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.

The Snake of Luvercy (1926/27) by Maurice Renard

John Pugmire passed away in 2024 and his death not only meant the end of Locked Room International, but also ended the steady stream of translations of Paul Halter and other, often obscure, French mystery writers – none of whom would have gotten translated without him. Just the translation of Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932) alone is as big a contribution to the genre as introducing Halter to a global audience. So, when it comes to translations of French (locked room) mystery novels, not much has been published for the past two years.

Tom Mead translated Pierre Véry's Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937) for Crippen & Landru and currently is doing some fresh translations of previously published Paul Halter novels. So was considering to finally give Émile Gaboriau a shot or revisit Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) when I got fantastic news. Pushkin Vertigo is going to publish a long wished for and overdue translation of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) in November! I guess the people at Pushkin Vertigo have read "The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated." Maybe a translation of Rafeal Bernal's Un muerto en la tumba (A Dead Man in the Tomb, 1946) next year?

Earlier this year, Serling Lake reprinted Maurice Renard's ? Lui ? Histoire d'un mystère (Him? The Story of a Mystery, 1926/27), which appeared in English under the title The Snake of Luvercy – translated by Florence Crewe-Jones and published by E.P. Dutton & Co in 1930. Renard is best remembered today as one of the pioneering French science-fiction writers, even creating his own subgenre dubbed "Scientific Marvel Fiction," but Renard also tried his hands at detective fiction. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, is a fan who called The Snake of Luvercy "an excellent, fast paced thriller" containing "a murder in a locked bathroom with a bizarre solution involving a baroque murder means." John also praised Renard's Les mains d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac, 1920) for being "a brilliantly fashioned detective novel wherein a series of impossible crimes are made to appear to be the work of supernatural agencies and a spectral being." So picked up the recent reprint of The Snake of Luvercy and hunting for a copy of The Hands of Orlac, because that's what John Pugmire would have wanted.

In 1926, The Snake of Luvercy was serialized in L'Intransigeant and published as a novel the following year. So a typical French roman-feuilleton full with sensational twists, turns and spins. You can say the story as a flexible as the titular snake driven entirely by a small, tightly-knit cast of characters.

Firstly, there are Miss Gilberta Laval and her dashing fiancé, Jean Mareuil, who's a rich dilettante who collects antique keys and old lamps. This match made in heaven spells trouble for Gilberta's aunt and cousin, Mme. de Prasse and her only son, Lionel. Mme. de Prasse plan had been for Lionel to marry Gilberta, secure the family fortune and cover up a slight financial irregularity ("...well, your gambling debts, Lionel, you know..."). Mme. de Prasse is Gilberta's legal guardian, but refreshingly, she doesn't hold the same power over her ward like her American and British counterparts ("armed with the Code, she could get rid of me and demand an accounting of her affairs..."). So they have to keep up appearances while plotting and carefully making their moves, which means acting as detectives, shadowing and poking around Jean Mareuil's private affairs hoping to find scandal and skeleton – anything to break them up. They enlist the help of the Lavals ex-butler, Aubry, who has a score to settle with Gilberta for sacking him.

While on shadowing duty, Aubry and Lionel discover a secret that could be a potential engagement breaker. Jean Mareuil moonlights as a snake charmer, Charlot the Adder, who's is an entertainment act in the dark cabarets of the Parisian underworld. But are they dealing with a double identity or dual personality? There's also a locked room murder lurking in the background of the story.

Five years ago, Guy Laval, an explorer, brought back "a number of rare serpents" from Central Africa to their home, Luvercy, but one of the deadly snakes escaped and found its way into Jeanne Laval's "almost hermetically closed" bedroom. The open windows were shuttered, however, each shutter is "pierced with a little heart-shaped opening cut in the wood for ventilation" big enough for a viper to slither through. Jeanne Laval was bitten while asleep and died. The guilt of having caused this accident killed her husband and left their daughter an orphan in the hands of her aunt, but could it have been murder? But who did it and how? The snake that killed Jeanne was never found leaving a Gilberta traumatized determined to never return to Luvercy. Getting her to return to Luvercy to confront the past becomes an ever increasing important plot point towards the end.

The Snake of Luvercy is what can be expected from a pulp-style, roman-feuilleton in the spirit of Gaston Leroux, Maurice Leblanc and a dash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So hardly an orthodox, traditionally-plotted and clued detective novel, but credit where credit's due, the story is better written and handled than expected going by the first-half. The murderer is surprisingly well-hidden with enough nudges and hints to make a fairly educated guess, while the locked room-trick is not as open to educated guesswork. However, the method to create the locked room perfectly fitted the story's pulpy, sensationalist aesthetics and put to excellent use to help reveal, and dispose, of that murderer. I suspect that scene was also meant as a sly wink to a very famous short detective story involving a murderous snake. So, while not exactly what I'm looking for when hunting for impossible crime classics, neither left it me disappointed. On the contrary, I admired how Renard handled and controlled a story involving dual identities, an impossible snake bite and snake charmers without resorting to second-and third-rate cliches and tropes like a long-lost twin, secret passages or strange poisons. You know, unlike some writers at the time.

