His Burial Too (1973) by Catherine Aird

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh is a British mystery novelist, known as "Catherine Aird," who started her writing career in the sixties with The Religious Body (1966) and published her most recent novel, Constable Country (2023), when she was 93 – bringing the tally to twenty-nine published novels and short story collections. All except the non-series, standalone novel A Most Contagious Game (1967) featured her series-characters, Inspector C.D. Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby of the fictitious Calleshire County.

Catherine Aird was a personal favorite of Tom and Enid Schantz, of the erstwhile Rue Morgue Press, who decided to break expand their own rules to include Aird's non-vintage, police procedural-like mystery novels. Rue Morgue Press reprinted the then already forgotten A Most Contagious Game and reissued eight Sloan novels, before closing down in 2016. I first learned of Aird through the Rue Morgue Press and an endorsement from the Schantz is good enough to try one out. Unfortunately, I somehow picked the worst possible title.

The Stately Home Murder (1969), originally published as The Complete Steel, sounded promising enough at the time. A modern rendition of the classical, Golden Age-style country house mystery, but ended up trotting out cliches (SPOILER/ROT13: obqvrf va gur yvoenel naq gur ohgyre qvq vg) that were presented as clever, funny and subversive takes on the genre. That left enough of a bad taste that I never returned to Aird and Sloan. Not even the fat carrot that has been dangling in front of me for years wasn't enticing enough to return... until now.

The fifth title in the Calleshire series, His Burial Too (1973), is one of the few, notable locked room mysteries to be published during the 1970s and shortly highlighted in "The Moderns" section of Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991) – only mentioning that it "incorporated an impossible killing." Worryingly, the only person who's beating the drum for His Burial Too is Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included the book in his "A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books" ("...one of the best methods of achieving this effect yet employed"). A red flag, if there ever was one, but His Burial Too came out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library." So finally moved it to the top of the pile to judge it for myself.

His Burial Too begins after one of the hottest days in the history of the shire with the discovery that a prominent member of the Calleshires village of Cleet has gone missing the previous evening.

Richard Tindall, of Struthers & Tindall, was supposed to be in bed that morning, but his daughter, Fenella, found the still made bed empty. Tindall failed to show up at the office and his car is later discovered in the unlocked garage. Not a sign of the man himself anywhere. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby travel down to the village, but their missing person's inquiry soon turns into a murder investigation when construction workers discover his crushed body inside the church tower. Tindall was flattened by a huge, marble statue ("a weeping widow and ten children all mourning the father"), known as the Fitton Bequest, toppled from its plinth a good few feet high and smashed to pieces – covering the floor with "a vast quantity of smashed marble." This wreckage not only ended up killing Tindall, but the broken pieces blocked both doors from the inside ("there must be all of half a ton of marble up against the back of it"). So getting inside to secure the crime scene and excavate Tindall from the debris resembles a small scale disaster relief operation taking several men and chapters. A great way to hammer down the impossibility of the situation! Once they manage to get inside and the body out, it becomes apparent Tindall had been deliberately killed. And how the murderer managed to stage this locked room scenery is not the only complication facing Calleshire's finest.

That "rather odd firm," Struthers & Tindall, is a research and development company specialized in doing research or analyses for companies without their own research departments/laboratories. Sometimes these are hush-hush jobs involving security, dishonest employees or industrial espionage. Tindall is not the only one or only thing that disappeared. A very important report, Mellemetic File, is nowhere to be found. Nor can they find the chairman of United Mellemetics, Sir Digby Wellow, who's known as "one of the country's more colourful industrialists" ("and vocal..."). A receipt is found on the body for pair of diamond and emerald clips, presumably a birthday present for his daughter, but they've gone missing too. Gordon Cranswick, of Cranswick (Processing) Limited, comes forward claiming Tindall was ready to sell the firm to him. However, it's the locked room problem that gives the plot its weight.

First of all, while His Burial Too is a genuine locked room mystery, it's closer in vein to Dorothy L. Sayers than John Dickson Carr. From the literary chapter headings and backdrop (The Nine Tailors, 1934) to the how being far more interesting than the who-and why. The locked room-trick is ingeniously contrived, original even, but not entirely convinced it could have done as described. Perhaps better suited as one of those immensely satisfying, false-solutions that fall apart under closer scrutiny (ROT13: gur gevpx fgevxrf nf qrcraqvat zber ba yhpx guna fpvrapr naq gvzvat va beqre gb xabpx bire frireny gbaf bs zneoyr). Despite not being wholly convincing, I still enjoyed it and appreciated Aird made real work of the locked room in both presentation and solution. It would have been disappointing if the statue had been pulled down with a rope that had been retrieved through the narrow slit window, crack of gap. So a little surprising His Burial Too failed to leave much of an impression in our niche corner as at the time it must have been like coming across a cool, tall glass of water in a scorching wasteland. Edward D. Hoch and John Sladek were the only two who made serious contributions to the locked room mystery during the 1970s, but failed to secure a place on the 1981 and 2007 ranking of best impossible crime novels – collectively known today as the "Locked Room Library." At least it got nominated this time around. Simply as a locked room mystery, it deserves the opportunity.

When it comes to the overall story, I can keep it short and simple. His Burial Too should have been either edited down to an excellent short story and potential anthology mainstay or expanded into a novel-length mystery in order to flesh out the underdeveloped characters, setting, motive and sub-plots. The latter option would have resulted in a gentler, kinder precursor of the more gritty, neo-traditional detective novels and locked room mysteries Roger Ormerod would go on to write in the years and decades ahead. The problem of the blocked doors reminded me a somewhat of the locked room problem from Ormerod's When the Old Man Died (1991) where shattered, undisturbed glass on the floor showed nobody opened or closed the door after the murder. It sure is an unusual way to lock and seal an open, unlock room and not something that has been fully explored, which is another reason why the trick feels satisfying. At least I know why Jim likes it so much. And why he finds it convincing.

