Masterclass: "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand" (2000) by Phil Mann

If you read my recent review of Fredric Brown's "Handbook for Homicide" (1943), you know the intention the intersperse the locked room reviews with reviews of non-impossible crime fiction, which is why I picked Brown's shortish novel as a followup to Carter Dickson's The Unicorn Murders (1935) and Newton Gayle's The Sentry-Box Murder (1935) – only for it to contain a trifling locked room element. So decided to take a look at Bertil Falk's Mind-Boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010), before dipping back into writers like Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn. That collection of short stories was not exactly "as described on tin." Now I really wanted a good locked room before mixing things up again.

I was tempted to go with Danro Kamosaki's third novel, stringing together eight impossible crimes, but decided to go with something shorter.

Phil Mann, an American attorney from Los Angeles, has authored textbooks, wrote film scripts and short fiction for magazines and anthologies. "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand," published in A Deadly Dozen: Tales of Murder from Los Angeles (2000), appears to have been Mann's only detective story and locked room mystery, but one that was overlooked by Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) and not often referenced everywhere else – except for one place. Mike Grost briefly discussed "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand" on his website, calling it "a nicely done locked room short story" with a detective recalling some of John Dickson Carr's characters. So probably would have never known of this short story's existence without that brief notice. Thanks, Mike!

Horace Masters, a mathematics professor, is approached after a lecture by young man, Tony Reed, who has heard of the professor's "experience with locked rooms." Well, a murder inside a locked room happened at the mansion of his father, Martin Reed.

Martin Reed is a filmmaker of direct-to-DVD movies, "filled with large-breasted women running around with large guns," who had his casting agent, Conrad Armstrong, camping out in one of his room while working on a movie. Armstrong is not a particular likable person ("you've heard of the casting couch?") as "everything he did seemed to be calculated to degrade someone." And causes enough friction in the Reed household that ends up murdered in his makeshift office under bizarre, seemingly impossible circumstances. The body is spotted through the glass panel of the office door, which is locked from the inside by its broken key. So the door can only be locked and unlocked from the inside, but the glass has glazed artwork on it and breaking it to unlock the door is not an option. They have to break open one of the french doors on the other side of the house. Once inside the office, it becomes apparent they really dealing with an impossible murder inside a hermetically sealed room without a place for someone to hide. Horace Masters is only a visiting lecturer who only has a day, or so, to solve the case before flying back home.

Solving it, he does, in the grand old traditional way by gathering everyone involved for a classic drawing room revelation. Masters sums up all the facts and nebulous clues to show who murdered Armstrong, why and, most importantly, how the locked room-trick was done – which is definitely the story's strongest aspect. I think most seasoned armchair detectives will have their suspicions about the murderer, but not how it could have been done. Well, there's one obvious trick to do it under these circumstances, but Mann opted for something different. The principle of the locked room-trick is one impossible crime fanatics have seen before, but Mann found a different way to put it to use. So a new wrinkle on an old conceit, but a very well done one, scratching that impossible crime itch, that should have been picked up by Mike Ashley for The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000).

Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010) by Bertil Falk

Bertil Falk was a Swedish newspaper reporter, TV journalist, magazine editor, translator, writer and something of a pop-fiction historian who published a three volume science-fiction history – Faktasin: den svenskspråkiga science-fiction litteraturens historia (Faktasin: the History of the Swedish-language science-fiction literature, 2020). Falk also wrote a well received biography of Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi (2016) and completed a 60 year translation project of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939) before his death, aged 90, in 2023.

Beside science-fiction, Falk was a fan of detective fiction and published his first detective novel, Den maskerade ligachefen (The Masked Gangleader, 1954), when he was twenty years old. A second detective novel, Mord & orkidéer (Murder & Orchids, 1996), appeared decades later, but neither received translations. So us non-Swedish mystery fans primarily know Falk as the translator of Ulf Durling's Gammal ost (Hard Cheese, 1971) and Locked Rooms and Open Spaces: An Anthology of 150 years of Swedish Crime & Mystery Fiction of the Impossible Sort (2007). What has been surprisingly overlooked is a volume with Falk's own crime and detective fiction published over fifteen years ago.

Falk's Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010) was published by Lighthouse Publishing. Yes, the same publisher that put out one of the three bellwethers of the then coming Golden Age revival, Dean White's The Mysteries of Reverend Dean (2008). So was both pleasantly surprised and a bit baffled to stumble across another such volume in their catalog from a highly regarded writer, translator and genre historian, because nobody has discussed this collection or even mentioned it – aside from a few mentions on Swedish websites. Even stranger, Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary is presented as a collection of impossible crime stories ("...feature the kind of impossible crime that the missionary is facing..."). Not exactly as advertised as only a few of the stories can be counted as impossible crime fiction, some borderline cases and impossible crime adjacent stories. And some non-impossible crime stories.

The main character in these nine short stories is a retired, unnamed missionary who now lives on an island, in the archipelago of Stockholm, where he either tells or listens to stories from the past. Stories about strange crimes and bizarre incidents, but for few exceptions, they're armchair fiction rather than armchair detective stories. Not bad armchair fiction. However, if you pick up this collection expecting traditional armchair detective stories littered with locked room puzzles, you're going to be disappointed. So adjust your expectations for your own enjoyment.

Just one more thing, before delving into this collection, I normally add original titles and publication dates when reviewing translated mysteries, but have been unable to find if any of these stories first appeared in Swedish. So have to do with their English publication history. Now with that out of the way, let's dig in!

"There Are No Pockets in Our Grave Clothes," first published in the Sept/Oct. 2004 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Passport to Crime (2007), serves as an introduction as the missionary tells his neighbor about an incident from a decade ago. The elderly, dying and widowed Mrs. Laura Svensson is on her death bed and her family is hovering around her fortune like vultures – telling him "soon the brats will have their way." And laments "there are no pockets in the cerements," so she could take it all to the other side. One of her possessions is uncut diamond, "a piece of uncut coal that is worth a fortune," which she keeps at her bedside. When she died three days later, the case with the uncut diamond has vanished. The house is turned upside down and they go as far as performing a clandestine autopsy without result. So how could a frail, dying woman disappear an uncut diamond from her deathbed? The missionary discovers the solution rather than deducing it, however, the astute reader should be able to make an educated guess how she did it.

"The Multicolored Herring," first appearing in the Sept/Oct. 2006, issue Crime Spree Magazine, brings an old friend of the missionary to the island. Roland Franzén is a retired police inspector and had previously appeared, as a teenager, in Falk's The Masked Gangleader helping to expose a spy ring. Franzén tells the missionary about a case from before he was placed in charge of homicide in southern Sweden, which he solved by mistaking a red herring for clue.

A wheelchair bound woman, Kristina Larsson, reported that her husband had gone missing longer than usual ("he goes to other women because of my ill-health"). It takes a while before the police apparatus starts moving, but, when they start looking into his disappearance, the police finds the husband had been doing more than just philandering. However, the trail pretty quickly leads back to his own doorstep and the story becomes a how-did-she-do-it? Kristina Larsson spends most of her time weaving rag carpets at her modified handloom. Franzén perceived a clue in the color scheme of one of her rag carpets and deduced the correct solution from what proved to be the titular, multicolored herring. I liked the idea of a wrong clue that's not misleading, but, on a whole, it needed more than the 15 pages it got.