So, in closing, Renard simply wrote a tremendously entertaining, fast-paced flight of fancy done in the unmistakable, reality-be-damned Gallic style from Leroux's era. If you enjoyed the quality, pulp-style (locked room) mysteries by James Ronald, Noël Vindry and Alexis Gensoul and Charles Grenier, The Snake of Luvercy should be right up your alley. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward with curiosity what Serling Lake is going reprint next.

The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) by Edward D. Hoch

Decades before Crippen & Landru, Edward D. Hoch had about half a dozen collections of his voluminous detective fiction published, throughout the 1970s and '80s, covering only three of Hoch's lead detectives – namely Simon Ark, Jeffery Rand and Nick Velvet. Simon Ark was the first to get a solo collection with City of Brass (1971), while Rand and Velvet had to share the spotlight in The Spy and the Thief (1971). Velvet would get his own collection years later (The Thefts of Nick Velvet, 1978), but Rand had to wait nearly two decades for The Spy Who Read Latin (1990). Who didn't have to wait years, or decades, to get an additional collection was Ark.

The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (1971) was published practically alongside City of Brass. A short, snappish collection of five Simon Ark short stories from the 1950s and comes with an introduction from the editor of The Locked Room Reader (1968), Hans Stefan Santesson. So these aren't only Hoch's earliest short stories, but also among the earliest stories from his first detective series. Some of these early stories provide a better, more interesting perspective on Ark's character than the later stories that I'm familiar with.

Simon Ark, an elderly, normal looking man, claims to be over a thousand years old Coptic priest ("would you believe it if I told you I walked the sands of Africa with Augustine...") condemned to wander the Earth seeking out and exorcising evil. And, one day, do battle with the Prince of Darkness himself. One of the stories from this collection gives a possible origin, "a strange Coptic priest in the first century after Christ," who wrote "a gospel glorifying the Lord" that was denounced a fraud and turned him into a man who could be sent neither to Heaven nor Hell – doomed to wander forever ("...until such time as God would decide his fate"). So, unless Ark is supposed to be stark raving mad, this series can filed under hybrid mysteries as having an immortal detective certainly makes it qualify as one. Anyway, this series takes place during the second-half of the previous century and combating evil in this world means taking on the role of unofficial investigator. However, Ark is an investigator with a classical bend and the evils he exorcises are the type of bizarre murders and impossible crimes that would have been more at home during the first-half of that century.

"Village of the Dead," originally appeared in the December, 1955, publication of Famous Detective Stories, introduces Simon Ark and his nameless narrator, but the ending suggests Hoch probably didn't intend it to be the first in a series. Nor it to be proper detective story. This first brings the narrator, a magazine writer, to the tiny, isolated mining village of Gidaz where the population was reduced from seventy-three to zero overnight in a mass suicide when every men, women and child flung themselves off a hundred foot cliff. Simon Ark meets the narrator at the edge of the cliff as they look down at the bodies on the rocks below. What attracted Ark to the scene is a strange man, Axidus, who appeared as a religious figure in Gidaz two years previously ("I knew him long ago, in North Africa, as St. Augustine did..."). Axidus wielded a great influence over the isolated people of the village, but how could he have had a hand in the mass suicide? And why? Is this Axidus the same person Axidus from history or perhaps an even greater evil? It's not a spoiler to say the answers to all these questions reveal a far lesser evil than the devil's devilry. More like a dark, grim version of Scooby Doo leaving some lingering questions unanswered (like how the culprit "had ever heard the odd story of Axidus in the first place"). The narrator's final lines about Ark, "never saw him again after that night, but I have the feeling that he’s still around somewhere," shows this was probably meant to be a one-off. Just note that the last Simon Ark story was published in 2008.

So, on a whole, a somewhat unusual story, but an interesting start and introduction to Hoch's first series. Yes, it's one of those weird coincidences I read "Village of the Dead" right after Motohiro Katou's "In the Year of Quantum Mechanics" from Q.E.D. iff vol. 1.

"The Hour of None," originally published in Fall 1957 issue of Double-Action Detective & Mystery Stories, brings Ark and his narrator to the monastery of Saint John of the Cross in West Virginia. Ark received a letter from an old acquaintance, Brother Ling, who wrote to him "that your old enemy Satan is walking among us, in the mind of one of my friends" and that he's "possibly in danger" – a fear not unjustified. Brother Ling is pushed from a church tower before Ark got to speak to him. So now they have to find his killer with three principle suspects, Father Michael, Father Joseph and Father Mark, who were brought back to the United States by Brother Ling after being held prisoners in China for years. So an intriguing premise and, when it comes to form, it feels more like a Simon Ark story than the previous one. A great backdrop and cast of characters, but found the plot and especially the solution lacking. Things gets better in the last three stories!

"The Witch is Dead," first published in the April, 1956, issue of Famous Detective Stories, takes place at Hudsonville College for Women in Westchester County during the second decade of the Atomic Age. Not a place for old world witchcraft and magic, but Mother Fortune was still "peering into a mammoth crystal ball and telling you just what you wanted to hear about yourself." Recently, Mother Fortune went medieval by placing a curse on the students ("...your school will be a campus of the dead") over an old injustice from decades ago. And not without effect. A mysterious, unidentifiable illness is hospitalizing one student, after another, which naturally lured Ark to the campus. This case is complicated when Mother Fortune "died as all good witches must" in a burst of flames while alone inside her locked trailer.