So not a full throated recommendation, but, if you demand some ingenuity and work going into your impossible crime fiction, His Burial Too is worth a try. It's a short enough novel that you can breeze through in two hours.

Cabaret Macabre (2024) by Tom Mead

Previously, I revisited The Red Widow Murders (1935) by John Dickson Carr, writing as "Carter Dickson," which got a long overdue reprint from Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics and their new edition comes with an introduction from the rising locked room specialist, Tom Mead – who has been a busy bee lately. Beside writing introductions, Mead translated Pierre Véry's famous short story collection, Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937), published by Crippen & Landru in 2023. And, of course, working on the third title in the Joseph Spector series of historical locked room mystery novels.

I got off to a rocky start with the Joseph Spector series. I thought Death and the Conjuror (2022) was a promising debut with its heart in the right place, but not the second coming of John Dickson Carr. That opinion received some daggerish glares. The Murder Wheel (2023) vastly improved on its predecessor and a noteworthy locked room mystery purely on the strength of the third, brilliantly-staged impossibility of a body materializing inside a sealed trunk on stage. So hoped the next one continued this streak. I'm glad to report Cabaret Macabre (2024) not only continued this upward trend, but ended up being leagues ahead of Death and the Conjuror and The Murder Wheel as a modern-day, Golden Age detective novel. A detective novel that can be summed up as Brian Flynn meets Paul Halter.

Cabaret Macabre begins with the discovery of a steamer trunk washed ashore on Rotherhithe beach, "it smelt worse than anything the Thames had ever spewed up before," which contains the decomposing body of a man – his face turned to pulp from numerous blows with a hard object. Before Inspector George Flint, of Scotland Yard, can give the problem of the faceless man in the trunk his full attention another problem presents itself.

Miss Caroline Silvius comes to see Flint on behalf of her older brother, Victor Silvius, who has been locked away as a patient in a private sanatorium, The Grange. Nine years ago, Victor was a 19-year-old youth who attacked and nearly killed the infamous hanging judge, Sir Giles Drury. Victor was madly in love at the time with Miss Gloria Craine, who worked as private secretary to the judge, but she died under mysterious circumstances ten years ago during a Christmas gathering at the Drury's country retreat, Marchbanks. The police wrote her death off as a suicide, but why take your own life using strychnine? Victor believed Sir Giles had killed her and attacked him with a knife, which was a costly mistake ("men like Sir Giles Drury make powerful enemies"). Sir Giles is a member of an influential drinking club, "The Tragedians," whose members include the experimental psychiatrist and head of The Grange clinic, Dr. Jasper Moncrieff ("...also cheerfully performed the odd lobotomy on troublesome sons or daughters of his high-society friends"). Caroline is convinced they're now trying to kill her brother ("...started with slivers of glass in his mashed potato").

At the same time, Lady Elspeth Drury contacts Joseph Spector, retired magician and consulting detective, because someone wants her husband dead. Sir Giles has been receiving poison pen letters and she believes the person responsible is Victor who has resumed his campaign of terror against her husband. What's more, the whole family is gathering again at Marchbanks in the run-up to the Christmas celebrations. There are Sir Giles and Lady Elspeth's troublesome sons, Leonard and Ambrose Drury. Sir Giles' illegitimate son, Sylvester Monkton, and Lady Elspeth's son from a previous marriage, Jeffrey Flack. Leonard is accompanied by his secretary, Peter Nightingale, who recently returned after working abroad for the explorer Byron Manderby. Marchbanks is only a stone throws away from The Grange. What could possibly go wrong?

Spector is right there when the first body is found, lying in a rowboat, in the middle of a small lake frozen over with a thin layer of ice. That facts turns this murder into Schrödinger's crime. If the body had been placed inside the boat and shoved from the jetty into the lake, before it began to freeze, all the suspects "have fairly solid alibis," but, if it was done after midnight, the murder suddenly becomes an impossible crime – because the ice is "not solid enough to take the weight of two grown men." So was "it a problem of time or space?" Mead wrote in his acknowledgments that has been delving into "the byzantine complexity" of several Japanese mystery writers and Tetsuya Ayukawa was no doubt on that pile. The second impossibility, a brutal shotgun murder, has another wonderful setup that to my knowledge has never been used before. I'm not going to give anything away here, but it sure is one way to break open a locked and watched room. As far as the solutions go, I think I enjoyed the trick to the second murder better than the first (MILD SPOILERS/ROT13) fubjvat lbh pna tb onpx gb gur jryy naq ersheovfu na byq gevpx nf ybat nf lbh pna nqq fbzrguvat arj be qvssrerag gb vg, juvpu pregnvayl vf gur pnfr urer. And it worked like a charm! However, the solution to the first impossible murder is not to be overlooked (SPOILERS/ROT13), juvyr n grpuavpny-gevpx (gung graq gb or yrff fngvfslvat guna gevpxf cynlvat jvgu fcnpr/gvzr), Zrnq perngrq n yrtvgvzngr ybpxrq ynxr zlfgrel. Hayvxr gur cebzvfrq ybpxrq ynxr zlfgrel V erivrjrq rneyvre guvf lrne.

