Murder Without a Net (1962) by Martin Meroy

"Martin Meroy" was the penname of Charles Ewald, a French journalist, radio producer and writer, who penned a series of typical, 1960s tough-guy novels starring a hardboiled private eye of the same name, Martin Meroy, which differed in one important respect from other tough-guy fiction of the period – an alluring "fondness for impossible crimes." The series has never received an English translation, but thirteen of the novels were translated into Dutch as part of De Schorpioen's Inter-Pol Collectie. A now obscure, not always easy to obtain line of mostly American flavored English, French and German crime-and detective fiction. I say mostly because the series include one of the scientific mystery novels by E. and M.A. Radford (Death on the Broads, 1957). 

So the Dutch translations of the Martin Meroy novels are not entirely out of my reach and actually (poorly) reviewed Du plomb pour la familie (Lead for the Family, 1959) and Meurtre en chambre noire (Murder in a Darkened Room, 1960) back in 2011. They were fun, fast-paced and short private eye stories with simple, straightforward solutions to the locked room puzzles. More workmanlike than truly inspired takes on the impossible crime tale, but good enough to keep an eye out for the other Dutch translations. And that took a little longer than expected. But finally got my hands on another one!

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Brett Halliday's Mike Shayne or Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective found themselves transported to Anthony Abbot's About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932)? Martin Meroy's Meurtre sans filet (Murder Without a Net, 1962) has the answer.

Martin Meroy is a French detective, who lives and operates in New York City, but the opening of Murder Without a Net finds him back in France on the day he's supposed to go back to America to when Commissioner Blaise Chateau calls him at his hotel – requesting his immediate presence at Circus Wallace. Judging by the Commissioner's tone, Meroy suspects "that there's a brand new corpse on display." And not any old regular corpse!

Gloria Suzin belongs to a group of three flying trapeze artists, called the Berena's, who retreated to her caravan following a late night training session, but didn't came out the next morning. So they broke one of the windows on the door to open door and discovered Gloria had been shot to death in her bed under very strange, almost impossible circumstances. The bullet "entered the crown, cut right through the neck and ended up in the stomach." A peculiar entry and trajectory, but just as peculiar is how the murderer entered and left the caravan. The caravan has a double-wing door with the left wing being locked in place, top and bottom, while the right wing door was secured on the inside with a hook-lock. There was precious little room in the crammed, over stuffed caravan to hide or any opening that lined up with the trajectory of the bullet. Since she's a circus artist with a backstory, the circus terrain is teeming with colorful suspects and certain danger.

There are the other two Berena's, Simone Lhardy and Pierre Rouget, who immediately replaced Gloria with Dorothy Hardt. An English trapeze artist who happened to be Paris and was available to take her place. Fred Saint-Brieuc is the aristocratic looking owner of Circus Wallace and entangled with Gloria in more ways than one. Cyril Beaton is an animal tamer who took great risks with both wild animals and his money, which is why he owed Gloria a ton of money. Arthur Raymondini used to be a flying trapeze artist himself, but nearly died in an accident and, when he returned, discovered that his then student Pierre Rouget had stolen his whole act. And now limps around the circus ring as Nanave the Clown. Bernard Dreville is a magician, escape artist and locked room specialist who references Meroy's success in Murder in a Darkened Room. Jacques Graillet aspired to be a world famous musician, but ended up as a circus orchestra master and Raoul Anderson is circus-technician who knows how to put a gadget together. Last, but not least, is the Goliath strongman, David Rezeff, who strongly objects to nosey parkers, like Meroy, sticking his nose in their business.

So the Goliath provides Meroy with a physical challenge to overcome, but Meroy, while an expert in impossible crimes, belongs to the tough-guy school of detectives and spends every morning hardening the sides of his hands karate-chopping "hard objects" – allowing him to end their first encounter with double axe-handle smash to the neck. But resorted to some dirty tactics during their next few encounters with the blow-off threatening to end in a disappointing brawl to the back. Fortunately, that was not the case. Another moment Meroy got to shine as a hardboiled gumshoe is when he found a bomb under the hood of his car, removed it and casually dropped it into his pocket. Meroy is booked strongly here.

Most of you are more interested in the plot than the action and, like mentioned at the beginning, the series differentiated itself from its contemporaries with stronger plot often centered on an impossible crime. The back cover of the Dutch edition even called Meroy "de specialist van moorden in gesloten ruimten" ("the specialist of murders in closed spaces") and he certainly lives up to his reputation in Murder Without a Net. Considerable attention is given to the locked room problem as numerous possibilities are considered (a hidden panel) and eliminated (reconstructing the pane of glass to look for signs of tampering), which resulted in a nicely-done false-solution towards the end. Regrettably, the actual, two-part solution turned out to be a mixed bag of tricks. The locked room-trick itself is a reasonable well-done variation on an old dodge of the impossible crime story (if you know your locked room fiction), but there was something genuine daring and original about the murder itself – which bordered on pure pulp. No, it has nothing to do with the mischievous, popgun wielding monkey. Only reason why it didn't entirely worked is that all the relevant clues and scraps of information were withheld from the reader until the last possible moment. Such as the wet smear of paint.

On the other hand, the murderer had a gem of a motive to stage the murder as a locked room mystery and Meroy got solve two equally baffling, even borderline impossible crimes towards the end in record time. One of these two deaths is staged inside the circus tent filled to capacity, which is very similar to the murder from Abbot's About the Murder of the Circus Queen, but with a completely different solution. A trick that almost feels wasted how it was tacked on at the end of this short, fast-paced novel.

So, all in all, Martin Meroy's Murder Without a Net could have been better, but it also could have been a lot worse and, if my memory is to be trusted, the best of three read so far. It's definitely the title I would recommend to translate to a publisher, like Locked Room International, as it scratches that impossible crime itch. Even with the eventual solution being marred by the late clueing and partially relying on a rather routine trick. But still good enough to keep on the lookout for the other translations.