Now this is far from Hoch's best detective story or locked room mystery, however, it's the first genuine detective story from this collection with a glimpse of the emerging short story giant. Hoch casually dropped one of those brazen, tell-tale clues identifying both murderer and method.

"Sword for a Sinner," originally published in the October, 1959, issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, is unquestionably the best story from this collection. This time, Ark travels to the tiny village of Santa Marta, somewhere on the state line between Colorado and New Mexico, where Father Hadden asked him for help on a personal matter – believing he can communicate with the dead. Before they can even get down to talk, Father Hadden is informed a murder has been committed at the morada of Sangre de Cristo in the mountains. The village has seen the revival of the Penitentes, or Brotherhood of Penitentes, who perform self-torture as an act of devotion ("...rites of self-scourging and crucifixion..."). A practice that was banned by the church, but the society with its various chapters continued to exist and practice. So when they go to the morada, they find one of the most bizarre murder scenes Hoch has ever created. A dark, dimly cellar room full of life-size crucifixes with living figures tied to them, "horribly fantastically alive," wearing nothing more than a white loin cloth and a black hood. One of these crucified, hooded men was run through with a Spanish sword! The victim, Glen Summer, runs the local bar, Oasis, which Father Hadden described as "a den of sin." So plenty of potential suspects and motives to go around, but the key to solving the case is figuring out how the murderer was able to stab the correct victim under those circumstances. Ark's answer to this question is beautifully simplistic and logically. Something that makes you want to kick yourself, if you missed it. Those few years of experience were already paying off by '59.

Finally, "The Judges of Hades," originally appearing in the February, 1957, issue of Crack Detective & Mystery Stories, which brings this collection full circle. Sort of. The nameless narrator receives a devastating telegram, "YOUR SISTER AND FATHER KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT," which brings him back home to Maple Shades, Indiana. A town sometimes known through a never-ending prank as Hades (“...since the boys are always painting over the sign”). Things get worse when he arrives as the police believes it was a murder-suicide by head-on collision, but who killed whom? The motive appears to stem from a family row when the narrator's father, a judge, ruled against his own son-in-law in a zoning battle. So he asks Ark to look into the case as a personal favor, but Ark becomes interested when learning the victim was known as one of the Judges of Hades. While not terribly complicated or especially challenging, "The Judges of Hades" is a decent enough detective story with perhaps the best part being how it succeeded in revealing absolutely nothing about the narrator himself. Well done, Hoch!

So how to rate The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories? There are only a handful of short stories here and only "Sword for a Sinner" cut it as a classic Hoch performance, which is normally a poor score for a short story collection – even for a short collection of five stories. However, I appreciated how Santesson decided to arrange and present the stories. Santesson didn't arrange the stories in order of publication, but placed them in such a way there's a pleasing uptick in quality with each passing story from the first to fourth story. And the last story simply compliments the first. That makes The Judges of Hades a great introduction to the character of Simon Ark. It also gives a fascinating glimpse of how Hoch developed as a plotter during his first years as a professional writer. A strong recommendation for long-time fans of Hoch and Ark, but, if you're new to Hoch or Ark, I recommend trying one of the recent Crippen & Landru collections. I recommend Funeral in the Fog (2020) or The Killer Everyone Knew (2023).

Back for More: Q.E.D. iff vol. 1-2 by Motohiro Katou

Last year, I finished Motohiro Katou's first run of his flagship Q.E.D. series with a review of vol. 50 and "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50," followed by several reviews of Katou's C.M.B. series – recently reaching volumes 9 and 10. That was nearly a year ago. So time to get started on the return of Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara under the title Q.E.D. iff. I've been given to understand the title change is more of a minor rebranding, due to the series switching magazines for serialization, than a serious shake up or soft reboot. There are, however, a couple of noticeable changes, but more on those in a moment.

The first, of two, stories making up Q.E.D. iff vol. 1, "iff," begins when Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara enter their third year at Sakisaka High School and "will soon be exam students" having to worry about getting into a good university. All except Touma who, aged 15, graduated from MIT and enrolled at Sakisaka "to experience a regular high school life." A very brief recap of the series premise before things go back to normal when they become involved in a locked room murder.

Inspector Mizuhara, of the Metropolitan Police Division 1, is investigating the murder of a well-known, internationally celebrated sculptor, Misago Taimei, who was found strangled inside his sealed workshop – which has a special locking system. The door can be manually opened from inside, but not from the outside. It only opens from the outside by pressing a button at the reception desk. And that button can be switched off with a key when nobody's at the desk. Beside the locked room-puzzle, Inspector Mizuhara has four suspects who were at the workshop. Misago Taimei's manager/receptionist, Oshidori Mariko, his two students, Dobato Soukichi and Magamo Ai, and a nude model, Mozu Yuuka. Mizuhara wonders why her father hesitates arresting the obvious suspects, Dobato, who has motive and apparently the only one who could have worked a simplistic locked room-trick. Touma explains Dobato "fulfilled enough requirements to perform the crime, but does he actually fulfill all the necessary requirements to perform this exact crime?" Reason why Inspector Mizuhara hesitates arresting him is because he's “thinking about the possibility that other people have those necessary requirements.” Touma also explains the meaning of iff ("...short for 'if and only if' and it means 'equal'").

