The Delft Blue Mystery (2023) by Anne van Doorn

Good news for your non-Dutch speaking mystery readers and impossible crime connoisseurs. Last year, I reviewed the first short novel in the new Gisella Markus series, In diepe rust (In Deep Peace, 2022), written by Dutch crime-and detective novelist M.P.O. Books and came with the announcement he was working on another series – an internationally flavored series published under his penname "Anne van Doorn." The first entry in the New York Cops series, Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023), was originally scheduled to be published in 2022, but the original Dutch edition got delayed until last May. Yes, you read that correctly. There's currently an English version in the works.

The Delft Blue Mystery has already been translated into English and the only thing holding up its publication is the ongoing search for a literary agent in the United States. So it may be some time before the English translation is released, but a few people have already read and commented on The Delft Blue Mystery like David Dean ("an impossible crime/locked-room mystery in modern day NYC is quite a feat of writing") and Tom Mead ("I absolutely love it"). I've been graciously given a review copy of the translation by E-Pulp to give my take on it as the resident locked room fanboy. And the timing couldn't have been better.

The Delft Blue Mystery is dedicated to Josh Pachter, author and translator, whose The Adventures of the Puzzle Club (2022), co-ghosted with Ellery Queen, was recently discussed on this blog – followed by reviews of S.S. van Dine's The Scarab Murder Case (1930) and Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938). So contemporary, Dutch seasoned take on Van Dine, Queen and Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series is a perfect, unintended capstone to that round of reviews. Let's see if Van Doorn succeeded in retaking Manhattan.

The story begins with a storm rocking New York City making the New Singer Building, a high-rise tower on West 33rd Street, sway like it has never done before. Mrs. Philippa DeRoos, blinded and paralyzed from the waist down in a climbing accident, lives on the seventy-second floor and "can't stand it when the tower is struck by strong winds," but the roaring wind is not the only reason for the deeply suspicious and superstitious Philippa DeRoos to be jittery. Philippa DeRoos has been getting weird phone calls and found two voodoo dolls on her bed, "one doll lay on her side of the bed, the other on her husband's," covered with dozens of needles. Suspected to be the handiwork of their former Haitian housekeeper. Gilbert DeRoos tries to reassure his wife, "evil spirits do not roam the streets, alleys, and skyscrapers of New York City," telling her that she's absolutely safe inside the penthouse as long as she don't anyone inside ("only someone who comes up can hurt you"). And then rushes off to an important business meeting. But soon things begin to happen inside the supposedly secure penthouse.

Philippa DeRoos believes she senses a presence around her, someone moving around the place and hears something crashing to the floor. She rings up the building's security guard, Jack O'Grady, who searches the place, but only finds fragments of white and blue pottery underneath a tall bookcase – which has collection of delftware pottery placed on it. Was it the swaying of the tower and Philippa DeRoos overactive imagination or had someone really invaded the penthouse? But the guard finds no one on the premises and left. When DeRoos returns from his business meeting, he finds that his wife locked herself in their bedroom and doesn't respond to his knocking. So together with another security guard, they break down the bedroom door to find Philippa's body. She died under very mysterious and suspicious circumstances, but how can an intruder possibly have bypassed the security cameras, keycard protected doors that log every opening and closing without showing up on any of them? Not to mention the bedroom door that was locked from the inside with the key still in the lock!

First of all, the opening chapters with the high-rise building swaying in the storm and an possible intruder, prowling invisibly, on the top-floor penthouse culminating with an inexplicable death in a locked room are excellent. It breaths like a Van Dine-Queen style detective novel and in particular Anthony Abbot's About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931), which also concerns an apparently invisible intruder in a top floor penthouse despite being guarded and constantly searched by the police. Only difference is that the New Singer Building has a view of modern-day New York and not merely guarded by locks, bolts and guards, but security cameras and computer-logged doors. This contrast between past and present, classics and moderns, permeates throughout the story and characters.

Detective Krell, of the 16th Precinct in midtown Manhattan, begins his day not only with a possible homicide on his hands, but gets saddled with a new partner. Merrilee Hopper comes from rural South Dakota and worked as a detective in a town called Salem Meadows, but transferred to New York to follow in the footsteps of S.S. van Dine, Ellery Queen and Rex Stout ("the city of the classics, the city of my heroes"). Merrilee likes to make Sherlockian deductions, theorize with brainstorm sessions and generally treats the investigation as a game. This greatly annoys the realistic-minded Krell whose first year with the NYPD cured him of such illusions ("crime investigation is no fun"). Krell tells Merrilee not to expect any carefully crafted puzzles in New York City, “crime is sordid,” because its filled with lying suspects and witnesses, corrupt officers, snitches, unsolved cases and manufactured evidence – simply "life as a police detective is also an ugly piece of shit." But his advise falls on deaf ears. And is told by the higher ups he's stuck with her for the foreseeable future.

So they have to investigate another sordid crime in New York City by working together as they try to find out how a nervous neighbor, a jealous lover, shoddy security guards and shady business dealing possibly figure in the death of Philippa DeRoos. However, the decidedly classical storybook trimmings of the case become hard to ignore when they persist in sticking around the place. The police locked and sealed the penthouse, but someone is heard moving inside and a witness from adjacent building saw someone with a flashlight walking from room to room. But, when the police arrive to inspect the place, nobody is found!

The Delft Blue Mystery is a locked room mystery with two impossibilities: the invisible intruder and the murder of Philippa DeRoos behind the locked doors of her bedroom. Firstly, the solution to the invisible intruder and how it related to broken Delft Blue bowl is brilliant! More importantly, the reason behind those intrusive incidents proved to be not without consequences. Secondly, the murder of Philippa DeRoos is a locked room mystery of a different order, but no less clever or inspired and rather reminiscent (in spirit) of the another, massively underrated New York mystery writer, Herbert Resnicow – who specialized in these type of impossible crimes. I'm just in two minds about the clueing and misdirection. Krell and Hopper have to wait a while for the results of the autopsy to come back, which makes the exact cause of death as mysterious as the circumstances under which Philippa died and pulled a haze over the clues. There are more than enough cleverly-planted clues, pointing both to the method and murderer, but with the cause of death being an open question, you can't expect your average armchair detective to spot and correctly interpreter all those clues. Long story short, I failed to pull-off a Gideon Fell with this locked room-puzzle. But other than picking at that one thread, I have absolutely nothing to complain or nitpick.

Van Doorn's The Delft Blue Mystery is not only an excellent introduction to a promising new series, but a fine example of what can be done when you build on the rich history of the genre to create something new and exciting for the future. This is another step towards our Second Golden Age.

A note for the curious: M.P.O. Books has been writing and publishing crime and detective novels of all stripes for nearly 20 years now, beginning with police procedurals/thrillers, but a love for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie made him branch out to the more traditional forms of detective fictions – always trying to strike a balance between the classic and modern schools of crime fiction. So you can call him the Roger Ormerod of the Netherlands with a hint of Paul Halter as nobody in the history of my country has any writer been as prolific and consistent in producing impossible crime fiction as Books. Now that the English edition of The Delft Blue Mystery is in the works, I hope some of his older work eventually finds its way to a much more appreciative overseas audience. De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011) is an excellent detective dressed as a police procedural with one of my all-time favorite clues and need to reread it one of these days. Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) is the first notable locked room mystery to be published since Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) and many turned over the years in the books and short stories published under his now open penname. Such as "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018) and De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019). So tell the American, Brits, French and Japanese to make room, because the Dutch are coming to claim their seat at the table.