"Accrued Murder Prevented" appears to be original to this collections in which the missionary returns the favor by telling Franzén a story that happened in New Jersey. A story related to him by one George Gonzales, a family man, who had been innocently convicted of murdering his business partner, Edward King – because nobody else could have pulled the trigger. Nobody with a viable motive. So he was convicted and released after seven years, but still claiming to be innocent, promises to hunt down the real killer and tells the promise society now owes him a murder. When an original, missing piece of evidence resurfaces, it throws a new perspective on the situation and possible solution. So more of a crime story with human interest than a detective story proper. Only part I found interesting was Gonzales' notion that going to jail innocently should "accrue the right to kill" that came from "a science-fiction story he's once read" without mentioning the title or name of the writer.

"The Hit of a Marksman," originally published in Bewildering Stories #256 (2007) and reprinted in the anthology Crime – the Swedish Way (2008), is not at all the spectacular miraculous crime described on the back cover, but a simple anecdote based around a bit of trivia. The missionary tells a story about his time in Kenya when a man named George, a white farmer, was shot by his rival in love, Cornelius – a young Dutch surgeon and marksman. Cornelius shot George straight in the heart. Not only did George survive the shooting, but no bullet penetrated his heart. You don't have to be Father Brown to dispel this miracle.

"The Apostolic Destruction," first published in Bewildering Stories #318 (2008), is an improvement over the previous story and an actual, if minor, impossible crime story. This time, the missionary tells his neighbor about the Apostolic Succession and its significance to some Christians. He also tells her how a mischievous Swedish bishop introduced the Apostolic Succession into the Danish National Church during the consecration of a Danish bishop, which lead to the murder of the Danish bishop some time later. The Danish bishop was murdered, presumably from drinking poisoned wine received at Communion, but the bishops who sipped the wine before and after him were unharmed. So why poisoned the bishop, why and how? Like I said, it's fairly minor as an impossible crime story, but it was a welcome change to see the missionary act as a detective.

"Don't Judge a Strangler by the Hair," published in the anthology (?) Darkest Before the Dawn (2009), regrettably is together with the last story the worst of the lot. A dull, uninteresting and predictable story about a woman who has two men vowing for her attention. One of the men ends up dead, strangled, but problem with the murder weapon, sort of, gives away the murderer.

"The Vicar Who Went Up in Smoke," original to this collection, is an impossible crime story. The missionary is entertaining Eva Lundström, the new bishop of the Swedish Church, and her husband, Herbert ("...a heathen"). So he tells them the story of the vanished vicar which he got to observe close at hand. The vicar in question on the foggy seashore with other pleasure anglers when he vanished into thin air. An angler had seen it happen through a gap in the fog, "one moment he was standing there, the other moment he was gone." This should have been the best story in the collection had the murderer and method not stood out like (ROT13) n Ivxvat va gur Jvyq Jrfg. You'll get it when you read the story.

"A Touch of Truth," first published in Bewildering Stories #371 (2010), is not only the grimmest story of the collection, but also its longest and it shows! It's the collection's most substantially-plotted story.

The missionary is asked by his neighbor why he became a missionary, instead of a private detective. Missionary tells her about the time he was mistaken for a private investigator and asked to kill a man who preyed on children. This man ends up dead in a murder-disguised-as-suicide with deliberate flaws to clue the police in that it was murder. But why? I'm not going to reveal any more details, but it was nice to see Falk making a spirited, not wholly unsuccessful, stab to plot a genuine detective story. Just be warned that the details of the "victim's" crimes are a bit gross. He was even reading a Nancy Drew novel when he was shot and apparently collected vintage girl books. A bullet well spent!

"An Impossible Equation," original to this collections, ended Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary on a sour note. This time, the readers travels alongside the missionary to Los Angeles to attend a consecration, but then a member of the congregation is shot dead in her home. Neighbors had seen her son, Harold Burns, arrive and leave shortly before the murder was discovered. However, Harold was Sydney when his mother was shot. No worries, because Harold has a twin brother, Henry, but Henry lived and worked in Tokyo for many years. So both twins have an unshakable alibi. You can probably anticipate the so-called surprise twist coming (ROT13), lrf, gur nafjre vf gevcyrgf. Unebyq naq Urael ragrerq vagb n pbafcvenpl jvgu gurve ybat-ybfg guveq gjva gb xvyy gurve nohfvir zbgure, orpnhfr abobql xarj nobhg gur guveq oebgure jub unq ercbegrqyl orra fgvyyobea. Just terrible!

So, like I said, the stories in Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary are mostly armchair fiction rather than armchair detective stories, which makes it difficult to recommend to the purists who tend to frequent this blog. I liked "There Are No Pockets in Our Grave Clothes," "The Multicolored Herring" and "The Apostolic Destruction," but "A Touch of Truth" is the only one that cut it as a satisfying detective story. So disappointing this was not an overlooked treasure trove of impossible crime fiction hiding in plain sight, but now I know and at least you breeze through this modern curiosity in no time. If you're still interested, Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary is (as of this writing) still in print. I'll try to pick something good for the next one.

The Stars Spell Murder: "Handbook for Homicide" (1943) by Fredric Brown

Fredric Brown's "Handbook for Homicide," originally published in the March, 1943, issue of Detective Tales, can be described as either a longish short story or a short, very short, novel comprising eight chapters – all short and snappy. I was in the mood for something short, snappy and to the point. And remembered reading "Handbook for Homicide" is one of Brown's more conventional pieces of detective fiction in the Van Dinean traditional.

Bill Wunderly, an accountant, is braving a dangerous, winding mountain road during a worsening storm to see his love, Annabel Burke, who's a mathematician with "the astronomy bug." She works as an assistant at "the most isolated and inaccessible observatory in the country," Einar Observatory. During his drive up the mountain road, Bill meets a Native American, Charlie Lightfoot, who's transporting crates with rattlesnakes on his donkey, Archimedes. I should warn animal lovers poor Archimedes doesn't survive the trip and Bill gives Charlie, along with his snakes, a ride to the observatory.

Einar Observatory houses a small group of scientists. There are three astronomers, Abel Lecky, Fergus Fillmore and Darius Hill, who each have an assistant, Paul Bailey, Eric Andressen and Annabel. Additionally, the observatory has a staff consisting of an electrician, Rex Parker, Otto the Janitor, a handy man and a small household staff – rounded out by Bill and Charlie. Like I said, "Handbook for Homicide" is a longish short story that's short, snappy and wastes no time in getting to the murder after their arrival. Elsie Willis, the maid, is found dead in an upstairs room with a cracked skull. I should note here that this first murder is, technically speaking, a locked room mystery as she's found dead behind a bolted door. I had no idea this story qualified as an impossible crime story and one of the reasons for picking this story was to break up the locked room reviews. However, it's such a small, trifling plot detail that's solved practically immediately with a routine trick and never mentioned again, a recurring problem with this story, that I decided not to tag this review as a locked room mystery.

The murderer is not done yet and even pries open a crate with rattlesnakes, which has fatal consequences and, even worse, they're cutoff from the outside when the bridge collapses. And, of course, the phone lines are down as well. So they're trapped at the mountain top observatory with a murderer, rattlesnakes crawling outside and no way out for at least another day or two. One interesting aspect of the story between the murder and solution is Bill learning the foppish Darius Hill is something of an amateur criminologist who's working on a manuscript, The Murderer's Guide. While reading the manuscript, Bill starts getting some ideas about the murders at the observatory. What I also found interesting is that the characters speculate Hill might suffer from necrophobia, "fear of death, fear of the dead," which would make for a fascinating alibi, but nothing is really done with it. That's emblematic of this story.