Touma employs this principle to solve the case and solves it in the most satisfying way. First by demonstrating that all four suspects has "their own components to commit the crime" and then demolishes the case against each suspect. So with everyone cleared, Touma starts from scratch and shows whom of the four really did it. A first-class solution that's both satisfying and feels inevitable with one hell of a daring locked room-trick seamlessly worked into it. A fantastic start to this second run of Q.E.D. stories!

By the way, as an aside, those changes I mentioned are minor, but noticeable enough. Touma and Mizuhara appear to have aged slightly and Touma moved into a new place. Touma has taste for someone who's barely sixteen. Anyway...

The second and last story, "In the Year of Quantum Mechanics," is halfway between a historical whydunit and a scientific romance from a bygone era. Tazuna Komakichi wants to buy a long abandoned, practically inaccessible house, tucked away deep in the mountains, where he plans to do research on vacuum energy. The house was a temple of "some rising cult," built a hundred years ago, but, when inspecting the place, a mummified body is discovered underneath the partially collapsed roof – a mummy in sitting position with a rifle on his lap. A phrase is scrawled on the wall behind the mummy, "FLOWER IN THE ROOT, BIRD IN THE OLD FORMER HOME." The body is identified as the founder and leader of that old cult, Tategami Kaijirou, who disappeared following the tragic, bloody end of his cult. Around the same time, Touma bought several boxes full of scientific magazines from the 1920s ("it's fun!"). Between the magazines is a notebook, titled "The Year of Quantum Mechanics," belonging to Hizume Ryougo. A name Touma recognizes as one of the authors from the 1920s magazines.

It turns out the Komakichi discovered the magazines alongside the mummy at the old, mountaintop house and sold them to raise funds for his research. Touma and Mizuhara travel to the remote house to learn more about the tragedy that ended the cult ("MIDNIGHT GUNFIRE INCIDENT... TWENTY-THREE DEAD AND WOUNDED"). So the story has flashbacks to the 1920s when Hizume Ryougo visited the cult and how Tategami Kaijirou played god with his flock. And how that someone finally snap. There is also some historical background color on "the age when quantum mechanics was just getting established." A good, solid closer to this first volume!

"The Emperor's New Clothes" is the first story from Q.E.D. iff vol. 2 and begins when a floundering comedian, Yuubari Yuuki, looses his script and last shot at making it as a comedian/comedy writer. A play about an emperor who prances about naked to amuse his subjects and the audience, but his script attracted the attention of a spoiled artist, Suzuka Sanda, and his unscrupulous manager, Akashi Natsuhiko – who do everything to get their hands on it. So the first mystery is how Sanda could have stolen the script when barged in on Yuuki bud naked. Yes, there's a surprising amount of nudity in these two volumes, but fortunately, Sanda's stand-up comedian was blurred out. However, the story then turns into a 21th century cat-and-mouse game between Touma and Natsuhiko involving social media and crowd funding campaigns. So decent enough, on a whole, but not one I found interesting or memorable. Katou has done better with these type of stories.

The second, and last, story closing out this second volume is "The Shape of Murder" and brings Touma and Mizuhara to Malta. Sid “Loki” Green asked Touma to come to Malta to help out a friend, Alf Retts, whose wife was murdered four months ago at Hotel Geometry and the police have already given up on finding the killer, because they believe she had been the victim of a botched burglary and "believe the culprit has already fled the island." Retts can't accept this answer and vows to find his wife's killer himself, but he has been completely wrecking himself trying to find new leads or witnesses. Touma turns down Sid's request to investigate the murder, however, Sid knows all it takes to change Touma's mind is flipping on his "interest switch." So he asks Mizuhara to do the legwork and tell Touma what she had found out. It turns out the murder has some unusual features.

Firstly, Alf and Camilla Retts were on holiday with friends, Derrick and Franny Goodman and Zadok Bliss, who were occupying a series of newly erected, neighboring suites – named Moon, Sun, Sea and Green Rooms. Camilla was shot while sleeping in a perfectly locked room ("...door and windows locked"), but why would a burglar, or someone faking a botched burglary, create an impossible crime scene? Secondly, Camilla turns out to have been a horrendous woman and loose canon who cheated on her husband constantly. So why is he now running himself to ground to find a killer who might not be on the island anymore? Touma becomes interested and sees the shape of an answer in these apparently contradicting questions. This is a good locked room mystery, not only because the locked room-trick is excellent. Simple and straightforward, but not too simplistic and straightforward with a light touch of originality. But also why the murder had to take place behind a locked door. A fine story to end this volume on.

So, a pair of excellent locked room mysteries, one very well done historical crime story and a decent, but not terribly exciting, cat-and-mouse game is not a bad return on this return to the Q.E.D. series. It was good to return to these characters again. You can expect me to rotate between Case Closed, C.M.B. and Q.E.D. iff for future reviews with maybe the occasional reappearance of The Kindaichi Case Files.

