Back in 2016, I compiled
a blog-post, "The
Locked Room Reader IV: The Lazy Anthologist," in response to an
angry
rant by JJ, of The
Invisible Event, lambasting David Stuart Davies' Classic
Locked Room Mysteries (2016) as one of "the laziest
anthology of classic crime tales ever assembled" comprising
largely of stories from the public domain – of which most had been
anthologized countless times. JJ ended his rant wishing for someone
to put together some "compendiums of unheralded locked room
stories."
So I decided to play
armchair anthologist and compiled a hypothetical locked room
anthology, called Ye
Olde Book of Locked Room Conundrums, with public domain
stories that were never, or rarely, anthologized. Stories covering a
period from Classical Greece to the First World War. Three months
later, JJ made that anthology a reality and you can download it here
(completely free).
There were quite a few
locked room-themed anthologies published between The Locked Room
Reader: Stories of Impossible Crimes and Escapes (1968) and the
upcoming The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling
Deaths (2020), but there are some baffling omissions in all of
those volumes. Since it was time for another, long overdue
filler-post, I decided to compile another hypothetical impossible
crime anthology with stories that have been inexplicably absent in
previous anthologies – or simply deserve to be considered for
future compendiums. I hope editors and anthologists who may be
lurking on this blog will find this list helpful. Stories are listed
in no particular order.
John Sladek's "By
an Unknown Hand" emerged victorious in Times of London
1972 short story competition and earned a contract to publish, what
would come to be regarded as, one of the finest, post-WWII impossible
crime novels, Black
Aura (1974). So a rather important short story that was
collected The Times of London Anthology of Detective Stories
(1973) and Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2001), but
strangely enough never made an appearance in any of the locked
room-themed anthologies. Sladek also penned a short-short parody of
the genre, "The
Locked Room" (1972), which amazingly has a story-within-a-story
structure on a mere handful of pages. I think they're both perfect
material for a future anthology.
D.L. Champion's "The
Day Nobody Died" (1944) is one of the best impossible crime
stories from the pulps, originally published in Dime Detective
Magazine, which not only has a great locked room-trick, but a
unforgettable cast of regular characters – headed by a mentally
unhinged New York ex-homicide cop. Inspector Allhoff lost his legs
during a botched arrest, resulting in a shootout, condemning him to
live in a dirty flophouse, but his unique mind proved to be
indispensable to his former colleagues. So now he acts as a special
consultant under the condition that the man he holds responsible for
the lost of his legs, Battersly, is assigned to him as a personal
assistant. And enjoys mentally torturing the poor guy. This makes for
a one-of-a-kind story and series.
Kendell Foster Crossen's "The
Closed Door" (1953) is one of the earlier attempts at
resettling the traditional detective story in a science-fiction
territory and expending the plot into a full-length novel, or even a
novella, could have resulted in a classic science-fiction mystery
along the lines of Isaac Asimov's Caves
of Steel (1954). However, the story is still anthology
material on the strength of the cheeky, but clever, solution to an
inexplicable slaying at a Planetary Hotel constructed out of nearly
three-hundred different kind of plastics.
Edward
D. Hoch kept the impossible crime story alive during the second
half of the previous century and believe he has had a short story in
practically every locked room anthology published in the past 50
years. There is, however, one story in particularly that deserves to
be anthologized, "The
Case of the Modern Medusa" (1973). A brilliant little gem
taking place against the backdrop of a Mythology Fair, in
Switzerland, where a man is stabbed to death in a small, crammed and
locked office-room with a trident. The explanation for this little
locked room riddle is one of Hoch's most creative and original!
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJZXO5ap7urshtaV56U88vOPwUUheObryRvyiFtTD2H7qmQvjRb58_PdqzwLIc5PIUsWmlggldqhSMnUs2TTFZQWg5DVP-ltmCHztzlyjXDNC-6ODVJkO-NFYVQ1kHKKpOzwAfImNC0E/s400/ABI_EDH.jpg)
J.A. Konrath's "With
a Twist" (2005) can also be labeled as a new kind of locked
room story for a new century with a highly unconventional, but
innovative, approach to the locked room problem. A lover of
mysteries, games and puzzles decided to take his own live, but his
elaborately staged suicide seems to defy any logical explanation and
poses a challenge to the police. Christian, of Mysteries,
Short and Sweet, even called the story "a modern classic of
the genre." It certainly deserves to be anthologized.
Frederic Anderson's "Big Time" (1927) is a peculiar, little-known impossible crime tale, collected in Book of Murder (1930), which was overlooked by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991), but has a delightful solution for an utterly bizarre murder in a locked room. Something you would expect from Edmund Crispin.
Speaking of the devil,
Crispin also wrote a short story rarely recognized as a locked room
yarn, namely "A Country to Sell" (1955), collected in the
posthumously published Fen
Country: Twenty-Six Stories (1979) and takes place during the
Cold War – as vital pieces of information are leaked from locked
and secure room. Admittedly, the technical aspects of the solution
makes the story a little dated, but still presents the reader with
something a little off the beaten track.