Brown crammed "The Handbook for Homicide" with plenty of good ideas, bursting with potential, but only mentions them without doing anything with them. I already mentioned the simplistic, somewhat unnecessary, locked room angle and the necrophobia bit. A better example would be the character of Charlie Lightfoot who first appeared as one of those dated, poorly-aged characters, but dropped "the Big Chief Wahoo accent" the moment trouble started on the mountain road and Brown sketched out an interesting background story for him. Like when Bill mentioned Charlie seems to be very familiar with the layout of the observatory and Charlie answers, "I designed it." Nothing is done with it or mentioned again. So everything feels underdeveloped and thus a bit disappointing in the end, especially the genuinely good bits like the ingenious alibi-trick behind the first murder and the question of motives – which all needed more room to breath and be developed into their full potential. Now it reads like an early outline or draft of unfinished, unpolished manuscript not unlike the published plot outline Jack Vance's third Joe Bain novel "The Genesee Slough Murders" (1966).

So I think "Handbook for Homicide" would have fared better had Brown taken the time to flesh out the characters, plot and background into a novel-length mystery.

Note for the curious: as the resident locked room fanboy and impossible crime fanatic, I couldn't help but notice the ingenious alibi-trick could have doubled as a way to (accidentally) create a locked room scenario. So... (SPOILERS/ROT13) gur zheqrere hfrq yvdhrsvrq nve sebz n QrJne synfx gb serrmr gur ivpgvz'f yrtf, cebc gur obql hc va n pbeare naq yrsg gur ebbz gb perngr na nyvov fbzrjurer ryfr. Jura gur yrtf gunjrq, gur obql sryy naq gur crbcyr qbjafgnvef jrer nggenpgrq ol gur guhq. Jul obgure cynlvat nebhaq jvgu jverf gb znavchyngr gur obyg, jura gur obql pbhyq unir orra cynprq ntnvafg gur jnyy pybfre gb gur qbbe. Jura gur obql svanyyl sryy, vg raqrq hc oybpxvat gur qbbe naq nccneragyl phggvat bss gur zheqrere'f rkvg. Gur zheqrere pna fvzcyl ybpx gur qbbe oruvaq uvz jvgu n fcner xrl. Nsgre nyy, vg'f gur obql oybpxvat gur qbbe, abg gur ybpx be qenj-obyg. Uryy, lbh pna cebonoyl hfr gur yvdhrsvrq nve gb serrmr gur qbbe va cynpr gb znxr vg nccrne ybpxrq.

The Unicorn Murders (1935) by Carter Dickson

In May, the British Library Crime Classics series of reprints is releasing a brand new, long overdue edition of John Dickson Carr's fourth Sir Henry Merrivale novel, The Unicorn Murders (1935) – published as by "Carter Dickson." I actually wanted to revisit Poison in Jest (1932) and The Plague Court Murders (1934) next or get to one of those previous few, unread Carr's like The Nine Wrong Answers (1952) or Deadly Hall (1971). But when I heard the British Library was going to reprint The Unicorn Murders, I decided to give it a second read instead.

My memories of The Unicorn Murders is fragmented, like a highlight reel, remembering being impressed with how it conducted a three-way danse macabre between the turn-of-the-century thriller, the 1930s detective story and the impossible crime tale. So let's find out how those memories stand up to a refresher with the finer details filled back in.

The Unicorn Murders begins with Ken Blake, who had previously appeared in The Plague Court Murders, on holiday in France. A lazy holiday during which he paid no attention to screaming newspaper headlines nor the public chatter about two names, Flamande and Gasquet. Believing them to be either rivaling boxers or cabinet ministers, which they're not. And not knowing lands him in a spot of trouble. But his adventure really begins when he spots a familiar face, Evelyn Cheyne. She spots him and approaches him with lines from "The Lion and the Unicorn" nursery rhyme, which he finishes and she tells him she's glad H.M. had paired her with him on this assignment. Blake has no idea what she's talking about, but plays along and learns the mission concerns Sir George Ramsden, of the Foreign Office, who's bringing “the unicorn” from France to London – nobody exactly knows what it is. Only that has garnered the interest of the Great Flamande, "the most picturesque criminal France has sported for years," but Gasquet, the Chief Inspector of the Surete, is hot on his heels. Both the arch-criminal and master detective are known as masters of disguise whose true faces are known to practically nobody ("it's wild, it's fantastic, but it's true"). Flamande, as is customary for a gentlemen thief, publicly announces he would be on the airplane with Sir George before reaching its destination.

So a duel, of sorts, between the arch-criminal and master detective complicated by the dangerous possibility Flamande made the first kill in a career of mostly whimsical capers ("...pinched the clock out of the courtroom while that Commissaire was giving evidence..."). A wounded, dying man was found in a Marseilles park with a horrondous wound between his eyes that, according to the police surgeon, could have only been caused by "the long, sharp horn of an animal." And the last words the victim spoke was the word "unicorn." Pretty soon, they find themselves in the middle of a comedy of errors fueled, madcap chase that convinces Blake both of them should "shortly be the object of one of the biggest police-hunts since Landru." This madcap chase ends in a three-way collision when Blake and Cheyne bump into H.M. nearby Chateau de l'Ile where they witness an airplane make a forced landing. Yes, that airplane!

When the stranded party seek shelter at the chateau, they find the Comte d'Andrieu expected their arrival. Flamande asked him to prepare for their arrival with the promise of "a unicorn-hunt." So the problems go from bad to worse as the causeway is washed away, no phone and a great detective who's as big a mystery as the criminal he's pursuing. And then one of them is killed under seemingly baffling circumstances.

 

 

This impossible murder is undoubtedly one of Carr's most creative, original and trickiest take on the impossible crime, especially in the subcategory known as "invisible killers," but not another simple, disappointing redressing of G.K. Chesterton's "The Invisible Man" (1911) – on the contrary! Like the victim in Marseilles, the second victim ended up with a mysterious, inexplicable wound in his forehead, but this murder was witnessed by several people. In the gallery, they saw the victim grab his head, "something horrible was happening to his head," scream and tumble down two flight of stairs. When they examine the body, even a layman can see "something had been pulled out of that wound," but there simply was no time to pull out a weapon without being seen.

Or, to sum the situation up more accurately, "if he was killed at the top of the stairs, he was either stabbed by an invisible man" or "shot with a bullet which pulls itself out of the wound and flies away."

Carr created one of his densest impossible murders with multiple moving parts relaying on various aspects of the plot and the floor plan here is not merely ornamental. If anything, the story probably needed a few more floor plans of the chateau towards the end with the explanation demanding your full attention. Where a lesser writer would have killed, or bogged down, the ending with a long, tedious explanation in minute detail, Carr's talent to make the utterly fantastic and fanciful seem plausible shines throughout. Certainly helped Carr had a knack for wrapping clues, red herrings and a good dose foreshadowing in an appealing, unputdownable narrative keeping you glued to the pages. Even when it gets tricky or a bit technical. I liked how the nature of that strange, apparently invisible weapon was handled with some of Carr's patented brazen clues and foreshadowing you can only truly appreciate upon a second read.

