author (1935) and Murder as a Fine Art my favorite Lorac reprints to date, but The Double Turn is now my favorite Lorac reprint to date! Not exactly what I expected after all these years, but well worth the long wait. A highly recommended highlight from the twilight years of the detective story's Golden Age. Fingers crossed Lorac's frustratingly rare, out-of-print Murder in St. John's Wood (1934) is next to be reprinted.

Note for the curious: if you're curious about my lame armchair theory, I figured (ROT13) fvapr gur byq cnvagre'f zvaq jnf tbvat “tntn” ng gvzrf, ur pbhyq tvira gur byq, unys oyvaq znvq n fpner ol chyyvat n cenax ba ure jvgubhg arrqvat gb yrnir uvf orq. Fbzrguvat ur pbhyq oneryl qb naljnl. Sbe rknzcyr, jung vs ur sbhaq n ovt fcvqre penjyvat ba uvf orq furrg, pnhtug vg naq uvq vafvqr n ancxva ba gur genl. Jura fur jrag qbjafgnvef jvgu gur genl, gur fcvqre penjyrq ba ure unaq tvivat ure sevtug naq penfuvat qbja gur fgnvef. Gur byq cnvagre urneq jung unccrarq, gevrq gb trg gb ure naq sryy qbja n syvtug bs fgnvef uvzfrys. Fbzrguvat nybat gubfr yvarf, orpnhfr V nffhzrq gur ybpxrq ubhfr jnf n erq ureevat naq gur erny vzcbffvovyvgl vf ubj n arne vainyvq onfvpnyyl pbasvarq gb uvf orqebbz pbhyq pnhfrq ure gb snyy qbja gur fgnvef. Ohg vg jbhyq unir plpyrq gur fgbel onpx gb vgf fgnegvat cbvag, v.r. n ubzr nppvqrag jvgubhg n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel. Fb tbbq guvat zl fbyhgvba pbhyqa'g unir orra zber jebat.

Locked and Loaded, Part 7: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

So lately, I noticed an unaccountable, unacceptable dearth in locked room and impossible crime reviews which needed immediate correction to bring this blog back to its previous acceptable conditions, standards and core values – only one way to do it. There are actually two ways to do it, but the reprint of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) is not out for another six months. I decided to do another "Locked and Loaded" instead.

In 2020, I posted the first part of the extremely irregular "Locked and Loaded" series and have now compiled seven of them covering locked room and impossible crime stories covering a period of 118 years stretching from 1905 to 2023. You can read my reviews, not in chronological order, in "Locked and Loaded" part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So let's start on part 7.

Fredric Brown's "The Djinn Murder," originally published in the January, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, begins when Professor John E. Trent, teaching Psychology IV (Abnormal), is approached by Harvey Glosterman – who really needs a specialist in the occult. Glosterman's retired brother, John Glosterman, collects "objects connected with primitive superstitions" like "old idols, spirit gongs, juju masks, voodoo drums" and recently brought a djinn bottle home from his travels. An earthenware bottle, "Seal of Solomon on the wax," supposedly emprisoning a very powerful, dangerous demon named Eydhebhe. John Glosterman foolishly broke the seal on the bottle and promptly vanished into thin air. However, the impossibility is not Glosterman's disappearance, but how he continued to communicate with his brother through "spirit rappings" coming from the study. Trent believes Glosterman was cleverly disposed and catches his killer by replicating the rapping sounds.

Now, ghostly tapping and other disembodied sounds tend be minor stuff when it comes to impossible crime fiction. Usually little more than small plot-thread or side issue explained away with variations of the same answers pulled from the spiritual medium's bag of tricks, but Brown offered an entirely new solution to the problem. Or, at least, one that's new to me. Still very minor stuff as both an impossible crime and detective story, but a very entertaining, pulp-style mystery.

Anthony Boucher's "The Anomaly of the Empty Man," first published in the April, 1952, issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, tries to take a page from John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court (1937) by presenting a puzzle with a logical and supernatural solution. "The Anomaly of the Empty Man" is told by a man named Lamb, but not sure if this the Martin Lamb from Boucher's The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937). Anyway, Inspector Abrahams calls Lamb to the apartment of James Stambaugh, collector of early operatic recordings and philanderer, who disappeared from the clothes he had been wearing ("...sucked dry of its fleshly tenant") – which is tighter impossibility than my description suggests ("...try slipping your foot out of a laced-up shoe and see if you can get that result"). What follows is a bit of a trip, but it boils down to Lamb being presented with two solutions to the problem. The supernatural solution comes from Dr. Verner believing the disappearance was caused by a haunted record from dead opera singer whom he believed carried The Death Wish ("men who knew her too well hungered no longer for life"). Inspector Abrahams found a much better, more convincing and really neat answer for how a man can be disappeared from inside his own suit of clothing. Needless to say, I prefer the inspector's solution over Dr. Verner's cursed record.

And no, the culprit was not a tall, green insect-like individual using his javelin-tipped tail as a sippy straw. If that had been Dr. Verner's alternative solution, I would have sided with him over Inspector Abrahams.