Jim, of The Invisible Event, once compiled a list with locked room mysteries where "the setup is baffling and the solution ingenious." If I ever put together my own version of that list, Cabaret Macabre is a strong contender to make the final ten. However, the two excellently handled locked room murders only represents one aspect of larger, incredibly elaborate webwork-like plot.

The challenge to the reader, or the interlude, notes Cabaret Macabre has thrown out "more bodies, more clues, more deceptions, than even Joseph Spector is accustomed to" ("a webwork of murder"). This is really a densely-plotted detective novel in the best tradition of webwork plotting, which also makes it tricky to give an idea just how dense without giving anything away. Just that the story, plot and even the characters turn, twist and curl right up until the last page like a bucket full of epileptic snakes and bringing it all to a convincing (enough, overall) conclusion is Mead's greatest accomplishment to date – which could have easily gone the other with an ambitious, webwork-like plot like this one. Particularly (SPOILER/ROT13) jura gurer ner frireny zheqreref ehaavat nebhaq. Some pieces of the overall plot are better, or more convincingly, presented and resolved than others. For example, the dark, bleak answer to what really happened to Miss Moira Crain showing that Mead, like Halter, is no writer of snug, cozy mysteries. Great stuff! On the other hand, there's the final, final twist (ROT13: ...tebff) In bringing this Swiss watch of a mystery novel together that fitted, Mead has delivered a glorious tribute to the Golden Age detective novel that perfectly captured the bright, vivid imagination and daring ingenuity of the 1930s locked room mystery.

Nearly as important, Cabaret Macabre showed my comments about giving this new generation of traditional, Golden Age-style mystery writers time to grow and hone their skills is better than rolling out blind praise Death and the Conjuror could never live up to. This is what nearly tripped Halter's entry to an international audience when the translation of Le roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule, 1996) failed to deliver on the years of hype and myth building. It took Carr himself a solid five to ten years and a dozen novels to go from It Walks by Night (1930) and The Bowstring Murders (1933) to The Three Coffins (1935) and The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939). Good news here, of course, is that it has only been three years and the third Joseph Spector novel can actually be compared to some of Carr slippery, early wire-walking acts, plot-wise, like The Plague Court Murders (1934) and The Unicorn Murders (1935). So there's much to look forward to! And I very much look forward to the fourth title in this series.

A note for the curious: I know some are worried whether this current renaissance can be maintained, but don't worry, that genie isn't going back in the bottle. Just look who took up the banner of the traditional detective story and locked room mystery: Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian, Martin Edwards and recently J.L. Blackhurst joined the party with her brand new "Impossible Crime" series. Not to mention a very strong, innovative independent scene with the likes of James Scott Byrnside, A. Carver, J.S. Savage, K.O. Enigma and H.M. Faust. So give everything time, space to breath and enjoy your front row seat to the blossoming of a second Golden Age.

The Red Widow Murders (1935) by Carter Dickson

So the quality of detective fiction reviewed on here over the past two, three weeks have left something to be desired, even John Dickson Carr struggled to meet his own high standards in The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941), begging to be remedied by picking something good – which lead me right back to the master. Carr's The Red Widow Murders (1935), published as by "Carter Dickson," is the third novel starring Sir Henry Merrivale that marked the first time Carr applied his considerable plotting skills to the intriguing problem of a room-that-kills. I first read The Red Widow Murders in Merrivale Holds the Key: Two Classic Locked Room Mysteries (1995) and remember liking it without recalling too many details. Let's see how it stands up to a second read.

The Red Widow Murders begins, as so many of Carr's 1930s novels, by imagining London as a modern-day "Baghdad-on-the-Thames" where high adventure and strange mysteries awaits all who would seek it.

Dr. Michael Tairlaine had complained to Sir George Anstruther, Director of the British Museum, on the lack of adventure in his prim, buttoned-up life. So, one day, Sir George comes to Tairlaine with a somewhat unusual question, "do you believe... that a room can kill?" An unusual question coming with an even more unusual instrictions. Near eight that evening, Tairlaine has to be wandering the north side of Curzon Street wearing evening kit and keeping an eye out for "any sort of queer thing." When somebody approaches him with an odd remark or request, he has to agree or go along with it. That's how he eventually ends up at Mantling House to have dinner with Lord Mantling and partake in a possibly dangerous experiment. An experiment concerning a room, called the Widow's Room, that has been locked and sealed for sixty years. Not without reason.

During the 19th century, the room was the scene of four mysterious, often inexplicable deaths leaving its victims black in the face and no marks on their bodies. The room was turned inside out by architects and every stick of furniture and gimcrack was examined, taken apart or dissected by experts – none of whom found a poison-trap or hidden needles. When the grandfather of Alan Brixham, current Lord Mantling, become its fourth victim the room was permanently sealed. Lord Mantling ensured the room remained sealed by stating in his will nobody was allowed to enter the room until the house gets demolished. So now that the house had been sold and scheduled to be torn down, Lord Mantling takes the opportunity to test the room and has gathered a small dinner party. Afterwards, they're going to draw cards to decide who's going to spend two hours in the room-that-kills.

This party comprises of Lord Mantling's younger brother and family historian, Guy Brixham, and their elderly aunt, Miss Isabel Brixham. An old family friend by the name of Robert Carstairs and a French furniture dealer, Martin Longueval Ravelle, who's related to French expert who examined the furniture back in the 1800s. Ralph Bender is introduced as another of Isabel's protégés ("artist or something"). Sir Henry Merrivale is also present as an outside observer. This time, H.M. is in no mood for shenanigans or clowning around. H.M. is at his most serious here and fears the worst from this little game, but wants them "to play out this tomfool game" because he has no idea why he's so worried about what's going to happen next – only advising to let it alone without interfering. So a pack of cards, "new box, seal unbroken," is opened to draw cards to see which one of them is to die within two hours. Bender draws the ace of spades ("...some people would call that the death-card") and is left behind in the unsealed room at the end of a passage off the dining room. The rest remained in the dining room, sitting in full view of the passage's door, while occasionally calling out and getting answers. At the end of the two hours, the replies stopped and when they go inside they find Bender lying on the floor. Dead and black in the face from curare poison!