I think the central impossible crime forms a solid foundation for the rest of the story to stand on, which is often even more fantastic with its dueling masters of disguise, impersonations and rivaling detectives, invisible unicorns with homicidal tendencies and bizarre incidents – like someone tossing his suitcase out of a window. The tightly-drawn, executed impossible crime not only did its parts in keeping this whole three-ring circus consistent, it also allowed the story to succeed as half parody, half serious detective story. Carr obviously intended The Unicorn Murders to be a parody, or homage, to the greats of the early French crime-and detective fiction, Maurice Leblanc and Gaston Leroux. Leblanc is mentioned in the story, but the story itself unmistakably was inspired by Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) and La parfum de la dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black, 1908). Rivaling detectives and impossible crime from the former and the one-man siege of a chateau from the latter.

So you can say Carr made things really difficult by trying to juggle the characters, rivaling detectives and criminals with an outlandish situation "straight out of a farce or a dream," while balancing between the thriller and a tricky, complicated detective story – while also balancing between farce and a serious detective story. Like I said, a lesser writer would have made a mess out of it, but Carr made it work because he took it seriously despite the humorous, often farcical tone. So, in many ways, The Unicorn Murder is almost more impressive a wire-walking act than The Three Coffins (1935) or the previously mentioned The Plague Court Murders. So a perfect vehicle for H.M. who's the only true rival to Gasquet and the doom of Flamande, but getting there is not without some dangerous and sometimes amusing obstacles. I really enjoyed Gasquet's false-solution putting part of the blame on H.M. ("...his senile dotage").

H.M. doesn't always have to be on page to be amusing. Blake recalled in the first chapter meeting H.M. at Whitehall, "lumbering along with his head down, shaking his fist and cursing certain government officials with an audible fluency which nearly got him mobbed as pro-German." When the times come, H.M. demonstrates he's very far from a comic relief sleuth, but no less an entertaining one!

The Unicorn Murders finds Carr and H.M. at the top of their game and at their most fun, however, it's also one of Carr's least plausible and realistic detective novels. Pure fantasy with all the logic of a mad dream, but you really have to put your mind in the right frame and go along in order to fully enjoy The Unicorn Murders. If that's no problem, I don't think I could recommend The Unicorn Murder more. Very glad I took this one off the shelf for refresher.

Note for the curious: other people have noted H.M. utters the phrase "oh, Archons of Athens," which is usually uttered by Carr's other famous creation, Dr. Gideon Fell. Some have wondered if this was a slip on Carr's part, but always suspected it was a hint. The Unicorn Murders was published when John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson were two separate entities. It was speculated about, but not officially confirmed. Maybe it was a way to let the keen eyed readers know it was him writing the H.M. series.

The Sentry-Box Murder (1935) by Newton Gayle

"Newton Gayle," a pseudonym, was a partnership of strange bedfellows between Muna Lee and Maurice Guinness, a human rights activist and an oil executive, who collaborated on five detective novels about Jim Greer and Robin Underwood – a British detective and his Dr. Watson. Their stint as detective novelists lasted from 1935 to '38 during which they produced a short-lived, colorful series detective novels tied to the regional mysteries of Todd Downing, Elspeth Huxley and Arthur W. Upfield.

Lee was a long-time resident of San Juan, Puerto Rico, who lived there from the early 1920s until her death in 1965 and was married to the man who would become Puerto Rico's first governor, Luis Muñoz Marín. Guinness was a Shell Oil executive stationed in Puerto Rico. So the island was the stage of two of their novels. Murder at 28:10 (1936) takes place during a hurricane and perhaps "the only crime novel to feature a series of barometric charts." The other is The Sentry-Box Murder (1935), alternatively published as Murder in the Haunted Sentry Box, which is also their best-known novel despite being as long out-of-print, little read as the other four titles in the series. Getting listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) always helps keeping total obscurity at bay.

The Sentry-Box Murder begins on the Calypso, Lord Dampier's ship, which has to make a stopover in Puerto Rico to replenish their fuel supply. Jim Greer and Robin Underwood are on holiday aboard the Calypso, following their "final triumph in solving the O'Donnell Formula mystery," which is where Dick and Cay Piper live – old friends of Underwood. Piper works as an agent for the Canadian-Caribbean company. A job consisting "mostly in herding a lot of tourists round" and "making them happy" ("...requires more tact, diplomacy, and ingenuity than Foreign Service ever did"). Their arrival coincides with Piper having to entertain a VIP party headed by a powerful US senator, John Monarch, who brought along an entourage. Monarch's wife and former actress, Melita Avery, his nephew Elmery Coulton ("...a queer duck") and the lawyer Fergus McKelvie. The party is rounded out by Blaise Grassington, public utilities magnate, and Stella Tophet ("...she's indescribable"). So part of the entertainment for tourists is a treasure hunt at the historic fortress of El Morro with its haunted sentry-box. Piper invites Greer and Underwood to join the treasure hunt, but the outsiders notice Monarch is as powerful a figure as he's unpopular. Suspect "there might develop considerable drama not on Dick's program." They proved to be correct.

During the treasure hunt, Coulton discovers Monarch's body inside the sentry-box with a bullet between his eyes! Shot at close range, indicating the killer was in the sentry-box with him, but two sentries standing guard kept a constant eye on the box and only saw Monarch go inside. And no gun found inside the box! So how did the killer manage to shoot him when nobody could have gone in, or out, without being seen by the guards?

This naturally all smacks of John Dickson Carr or Hake Talbot. A brief history tells of two haunted sentry-boxes on the island "supposed to be the special domain of the Devil." One of the boxes, one at San Cristóbal, makes people vanish without a trace, while this one at El Morro kills people. So basically a classic room-that-kills and it's mentioned Monarch, an Irish-American, has a banshee in the family. However, the supernatural frills are just that, frills and background decoration. Nothing is done with it. So to present it as anything even remotely Carr-like or an ancestor of Talbot would be misleading. If the writing duo of Lee and Guinness modeled their work on anyone, it probably was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the American mystery writers of the day such as S.S. van Dine and Ellery Queen.

Jim Greer and his narrator, Underwood, give the story a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson vibe, but that's because Underwood is more like a Dr. Watson than Greer is a Sherlock Holmes. Greer simply is another attempt to imitate, improve and maybe try to humanize the Philo Vance type of detective character – which was done here with various degree of success. Greer is certainly a fun enough detective, sneaking and sleuthing in the background, obsessing over nebulous clues and minor matters. Like a packet of soiled shirts left in the bushes, scribbles on a cuff, whispered threats of revenge and fretting over the disharmonious array of motives ("where's revenge!"). Like I said, a fun enough character who fulfills his duties as Great Detective, but ultimately a fairly paint-by-numbers detective character. You can honestly say that about most of the characters and plot. Funnily enough, that's where the book's greatest strength shines the brightest.