Joseph Commings "The Fraudulent Spirit" originally appeared in the September/October, 1960, issue of Mystery Digest (as by "Monte Craven") and reprinted in the anthology Wicked Spirits: Mysteries, Spine Chillers and Lost Tales of the Supernatural (2024). A few years before the story's opening, Mrs. Jasmine Leslie fell to her death from the outdoor terrace of her New York penthouse, twenty stories up, which the police dismissed as an unfortunate accident – because she had gardening gloves on and a a trowel was left on the terrace. Years later, Jasmine's widowed husband, Fergus Leslie, becomes engaged to Suzanne Dittner and falls under the spell of a spiritual medium, Mme. Olympe. She has done the usual routine with spirit writing appearing on the ceiling during a séance in a locked room, making objects drop out of thin air and claiming to have "greater levitation powers" than D.D. Home ("he floated in and outta upper windows of a house on Jermyn Street in London"). Mme. Olympe also needs money to start her own spiritualist movement and Leslie is willing to provide the funds, but only if she perform a truly convincing séance.

Suzanne Dittner turns to Lt. Barney Grant, of the NYPD, for help. Fortunately, Grant just so happens to have Senator Brooks U. Banner as a visitor. Banner is an old hand when it comes spiritual mediums and the fundamentally impossible, but, even better, Banner remembers Mme. Olympe when "she was dressed in a leopard-skin, leading a carnival parade on the biggest elephant at the Minnesota State Fair." So they attend the séance during which Jasmine's ghost appears on the terrace, disappears and reappears moments later on the terrace of the penthouse across the street! Not really an impossible situation involving levitation, but teleportation and not necessarily a bad one. Just a bit muddled in parts and that knocks it down a peg. "The Fraudulent Spirit" started out as a companion in miniature to Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), but ended up being a kindred spirit of David Renwick's Jonathan Creek series (ROT13: yvxr gur hfr bs na haxabja nppbzcyvpr gb perngr gur vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba). So while not one for the best-of list, "The Fraudulent Spirit" should not fail to entertain fans of these type of impossible crime stories involving séances, fraudulent mediums and ghostly murders.

Jeffry Scott's "The Brick Overcoat," originally published in the December, 1990, issue of EQMM, slowly moves away from the recurring themes of the previous three short stories, but not entirely as one, of two, impossibilities whispered threats – coming from nowhere. Jenny is working on reviving the once derelict Malreward Theater, currently between productions, which has seen its fair share of tragedy over its hundred year history. But did it pick up a few ghosts along the way? Jenny confides in Detective-Sergeant Nick Flinders she has heard a disembodied voice whisper a chilling threat, "I'll make you a brick overcoat," when she was all alone in the empty, locked theater. Nick Flinders is a hardened skeptic ("half the theaters in England are supposed to be haunted"), but promises to investigate and begins to comb through the old theater, "an untidy labyrinth of grimy brick cells," for answers. Flinders finds an answer, but is it the correct answer? It's enough to reassure Jenny, but Flinders soon returns to the theater when his half-answer could be the key to another case. A case in which a package unaccountably disappeared from a locked room. While more of a modern crime story than a traditional, fair play mystery, "The Brick Overcoat" is not a bad story at all and appreciated its classical trimmings.

Simon Clark's "The Adventure of the Fallen Star" was originally written for Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (1997). I reviewed Clark's other Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Climbing Man" (2015) back in 2021, which presented the Great Detective with a fresh corpse discovered inside a sealed, undisturbed 3000-year-old archaeological site – like it enough to track down this particular pastiche. Sherlock Holmes is asked a favor by Professor Charles Hardcastle, specialized in metallurgical sciences, who once helped him "lay to rest the matter of the golden bullet murders in King's Lynne." Professor Hardcastle is interested in "aerolites" (i.e. meteorites) and has a collection of them in his private laboratory at his home in Homestead. A particular meteorite had recently been taken from the locked laboratory and turned up again in his son's bedroom. Holmes is asked to look if there's something to the case, but, when he arrives with Watson, they find a half mad Hardcastle. The backstory of the meteorite reveals who's behind it all and why, but now how this person got through locked doors. And the answer to that question is a big meh.

Elizabeth Elwood's "The Chess Room," first published in the November/December, 2019, issue of EQMM, closes out this random selection on a high note. The first-half of the story introduces Chloe Helms, a cleaning lady, who works at the Hanover building owned by the wheelchair bound, octogenarian chess fanatic, Jacob Russell – who takes a liking to her. So "the Hanover grapevine buzzed with the rumor that she had become the latest threat to David's inheritance" and David, Jacob's son, is not amused ("the exact term he used was gold digger") causes nothing than misery for Chloe. This situation culminates with the pressure getting too much shooting himself inside his beloved chess room storing his collection of varied chess boards and pieces. Chloe was one of the people standing outside the door when the shot was heard and every other exit was either locked or under observation. The second-half takes a procedural approach to the locked room problem as Detective Constable Annie Blake and her team take charge. There's a part of the locked room-trick that hard, if not impossible, to anticipate, but loved the classically-styled twist.