Somehow, someway, someone managed to jab a dose of the South American arrow-poison into Bender without leaving a fresh mark or scratch on him. In a room where the only door was watched, window covered with steel shutters "sealed with bolts rusted in the sockets" and a covered, soot chocked and impassable chimney. No secret passages or hidden doors. And, more importantly, not a hint of a long-forgotten, cleverly hidden poison-trap. What happened?

This is merely the setup of The Red Widow Murders, but what a killer setup! The problem is not only how the murderer transported a dose of curare into the victim's bloodstream, but who answered for Bender when he had been already dead? Why did the murderer leave behind the nine of spades and a strip of paper with an obscure phrase scribbled on it? And why take away Bender's notebook? Who had unsealed and cleaned out the passage and room before the party entered? What about the peculiar habit of the Widow's Room being "as harmless as a Sunday School" when it's occupied by more than one person, but kills anyone who's alone within two hours? Is there a madman in the family who already killed their pet parrot and fox-terrier? And how is any of it linked to Bender? H.M. eventually remarks, "I've met tricky murderers before, but Bender takes all prizes for being the trickiest corpse." Carr, H.M. and the corpse aren't the only ones who are in excellent form. Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters, officially in charge, gets to show why he was introduced in The Plague Court Murders (1934) as the supernatural debunker of the London police with a wonderfully contrived, somewhat technical false-solution – complementing the ultimately simple and elegant solution. More on that in a moment.

It has been commented elsewhere that the book is perhaps a few chapters too long, which could have been trimmed down and one, or two, unnecessary characters cut. Nothing that bothered me personally. I enjoyed the historical excursion into the death room's backstory reaching all the way back to Revolutionary France and the household of Monsieur de Paris. Admittedly, the historical excursion here didn't quite enhance the overall story, like the Plague-Journal from The Plague Court Murders, but it's the kind of quality padding/storytelling frills I welcome. Even more so when Carr is doing the writing! Lay on that gloomy, historical atmosphere as thick as possible!

Speaking of frills, The Red Widow Murders has a mild, fascinating crossover element. Not enough to tag this post as a crossover mystery, but it's definitely there. Tairlaine and Sir George previously appeared in the standalone novel The Bowstring Murders (1933) in which the alcoholic John Gaunt solved an impossible murder at a haunted castle. Gaunt is not only mentioned ("I should like Gaunt's opinion"), but Tairlaine remembers Gaunt had mentioned H.M. "almost (for Gaunt) with admiration." Crossovers are my guilty pleasure and love these small, throwaway lines confirming an author's series-characters share the same world, but they also make me wish Golden Age crossovers were done more often. Gold was left on the table! By the way, Chapter Sixteen has a teaser of a footnote referring to the unrecorded case of "the singular puzzle of the triple impersonation" in the murder of the American millionaire, Richard Morris Blandon, at the Royal Scarlet Hotel in Piccadilly ("...a record which may one day be published"). You could easily fill a collection with pastiches of unrecorded cases from Carr's work covering everything from Dr. Fell's curious problem of the inverted room at Waterfall Manor and the H.M.'s Royal Scarlet case to Colonel March's unrecorded cases of the walking corpse and the thief who only steals green candles. Anyway, back to The Red Widow Murders.

The Red Widow Murders is an intricately-plotted, beautifully layered locked room mystery which doesn't neglect providing the skillfully hidden murderer with a worthy and somewhat unusual motive. Not to mention the brilliantly handled, apparently messy, second murder or the shocking explanation to the problem of answers coming from a room occupied by a corpse. Every nook and corner of the story is crammed with clues and red herrings. A vintage JDC!! So, if there's anything to be said against The Red Widow Murders, it's that it still feels like it's a step below Carr's more celebrated works like The Three Coffins (1935), The Judas Window (1938), The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) and Till Death Do Us Part (1944). That can be entirely placed on the simple, elegant solution to the impossible poisoning. A solution that's perhaps a little too simple, too elegant for the murderer's purpose to be entirely convincing in the end. Simply put, this is another case of the false-solution ending up outshining the real solution as Masters going full John Rhode on the locked room puzzle of a room-that-kills was quite fun. Other than not being a full-blown, uncontested genre classic, The Red Widow Murders is a fine showcase why the period between 1934 and 1937 is generally regarded as the zenith of the Golden Age, when the detective story shined at its brightest. So exactly what I was looking for.

So immediately wanted to take a gamble with a murky, obscure mystery-thriller from the 1920s, but changed my mind. Tom Mead introduced the 2023 American Mystery Classic edition of The Red Widow Murders. So why not follow it up with Mead's Cabaret Macabre (2024). You're next, Mead!

Gray Tones: The Case of the Elevator Slaying (2017) by R.L. Akers

R.L. Akers is a self-styled, self-published storyteller who authored several science-fiction novels and short story collections blending science-fiction with thriller elements, but, more importantly, Akers wrote a short series of detective novellas – published between 2017 and 2018. A series covering half a dozen novellas blending classically-styled plots with the contemporary police procedural and cop dramas.