I think the greatest accomplishment here is how the authors trotted out a cartload of old, recycled ideas, tropes and cliches and somehow made it feel like a fresh treatment. Not just because of its colorful backdrop by staging a murder during a treasure hunt in "an old Spanish castle on a tropical island." For example, the solution to the impossible shooting of Monarch in the sentry-box dates back to (SPOILER/ROT13) Qblyr'f fubeg fgbel “Gur Ceboyrz bs Gube Oevqtr” (oryvrir vg jnf hfrq va n Cuvyb Inapr abiry) and has been used way too often as a cheap, rage-inducing cop out explanation for various impossible crime stories with vgf fhvpvqr-qvfthvfrq-zheqre tbgpun. But here it was used to disguise a murder as an impossible murder. Yeah, that part falls a little flat without playing up the supernatural part, but liked how it was integrated with the treasure hunt and appreciated it tried to do something good with an otherwise terrible idea. That and not getting another fhvpvqr-qvfthvfrq-nf-zheqre fbyhgvba. Another thing done very well was how Greer worked towards a neatly posed false-solution, but, as to be expected, the correct solution underwhelms. Worse even, it betrays the authors hadn't played quite as fear with their readers as the list of clues would suggest.

That there's always a "but" is what keeps Gayle's The Sentry-Box Murder from a place in the first-ranks of 1930s mystery novels, but, to give it a positive bend, it's a solid second-stringer. Remember a second-stringer is not the same as a second-rate mystery. The Sentry-Box Murder is not second-rate, but misses the rigor and finesse of a truly first-rate mystery. Just a solid second-stringer that some probably wish had been more like Carr or Talbot. If you want an alternative take, Pietro De Palma, of Death Can Read, reviewed The Sentry-Box Murder in 2022 and called it a "beautiful novel from the golden age of mystery!"

Notes for the curious: to be fair to Lee and Guinness, they appear to have improved from book to book. Their first, Death Follows a Formula, also seems to be their worst with the detection being drowned out by lectures on oil manufacturing and economics. So, if that's true, The Sentry-Box Murder stands as a marvelous improvement. Martin Edwards reviewed Murder at 28:10, praising the building of tension and its sound plot, but thought the characterization was flimsily. Edwards also reviewed Sinister Crag (1938), "appealing and atmospheric," which is the last in the series. Death in the Glass (1937) has not been reviewed recently, but contemporary reviews appear to have been mixed. One calling the book a smooth, well done, but average, mystery and the other it had to odor of "desperate originality" about it. So maybe they relapsed in that one, but their partnership seemed to have ended when they started to get it down. I suppose Guinness was called away from Puerto Rico, because he returned decades later with three solo-thrillers, Man in Danger (1961), Man on the Run (1962) and Man Against Fear (1966), published as by "Mike Brewer."

Best Served Cold: Case Closed, vol. 96 by Gosho Aoyama

This is probably going to be a slightly shorter review than usual, because Gosho Aoyama's 96th volume of Case Closed only has one completed story, book-ended by the conclusion and setup to stories from the previous and next volume – which doesn't make for a great reading experience. Ho-Ling Wong noted the same problem in his 2019 review of vol. 96 ("...one of the worst volumes of the last decade or so"). The reader has been warned!

So this volume begins with the conclusion of the "The Female Officer Serial Murders" setup in the last two chapters of the previous volume. Normally, that's done in the opening chapter, but there three more chapters. Had it been tidied up in one, or two, chapters it would have been like any other volume in the series with one conclusion and two complete stories. Maybe even a one-chapter setup for the opening story of the next volume, but I'm padding now.

Yumi Miyamoto and Neako Miike, officer of the traffic department, get drag into the case when two of their colleagues are murdered. First victim was Sergeant Momosaki, found in a park, who "used her last moments to point at a swing set" as a dying message and killer struck again later that same day – throwing Lieutenant Shiori Yagi out of a building. She also used her last moments to give her colleagues a clue to the killer. But the killer left a calling card behind at both crime scenes: a bent 200-yen coin that has a depiction of cherry blossom ("...emblem of the Japanese police") engraved on it. So the murderer obviously has it out for female officers of the traffic department. There are three suspects who were involved in traffic incident, days before the murders, during which they had a heated argument with several female traffic officers. So pretty much one of those familiar who-of-the-three stories, but disliked how very similar, somewhat specific motive was tacked on all three suspects. On the other hand, I liked the idea how every cop in trouble, whether they died or survived, tried to transfer information to their colleagues in the form of a dying message. The meaning behind those dying messages form a pleasing thematic pattern, but an idea that needed a better, longer treatment than it received here. By the way, this story also provides a resolution for the Detective Chiba and Neako Miike story-arc going all the way back to vol. 75.

The first, only complete story in this volume is a self-parody of the Wile E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner feud between Jirokichi Sebastian and Kaito KID. I started out as a big fan of Jirokichi trying to ensnare KID with his elaborate, expensively baited and widely publicized traps. Their first few duels from volumes 44 and 61 were series highlights, but suppose they were hard acts to follow as their last few encounters have been a little underwhelming. So not a bad decision to go for a self-parody, because it would have been worst Jirokichi/KID caper to date. Jirokichi has new bait to tempt the KID, the Fairy's Lip, "one of the biggest conch pearls in the world," but how to present and protect it poses a problem. Fortunately, a familiar face turns up, Inspector Takaaki Morofushi, who advises to have the conch pearl exhibited frozen inside a block of ice and placed in a guarded, makeshift room of tempered glass. And some other high tech precautions that should prevent KID from getting out of the glass room with the pearl.

So far, a fairly typical setup for a Kaito KID caper, but this time you get to see KID at work and he's not disguised as Inspector Takaaki Morofushi. KID has hidden himself among the guards posted around the glass room with the block of ice, but is having second thoughts when notices "those two sleuths," Conan and Harley, "plus a cop who's not a total dummy," but an incident makes him decides to go ahead with the heist. From the start, KID is nearly caught out, but things get farcical when he takes the place of someone in Conan and Harley's group. You can see one scene coming from that very moment and this gag, sadly enough, carries the story. KID steals the ring and solution is OK-ish, but still no idea how he could have pulled it off, under those circumstances, within ten minutes. So fun enough, but nothing more than that.

The last story begins with Conan, Rachel, Sera, Serena and her boyfriend, Makoto, coming out of the theater having just watched The Avengers The Amazers movie when they stumble into a hostage situation. Makoto, a karate champion, jumps to the rescue only to discover he interrupted a shoot for the TV series 48 Detectives. And the gun toting criminal he kicked into next week was a stuntman. So now they need a stuntman and they immediately see potential in the karate champion, but Makoto's stint as a stand-in stuntman ends with two murders on set. And, according to tradition, will be concluded in the next volume.

So not much to say, except Sera trying to pry the truth out of Conan and even asks Rachel if she's ever seen Conan and Jimmy together. Very much to her surprise, Rachel tells Sera how Conan went to a school play Jimmy was in ("...Jimmy solved a mystery during the play, while the brat sat in the audience pouting"). I believe this is a reference to a story not reviewed on this blog and barely remember it, but how it's describe here makes it sound like a hilarious case of bi-location in close proximity, especially from Sera's perspective – who's convinced Conan is Jimmy ("...Conan and I picked Jimmy up from his house the next morning").

There's not much else to say about this volume, except how this series structures its serialized chapters and volumes worked against it. I simply recommend everyone reading this in the near of distant future to read volumes 95, 96 and 97 without big gaps of time between them.

My Grandfather, the Master Detective (2023) by Masateru Konishi

Masateru Konishi, a TV and radio writer, debuted as a novelist in 2023 with Meitantei no mama de ite, vol. I (Stay a Great Detective), retitled in English to My Grandfather, the Master Detective, which is partly based on the author's "own experience of caring for his father with dementia" – netted the book the 21st "This Mystery is Amazing!" Grand Prize. Last year, the English edition of Konishi's My Grandfather, the Master Detective, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, was published by Macmillan. And, from what I gleaned, this series is a trilogy with the title of the last volume suggesting a definitive ending. So assume a translation of the second title in the series will be published later this year.