So, all in all, not a spectacular haul, but not a thoroughly bad one either. When it comes to the locked rooms and impossible situations, only Boucher truly impressed and Brown scoring bonus points for originality. Elwood is a good, solid second. Commings' take on the miraculous levitation/transportation is fun, but too muddled to be really good. I enjoyed Scott's story more for its storytelling than its plotting and Clark's pastiche was meh. Let's hope that the next installment of randomly thrown together impossible crime stories uncovers a real gem, but next up is a classic locked room reprint.

The Ark (2022) by Haruo Yuki

When compiling and cobbling together "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries," I mulled over including a disaster-themed detective novel, but was not entirely sure whether disaster detectives counted as hybrid mysteries or not – decided not to include one. It only dilutes the concept if every detective story in which a mine explodes or a submarine is sunk with survivors aboard. Not to mention the knock-on effect of wartime novels suddenly qualifying as hybrid mysteries.

However, there are disaster detectives, rare as they are, in which the disaster is central to the story rushing along the plot. I suppose Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933) is a good, early example of the disaster detective hybrid and it's impossible to ignore Nevada Barr's Firestorm (1996). So this issue needed further probing and why I looked forward to two translations Pushkin Vertigo announced last year as forthcoming.

Akane Araki's Konoyo no hate no satsujin (Murder at the End of the World, 2022) takes place during humanity's last three months as a civilization ending meteor hurls towards our planet, which should be out around late July or early August. Haruo Yuki's Hakobune (The Ark, 2022), translated by Jim Rion, had been out for a few months now and merges the classically-styled, closed circle whodunit with a survival thriller – arrival of my copy coincided with an interesting review. Countdown John reviewed Yuki's The Ark right after it was published and observed, "I think this qualifies as a hybrid mystery, in this case a cross between a classic mystery and a disaster movie." Agreed! The Ark is exactly the kind of disaster detective/thriller that works as a hybrid mystery, but let's start at the beginning.

The Ark begins when a group of former students and members of their university's hiking club reunite two years after graduating. Firstly, there's Shuichi Koshino, a system engineer, who narrates the story. Shuichi brought along his smartly dressed cousin, Shotaro, who's going to be Ellery Queen-like detective and not the infallible version. Other friends from the old hiking club are Sayaka Nouchi, a yoga teacher, Hana Takatsu, an office worker, Yuya Nishimura, vaguely doing something with fashion, Ryuhei and Mai Itoyama. They got married shortly after graduating. Yuya has hiked in the area before and had discovered an underground building in the mountains. A three floor, subterranean steel structure into a huge cavern with the whole structure following "the shape of a naturally occurring cave" giving it the form of an ark ("...like in the Old Testament?"). The place has a murky past possibly involving militant groups, cults and criminals. Yuya suggests they go explore The Ark, but has trouble finding the entrance to the tunnel. So it quite late when they finally find the entrance and bump into a family of three, the Yazakis, who were out hunting mushrooms when they got lost. They have to camp for the night inside The Ark.

During the night, the mountain is rocked by an earthquake that set the barricade boulder rolling and blocking the exit. The earthquake also caused the trickle of water that had already claimed the bottom floor to increase. So they were trapped for the time being, because there's a way out that comes with a huge moral dilemma: the boulder can be moved, but it would trap the person working the winch to be trapped alone inside a small, cavern-like room – no guarantee the rest can return in time with help. Who has to be sacrificed? Before they can even think about it, one of them is found strangled to death in a storeroom! So now they not only have to deal with being trapped, while the water is slowly rising, but one of them unquestionably being a murderer. Even more baffling is why commit murder under these dire circumstances, especially after finding out they need a sacrifice to escape?

What they need to do is find the killer and force that person to make the sacrifice, because they're going to be hanged for murder anyway. Fortunately, the Ark has a working generator with a weeks worth of fuel giving them some time to find the murderer and that's my sole gripe with The Ark. A detective story can be too much driven by coincidence, but The Ark is the only detective story driven entirely by convenience. The situation inside the Ark would have played out completely different had their been no lights or a way to keep their smartphones charges. Not to mention the left over supplies and tools scattered across the numerous room or the old, outdated, but still working security camera system guarding the blocked entrance and exit. However, convenient as the situation may for the purpose of the plot, Haruo Yuki used those plot conveniences to their full potential to tell this story.

So with about a week until fuel runs out and the water reaches them, Shuichi and Shotaro set out to find the murderer, but the first murder is just a plain murder. The storeroom "had not been locked from the inside, no article of clothing was missing for unexplained reasons, nothing in the room had been inexplicably turned upside down" and "no dying message." Only the baffling question why the murderer picked this moment to strike. While the first murder was "almost disappointingly free of puzzles," the second murder is a typical, gruesome shin honkaku slaying. Every action to killer took to be "simply mystifying." Why stab and decapitate a corpse? What happened to the head? Why dispose of the victim's belonging? And why kill when being trapped underground? Merely a few of the puzzling questions surrounding this second and third, arguably even stranger murder.