Puzzle in Porcelain (1945) by Elizabeth Gresham (writing as "Robin Grey")

"Robin Grey" was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Fenner Gresham, of whom not much is known today, except that she was involved with the Virginia theater scene and wrote both stage plays, novels, short stories and non-fiction – notably the Jenny Gilette and Hunter Lewis series. This series began with Puzzle in Porcelain (1945) and Puzzle in Pewter (1947), but it took a quarter of a century before Puzzle in Paisley (1972), Puzzle in Parchment (1973), Puzzle in Parquet (1973) and Puzzle in Patchwork (1973) to be published. Steve, of Mystery File, hypothesized in a 2013 comment Gresham "had the book written but no publisher for them until Curtis, a small and all but obscure paperback publisher in the 1970s came along and made her a deal." Adding "same thing happened with Mike Avallone and several of his Ed Noon PI novels in pretty much the same time period." So thank you Curtis for preventing four more novel from entering the Phantom Library forever.

The first two novels from the 1940s were published as by "Robin Grey," while the 1970s
paperbacks appeared under her own name, but there never was much of a mystery about the authorship.

I found a short write up from Times-Register, "Mrs. Greshham Will Publish Mystery Novel," which announces Gresham's forthcoming debut and introduces her two series-character, Jenny and Hunter. A second, 1947 write up from Times-Register informs Mrs. Thomas B. Gresham, of Salem, has published her second mystery novel, Puzzle in Pewter, full of local color. Interestingly, it mentions the book is dedicated to Roger Boyle, director of the Virginia Players at the University of Virginia, who "was instrumental in the formulation of the chief character in the stories." The piece optimistically ends with the news "Mrs. Gresham is currently at work on a third mystery novel" and "she has indicated that the Hunter Lewis series will be continued." That, as we know now, took another 25 years when Puzzle in Paisley finally made it to print.

I believe I first read about Gresham in The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-45 (2009) praising Puzzle in Porcelain as "a pleasing debut" with "some agreeable fresh angles." Looking a bit further into the series, the Jenny and Hunter mysteries sounded like a series the Rue Morgue Press overlooked to reprint. Well, I was not wrong! Puzzle in Porcelain would have been right at home in the reprint catalog of the Rue Morgue Press alongside Delano Ames, Kelley Roos and Margaret Scherf.

Puzzle in Porcelain introduces Hunter Lewis, a tinker/handyman, who makes a modest living mending valuable, or mechanical, things and drives a homemade, Frankenstein-like car ("ugly and noisy") which he built from the chassis up – affectionately called the Mongrel ("...no alley pup ever represented more breeds than Hunter's masterpiece"). Jenny Gilette, the narrator, is Hunter's next door neighbor and she been pursuing him for years to the point where everyone half-jokingly sees it has her job. So they make for a fun, lively pair of lead characters and Jenny makes for an engaging narrator and Watson. Or, as she's called towards the end, "Amanuensis Extraordinary to that stubborn sleuth."

The scenery of Puzzle in Porcelain is Albemarle County in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Yankee transplant and local humbug, Thomas Pottle, drops by Hunter's workshop to ask to have a garden statue of Psyche mended, which had been reduced to “a basket of china chips” – deliberately destroyed when a stone hit it. Pottle tells Hunter he had been out in the garden that morning and, when bending down to pick a flower for his buttonhole, heard a hiss and the statue shattered. When he stood up to look saw Jake, "bpoor-white boy who lived in the strip of woods between Pottle's place and Scottswood," twenty foot away with a silly grin on his face. Hunter finds it hard to believe Jake had thrown the rock ("that boy wouldn't touch a rabbit"), but promises to come over to collect all the pieces. That evening, Jenny goes to a dinner party at Scottswood where the reader gets a brief demonstration why Pottle is not particular popular in the community, as well as introducing the tight-knit group of suspects.

Firstly, there are Dan and Virginia Scott, of Scottswood, who are the neighbors of Thomas and Edna Pottle. They have Dan's 92-year-old grandfather, Colonel Bedford Scott, living with them who still has it out for those Yankees ("...blood hasn't had time to cool since sixty-five"). Gordon Claibourne, Virginia's cousin and Pottle's lawyer, Dr. Keith and a newcomer from Norway on the University faculty, Erik Salten. And, of course, Jenny.

Next morning, Pottle's body is found on his own doorstep, dead as a door nail, who appears to have succumbed from the poisonous effects of a rattle snake bite. Sheriff Dick Cox, Jenny's cousin, remarks that it's "very unusual for rattlers to come so far into the lowlands," but retracing Pottle's steps reveals evidence he had been attacked by a rattle snake, ran all the way home and the exertion hastened the action of the poison. So a clear, cut and dried case without a hint of mystery, until Hunter begins to notice inconsistencies and convinced the sheriff his idea of a human hand rather than a wayward snake being responsible was not "altogether mad." Hunter and Jenny embark on their first case.