Herbert
Resnicow was a civil engineer who brought his drafting pencil to
the detective story in the 1980s and brought something never seen
before to the (Western) impossible crime tale: large-scale,
architectural mysteries that turned whole floors or entire buildings
into tightly locked crime scenes. The
Gold Deadline (1984) and The
Dead Room (1987) are classic examples of this. Resnicow wrote
only one short, but very charming, locked room mystery, "The
Christmas Bear" (1990), in which a great-grandmother explains
how a teddy bear could have taken from the top row of a rickety
shelf.
During the mid-1920s, the
Father of the Japanese Detective Story, Edogawa Rampo, wrote two
short stories as a response to critics who claimed it was impossible
to set a Western-style locked room mystery in the wood-and-paper
house of Japan – showing it was possible in "D
zaka no satsujin-jiken" ("The Case of the Murder on D. Hill,"
1925). However, the solution to the locked room problem was routine
and uninspired. Something he would improve with a classic example of
the inverted impossible crime story, "Yaneura
no sanposha" ("The Stalker in the Attic," 1925), which is
the earliest Japanese story to incorporate unusual architectural
features into its plot. A corner stone story that deserves to be
absorbed into a Western locked room anthology!
A more modern examples
are Soji Shimada's "Hakkyō-suru
jūyaka" ("The
Executive Who Lost His Mind," 1984) and Takemaru Abiko's "Ningyou
wa tent de suiri suru" ("A Smart Dummy in the Tent," 1990).
The former is the utterly bizarre done correct with the problem of a
body decomposing at a supernatural speed and the latter is in a more
lighthearted vein with an impossible murder in a carnival tent, which
has a satisfyingly simple, but original, explanation and unusual
protagonist – a ventriloquist with a split personality. Both of
these stories would make fine additions to any locked room anthology.
Back in 2013, I compiled
a small list with real-life examples of the locked room mystery,
entitled "Out
of the Tidy, Clipped Maze of Fiction," which included a case
solved by a well-known magician, John Scarne. A puzzling problem how
horse race results could have leaked into a locked, soundproof room
where a bookie entertained his customers and encouraged them to bet
on horses. Two months later, I accidentally came across a
fictionalized account of the case written by Richard Curtis, "Odd
Bodkins and the Locked Room Caper" (1969), who added a very
well done false-solution to the plot. The result is an excellent
detective story with an interesting back-story.
Arthur Porges produced
two all-time classics of the impossible crime stories, "No
Killer Has Wings" (1961) and "Coffee
Break" (1964), but one story anthologists should consider
including in a future volume is "The
Unguarded Path" (1963). A devilishly clever story with an
unconventional, but original, premise: a murder has to be prevented
with the victim locked up in tightly guarded house. The solution is a
completely new take on the macabre Judas window from Carter Dickson's
The
Judas Window (1938). Other stories by Porges worth
considering are "Dead Drunk" (1959), "Horse Collar Homicide"
(1960) and "The Scientist and the Wife Killer" (1966).
Theodore Roscoe is known
to locked room readers as the author of the brilliant Murder
on the Way! (1935) and the much lesser-known I'll
Grind Their Bones (1936), but, during the 1930s, he also
wrote a series for Argosy about a small town full of criminal
intent, Four Corners – which may have inspired Ellery Queen's
Wrightsville (Calamity
Town, 1942) and Shinn Corners (The
Glass Village, 1954). One of the stories in the series, "I
Was the Kid With the Drum" (1937), is an excellent impossible
crime story about a phantom drummer and an impossible disappearance.
James Holding's "The
Japanese Card Mystery" (1965) has a plot along the lines of
Crispin's "A Country to Sell" and Curtis' "Odd Bodkind and the
Locked Room Caper" with the impossible leakage/transmission of
information as its central plot-point and there are multiple
false-solutions given to the problem. A shamefully overlooked story!
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The premise and solution
to Max Afford's "The
Vanishing Trick" (1948) could have easily been the plot of
Jonathan
Creek episode (c.f. Ghosts' Forge, 1999) with someone
miraculously disappearing from a hungry room with an appetite for
humans. Admittedly, this is a very minor locked room mystery, but
Afford came up with a splendidly original solution and cleverly
planted one of those tell-tale clues.
Robert
Arthur is the creator of The
Three Investigators and wrote a collection of short detective
stories for Young Adults, Mystery
and More Mystery (1966), which probably explains why the
crown jewel from that collection, "The Glass Bridge," has never
been acknowledged as a locked room classic! A semi-inverted mystery
centering on the question how a gravely-ill, physically weak man
could have murdered a woman and made her body vanish into thin air.
Xavier Lechard, of At
the Villa Rose, is the only other one who recognized its
greatness. And placed it on his list
of twelve favorite short stories.