Haruo Yuki delivered some devilish clever answers to those questions, like why cut off the head of the second victim, but even better is the role the character's smartphones played though out their ordeal. I mentioned in the past how much I dislike the claim how advances in forensic science and technology in generally had made the traditionally-plotted, Golden Age-style detective novel obsolete. An argument Isaac Asimov demolished in the granddaddy of hybrid mysteries, The Caves of Steel (1953/54), but The Ark provides several practical and ingenious examples for our time. If you ever wondered what the greats from the Golden Age could have done with today's technology, The Ark should give you a pretty good idea. Where the plot and story excels is when the time has come to put everything together as Shotaro reveals the murder through an Ellery Queen-style chain of reasoning and deductions by going over identifiable action and step the killer took from the first to third murder. But then it's time to get out.

Anyone somewhat familiar with Japanese authors penchant for dark, bleak endings and tragic twists can feel something coming in the epilogue. I expected something normal and mundane. Something like the survivors emerging from the Ark to discover the earthquakes were caused by an apocalyptic event like a nuclear war or an asteroid strike, but I didn't see that twist coming. A cruel, beautiful twist making for an unforgettable ending. Even more impressive, the revelation in the epilogue serves as the finishing touch of perfection as it revealed the crimes to have been truly unique to that place and harrowing week inside the Ark. There was no other time or place where the motive for these murder could have arising except among that group of people trapped inside. So, yes, I enjoyed this one very much.

Haruo Yuki's The Ark is simply a plot-technical marvel of the 21st century detective novel with a time-honored approach to the age-old question of whodunit? Highly recommended!

I plan to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Translations from Pushkin Vertigo" sometime in the future, but picking just ten is, fittingly enough, going to be a bloodbath.

The Darker the Night (1949) by Herbert Brean

There are a handful of dusty, timeworn tropes and cliches that make detective fans despair when they rear their ugly head in a mystery, novel or short story, published after 1920 – tropes and cliches that belong to that pre-Golden Age period. Namely, secret passageways, untraceable poisons, exotic animals and surprise twins. But nothing can make most of us cringe as hard as a detective story involving hypnosis and mesmerism. A trope and crutch of bad, third-rate pulp fiction rarely making for good detective fiction.

So this antipathy against mixing hypnotism and mesmerism with mystery and detection is probably why Herbert Brean's second Reynold Frame novel, The Darker the Night (1949), is rarely mentioned. And, until recently, almost never discussed or reviewed. Sure, it doesn't help it's sandwiched in between stuck Brean's most famous (Wilders Walk Away, 1948) and best (Hardly a Man is Now Alive, 1950) detective novels, but the edition currently easiest to find (Pocket Book) has the off-putting phrase "was a hypnotist controlling THE KILLER?" screaming across its cover. Not something to inspire confidence or curiosity in fans of vintage mysteries. Most of can cite examples from first-rate writers, like Clyde B. Clason or Carter Dickson, who tried to do something halfway decent with it and failing miserably. The Darker the Night is not that kind of mystery and needed to tidy up this series one day. So why not now?

Reynold Frame, a freelance photographer, writer and amateur detective, returned to New York from his adventures in Wilders Lane, Vermont, to await the arrival of his fiancee, Constance Wilders – who try to get married in the next novel. While perusing the newspaper, Frame spots the name of an old college flame, Lee Ballantyne. A one-paragraph story reporting the death of Douglas Ballantyne, a Cleveland attorney and ex-judge, who "jumped or fell to his death today from the 26th floor of the Barchester Hotel." Frame contacts Lee to see if there's anything he can do for her, but, shortly after their reunion, begins to suspect her uncle's death was due to a push rather than a dizzy spell on a dangerous balcony. Frame begins to investigate, what could be, murder involving friends and friends of friends.

There's the wealthy, likable widow, Margaret O'Hara, who's engaged to an ex-British army major, Varian Trevor. Eddie Nolan, hero of the World Series, Glance Keenly, a night club singer, socialite "Bix" Ramsay, soap opera writer Annie St. Ann, night club hypnotist Gary Price and his willing subject, Adele Swatcher. A small, close-knit group that makes up its own slice of night club scene and Frame's investigation takes place against "indefatigable buzz and murmur an clink of a New York cocktail party." This close-knit group is fascinated with hypnotism and being hypnotized by their friend Gary Price naturally raising some questions about Ballantyne's death. Even more so, when another person from this close-knit group falls out of a window.

Like I said, hypnosis in a detective story is a crimson red flag, but Brean raised the subject practically at the outset as a double reassurance. Hypnosis was not going to be used as a lazy, cop-out explanation and likely not much to do with how the murders were done, but more on that in a minute.

Beside the hypnotism angle, there's more to the deaths needing investigation like why Douglas Ballantyne asked Margaret O'Hara to postpone her engagement? Why has one of them gone missing? Why is Benny the Bump, an ex-mobster, trying to silence Frame? Benny the Bump turned out to be surprisingly fun character providing the book with one, of two, memorable sequences when Frame finds him. The other one comes when "playing detective" comes with consequences and Frame has to find a way to escape from Detective James Kilroy and Assistant D.A. Philip la Vella. If anything, The Darker the Night is another testament to Brean's talent as a storyteller ensuring you keep turning the pages. Only things occasionally slowing down the pace are the wonderful, often lengthy footnotes on subjects such as the rarity of defenestration, historical New York murders and ESP – even a recipe for spiedino romana. The footnotes are meant to be a nod to S.S. van Dine, but Brean made the odd, curious footnotes a quirk of his own.