A case that's more like a Herculean task and not merely because they have to get around in the clunky, noisy Mongrel. They have to prove it was murder, before they can go on to the who and why. And how do you fake, what looks like, a completely explainable death by snake bite? While they begin their sleuthing, the parade of clues and red herrings, ranging from a broken statue and brown beans to dead fish and the sounds of hissing and rattling, keeps growing – seemingly never getting closer to the truth. Not even a second death, presented as a suicide, nor another snake attack brings Hunter closer to cracking the case. On the contrary, the sheriff is ready to close the case after the latest snake attack resulting in something I have never seen before in a detective story, past or present. Hunter is far from satisfied and continues to poke around, which is when the suspects band together to legally prevent him "from further private ferreting into our affairs." Something that should have been explored and exploited better, but it's one of those fresh angles that makes Puzzle in Porcelain a smidgen more than just a pleasing debut!

There are no obviously nods or references to other mystery writers, or characters, but Gresham evidently must have been an enthusiastic consumer of detective stories. She shows throughout the story a good understanding of what makes a detective story tick and, perhaps more importantly, what came before her. That allowed her to find and work those fresh angles Boucher praised. It's only in the finer details of the solution, primarily method and motive, you notice the still inexperienced hand of the first-time (but promising) mystery writer still needing some time and a touch of polish. Other than that, I greatly enjoyed Puzzle in Porcelain and liked how the story kept making me second guess my brilliant armchair solution. I was sure I had figured it all out when deducing the method, which I did, but not fully. So well worth picking up, if you come across a copy. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep an eye out for a copy of Puzzle in Pewter.

The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) is the sixth entry in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series of Wodehousian locked room mysteries, set in the late 1920s, which brings Anty and Vickers to the fictitious gorge of Glen Glennegie, Scotland – where he has to serve as judge in a whiskey competition. Kilcladdich and Kildrummy, dual villages divided by Glen Glennegie river ravine, which "supplies the icy clear hill water that balances the local magic." Namely whiskey. There are two master distillers, Lummy MacAlistair and Duncan MacAngus, whose respective clans have been feuding for generations. A feud dating back to a golf game from 1767 that "resulted in a rift between the families which has survived to this day." A long-standing feud with customs and traditions of their own.

Once every decade, there's a competition between the two distilleries for the right to label their whiskey "Glen Glennegie" for the next ten years. So, during the final stages, the master distillers locked themselves inside their distilleries in order to guard the secrets of the process. A jury of three decide the winner and Anty inherited the seat on the jury from his late father, but, when he arrives in the Scottish highland, trouble is not only brewing... it has already exploded!

Lummy MacAlistair was blown to pieces when his distillery exploded, likely an accident, but Anty is suspicious the accident happened right before the competition. Not to mention the apparent impossibility of it having been murder ("...what we have here is a locked room mystery"). However, the story doesn't plunge headfirst into classically-styled locked room case meticulously picking apart various (false) solutions to the impossibility like a few of my recent reads. The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich is primarily a comedy with detective interruptions with the first-half going over the territory, its history and characters populating the village – something that normally doesn't bode well for the quality of the plot. So it's very fortunate for this series Fitzsimmons is a funny writer who knows his way around one-liners, punchlines and absurd anecdotes. I'm no Wodehouse expert and have read bits and pieces of criticism from Wodehouse fans, but, when it comes to genre spoofing and satire, Fitzsimmons very much writes in the tongue-in-cheek tradition of Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin and R.T. Campbell.

Fitzsimmons has always been upfront that he writes the Anty Boisjoly series "strictly for laughs" with result being "either an inexcusable offense to several beloved canons or a hilarious, fast-paced, manor house murder mystery." This series has also shown with The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022) what can be done when the laughs and chuckles are backed by a good, solid plots. The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich is mostly played for laughs and that can be frustrated when the plot had enough to match those two earlier novels.

First of all, the "impossible coincidence" of the two master distillers dying in apparent accidental explosions in their locked and barred distilleries. There's a third, very minor, locked room in miniature concerning ten bottles of whiskey added to a locked cabinet when the key was accounted for ("...nearest locksmith that can copy that key died in 1902"). Regrettably, The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich is not very impressive as a locked room mystery, comparable to the earlier The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022), but the motive saved it from being just satire sporting a tartan deerstalker. The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich operates on its home brew of loopy logic and crooked rules, which Fitzsimmons cleverly employed to create a plot that could not have worked anywhere else except in Kilcladdich and Kildrummy ("we might be by Michael Innes"). So the digging into the history, characters and long-standing feud ended being more than a bantering exercise in exchanging barbs. I also enjoyed the scene in which Anty tries to explain to the Scottish policeman that America has gone dry ("you're saying that America has outlawed alcohol"). That needed some processing of its own.

So while I enjoyed The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich, it was more for the characters and humor than the plot and can only recommend it those already a fan of the series. I'll probably get to the next title, Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023), before too long but hope to have something good from the Golden Age next. Stay tuned!

Panic Party: Case Closed, vol. 97 by Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama's 96th volume of Case Closed starts out, as is tradition, with the conclusion to the story that closed out the previous volume when Conan, Rachel, Sera, Serena and Makoto wandered onto the set of 48 Detectives – confusing a hostage scene for the real thing. Makoto, a karate champion, disabled the stuntman playing the hostage taker and obliged to take his place to finish the shoot.

