They Can't Hang Me (1938) by James Ronald

In 2023, Moonstone Press published Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023), collecting three novelettes, the once elusive novel Six Were to Die (1932) and an excellent non-series short story ("Blind Man's Bluff," 1929), starting the process of reprinting all of James Ronald's novels and short stories – spread out over fourteen volumes. The stories collected in the first volume are better written than to be expected from the pulps with a regrettably short-lived detective character, but the plots left something to be desired. However, Murder in the Family (1936), marquee title from Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 2: Murder in the Family (2023), proved to be a surprisingly sophisticated, character-driven crime drama. And an excellent crime drama at that.

I wanted to sample Ronald's often praised impossible crime fiction and Six Were to Die failed to scratch that itch. So looked forward to the release of Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 4: They Can't Hang Me (2024) which include one of Ronald's reputedly best impossible crime novels.

John Norris called They Can't Hang Me (1938) "a corker of a mystery novel" with two impossible crimes "one of which is worthy of Carr," while Jim Noy gave the book a five-star review ("freakin' loved it") and included it in his "100 Books for a Locked Room Library" – commenting that "the impossible gassing is as good a ploy as any Carr dreamed up." High praise indeed! But is They Can't Hang Me good enough to be included in the "New Locked Room Library" currently being compiled? Time to find out

Twenty years ago, the eccentric Lucius Marplay owned the London newspaper the Echo, but the paper was stolen from underneath him by the current managing editor, Mark Peters. He and his cronies made a personal fortune from their hostile takeover. Marplay was locked up as a certified lunatic and forgotten about. Even his young daughter, Joan, was told he had died and was buried abroad when she was a baby. When the story begins, Joan overhears a conversation at a garden party and learns her father is still alive. So the people around her have something to explain. Naturally, Joan wants to meet her father, however, this demand sets in motion a series of events culminating in wholesale murder at the Echo office building.

Lucius Marplay is sane most of the time except on one point: an unquenchable desire to kill the men, Mark Peters, Ambrose Craven, Sinclair Ellis and Nigel Partridge, whom he holds responsible for his situation. Marplay whittled away the decades by filling "dozens of notebooks with ingenious schemes to end their lives" ("Oh, but they aren't wild plans. They're amazingly shrewd"), which gets to put into practice when he manages to escape during a mental evaluation ("MADMAN TRICKS ALIENIST!"). Before too long, the first death announcement is made and one of the four partners, Ellis, is bludgeoned to death in his private office as the Echo building is locked down and swarmed with armed policemen – resembling a beleaguered fortress. However, Marplay continues to strike with impunity. Every murder is preceded by a death announcement and a note is left with each victim reading, "PAID IN FULL." A familiar setup for the pulp-style "miracle menace" thriller!

An important man under police protection getting bumped off in a locked and guarded or a group of people trapped in a house under siege is a popular setup for a pulp-style locked room. I have encountered them time, and time, again in my admittedly still limited reading. John Russell Fearn's Account Settled (1949) and the posthumous The Man Who Was Not (2005) come to mind as does Gerald Verner's novella "The Beard of the Prophet" (1937) and The Last Warning (1962). Some other examples include Brian Flynn's Invisible Death (1929), T.H. White's Darkness at Pemberley (1932) and more recently Anne van Doorn's short story "De man die liever binnen bleef" ("The Man Who Rather Stayed Inside," 2021). However, Ronald might very well have written the delivered the masterpiece of these pulp-style, beleaguered locked room mysteries with They Can't Hang Me and so much more heaped on top of it.

Firstly, the plot is pleasantly busy with multiple characters working at cross purposes without the story becoming a tangled mess. Joan is determined to learn the truth in order to clear her father's name by coaxing a confession from one of the four men and goes undercover as a secretary/typist, which places her in the cross-hairs of the lecherous, fittingly named Ambrose Craven. Fortunately, she has two allies in her guardian, Miss Agatha Trimm, and the Echo's gossip columnist, Lord Noel Stretton, who has fallen in love with Joan. There's an ex-newspaper reporter and Fleet Street drunk, Flinders, who's always hanging around the Echo building trying to make a buck. My favorite character is unquestionably the Scottish private detective, Alastair MacNab, attached to the New World Investigation Bureau. MacNab has been hired by the asylum to help sniff out Marplay, "I've aye had the knack o' understanding whit goes on in an unbalanced br-ain," who's granted unrestricted access to the building ("if he had been able to foresee how much of nuisance Alastair MacNab was to be..."). A fine character in the tradition of Leo Bruce's Sgt. Beef and Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale ("you aren't one of Doctor Hammond's patients by any chance?"). Secondly, beside the characters, plot, excellent storytelling and pacing, there's the setting itself. James gives an insight look of the newspaper business and these specialized backgrounds or setting are always a plus when handled properly (i.e. not an info dump of the author's research or first-hand experience). More importantly, Ronald fully exploited the setting to enhance and further the plot.

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) lists only one impossibility for They Can't Hang Me, but there are three and understand why the second one got overlooked, but the third, non-deadly impossibility deserves to be acknowledged – which is a small gem. Peters and the Echo suddenly find themselves in a competitive fight with the rivaling Evening Dispatch. Despite the entire building being under lock down and closely guarded, the Evening Dispatch beats the Echo throughout the story in putting out the news of the developing murders first. Sometimes complete with photographs of the crime scene. But who was leaking information? And how? Not only is the building locked down and guarded, but the switchboard monitors every telephone call. The impossible leakage information is, in my opinion, the best of the three impossibilities as the culprit is what makes its solution great and loved the clue of (SPOILER/ROT13: gur yvivat yhapu).

Marplay having seemingly unfettered access to the building can be counted as a quasi-impossible and ongoing situation, but found Marplay's earlier actions after escaping to be more interesting. After a twenty year spell in an asylum, Marplay proves to be surprisingly resourceful, once outside, collecting and trading money or items to be used in his shenanigans. Such as pawning the coat he stole from the psychiatrist or taking a curtain cord from one scene to use it another like it's a video game. And his presence throughout the story is very well handled. But what about the two locked room murders?

One of the men is shot in a locked and tightly guarded room "as impregnable as one of the vaults of the Bank of England," while policemen were sitting only a few steps away in the anteroom. Another one dies of cyanide, while surrounded by police guards, but no apparent way the poison could have been administrated. The shooting is definitely the better of the two with a novel new way to shoot someone in a locked and guarded room. A trick that by itself could have been developed into something really good as it has enough aspects to have carried a novel-length locked room mystery. The problem with pulp writers (for us, anyway) is that the finer plot details and clueing aren't always treated with exactly the same care or rigor as their Golden Age counterparts. Something that can be a problem for the uncompromising plot purist, but nothing that should deter you from enjoying this lively, well written and characterized story mixing the lurid pulp-thriller with the traditional locked room and impossible crime story.

James Ronald was a pulp writer, but not your average, dime-a-dozen second-stringer who dominated the pulps. Ronald could very well have been one of its best writers, certainly better than my favorite second-stringers, who surprised me with Murder in the Family and entertained me on every page of They Can't Hang Me ("incredible, unbelievable, fantastic, impossible"). They Can't Hang Me is fun with a capital F and pulp with a P. So bring on the reprints of Cross Marks the Spot (1933) and Death Croons the Blues (1934)!