That brings me to the plot of The Darker the Night. So, of course, neither the two victims or the murderer acted under the haze of an hypnotic spell. Brean may have been a better writer and storyteller than plotter, but neither was he third-rate who would seriously offer hypnosis as an explanation for how the murders were pulled off. However, while hypnosis was not the cause of the deaths, neither has it a good alternative explanation. Someone was pushed from a balcony and another one was hurled out of a window. So it comes down to whodunit and why, not how. It has been remarked "you could really tag anyone as the culprit with similar result," but have to disagree as that would ignore inventive motive tying and holding everything together.

The Darker the Night is very similar in that regard as the last of the Frame novels, The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1954). Neither fail to entertain or fascinate, but their thin-ish plots needed the characters, backdrop and situation to carry them to a full-fledged book. So a good, fun book, but definitely one falling into the category "for fans and completists only." If you're new to Brean's shamefully neglected detective fiction, I recommend giving Wilders Walks Away, Hardly a Man is Now Alive or the often overlooked The Traces of Brillhart (1960) a shot.

By the way, I'm near completing Brean myself. There's only the standalone novel Collar for the Killer (1957) and a dozen uncollected (hint, hint, C&L) short stories left to go.

Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine (2026) by P. Dieudonné

Recently, E-Pulp published the 14th title in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam Police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en tranen om Valentijn (Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine, 2026), which has a different tread on its plot than previous entries – centering on a series of disappearances instead of murder. This series oscillates between the modern police procedural/crime fiction and the more traditionally-styled detective stories. Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine squarely falls into the modern category, but the story is a bit of roller coaster with an unexpected, satisfying conclusion. I'm getting ahead of the story.

Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine begins with a panicky phone call to the police. Dorette Vroom is frightened and scared that something has happened to her boyfriend, Bart Biervliet, who went out to confront the man who has been bothering his seven-year-old daughter. The last drop was a Valentine card send to the girl. Bart Biervliet "was determined to teach that pervert a lesson," taking along a hockey stick, but never returned and doesn't answer his call. Inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver answer the call, only to find out the case is not as straightforward as it first appeared.

First of all, the man suspected of trying to contact Biervliet's daughter, Nico Pelsmaeker, appears to have nothing to do with what he has been accused of. So De Klerck wonders if the Valentine card was bait to lure Biervliet to a secluded place, but who and why? And what happened to the body? A possibility that begins to gain traction as Biervliet's complicated private and professional life begin to stir their investigation by throwing up complications, one after another, as the people involved either go on the run or disappear themselves – always under somewhat similar circumstances ("...lured away to a lonely place..."). What really adds interest to the story, considering how it started, is Biervliet's background as editor-in-chief of an opinion magazine, Vrij Onverveerd Vaderland (Free Undaunted Fatherland). More importantly, his past work and association with De Spanningsgids (Suspense Guide).

Dieudonné opened Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine with a short preface thanking "the friendly people at the publisher who recounted their experiences with the darker sides of the book trade" and "allowed to make full use of their recorded experiences" for the book. If you have read my previous reviews of Dutch detective novels, classics and modern, you probably picked up on the fact that the Netherlands is a hostile place for not only traditionally-inclined detective fiction ("those sourpusses thought that detective novels should actually be thrillers"), but independent publisher and basically everything that's not proper crime fiction. For example, Dieudonné notes in the preface that you can't find his novels in the majority of bookstores in the country, "there are even provinces where practically no bookstore participates in the sale," wanted to explain why that is through this story. Oh, boy, did he ever!

When they start digging into the shenanigans of De Spanningsgids, De Klerck and Klaver uncover everything ranging from bullying and gatekeeping to biased or malicious reviews. M.P.O. Books, better known to some of you as "Anne van Doorn," can tell you what a malicious review can do when you're an author with a small publisher. So that put a very different spin and tone on the story from where it started, but then everything began to dovetail in its final stretch and ending. Now, like I said, Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine is very much from in the modern, not classical, tradition and most of you would probably sneer at the murderer's identity – which can be taken as a cheat. However, there was a hint, or two, for the observant reader to spot. Yes, I spotted it and figured out the identity of the extremely well-hidden culprit, but that's not what made the ending so satisfying. That goes to the solution revealing what ultimately happened to the men who went missing without a trace. De Klerck rightfully called it "a unique case."

My personal taste and bias, of course, favors more detective story-like titles such as Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020), Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de dode weldoener (Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist, 2025), but wouldn't want to have missed that ending for the world! Never knowing, exactly, what type of crime/detective next novel will turn out to be is part of the fun. It can be a straightforward politieroman like Rechercheur De Klerck en het duistere web (Inspector De Klerck and the Dark Web, 2022) or something much weirder like Rechercheur De Klerck en een dodelijk pact (Inspector De Klerck and a Deadly Pact, 2022). Whatever the next novel turns out to be, I'm looking forward to it.