Gray Tones: The Case of the Elevator Slaying (2017) is the first title introducing the series protagonist, Grayson "Gray" Gaynes, who's a NYPD detective third grade and typical, troubled cop of today's crime fiction. More on that in a moment. The Case of the Elevator Slaying is one of 571 works to come out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library" organized by The Detection Collection blog. However, The Case of the Elevator Slaying is not a locked room mystery or impossible crime story. No idea why or who nominated it. Even more surprising, I ended up being more intrigued by Gaynes and his backstory than the plot itself.

The setting of the story is the Harkley Building, "an aging low-rise apartment building," which becomes the scene of a gruesome, double murder when the elderly couple of Ellis and Kathryn Howell get beaten to death inside the elevator – now painted red with their blood. Fortunately, the murderer is easily identified as their next door neighbor, Barton Chan, who was seen exiting the elevator covered in blood. What's more, the murders were caught on the elevator's security camera. So an uncomplicated, clear cut case and exactly what Gray needed on his first day back on the job ("combination medical leave and bereavement"). Gray wanted "to get some sense of motive" to understand why Chan snapped and sticks around the apartment building to continue digging. That... and another reason.

This is where the story splits in two. For me, anyway. On the one hand, the setup is fascinating and assumed the impossibility wasn't a double murder in closed and locked elevator, but proving Chan's innocence, which didn't turn out to be the case. The solution to the murders and why, or rather how, Chan snapped is pulpy at best and incredibly hokey at worst (SPOILER/ROT13: V pna'g oryvrir vg'f abg ulcabgvfz!). And the culprit is not difficult to spot. On the other hand, Aker planted his clues fairly and the underpinning motive is original. By the end, I was more intrigued how Gray was going to tackle his next case. I'm normally not too keen on the troubled cop trope, but if you're going to do and stack the odds against him, you might as well make a thorough job of it. So that's enough to warrant a return to the series, but have two even better reasons.

Firstly, The Case of the Elevator Slaying pleasantly reminded me of the detective fiction of Dutch mystery writer M.P.O. Books (a.k.a. "Anne van Doorn"), e.g. "Het lijk dat aan de wandel ging" ("The Corpse That Went For a Walk," 2019) and Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023). Second, the reviews of the next three, or so, novellas sound positively intriguing with a potential modern-day impossible crime/how-was-it-done classic. Stephen Pierce praised Gray Matter: The Case of the Autonomous Assassination (2018) as rivaling "some Golden Age novels in how it forces you to accept an unbelievable narrative—just trade the local ghost for a homicidal AI" and the To Solve a Mystery blog called it "a good reminder that mysteries utilizing technology aren't impossible." So, at the very least, this series is going to contribute to that future addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century."

Golden Age Whodunits (2024) edited by Otto Penzler

Golden Age Whodunits (2024), edited by Otto Penzler, is the fourth anthology in the American Mystery Classics series and previously reviewed Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022), which unfortunately consisted mostly of short stories already collected in other locked room-themed anthologies – several having appeared together in Tantalizing Locked Room Mysteries (1982). So the selection of stories left me a little salty and you can taste it in the review. A review that wasn't appreciated by everyone at the time.

Fortunately, the content of this latest anthology looked a lot more promising and enticing. I've only read four five, of the fifteen, short stories collected in Golden Age Whodunits. And discussed two of those four stories, Clayton Rawson's "The Clue of the Tattooed Man" (1946) and Fredric Brown's "Crisis, 1999" (1949), in past blog-posts. I'll be skipping those two stories. Still more than enough newish material to warrant a read that will hopefully translate into a review with lower salt levels. Let's find out!

The first short story is Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Amateur of Crime," originally published in the April, 1927, issue of The American Magazine, which begins during Mrs. Culverin's house party at her Long Island home and she has gathered a who's who of guests – everyone from a cinema star and Olympic athlete to Ruritanian dignitaries. Peter Scarlet is a pink-cheeked youth whose enormous, horn-rimmed spectacles "gave him much of the innocent downiness of a very young owl” and his hobby enlivened the sagging house party. Scarlet is the amateur of crime privately studying "the queer kinds of people who are murderers" or "the even queerer kinds who are murderees" ("the people who seem just born and bound to be murdered"). Mrs. Culverin's house party is going to give him an opportunity to put his theory into practice when Prince Mirko, of Ruritania, is stabbed to death in his locked suite under impossible circumstances.

G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown series clearly modeled for "The Amateur of Crime" and Peter Scarlet. Benét wrote a short story that often feels like a Chestertonian detective story, particularly the opening stages and the character of Scarlet, but the disappointing solution is exactly the kind of second-and third-rate tripe Chesterton shepherded the genre. Baffingly, Benét did nothing with Scarlet's study of murderers and their murderees. So not a very promising beginning to this anthology.

Anthony Boucher comes to the rescue with "Black Murder," originally published in the September, 1943, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in Exeunt Murderers (1983), which is where I first read it. However, I didn't remember having read this before until Nick Noble came into the story. A once promising, young homicide devoted to both his job and wife, but "when both were gone, there was nothing left" except "cheap sherry that dulled the sharpness of reality enough to make it bearable" – while his mind and reasoning skills remained razor sharp. A mind that can trace patterns in chaos. So helps out his former colleagues on occasion, like a barroom detective, for booze money ("Screwball Division... they called him"). This time, Detective Lieutenant Donald MacDonald is investigating the attempted poisoning of a naval inventor, Harrison Shaw, who was working a sub detector. Only person who could have administrated the poison is his own mother and MacDonald doesn't buy it. So goes to the Chula Negra Café, headquarters of the Screwball Division, where Noble makes short work of the case, but they get surprise when the inventor is still gruesomely murdered. And, whoever slit his throat, drew a bloody swastika on the wall. Noble simply solves this second part of the case by pointing out that swastika drawing points to only one of the suspects. I liked how the solution delivered on the promise of the story's opening line, "in peacetime the whole Shaw case could never have happened." A solid short story from an even better, regrettably short-lived series.