My Grandfather, the Master Detective is an interconnected collection of short stories, some
would probably call it an episodic novel, of six chapters (or short stories) about 27-year-old school teacher Kaede and her grandfather. Kaede's grandfather is a retired school principal, born storyteller and an avid reader diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. Even when struggling with dementia, Grandfather is one hell of an armchair detective during his better, lucid moments.

So the first chapter, "Those Little Scarlet Cells," is an introduction to Kaede, Grandfather and how they try to cope with his diagnosis. Dementia with Lewy Bodies, "the third dementia," which are "tiny, fried-egg-shaped crimson structures" found on the brains and brain stems of patients causing Parkinson's symptoms, hypersomnia, spatial recognition impairment and very vivid visual hallucinations. Grandfather is not only an avid reader, but, back in the 1970s, he was a core member of the Waseda Mystery Club, a university club, who met at cafe Mon Chéri to "froth in excitement over the latest mystery novels" – meetings that would "produce a whole slew of famous mystery writers and critics." Ever since her grandfather's diagnosis, Kaede has become something of a mystery magnet and brings the puzzling mysteries, big and small, to her grandfather to help keep his mind deteriorating too fast ("...mystery was the best medicine for her grandfather"). As her Grandfather says, "Hercule Poirot is always talking about his 'little grey cells,'" but "in my case, due to the reddish-orange appearance of those Lewy bodies scattered throughout my brain, I have 'little scarlet cells.'" Their armchair sessions aren't only to discuss mysteries and puzzles, but simply for Kaede to spend time with her grandfather.

The first real case is the second, promising titled story, "The Izakaya Locked Room Murder Mystery," which also introduces two recurring characters, Iwata and Shiki.

Iwata is a male colleague Kaede and Shiki one of his high school friends who recently got involved in an actual impossible murder. Shiki was visiting a small, intimate sports bar to watch the football match, soccer for you Americans, between Japan and Saudi Arabia with his group occupying one of the two tables. When one of his friends gets up to go the toilets, supposedly free, he finds it locked, blood seeping out from under the toilet door and when looking over the top of the door sees the body of shaved, tattooed and pierced man sitting on the seat – "a knife-like object sticking out of his back." This is murder poses a double impossibility as nobody had seen the victim enter the bar and the toilet supposedly unoccupied, which means "the victim had to suddenly appear in the toilet and the killer to vanish" without being seen. Kaede decides to bring this locked room problem to her grandfather who, between drags from a cigarette, beautifully reasons two linked solutions: an incomplete, false-solution and a complete correct one. But was even more impressed with Konishi creating an impossible crime without any actual locked room-trickery. So, needless to say, "The Izakaya Locked Room Murder Mystery" is my favorite part, but it's the characters, all of them, whom drive the plot and story. Not the baffling impossible murder. That's true of all the stories, although a good locked room is always appreciated.

In the next story, "The Vanishing Person at the Pool," Kaede attends a reunion lunch of her old university class where she hears about a strange, inexplicable incident that happened at her grandfather's old school. A new, young teacher, only referred to as Madonna-sensei, vanished as if by magic in front of the children of her swimming class. When the lesson ended, Madonna-sensei blew her whistle to signal the class the get out of the pool and head for the showers, but, after the pool emptied, the children heard a splash behind them. So they assumed Madonna-sensei was taking a quick swim and, "kids being kids, they started complaining that Sensei was having all the fun." However, she didn't came back to the surface or climbed out of the pool. She had simply vanished as if the water had dissolved her! Kaede, of course, brings this mystery to her grandfather. Now the solution to the impossible disappearance is decent enough, not great but decent, but the reason why she had disappear and who had a hand in became a little too rich. This whole story reminded me of one of those ropey episodes from Jonathan Creek like No Trace of Tracy (1997) and The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish (1999).

Fortunately, the third story, "They Were Thirty-Three," is a better story despite being half the length of the other stories. Kaede is worried about signs that her grandfather is on the decline. So she tells him about an incident from her own classroom. She was teaching a sixth grade class that has an unusual trio, two boys and a girl, whom she compared to Harry, Ron and Hermione from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series – an inseparable trio always at the center of attention. One day, Harry shared a scary story in class about a crying ghost girl connected to a WWII air-raid shelter that used to stand on spot of the classroom. Kaede immediately put an end to the scary stories and started the English conversation lesson, during which they're not allowed to speak Japanese, but they heard someone say in Japanese, "lonely and tearful." But nobody could have spoken those words! So was it the ghost girl or someone else, but the main question remains "how a thirty-third suddenly turned up in a class of thirty-two." A very well done riddle in story form with clues hidden in both the outline of the problem and the floor plan of the classroom.

The last two stories, "The Phantom Lady" and "The Riddle of the Stalker," are connected as the first introduces a problem, Kaede's stalker, that will be resolved in the last story. "The Phantom Lady" has another, rather pressing, case needing a brilliant armchair detective first. On an early Saturday morning, Iwata is jogging along the riverside when he witnesses a struggle between two men under the bridge. One man leaves the other man seriously wounded and unconscious with a knife in his stomach, which leads the police to arrest and incarcerate Iwata on suspicion of assault and attempted murder. Only witness, a woman power-walker in a hoodie, is nowhere to be found. Kaede and Shiki come to the rescue of their friend, but the witness has not only vanished. She doesn't even appear to have existed at all! They had seen the woman in hoodie on their previous jog through the area and assumed she's a regular of the route, but other regulars don't remember ever having seen a woman power-walker in a hoodie along the riverside route. Just like the other stories, there are many literary references to other phantom person stories like Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady (1941), John Dickson Carr's radio-play "Cabin B-13" (1943) and the 1800s urban legend of the vanishing lady at the Paris Exposition, but not Basil Thomson's short story "The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser" (1925) collected in Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries (2025). I think Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Leather Man" (1992) warrants a mention as not only a great take on the phantom person device, but the episode from the Furuhata Ninzaburo series described here sounds very similar to Hoch's story. Anyway, this is not bad take on the phantom person and how the woman in a hoodie faded out of existence and unwilling to come forward.

On a side note, "The Phantom Lady" begins with an interesting discussion between Kaede and Shiki when Iwata interjects with his "Pro-Wrestling and Mystery Equivalence Theory" stating "pro-wrestling and mysteries have a lot in common." What follows is a fun, brief discussion going from Iwata's shallow comparisons ("wrestlers with mystery-related nicknames...") to Shiki pointing out their commonalities when it comes dramatics ("all these storylines converge perfectly at the final match in the grand arena"). Personally, I've always been baffled that something as American as pro-wrestling never was the subject of a vintage sports mystery novel or even thriller. Just that one short story by Craig Rice. That as an aside.

My Grandfather, the Master Detective concludes with "The Riddle of the Stalker" bringing everything, and everyone, together, but can't say much about it except to expect a modern rendition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" (1913). But with an actual dying detective. And it makes you really root for grandfather as he has to take on both his granddaughter's stalker and his dementia. A very well written conclusion to round out this first volume.