Cross Marks the Spot (1933) by James Ronald

Last year, the Moonstone Press completed their ambitious, massive reprinting project of James Ronald's nearly forgotten, long out-of-print pulp and detective fiction spread out over a dozen volumes – which started with Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023). A volume collecting Ronald's earliest endeavors as a writer and included the once obscure, sought after novel Six Were to Die (1932), but Murder in the Family (1936) and They Can't Hang Me (1938) from vol. 2 and 4 proved to be the true highlights from this run of reprints. A run that closed out with the publication of Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 12: She Got What She Asked For (2025).

The last time I visited Ronald's pulpy brand of detective fiction was more than a year ago when reviewing The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) and The Sealed Room Murder (1934) from Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 11: The Sealed Room Murder (2024). So high time I returned to Ronald and decided to go with Cross Marks the Spot (1933) collected in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 6: Cross Marks the Spot (2024).

Cross Marks the Spot is the first, of two, novel-length novels featuring Ronald's best realized, regrettably short-lived series detective, Julian Mendoza, who's an ex-adventurer turned ace reporter for the Morning World – becoming known the Bloodhound of Fleet Street. Mendoza also appeared in five (short) novels that appeared in The Thriller Library series and a rewrite of Cross Marks the Spot under the title The Frightened Girl (as by "Michael Crombie"). The first chapter here gives an excellent introduction of Mendoza while neatly setting up the plot.

Mendoza has lived the life of a "reckless adventurer" since he was a youth, until a near fatal encounter with a lion left one of his legs "a pitiful scarred and shrunken limb," which forced him to return to London. Restless as ever, Mendoza decided to be come crime reporter ("criminals are merely men with the instincts of animals") and hunt down murderers for the Morning World despite his handicap ("in a civilized city half a man is as good as a whole one"). When the story opens, Mendoza has become restless again and goes out in streets looking for a good story. And what he gets hold of turns out to be next morning's headline. Mendoza spots a young, beautiful, but obvious frightened, woman fleeing the Dorian Building. A building of luxurious apartments where the famous movie magnate, Jacob Singerman, who had an appointment with the frightened woman that went disastrous.

Shortly after this scene, Hyman Singerman arrives at Dorian House to discover his brother's body with a bullet hole in his head. Mendoza worms himself into the case by impersonating a Scotland Yard detective and goes over the scene, before the official police has even arrived. Mendoza discovers the frightened woman is an aspiring movie actress, Cicely Foster, but, when he tracks her down, she says she had only hit him when became physical ("...there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me if I would be nice to him"). If she didn't shot Singerman, who did and how? As it must have been done within the short window of time between Cicely Foster's hasty exit and Hyman Singerman's arrival. Just in time as the police finally catches up Mendoza, but convinces Inspector Howells to work on the case alongside him. That brings him to Jacob and Hyman Singermans' Colossal Film Company.

Now it has been commented upon in the past how classic British mysteries taking place at film studios rarely tend to be good detective stories, even from normally top-tier mystery authors like Edmund Crispin (Frequent Hearses, 1940) or Carter Dickson (And So to Murder, 1950). One reason given is too much focus on the background and mise-en-scène than story and plot. That's not the case as Ronald opted for a series of short, sharp scenes that show the plain, ugly woodwork behind the scenes of the movie studio business covering everything from struggling, poverty stricken actors to the higher ups at the studio and the power they wield over everyone below them – providing another plot-thread that could have been its own novel. Colossal Film Company is currently paying through their nose to produce a film directed by the mad scientist of the movie industry, Gustav von Blom, who can spend thousands of pounds to make a foot of film. Von Blom is also a typical, temperamental and abusive artist who's notoriously difficult to work with.

The movie Von Blom is shooting involves an internal triangle, but found the emotions and passion of the cast lacking in realism. So fired the whole cast and started from scratch by engaging two actors and an actress, Russell Clayton, Philip Dressler and Norma Lavery, who are involved in a real-life love triangle. Von Blom contracted them separately and only told them a day before rehearsals. They, of course, refuse to take part in, what's essentially, an emotional snuff movie, but they already signed the contracts ("...murder will be done before it's finished"). Add to this Von Blom rooms at Dorian House and has a motive, an attempted murder of a studio employee and Mendoza demonstrating what a one-legged man can do in an ass kicking when he knows his jiu jitsu, Cross Marks the Spot never bores for a second. More importantly, the plot holds up a lot better than the second Mendoza novel, Death Croons the Blues (1934), which fell apart with its ridiculous solution. Fortunately, the solution here held together even when parts of Ronald's pulp roots came to the surface. Not a bad conclusion either. Perhaps not quite as good, overall, as Murder in the Family and They Can't Hang Me, but a good, solid and well-deserved third place. Recommended as a good, fun and fast-paced mystery novel with pulp tendencies and great introduction to James Ronald and one of his best, too short lived detectives.

The Hit List: 10 More Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated

In 2023, I posted "The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated" going down a list of ten classic, or classically-styled, non-English detective novels from four different continents written in six different languages – not just French and Japanese titles. It would be very easy to compile a wishlist comprising of mostly Japanese and French mystery novels. All I need to do is link to Ho-Ling Wong's blog and John Pugmire's "A Locked Room Library." That would have been too easy. I think I scraped together a decently varied, alluring selection of potentially first-rate detective fiction waiting to be ferried across the language barrier.