Finally, I want to submit
a recently translated
story from my neck of the woods, Anne van Doorn's "De
dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself
In," 2017), in which a poet apparently killed himself behind the
locked door of a log cabin in the woods. The plot is entirely focused
on proving this was a case of murder. So a pure, John
Rhode-like, howdunit centered around a sealed room puzzle and
therefore a fitting story for a locked room anthology.
I believe this
constitutes as a pretty strong selection of unheralded locked room
stories, but, since these stories have already been crossed off my
list, I would like to end this bloated filler-post with a modest wish
list – comprising of obscure, hard-to-find stories that sound
interesting. I'll keep it as short as possible. :)
Anthony Abbot's "About
the Disappearance of Agatha King" (1932). Herbert
Brean's "The Man Who Talked with Spirits" (1951) and "Nine
Hours Late on Opening Run" (1954). Vincent
Cornier's "Dust of Lions" (1933). Arlton Eadie's "The Clue
from Mars" (1924). Bruce Elliott's "Death Paces the Widow's Walk"
(1944). Allan Vaughan Elston's "The Shanghaied Ship" (1933).
Alfred Feeny's "The Mystery of the Round House" (1906). Wilson S.
Freesland's "Treachery Tarmac" (1932). Vincent Griffin's "Martin
Speed Unveils the Invisible Death" (1957). Rex Hardinge's "The
Cinema Murder Mystery" (1927). Bruce D. Pelletier's "The Hedgehog
and the Fox" (1961). Edgar D. Smith's "Killer in Khaki" (1948).
Leonard Thompson's "Close Shave" (1946) and "Squeeze Play"
(1946). And pretty much everything that hasn't been anthologized,
collected and reprinted by Joseph
Commings.
I told you my wish list
was rather modest. Sure, I trimmed it down a bit, but, hopefully,
this list will proof useful to someone in the future.
This is a great list. Maybe you can find a publisher for your proposed anthology. There are enough published fans in this community who might be able to help you do it.
ReplyDeleteThis is just a list with suggestions for any anthologist/publishers who may be lurking out there. They're free to use it. :)
DeleteI just noticed I overlooked an important title myself: Hake Talbot's "The High House." Even this list of overlooked impossible crime stories has overlooked impossible crime stories. What a hack job!
I second Anonymous's suggestion. Start looking for potentially interested publishers, TomCat,
DeleteAnother outstanding round-up, TC.
ReplyDeleteExcited to learn of The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths, even if it promises the best new stories in the genre -- I'm hoping that's some design boilerplate given that the image on Amazon has the old "ipsem lorem" filler text. I appreciate rights issues can be tricky, but -- as you prove above -- there are still so many classics that are nearly impossible to track down, I can't help but feel I'd prefer 20 or 30 of those in a collection instead. Time will tell...
And having read Bruce Elliot's 'Death paces the Widow's Walk' I can assure you that you need not go to any special lengths to encounter it. Perfectly fine, possibly a little bland, and nowhere near as hilariously enjoyable as his impossible disappearance novel You'll Die Laughing.
Thanks! I've snooped around to see if I could find a content-listing for The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths, but, so far, nothing else has been released except the title and book-cover. Like you, I'm still excited at the prospect of another anthology, even if they're modern (21st century?) locked room stories. Just as long as they're of the same caliber as Hoch's "Circus in the Sky" or Konrath's "With a Twist" and not some abomination like Laird Long's "Three Blind Rats."
Delete"And having read Bruce Elliot's 'Death paces the Widow's Walk' I can assure you that you need not go to any special lengths to encounter it..."
What a pity. A widow's walk really appealed to me as a location for an impossible crime.
Ha, Three Blind Rats. Oh, yikes, what a horror that was.
DeleteThanks for the mention! And for the heads-up on Jakobowski's anthology next year. I'll be sure to get that one. You don't happen to know what the contents will be?
ReplyDeleteOut of all the stories you mentioned - all of which I'd certainly like to see collected somewhere - the Talbot story you named here in the comments is the one I really, REALLY want to see collected, because I've never seen it available anywhere. I've read his other short story (and of course both his novels), but this one's proved elusive so far.
Yeah, I've no idea how "The High House" slipped my mind when putting together this post, but that one ranks alongside Sladek's "By an Unknown Hand" as a story baffling absent from any past locked room anthologies.
Delete"...because I've never seen it available anywhere."
You know what's frustrating? The internet archive has archived several copies of The Mystery Book Magazine, but not the Spring 1948 issue with "The High House."
I have a scanned copy of The High House by Hake Talbot. I think folks will be a bit disappointed -- it certainly does not live up to his other works. I'm not sure of the legalities of providing this to others, but you can email me at mdavidson6611@yahoo.com
DeleteVery interesting list. As regards Maxim Jakubowski's locked room anthology, the deadline for submissions hasn't expired yet, so it will be some time before he is able to release the contents list.
ReplyDeleteSo they're all going to be brand new stories? Very interesting! Hopefully, some of those submissions will include new translations of older, non-English stories.
DeleteThanks for letting us know!