However, the shoot ends with two murders. The first murder is when one the actors falls to his death from a top floor window of an abandoned building and a member of the crew is mysteriously poisoned with cyanide. There is, of course, a trick that allowed the murderer to pull off both murders with an alibi in the pocket, but this time the tricks aren't the stitched together Frankenstein-tricks bugging some of the stories from these later volumes. They're simple, somewhat elegant and satisfying, especially the first one. Even more fun is what's happening in the background of the story. Sera is convinced Conan and Jimmy are one and the same person. She has been poking and prying for information, which doesn't make it easier for Conan to solve the murders and has to use Serena ("...deduction queen Serena in action") to pull his "Sleeping Moore" act with Sera watching ("he uses Serena when Moore isn't handy"). I also liked how Makoto and Rachel prevented the murderer from committing suicide with Rachel echoing Conan's sentiment ("no matter whose life it is, it's too precious to take"). Conan has always disapproved of detectives turning a blind eye to murderers intending to take the easy way out. A fun and, plot-wise, decent story.

The second story is a good, old-fashioned closed circle whodunit. Richard Moore receives a letter from a client, named Taisei Nichihara, who included a code, a 500,000 yen retainer and four train tickets – destination an abandoned, mountaintop church in Nagano Prefecture. A friend of the client hanged himself in the old church and wants it investigated. But why did Moore need to bring three other people along for the case? The three others include, naturally, Conan, Toru Amura and the sushi chef the mystery loving sushi chef from vol. 92, Kanenorih Wakita. When they arrive at the church, they find a group of five people ("we went to high school together") and discover Moore's client is the man who hanged himself. So they have been all lured to the church under false pretenses and, as to be expected, a blizzard traps them inside church for a day. All they can do trying to figure why they were brought to the church, decipher the coded message and hunt around for clues. Only for one of them to walk straight into a booby trap and another is found poisoned.

Similar to the previous story, the tricks used to build up this story aren't the Frankenstein stitch jobs from recent volumes and wonder if the original Japanese volumes received similar criticism for it. The tricks here are simple, but not too simple and possess a kernel of elegance. Such as how the murderer picked the victims and a good booby trap every now and then is to be appreciated, but it has to be admitted that it also makes for another fairly minor chapter in the series. Very enjoyable nevertheless, if only because it has been a while since this series featured such a classically-styled mystery story.

The third story is short, two chapter inverted mystery in which the killer rigged up a daring, seemingly unbreakable alibi. Maika Zenda, a school teacher, discovers that her fiance, Toji Fukikoshi, is a marriage swindler who has another girlfriend stashed away in luxurious summer house – which throws her in a murderous rage. She stabs him and then have the body appear during a school trip to the woods to forage for wild vegetables. Zenda worked it in such a way proving she could not have dragged the body and propped it up against a tree backed by photographic evidence. Only problem is that the children on the trip are Conan and the other members of the Junior Detective League. This story actually felt more like one of those earlier cases than the previous story nicely balancing the central trick with the characters and story. Not to mention the clueing is surprisingly sharp as Conan reasons the truth from a missing four-leaf clover and mud stains. So a very well done, completely solvable alibi cracker.

The last, incomplete, story being setup here will be concluded, as is tradition, in the next volume and begins with a callback to a case from vol. 12! In that case, Doc Agasa brought the Junior Detective League to the house of his late uncle, "the guy with the sun, star and moon code built into his house," where he found a wooden box containing a small antique plate. A black lacquer tray, to be precise, recently featured on an antique TV show where its value was an estimated 100 yen ("about $1 million"). Doc Agasa was not the only person who had the idea to have his tray appraised, but the appraiser had received three other trays and, to his surprise, "all three trays turned out to have the same carving" ("...at least two are counterfeit"). Doc Agasa is invited, along with the other owners, to the home of the appraiser, but there the appraiser is attacked with a spear. When Doc Agasa goes to get help, the attacker returns to finish the job. So a who-of-the-three whodunit that will be concluded and resolved in vol. 98.

So, all in all, the cases making up vol. 97 aren't the most spectacular this series has produced during its long run, but they had pleasing consistency, purely as detective stories, while the red threads and character-arcs of the main storyline continue to move and develop in the background. A great volume in a small, modest way on way to vol. 100. Just two more to go!

Fear of Fear (1931) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements were an American husband-and-wife writing tandem, "of varied and prodigious talent," whose output included novels, short stories, stage plays and film scripts like the 1930s Philo Vance movies – which lead to a brief friendship between Ryerson and S.S. van Dine. Van Dine credited her with saving the screen adaptation of The Canary Murder Case (1927) from the "Hollywood morons" and their propensity to mutilate the source material. However, they had a falling out years later when Ryerson suggested "Hammettizing" Vance for The Casino Murder Case (1934) to go for that Nick and Nora Charles movie charm. Van Dine was not thrilled as he "loathed the character Nick Charles."

Ryerson not only worked on some very popular detective movies, but also collaborated with her husband on a handful of Van Dine-style mystery novels. The fifth novel, The Borgia Blade (1937), is a standalone thriller.