That list was originally intended as a follow-up to the 2022 blog-post "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Detective Novels That Need to Be Reprinted," but decided it worked better as an ordered top 10 list and wanted to do a part 2. I needed more than can be found online or in certain reference works and asked for suggestions to be left in the comments. My blog is visited by detective fanatics from across the world and figured if even my country produce writers like Cor Docter, Ton Vervoort, M.P.O. Books and P. Dieudonné, surely other countries must have some gems practically unknown outside their borders. The harvest was not great and gave up on the idea of doing a follow-up, until a minor miracle occurred.

Pushkin Vertigo is publishing a long-awaited translation of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939), which was one of my two or three premium picks alongside Rafeal Bernal's Un muerto en la tumba (A Dead Man in the Tomb, 1946) and Hajime Tsukatou's John Dickson Carr no saishuu teiri (John Dickson Carr's Last Theorem, 2020). Boileau's Six Crimes Without a Murderer was also one of the least likely titles on the list to get translated, because that snooty French upstart of a locked room extravaganza has resisted getting translated since the 1940s – even producing a lost manuscript. At the end of Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), there's the often overlooked section "Foreign-Language Books." It has a lengthy note for Six Crimes Without a Murderer. A translation was advertised in 1949 by Sampson Low as forthcoming, however, "the publishers themselves disappeared about that time and all efforts to trace a proof" or "a draft of the translation, or the translator, one Eric Sutton, have proved entirely unrewarding." The late John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, tried to get a translation published, but the current copyright holder refused to work small, independent or print-on-demand publishers. Pushkin Vertigo came true and caught the one that kept getting away for nearly eighth years.

So decided to take another look at that follow-up, dug around a bit and finally managed to gather enough to do another list without leaning entirely on French and Japanese titles with a smattering of Dutch mysteries. I tried to have the list not entirely dominated by locked room mysteries and impossible crimes, but somehow, they tend to be easier to find. So they have, as usually, a strong presence, but marvel at my impartiality.

Le testament de Basil Crookes (The Testament of Basil Crookes, 1930) by Pierre Véry

The obvious pick here would have been Pierre Véry's vaunted impossible crime novel, Les quatre vipères (The Four Vipers, 1934), but, to keep up appearances, I went with The Testament of Basil Crookes – "a pastiche of the English detective novel." The Testament of Basil Crookes is Véry's debut and appears to be a madcap chase mystery in which an unpublished manuscript, tossed from one train onto another train, is the key to securing a large inheritance. A madcap race with a three year time limit during which genre conventions are turned upside down. Véry's first stab at the detective story not only sounds like a fun, tongue-in-cheek mystery, anticipating Leo Bruce and Edmund Crispin, but one of those early meta-fictional mysteries that started to appear around this time. And that type of mystery is now appreciated more than ever before.

L'antro dei filosofi (The Philosophers' Den, 1942) by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Giorgio Scerbanenco is one of the writers Igor Longo wrote about in his short essay "The Italian Detective Story" from the English translation of Franco Vailati's Il mistero dell'idrovolante (The Flying Boat Mystery, 1935). Scerbanenco belonged to the Van Dine-Queen School and even had an American series-detective, Arthur Jelling, who's "a Reeder-like archivist in the Boston Police Department." Longo highlighted The Philosophers' Den, "a very moody and bleak murder story in a very Queenesque eccentric family, possibly related to the Hatters of the Tragedy of Y," in which he praised Scerbanenco's effective use of "the Queenesque negative clue." The Philosophers' Den apparently is not the only notable Jelling case in addition to "a very famous Noir series with unfrocked and disbarred surgeon Duca Lamberti" written during the 1960s. And, of course, four of the Lamberti novels have been translated into English.

Diferentes razones tiene la muerte (Death Has Different Reasons, 1947) by María Elvira Bermúdez

María Elvira Bermúdez was according to Latin American Mystery Writers: An A to Z Guide (2004) "one of the founders of the Mexican detective story" and "one of the most innovative practitioners of the genre in Mexico," while also making a name as "one of its most perceptive critics." Death Has Different Reasons was "the most ambitious detective up to that time in Mexico" introducing her series-detective, Armando H. Zozaya, who's "modeled after the American sleuth Ellery Queen." Zozaya's solves his first case, a double murder, by sticking to conventions and traditions of the fair play, Golden Age-style detective novels. If that's not enticing enough for publishers, Bermúdez was "one of the most prolific female detective fiction author in the Spanish-speaking world" and "for 50 years a unique voice in Spanish-American detective fiction and criticism."

A morte no envelope (Death in an Envelope, 1957) by Lopes Coelho

This entry also comes from Latin American Mystery Writers. According to that insightful guide, Lopes Coelho was a driving force in the creation of "a uniquely Brazilian brand of detective fiction" by creating the first truly Brazilian detective character, Doctor Leite, whose cases filled three collections of short stories – published between 1957 and '68. The stories are classic whodunits and other type of puzzle stories, "solved by applying principles of logic and deductive reasoning," including two locked room mysteries, "A morte no envelope" ("Death in an Envelope") and "Só o crime estava na biblioteca" ("Only Crime Was in the Library"). So more than enough reasons to want a translation of at least the first collection.

