Voodoo (1930) by John Esteven

Samuel Shellabarger was an American educator, scholar and writer who had a passion for history and a linguistic talent, speaking nine different languages, which eventually lead him to the field of historical fiction and copies sold "so briskly" that Twentieth Century Fox bought the screen rights to several novels – amassing "1.5 million dollars for his late-in-life historical novels." So historical fiction is the genre which gave his name literary immortality, but he cut his teeth on "light literature." That's a very nice way of saying detective stories. 

Shellabarger adopted two pennames, "John Esteven" and "Peter Loring," to separate his
scholarly work from his light-headed romantic adventure novels and his somber, outlandishly weird detective fiction. 

The Door of Death (1928), published as by John Esteven, appears to have been his first foray into the genre and introduced one of his short-lived series-characters, Inspector Rae Norse, who made his second and last appearance in Voodoo (1930) – which is listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). While obscure and largely forgotten today, Shellabarger's detective novels were reissued as relatively cheap ebooks in 2013. Why not cross another impossible crime title off my locked room list. 

Voodoo starts off as a conventional, 1930s detective novel as Inspector Rae Norse, of the Metropolitan Police, is consulted by Judge Matthew Frole. A "zealot of the code" who never "swerved to left or right in the interpretation of any law" with a "let the chips fall where they will" kind of attitude, but age had also "hardened, narrowed, dehumanized" him. This hardly endeared him to the people around him. Now the judge being hunted by several thugs with several narrow escapes, but they keep entering his home and his watchdog has disappeared. And they leave behind withered oak leaves. So who's the subtle hand guiding those blunt, brutal men?

Judge Frole's household is crawling with potential candidates. There's his son, Essex, who was convicted and sentenced for liquor smuggling. Judge Frole declined to judge the case and refused his son any help, which earned him praise in the national press, but his wife and daughter where entirely on the side of Essex. Doris married a distant relative, James Ackerson, who used Judge Frole and the law as "unwitting instruments of a cowardly personal spite" to destroy an honorable man. Ackerson used the one-drop rule not only to destroy the career of a navy officer, Dryden Senart, but challenged the right of his 7-year-old daughter to attend a white school and the case was eventually brought to court, which was presided over by Judge Frole – who stripped the child of her privileges. When he later learned of the true background of the story, he washed his hands of Ackerson and kicked him out of the house. However, the damage had already been done.

Inspector Rae Norse recognizes there's potential danger and the judge hardly improved the situation when he announced the drafting of a new will, which would leave his relatives on "scanty rations" and counting pennies. Norse places his house under close guard and positions himself in the silent, pitch-black corridor to Frole's bedroom with a flashlight.

So far, so good. This is unquestionable the best written portion of the story and somewhat reminded me of Roger Scarlett's Gothic-style mystery novel, In the First Degree (1933), which both have the detective present at the bedside of the dying victim. Norse makes an unsettling discovery when he enters the locked bedroom. Judge Frole is sitting up in bed, breathing and conscious, but his entire body is paralyses and unable to speak. What follows is a nightmarish distortion as a doctor attempts to revive him while his loud, impatient family try to get access to the sickroom, which they know stresses the dying man. A scene as bizarre as it's dark that ended with the judge dying and his son on the run. Regrettably, this is also where the story slowly begins to disintegrate and fall apart. You can blame that on Shellabarger going off in every direction without arriving anywhere. 

Voodoo began as a relatively normal detective novel with a premise and bizarre, quasi-impossible murder promising something in the spirit of Virgil Markham, Theodore Roscoe and W. Shepard Pleasants' The Stingaree Murders (1934), but descended to the ranks of second-rate, badly cliched pulp thrillers during its second-half – complete with voodoo savages and a city cult. A pensive Norse has to cross paths with a West Indian voodoo cult in a modern American city and "the practice of cruel, superstitious rites." Practically everyone appears to have some kind of connection to the voodoo cult or the liquor ring, which brings Norse to the mountains of Cuba. This is where the story becomes a kind of hybrid mystery with a strong supernatural flavor as Norse gets the witness a blood sacrifice with the head priestess becoming the physical manifestation of an ancient serpent god. None of it is captivating or particular good. I wish voodooism was used an explanation for everything else, because, as bad as Voodoo is as a pulp-style thriller with magic, it's even worse as a detective story.

Firstly there's the locked room-trick, which is kind of original and novel, but a very bad, mindbogglingly stupid kind of original and novel. I even checked Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement to be sure and was relieved to read the Robert Adey's baffled comment. I'll quote (using ROT13) the solution and Adey's comment, because you have to read it in order to believe it. But would feel guilty, if I tempted any of you in spending a few backs on the ebook. So, if the solution is to be believed, gur zheqrere unq na rkgen xrl sbe gur pbaarpgvat qbbe naq gur ybpx jnf fhpu gung ur jnf noyr gb hfr vg jvgubhg qvfybqtvat gur xrl ba gur vafvqr. Adey's sanely questioned, "jung xvaq bs ybpx nyybjf gur vafregvba bs n frpbaq xrl jvgubhg qvfgheovat gur svefg?" Neither is it much of a whodunit as the murderer's identity is painfully obvious, but there was a nice attempt to serve the reader a confusing red herring. A trick that required the hand of a skilled and practiced plotter, which is why it didn't work here. But appreciated the attempt.

So, yeah, Voodoo is a pretty poor specimen of the genre with an indecisive, directionless writer further weakening an already run-of-the-mill, pulp-style plot and resulted in a mess that's going to be hard to beat as worst mystery of 2021. The reader has been warned!