First of all, this review mainly focused on the plots, but the stories making up My Grandfather, the Master Detective are mainly character-driven mysteries – even when they involve locked rooms or diagrams. Not only Kaede and her grandfather, but everyone around them. From her friends to the team of caregivers surrounding her grandfather. And, of course, the people involved in the various cases and problems. They all reminded me of the mysteries-with-a-heart from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series, where people are the metaphorical pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together to get the complete and correct picture, whether it be a locked room murder or ghostly chatter in a classroom. Add to this the relationship between a granddaughter and a doting grandfather struggling with his dementia, you have something very different from what I expected when this translation was announced as forthcoming. I expected a Japanese take on James Yaffe's "My Mother, the Detective" series, but Masateru Konishi delivered something entirely different with My Grandfather, the Master Detective. Not in the least for creating a memorable armchair detective and an even better pair of detectives & co! So a warm recommendation and hopefully Louise Heal Kawai gets to translate the second and last book in the series. Fingers crossed!

Invitation to Murder (1953) by Ab Visser

Ab Visser was a Dutch writer, editor, critic, reviewer, poet and a tireless advocate of the Dutch detective story, who tried to position himself as the Frederic Dannay of the Low Countries, but not with the same rate of success as his American counterpart – not even remotely close. Between the late 1960s and early '80s, Visser launched two ill-fated, short-lived magazines, Pulp and Plot, that lasted only a handful of issues. During the early '60s, Visser took on the editorship of an ambitious project, "Zodiac Mysteries," which would have consisted of twelve, zodiac-themed detective novels from a dozen different writers. But for some reason, the project was abandoned after the eighth novel was published. At least we got Ton Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) out of it!

Another problem is that Visser was more active as a mystery critic, editor and reviewer than writing actual mystery and detective novels. Visser wrote a couple of crime thrillers like De samenzwering (The Conspiracy, 1965), De kat en de rat (The Cat and the Rat, 1967), Het kind van de rekening (The Child Who Paid the Price, 1969) and the short story collection De chanteur (The Blackmailer, 1970). Only one true, classically-styled detective novel.

Visser submitted Uitnodiging tot moord (Invitation to Murder, 1953) to the detective story competition, organized by A.W. Bruna & Zoon, but the first prize went to, what's considered today, the first homegrown hardboiled thriller, Parels voor Nadra (Pearls for Nadra, 1953) – penned by journalist Joop van den Broek. Eline Capit came in second with De Wolven en de schapen (The Wolves and the Sheep, 1953) and was published in America two years later under the title Run from the Sheep. Third place unaccountably was awarded to Bob van Oyen's terrible Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953). Visser's Invitation to Murder won one, of four, consolation prizes alongside Madzy Ford's De speurder zoekt een spook (The Sleuth in Search of a Ghost, 1953), Bert Japin's Stenen voor brood (Stones for Bread, 1953) and Josine Reuling's Poeder en parels (Powder and Pearls, 1953). So a Dutch detective story competition is won by a hardboiled thriller, a crime comedy and something amounting to an anti-detective story. I swear, this country is as hostile an environment to the traditional detective story as Mars is to Earth life.

Invitation to Murder got published and reprinted in the 1953 Bruna omnibus together with the Ford and Japin novels, before it dropped into obscurity for the next thirty years. A year before his death, Visser edited the anthology 3 klassieken uit de Nederlandse misdaad literatuur (3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature, 1981) and placed Invitation to Murder among the classics. If you're wondering, the other two classics are August Defresne's Moord (Murder, 1931) and Ben van Eysselsteijn's Romance in F-Dur (1934). Not that it helped either the book or its author as both were forgotten again when Visser died in 1982.

So why did I mark Visser's Invitation to Murder down as a Dutch detective novel of potential interest on these shaky credentials? Visser reportedly wrote it as an homage and parody of Agatha Christie with nursery rhymes as a leitmotiv for murder. I thought that sounded like a fun, harmless mystery and a safer bet than usually, considering how I normally go about trying to find good, old-fashioned Dutch detective fiction. Let's find out how it panned out.

Maarten Roesink is a poor, struggling and unrecognized poet with an estranged girlfriend, piles of unpaid bills and an unfinished novel, but nothing to the detriment of his ego, sense of self-importance or that of his poetry – which he blamed on the public ("...a monstrosity of bad taste"). That helped to make him decide to accept the invitation from his aunt, Ina Roesink, to stay with her so he can work on his novel and poetry in peace. Since his landlady is pressing him for rent and his stepfather is talking about getting him a decent office job, Maarten decides to accept his aunt's invitation ("...she may be a cultural barbarian, but she has money..."). So packs a suitcase, borrows some money and travels to Aunt Ida's home, Villa Lucie, in the village of Drechteroord in Gelderland. When he arrives, something is not quite right.

Maarten is greeted by the newly hired housekeeper, Miss Mieke Kremer, who had neither been informed about him or the other guests ("...I seem to have ended up in a boarding house"). There are five other guests: Christiaan and Tine Henkelmans with their two children, twenty-year-old Hortense and eighteen-year-old Eddie. Mrs. Maud de Groot, elderly widow, who's Aunt Ina's oldest friend. Aunt Ina herself is nowhere to be found and no one knows where she or what happened to her. Maarten has to cycle down to the village to file a missing person's report, but is spending the next day bumming cigarettes, trying to borrow money and planning to return home. Only for Aunt Ina to turn up dead as a door nail. She's found inside a kitchen chest, hit over the head, before it was tightly nailed shut.

That brings the police to the villa, represented by Inspector Wietse Dijkstra, who's your typical, anchored to earth Dutch policeman which Visser punctuated by making Dijkstra a Frisian ("...his accent betrayed the Frisian, who speaks Dutch with difficulty"). What follows is largely a paint by numbers investigation revealing the victim was far from a sainted figure to her family and friends. Dijkstra more than once "would swear that all the guests entered into a conspiracy to murder Miss Roesink," because everyone has a motive, they're lying about something and nary an alibi to be found. However, I liked Dijkstra's quick, rapid fire Q&A with all seven suspects as opposed to the usual "dragging the Marsh." I also should mention that the stay at the villa and the death of his aunt starts an unexpected maturing process in the otherwise egocentric poet. Maarten today would have been accused of suffering from main character syndrome, but what if such person suddenly finds himself "not only an heir and witness, but also, and perhaps primarily, a suspect" in a sensational murder case? So slowly, but surely, a change comes over Maarten between the moment his aunt's body is discovered and Dijkstra hits upon the solution.

So we arrive at the most exciting, nerve-wrecking point in any Dutch vintage mystery: the solution. Is it going to hold itself together to deliver at least a fairly decent conclusion, underwhelm or completely fall apart? Good news, bad news. The good news is Visser, stylistically, remained consistent and a breeze to read, but ended bitterly disappointing. You can argue the only real crime happened towards the end, when Visser knifed his own story and let it bleed out over its last two chapters. I can only explain it by giving the solution (SPOILER/ROT13): Nhag Van jnagrq gb rzcgl bhg gur xvgpura purfg jura gur yvq qebccrq ba ure urnq, genccvat ure vafvqr frevbhfyl vawherq naq hapbafpvbhf. Fur unq nfxrq gur ivyyntr pnecragre, n qehax, gb pbzr bire naq anvy gur purfg fuhg, juvpu ur qvq jvgubhg ybbxvat vafvqr. Fb na nppvqrag gung ybbxrq yvxr zheqre ol hayvxryl pvephzfgnaprf. Invitation to Murder is basically one of those detective novels walking back its entire premise and the whole story itself into one big, blood-red herring. Something like that can absolutely be done, and successfully, but not it was executed here as it only leaves you with the feeling you just wasted your time – someone with Visser's credentials should have known better. Even more so thirty years later, when he inserted it into the 3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature anthology.