Ălkistan (The Eel Cage, 1967) by Jan Ekström

When it comes to crime fiction, Sweden is known for their dark, dreary police procedural, psychological thrillers and cold, character-driven noir fiction. There's an exception to nearly everything and one of the exceptions here was Jan Ekström, "the Swedish John Dickson Carr," who wrote several locked room mysteries. Ekström's best known impossible crime novel, Ättestupan (Deadly Reunion, 1975), received an English translation decades ago, but nothing else outside of a short story in an obscure anthology. Adey's Locked Room Murders, under "Foreign-Language Books," lists several titles like The Eel Cage. From what I've been able to gather, The Eel Cage is Ekström's best regarded detective novel taking place in a small, rural fishing village where a body inexplicably turns up inside a jealously guarded eel chest, locked from the inside, but the key is found in the victim's pocket! Can you blame me for being intrigued?

Kyuukon no misshitsu (The Locked Room of the Suitors, 1978) by Sasazawa Saho

Like I said above, it would be really easy to fill out a list with just titles Ho-Ling has reviewed over the years. Just one list would not even scratch the surface of my honkaku and shin honkaku wishlist, but some titles stand out more than others. Sasazawa Saho's The Locked Room of the Suitors has for some reason always intrigued me. It was reportedly nearly forgotten about, until Alice Arisugawa included The Locked Room of the Suitors in An Illustrated Guide to the Locked Room 1891-1998 examining forty impossible crime novels from across the world. The plot concerns a double murder, plus dying message, behind the padlocked door of an old storage cellar. Ho-Ling says in his review, "the locked room mystery and the build-up towards the solution are quite good" with "both the fake murder theory and the final solution are built on clever clues." More importantly, "the locked room mystery itself is also quite memorable."

Mord & orkidéer (Murder & Orchids, 1996) by Bertil Falk

Back in February, I reviewed Bertil Falk's collection of short stories Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010) and mentioned he had authored two novel-length, untranslated detective novels beginning with Den maskerade ligachefen (The Masked Gangleader, 1954) – written and published when he was twenty years old. Murder & Orchids followed four decades later and appears to be a better, maturer novel combining the formal detective story with the travel thriller to create a tricky plot turning accepted cliches and conventions on its head. So very much a mystery in the spirit of the first entry on this list.

 

Jinrojo no kyofu (The Terror of Werewolf Castle, 1996/98) by Nikaido Reito

I mentioned Nikaido Reito's The Terror of Werewolf Castle in "Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated" as not having very good odds at ever getting translated. The Terror of Werewolf Castle is, as Ho-Ling pointed out, "a monument in Japanese detective writing," comprising of four separate books averaging around 700 pages each. So it's not very realistic to expect a publisher today to translate a four volume, 2800 page behemoth, but on the other hand, we're paying customers with a The Terror of Werewolf Castle-shaped gap on our shelves. So, you know, chop, chop!

Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past, 2012) by Paul Halter

The death of John Pugmire in 2024 ended both Locked Room International and his regular Paul Halter translations, which consisted at his passing of nearly twenty novels, several short story collections and a few uncollected short stories. Tom Mead is currently doing fresh translations of previously published Halter translations, but nothing new so far. There are still quite a few untranslated Paul Halter titles on my wishlist like Le crime de Dédale (The Crime of Daedalus, 1997), Le douze crimes d'Hercule (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules, 2001) and Le tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger, 2004), but The Traveler from the Past intrigued me ever since reading Patrick Ohl's 2012 review. A young man who went missing in 1905 turns up in 1955 without having aged a day, only to be tragically killed in a subway accident. But his identity appears to check out. What follows is no less impossible! Patrick described the book as "utterly fantastic" and "chillingly bizarre" with a plot that springs "a genuine surprise in the dénouement." Fingers crossed Mead eventually turns his hands to the Halter novels Pugmire didn't get to translate with The Traveler from the Past being at the top of that pile.

Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023) by “Anne van Doorn” (a.k.a. M.P.O. Books)

This is the first entry in the New York Cop series by "Anne van Doorn," open penname of M.P.O. Books, which follows Detectives Krell and Merrilee Hopper, of the 16th Precinct, whose first recorded case involves an impossible murder on the seventy-second floor of a high-rise tower on West 33rd Street – committed when the building was swaying in a storm. You can view this series as an homage to other New York detective writers and series like Van Dine, Queen and Ed McBain's 87th Precinct, but flavored like a Dutch politieroman (police novel). The sequel is titled Het legpuzzel mysterie (The Jigsaw Puzzle Mystery, 2026) and scheduled for release later this year. And here's the kicker... The Delft Blue Mystery has already been translated into English complete with blurbs from David Dean and Tom Mead, but holding up its publication is the search for a literary agent and publisher in the United States. No news on that front, yet, but you can at least look forward to my review of The Jigsaw Puzzle Mystery when it gets released.