The Rising of the Moon: "The Juarez Knife" (1948) by Richard Deming

Richard Deming was an American mystery writer, "solid and reliable," whose career began during the decline of the pulps in the 1940s, but managed to become a frequent contributor to such publications as Manhunt, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine over the following decades – reportedly producing 900 short stories and novellas from 1948 to 1984. From the 1950s onward, Deming also began to write TV tie-in novels for Charlie's Angels, Dragnet and Starsky & Hutch in addition to ghostwriting ten books under the "Ellery Queen" name in the 1960s. 

Deming had a presence in the genre and I have been aware of him, but only one of his stories, a novella, was jotted down on my wishlist. And the reason is painfully obvious. 

"The Juarez Knife" was originally published in the January, 1948, issue of Popular Detective and has not been listed in either Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) or Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019), but two reviews from 2020 described it as "traditional locked room" like "something from an Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr novel." Say no more! Conveniently, "The Juarez Knife" has been republished as an ebook by Wildside Press in 2018. 

"The Juarez Knife" is a double debut as it was Deming's first published short story and introduces his private detective, Manville "Manny" Moon, who lost part of his right leg fighting in Europe in World War II and now has to walk around on a "cork, aluminum, and leather contraption" – which turned out to be a formidable weapon when combined with his "army judo." Deming got a laugh out of me when he described "the ghoulish humor of the ward boy who had established an amputation cemetery immediately behind the huge hospital tent" and asked Moon "how it felt to have one foot in the grave." This more, or less, sets the tone of the story. A story that begins when Moon receives a phone call from a crooked lawyer, Lawrence Randall, who wants to hire him to do a job that comes with $1000 retainer and $500 fee. Something involves a great deal of money and potentially danger for the lawyer, but he has to come to Randall's office to get the details.

Since "the private investigation business is not good enough to ignore fifteen-hundred-dollar windfalls," Moon decides to keep the appointment, but, upon arrival, the private secretary he has to wait until Randall has seen a Miss Gloria Garson. So he turns around to leave, catches a glimpse of Garson and sticks around to catch a second glimpse. Garson had left through the rear exit in the office and when Moon went in, he finds Randall's body sitting behind the desk with a knife-handle sticking out from the center of its chest "like an oversize shirt stud."

Moon and private secretary were sitting outside the office's main door, the rear exit has a spring lock that could not be opened from the outside and the open windows looked out over a fourteen floor drop with a precarious, six-inch ledge running underneath it - nothing "but a bird could get in that way." So the inference is obvious. Garson planted a knife in Randall's chest and got away through the rear door, which seems to be confirmed when Moon learns the rear door had also been under observation. But when Moon discovers she immediately went from Randall's office straight to her hairdresser. Moon reasons "no woman would stick a knife in a man and then calmly go have her hair set," but how did the real murderer get in and out of the office without being seen?

Moon finds the answers to these questions in typical hardboiled fashion as he has to deal with Randall's business associate in Club El Patio, Louis Bagnell, who's somewhat of gangster with an assortment of hired goons. Vance Caramand, Bagnell's Number One Hood, kindly provides several occasion for Moon to showcase his army judo and peg-leg karate. While maintaining a pleasantly antagonistic relationship with Inspector Warren Day of the Homicide Squad.

So the story and characters are neck deep into pulp territory, but the plot is sound enough and reasonable clues with the highlight being how the unforeseen impossibility ruined the murderer's risky scheme. Only problem is that the locked room-trick is uninspired (almost disappointing) and the murderer sticks out even more than the knife-handle in Randall's chest. So this story turned out to be somewhat of a mixed bag as it's undeniably a fun, fast-paced read with a detective you want to follow around to see what happens next, but, plot-wise, it came up a little short. For readers of the hardboiled pulps rather than locked room aficionados.