Mignon G. Eberhart's "The Flowering Face" was first published in the May, 1935, issue of The Delineator and collected in Dead Yesterday and Other Stories (2007). This story features Susan Dare, a young mystery novelist, who's wrested away from her fictional murders to join a party on a mountain hike to the inn at the top. There the announcement of an engagement becomes "the focus of a queer, dreadful quarrel" ending with someone dead at the bottom of a ravine. Was it an accident or a cleverly engineered murder? The murderer is apparent halfway through the story, but then it becomes a question how it was done as everyone was inside arguing. A soundly constructed, quasi-impossible crime around a well-realized outdoors setting recalling the mountaineering howdunits of Glyn Carr. I enjoyed it.

The next short story comes from a "Literary Visitor" to the crime-and detective genre, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose short story "The Dance" first appeared in the June, 1926, issue of The Red Book Magazine. The story has the narrator recalling a trip to the southern cotton mill town of Davis where she "saw the surface crack for a minute and something savage, uncanny, and frightening rear its head" – before "the surface closed again." It boils down to flirtatious love affairs boiling over into murder during a dance party and the narrator solves the fatal shooting in the women's dressing room, but "The Dance" is closer to a social crime story than a detective story proper with the local's searching for the shooter among the black population of the town ("...instant and unquestioned assumption"). So not a bad short story, but neither is it a Golden Age detective story.

Penzler wrote in the introduction that a 13-year-old Fitzgerald wrote a short detective story, "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage," which actually got published in the September, 1909, issue of Now and Then. So poked around a bit and found something interesting: "The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage" would "likely have remained a mysterious footnote in Fitzgerald's bibliography, were it not for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine." EQMM saved it from obscurity by reprinting it in their March, 1960, issue. A shame its early, pre-GAD publication date precluded inclusion here as it sounds like a fun, Doylean-style mystery, but perhaps something for a future anthology entitled Gaslit Whodunits.

C. Daly King's "The Episode of the Tangible Illusion," originally published in the February, 1935, issue of Mystery under the title "Invisible Terror,' is a gem of an impossible crime story! Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries has King's most well-known short story in the Mr. Tarrant series, "The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem" (1935), but it's overrated and suggested "The Episode of the Tangible Illusion" would have been a better pick. And here we are!

After recovering from a mental breakdown, Valerie Mopish moved with her brother, John, to Norrisville where they built a new, modernistic house on a remote piece of ground without a shred of history attached to it. So no ghost haunts the Mopish house, which means Valerie's delusions and hallucations have returned. She begins to see and hear things when alone in the house. Such as footsteps following her around. And, fearing she's going mad again, she refuses to marry Jerry Phelan. Not until she knows there isn't "something funny" about her. Jerry stays the night to guard the house against prowling tramps, noisy ghosts or simple delusions, but gets to meet the invisible intruder. Jerry is followed up the stairs by clear, unmistakable pounding footsteps ("heavy and solid"), but, when he turned around, the stairs behind him were "absolutely empty." Next thing that happens is Valerie getting pushed down a flight of stairs when "there was no person, nor anything else, near her." This is enough for Jerry to get in a specialist and turns to the ever curious, Mr. Tarrant and returns to the house with his manservant, Katoh, but the night only brings another ghostly impossibility to light. Surprisingly, Tarrant concludes that "there is no mechanical contrivance in the entire house in any way connected with the phenomena." So what caused the phenomena? Could a modern, 1930s house really be haunted?

The impossibility of phantom footfalls is a neat variation on the no-footprints scenario, which has been sporadically explored in such stories as Anthony Wynne's "Footsteps" (1926) to Edward D. Hoch's "The Stalker of Souls" (1989), but never as good as "The Episode of the Tangible Illusion" – on a whole a very original take on the haunted house detective story. I'm thinking it's time to place The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant (2003) on the reread pile.

Ring Lardner's "Haircut," originally published in the March 28, 1925, issue of Liberty Magazine, is, as the introduction points out, "not a typical mystery story." Lardner was famous as a sports writer and humorist who penned a darkly humorous story presented as a string of anecdotes told by a barber cutting a new customer. The anecdotes revolves around the exploits of the small town's cruel jester, Jim Kendall, who would have made a fascinating study subject for Peter Scarlet from Benét's "The Amateur of Crime." So, of course, Kendall gets hoisted on his own petard. A bleak, darkly humorous criminal anecdote and a welcome surprise to find in this anthology.

Stuart Palmer's "Fingerprints Don't Lie" was first published in the November, 1947, issue of EQMM and one of the Miss Hildegarde Withers short stories I hadn't read yet. Miss Withers was on her way to California for a holiday when her friends of the New York police at Centre Street asks her to look into a missing person, Eileen Travis. She's supposed to be living there to establish residence for a Nevada divorce. And her husband, recently indicted for black market shenanigans, has uttered some treats. Miss Withers arrives on the scene of a gruesome shotgun killing and, before too long, another murder discovered. This time, the victim has an icepick planted between his shoulders. Fortunately, the murderer left fingerprints on the murder weapons ("...the prints on the icepick matched the prints on the shotgun..."), but they "can't find any suspect whose prints fit those on the murder weapons." Palmer is a personal favorite and think Miss Withers is the best spinster sleuth the Golden Age has produced, but this short story is definitely a low-point in the series. The solution to the fingerprints is carny, not the good kind, which is trotted out in the last line as a "tadaah, surprise!" However, it outright ignores the incredible difficulty to use that trick to shoot someone in the face with a shotgun or the outright impossibility to stab someone in the back with it. Unworthy of Palmer and Miss Withers!