Their first four novels, Seven Suspects (1930), Fear of Fear (1931), Blind Man's Buff (1933) and Shadows (1934), star author, playwright and amateur sleuth, Jimmy Lane, whose Van Dinean chronicler is Philip Carter – all out-of-print for over 90 years. Until a few years ago, when Coachwhip Publications reissued Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff with an always insightful introduction from Curt Evans. Ryerson and Clements' Fear of Fear happened to be on my specialized wish list ever coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). That and I really like the Van Dine-Queen School of detective fiction. Let's dig in.

Fear of Fear begins with Carter telling the reader "the time has come to tell the truth about the murders on Russian Hill" almost two years ago. Jimmy Lane had already achieved his first success as an amateur detective "during the ghastly week of the Lopez murders" (probably a reference to Seven Suspects) when he receives a message from Lane to come to dinner ("...bring pistols for two"). Lane had a chance meeting with Miss Norah Fallon, a film actress, who had a big problem. She had fallen into the clutches of a blackmailer and famed spiritualist, Harlan Grant, who "advised on business deals, drew up horoscopes and arranged love-affairs" at his house on Russian Hill. And, of course, raising the spirits inside his private séance room. Grant has "gone nutty" about Norah Fallon and is determined to drive a wedge between her and her fiance, Dick Stoddard. He's gotten hold of some "awful stuff" from her past that looks worse than it is depending on how it's explained. Lane, ever the gentleman, promises to help, but then the unexpected news breaks that Grant died from cerebral hemorrhage in his locked séance room. However, the promise still stands to retrieve the blackmail material.

Lane and Carter go to the trio of tilted, adjacent houses on the slope of Russian Hill where Grant lived with his family and next door to a long-time friend. There's his older brother, the Colonel, whose daughter Chanda is married to the wheelchair bound chemist Otto Steeb. They have two Indian servants, Singh and his wife Lalah. Dr. Waverly, a physician and spiritualist, lives next door. Lane worms his way into the household under the guise of writing an article for the Occult Review, but, before too long, Captain Hemming and Sergeant McCarthy return to the house to begin a murder investigation. A keen-eyed undertaker at the funeral parlor noticed an irregularity, called the police and an autopsy was performed revealing "Grant did not die a natural death" – although the doctors are "unable to agree upon the cause." So now they have a seemingly impossible murder on their hands!

First of all, Ryerson and Clements deserve a ton of credit for how they handled the locked room and attention given to the finer details. The only door to the séance room was bolted tight from the inside with Lane remarking "I don't believe even Philo Vance could figure out a way of locked it from the outside," but the floor plan of the crime scene included something immediately aroused my suspicion and a bit of preemptive, uncalled for disappointment. A subsequent and very thorough investigation of said something eliminated one possible disappointing solution to the locked room. Ryerson and Clements allow the curious and suspicious armchair detective to examine the whole room and everything bound to get them suspicious through characters, which allows for a series of false-solutions to be proposed and demolished. I should mention here, a little less than halfway through the story, it's revealed Grant was not entirely alone in the room. Mowgli, a tiny marmoset, was beside the body, but the authors had a very practical use the tiny monkey. Mowgli is "too small to have committed a murder" and not strong enough to have drawn the bolt. And Mowgli being unharmed disposed of another potential locked room-trick. A detail that should have been mentioned earlier, but very well and cleverly handled once it was brought up.

This is, technically, not the last impossible crime of the story. Adey listed only Grant's death in Locked Room Murders, but the second murder can be categorized as a (borderline) impossible crime and there's a mysterious incident involving Lane's wire-haired terrier, Ruggles ("...his little whiskered face showed horror...") – coinciding with an uptick in so-called paranormal activity. All the astrology, table tapping and even spirit photography started out as plain cover and background decoration for a common conman and blackmailer, but second-half leaned into its supernatural trappings with sightings of the yellow ghost. One witness was a police officer who described the entity as "like a yellow veil" between the curtains, while another witness called it a light. Another witnesses comes forth to tell he has seen a full body apparition. That adds a new dimension to some of the puzzling aspects and clues from the first-half "such as the faint, elusive fragrance of jasmine" and the phrase "fear of fear" that plagued Grant for the past two weeks. Or why he can only manifest spirits of certain people.

So both the first and second-half are full of interest, but for different reasons. The first-half for the investigation of the locked room and the second-half for going the John Dickson Carr-Hake Talbot route, atmosphere-wise. Ryerson and Clements tie everything together wrapped with an unusual motive and a murderer who didn't stand as much as they should have in this small cast-of-characters. There's a trace amount of pulp to the over solution, like the locked room-trick, but never anywhere near lurid levels of bad pulp fiction. Just a small dusting. Ryerson and Clements kept the story in detective story territory unmistakably belonging to the Van Dine-Queen School. Going by Fear of Fear, I would place Ryerson and Clements between Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett with this one being comparable to their best locked room mystery novels. A highly enjoyable and satisfying locked room mystery that should be better known among impossible crime enthusiasts. The reprint of Blind Man's Buff has been jotted down on the wishlist.

Note for the curious: Ryerson and Clements dedicated Fear to Fear to “Our Friend Willard Huntington Wright and His Friend S.S. van Dine.”