I really wanted to like Invitation to Murder and silently rooted for Visser to carry the story and plot pass the finish line, but the end result is not the stuff of classics. Far from it. I would have been perfectly happy with a serviceable mystery. So my search for another Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort continues and hope you me on my next wandering through the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Dutch detective story.

Above Suspicion (1922/23) by Robert Orr Chipperfield

Several years ago, I reviewed the "Otto Penzler's Locked Room Library" reprint edition of The Clue in the Air (1917) by Isabel Ostrander, a pre-Van Dinean pioneer of the American detective story, whose detective fiction can be described as premonitions of the coming Golden Age – lacking only in finesse. Nick Fuller said it perhaps best, "impressive because it is ahead of its time, disappointing because fair play is still in the future." A comment made in reference to Ostrander's second McCarty and Riordan novel, The 26 Clues (1919), but also perfectly describes and sums up The Clue in the Air. Ostrander could have easily become the mother of the American detective story, a good decade before the publication of S.S. van Dine's The Benson Murder Case (1926), had she been a bit clairvoyant on top being farsighted.

Ostrander died young, aged 40, in 1924 and only got to witness the early dawn of the Golden Age, but not the rise of Van Dine and his followers. That probably makes her one of those legitimate "what-if" case had her health not been so bad and had lived another twenty, thirty years. So, while being mostly a historical footnote and genre curiosity today, I was still incredibly curious about one of her last detective novels, Above Suspicion (1922/23), published only a few years before her death.

Above Suspicion was first serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly, as by "Robert Orr Chipperfield," between November 11 and December 16, 1922 and published as a complete novel the next year. Above Suspicion is listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) with a no-footprints impossibility. A no-footprints mystery, let alone a good one, were less common in the pre-1930s impossible crime genre. So why take a gamble on it? Adey's description of the impossible situation in combination with the book title and another scrap of information suggested a possible solution, but didn't want to thumb to the back of Locked Room Murders and potentially spoil a good, early and rare 1920s impossible crime novel – figuring it would turn up, somewhere, eventually. That happened last November.

Serling Lake reprinted Above Suspicion, under the Chipperfield name, as part of their "Impossible Crime Classics" series. I wasn't impressed with their first half dozen titles of mostly second-and third-rate pulp, like Joseph Gollomb's The Girl in the Fog (1923), but the selection began to improve with reprints of Elsa Barker, Henry Leverage and Charles Chadwick's The Moving House of Foscaldo (1925/26). At least, the reprints begin to get more interesting and the Chadwick reissue reeled me back in. So let's find out if Above Suspicion is another one of Ostrander's anachronistic genre curios or succeeds as an early, Golden Age detective novel.

Above Suspicion wastes no time by first introducing most of the main characters, setting the stage or even the mood, but begins with the discovery of the murder. Joseph Benkard, a Wall Street financier, is found dead next to a stone bench on the terrace of his sister's new, partially finished country house in Sunny Beach. Someone had struck him down from behind without leaving either a weapon or footprints on the recently sanded floor. It's unlikely the murderer smoothed out the tracks, because "the smoothin' out would show same as footprints" ("how'd he go?"). How this impossibility is laid out eliminates most of the routine and hack tricks for the no-footprints problem, but I'll get back to the impossible crime.

The problem of the footprints is only one, of three, standouts making Above Suspicion a noteworthy detective novel from the early 1920s. Other two are the detective and victim. Ostrander created one of the first blind detectives, Damon Gaunt, but here she introduces, what could be, one of the first working class detective, Geoff Peters – a stone mason working on finishing the house. A simple, down-to-earth man clad in dirty overalls and always seen mixing cement or puttering around. Contrary to tradition, Peters is a detective who tries not to stick his nose where it has no business being, "tain't any o' my business," but someone who's acutely aware of everything happening around him. Peters is the one who takes the initiative when the body is discovered by having the crime scene roped off and calls for the medical examiner. Doc Hood rates Peters highly as an amateur detective as helped the local police out on several murky murders ("you gave me some good ideas that helped a lot when Jim Hicks was found dead in the swamp and again when old Mrs. Beckley was murdered in her barn"). No idea if they're references to previous stories or merely apocryphal. Note that a policeman refers to Peters later in the story as that "hick Sherlock" from Sunny Beach.

So you get an amateur detective, clad in dirty overalls, snooping and eavesdropping between "doin' odd jobs round concrete and stucco." And, every now and then, puts on his Sunday suit and straw hat when needing to talk to people in town or at the bank. Pretty much the exact opposite of the American detectives who would start appearing over the following years like Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, Thatcher Colt and Nero Wolfe.

Joseph Benkard is not your typical, 1920s victim either. I mentioned in the past how bankers, financiers and stockbrokers took the torch from blackmailers as popular murder victims after the stock market crash of 1929, but Above Suspicion was a good eight years ahead of the curb – certainly in attitude. Benkard was known, not always for the right reasons, as "one of the most daring, brilliant speculators" and his past Wall Street shenanigans drives part of the plot. Having ruined more than one man and driven some of them to suicide, which has resulted in receiving threatening letters, twice a year, on the same dates. But there's also his domestic roguery involving trying to marry his niece to a shady friend/business enemy. And a young man who's very much opposed to those plans. Peters and Benkard perfectly complimented each other, as detective and victim, who elevated and added interest to what would otherwise have been a fairly routine investigation. That brings us to the surprising conclusion of Above Suspicion.

I mainly read this to see what Ostrander could do with the no-footprints scenario in 1922 without expecting too much from the who or why. I didn't even expect all that much from the no-footprints trick, because it was written in the early twenties. It's not a period when the locked room mystery and impossible crime blossomed. Just scratching that curiosity itch and crossing another locked room title from the impossible crime list. When I got to the penultimate chapter, it seemed like Above Suspicion was going to follow the pattern of The Clue in the Air and The 26 Clues. A detective story that in many ways feels ahead of its time, until it falls apart as a detective stories in the last chapter or chapters. Well, that didn't happen here!

In that penultimate chapter, the supposed murderer obligingly commits suicide and leaves behind a written confession, but the last, short chapter, "Geoff Minds His Own Business," Peters turns the official explanation into a false-solution – reveals an entirely different solution. A solution that comes with an entirely new take on how the murderer pulled off the footprints-trick, which is a far more involved trick than most of us would expect from 1922 mystery novel. I also thought it was a nice touch Ostrander used a real cliché of the detective story (ROT13: gur cevingr frpergnel qvq vg) as the story's false-solution. By the way, Adey wrote down the false-solution in Locked Room Murder, not the correct one given in the last chapter. This surprise solution comes with two caveats. Firstly, it can be debated how fairly clued the surprise solution really is. Secondly, the footprints-trick showed what story needed even more than clues was a floor plan and crime scene diagrams.

Smudges aside, Above Suspicion ended up being a better, more consistent and well-rounded detective novel than The Clue in the Air, helped by a memorable detective and original impossible crime. Not a flawless, perfectly polished detective novel, but a clear case of the pros outweighing the cons. So not just for genre scholars and impossible crime fiends!