Shockingly, I didn't hate the next story. I'm not a fan of Melville Davisson Post nor understand the (once) classical status of stories like "The Doomdorf Mystery" (1914) or why S.S. van Dine, Ellery Queen and Howard Haycraft tried to prop him up as America's answer to G.K. Chesterton and Father Brown – which couldn't be further from the truth. Every story I've read by Post was a poor specimen of the detective story often with "borrowed" plot ideas. "The Doomdorf Mystery" reportedly lifted the central idea from M. McDonnell Bodkin's "Murder by Proxy" (1897), "The Bradmoor Murder" (1925) took its cue from a famous Sherlock Holmes story and "The Hidden Law" (1914) bad and boring. So gave it half a thought to simply skip this story, but decided to give it a try. And, surprisingly, found a very decently done courtroom procedural.

Post's "The Witness in the Metal Box," originally published in the November, 1929, issue of The American Magazine, concerns a contested will. Alexander Harrington was supposed to have died intestate, "leaving his great properties to pass by operation of law to his daughter," but a holograph will was found leaving everything to his younger brother ("...some minor provisions for the daughter"). What gave the testament the stamp of authenticity is the signature ("that big arabesque of a scrawl could not be imitated"). Colonel Braxton, "no knight-errant for romance," is the eccentric lawyer representing the daughter. But he brought no witnesses or experts to testify. Only a small, circular metal box and curious questions about farming to win the case ("this Colonel Braxton was the magician out of a storybook"). I never thought I would say this about a short story penned by Melville Davisson Post, but "The Witness in the Metal Box" is not bad at all.

Ellery Queen's "Man Bites Dog" first appeared in the June, 1939, issue of Blue Book and collected in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940), which is where I first read it, but remembered next to nothing about the story or plot. The story finds Queen working in Hollywood and itching the return to New York where "the New York Giants and the New York Yankees are waging mortal combat to determine the baseball championship of the world" ("ever missed a New York series before"). Miss Paula Paris, celebrated gossip columnist, ensures he gets to see the championship match together Inspector Richard Queen and Sgt. Velie. During the game, the ex-baseball pitcher Big Bill Tree is poisoned while watching the game. While not the most challenging of short stories this series has produced, the solution to the poisoning has a satisfying little twist. However, the most interesting part of the story is the character of Ellery Queen himself.

It has been pointed out before that the Ellery Queen in this short story is nothing like the book collecting, pince-nez-wearing Philo Vance clone who was introduced in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) a decade earlier. You can't imagine the Queen from the international series getting annoyed at a murder interrupting his baseball game and only given the case half his attention, while keeping another eye on the game. That being said, I think "Man Bites Dog" could have been adapted into a tremendous episode for the 1975 Ellery Queen TV series. I couldn't help but imagine Jim Hutton, David Wayne and Tom Reese playing the parts of EQ, Inspector Queen and Sgt. Velie here.

"The Phonograph Murder," originally published in the January 25, 1947, issue of Collier's, is Helen Reilly's only short story on record. This story is an inverted detective story. George Bonfield is the complacent, browbeaten husband of Louise who realizes one evening he really hates her guts. The catalyst is his aunt's bequest coming due in three months and his wife tells him colorful details how she intends to spend the money ("she went on, devouring his $30,000 endowment to the last crumb"). A broken timer on the gas stove gives him an idea how to get rid of his wife and provide himself with an incontestable alibi, or so he hopes. The case of the apparently botched burglary is in the hands of Inspector Christopher McKee of the Manhattan Homicide Squad. Not that this case needed a great detective as Bonfield folds at the first small bump in the road and obligingly confesses. So a weak ending to a story that started out strong.

Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Lipstick," originally published in the July, 1942, issue of Cosmopolitan, brings some mild suspense to this anthology. Elinor Hammond had fallen from the tenth-floor window of her psychiatrist's waiting room, but did she take her own life or was she pushed? Her younger cousin, Miss Louise Baring, believes she was murdered and takes it upon herself to find the murderer. Not merely because her mother threatens to stop her allowance for trying to stir up scandal. Not bad, on a whole, but not really my thing either.

Vincent Starrett's "Too Many Sleuths," originally published in the October, 1927, issue of Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories, is the longest story in this anthology and loosely based on the real-life Oscar Slater case – similar to D. Erskine Muir's Five to Five (1934). This time, the victim is the elderly, jumpy Miss Harriet Lambert "who is constantly afraid that something is going to happen to her." So she locked herself away in her apartment with her collection of brooches, rings, and pendants against "the bloody terrors that filled the outside world." Unfortunately, for Miss Lambert, one of those bloody horrors got pass the patent spring lock on the door and bludgeoned her to death. Frederick Dellabough, roving crime reporter of the Morning Telegram, is on the case and he has access to his own armchair detective, G. Washington Troxell. A bibliophile, bookseller and amateur detective who work together like Rex Stout's Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe ("I'm Dellabough's brain. Dellabough, to put it in another way, is my legs"). The first lead is the man who was seen casually leaving the scene of the crime after saying goodbye to the corpse. A man who may be named Otto Sandow or Oscar Slaney and they may, or not may, be one and the same person. Just one of the many complications that include other people who think they got hold of the answer.

A very well written, Wolfean-style detective story predating Stout's Nero Wolfe series by a good eight years! Regrettably, the solution is plain and unremarkable next to the elaborate misdirection and dead ends involving mixed identifies, a pawn ticket and too many sleuths. A stronger, more inspired solution could have turned this into a small gem.

T.S. Stribling's "A Passage to Benares," first published in the February 20, 1926, issue of Adventure, closes out this anthology, but have nothing much to say about it. Dr. Henry Poggioli, the American psychologist and consulting detective, is in the Port of Spain, Trinidad, when he asked to investigate a murder at a Hindu temple. A young bride had been found decapitated and a group of beggars were found sleeping nearby carrying items of the murdered bride, but the widowed groom is also under suspicion. However, this story is an exercise in style over substance. From the local color and dream analyzes to the final line. A travelogue trying to be a regional mystery, which only succeeded in making me appreciate S.H. Courtier and Arthur W. Upfield all the more.

So not a great closer to Golden Age Whodunits, but, on a whole, I thought the selection an improvement over Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries. Not every pick is a classic of the short story form, some were just bad or disappointing, but greatly enjoyed the stories from Boucher, Eberhart, King and Queen with the stories by Lardner and Post being welcome surprises. So the usual mixed bag of tricks, but a mixed bag with something for everyone.

The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) by John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr's The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) is the thirteenth novel in the Dr. Gideon Fell series, which is one of his signature locked room mysteries, but stands out due to having no less than three impossible murders – disguised as apparent suicides. Unlike the locked room specialists of today, Carr rarely included more than one impossibility in his stories and even rarer more than two. The Case of the Constant Suicides is an exception in that regard on top of being one of Carr's shortest novels that introduced me to Carr and Dr. Gideon Fell. And believe the first that made me aware of what, exactly, a locked room mystery is.

However, The Case of the Constant Suicides didn't convince me at the time that Carr was the greatest mystery writer who ever lived, but you can blame that on the cover of the Dutch translation strongly hinting at a key-part of the solution (i.e. practically giving it away). I also hate the Dutch title, De moordenaar was een Schot (The Murderer Was a Scot). Why not something like De familie die zichzelf vernietigde (The Family That Destroyed Itself)? Anyway, enough time has passed for a second read. This time in English.

The Case of the Constant Suicides begins with Alan Campbell, a youngish professor of history, boarding a train bound for Scotland where has been summoned to attend family business concerning his late uncle, Angus Campbell – who recently died under questionable circumstances. Not that Alan has ever heard of Uncle Angus or Castle of Shira on Lock Fyne. Alan is not the only distant relative summoned or the only Campbell on the train. When returning to his compartment, Alan finds a pretty woman, Kathryn Campbell, who's not only a fellow historian but a distant cousin. So they end up having to share the compartment and sit up all night as there are no other compartments available, which in 1941 was open to misinterpretation and gossip. Which sets the surprisingly comedic tone for a story taking place in a gloomy, Scottish "castle." More on that in a moment.

When they arrive, Alan and Kathryn find out that the death of Angus Campbell caused some problems. The family lawyer, Alistair Duncan, is arguing with Walter Chapman, of the Hercules Insurance Company, over Angus' life insurance policies. Several of them constituting the whole of his assets ("the whole of them, sir") which naturally came with iron-clad suicide clauses. And it has all the appearance that he committed suicide.

Angus usually slept in a room at the top of the house's tower, "sixty-two feet high" with "conical roof of slippery slate," where he leaped from the window in the middle of the night and only found the following morning at the foot of the tower – leaving behind an empty room locked and bolted from the inside. The window is, of course, completely inaccessible. So a clear case of suicide, but what about the empty dog carrier found in the room? Something that definitely wasn't there before he locked himself in? And that's from it! The nearly 90-year-old Aunt Elspat, "supposed to be rather a terror," is a loyal reader of the Daily Floodlight (“that filthy scandal-sheet”) and asked a reporter to come down to Shira because to make some "sensational disclosures" regarding a murder. The reporter in question, Charles Swan, proves to be a pain in the neck for Alan and Kathryn. Swan overheard their historical discussion in their train compartment and completely misinterpreted it ("who is this dame from Cleveland, anyhow?"). And, on the night of the murder, Angus received a visitor, Alec Forbes, in his tower room. Forbes, who fancies himself an inventor, collaborated with Angus on a wildcat scheme with predicable, disastrous results. So he came to have it out with Angus in private, but what happened with the inventor since then? This is still only the beginning of this very short novel.

Like I said, The Case of the Constant Suicides is not only one of Carr's shortest novels and surprisingly comedic in tone considering the Dr. Fell series abandoned the farcical comedy of The Blind Barber (1934) in favor of darker, more serious tone. Carr carried the Punch and Judy slapstick and chase comedy over to the Sir Henry Merrivale series, published under his "Carter Dickson" penname, but the humor here is not the usual hit-or-miss, Punch and Judy slapstick comedy. There are some off-page drunken antics with claymores and shotguns, but it's mostly the type of situational comedy associated today with classic British comedy series. Carr obviously was a better mystery writer/plotter than a comedian and his attempts at comedy either works (The Punch and Judy Murders, 1936) or dies a death (The Eight of Swords, 1934), but here it definitely worked and makes the story standout more than the plot itself. For example, I really enjoyed the story's opening in which Alan recounted his feud in the Sunday Watchman with an author who had a problem with his book review to finding another Campbell in his train compartment.

However, the plot is, uncharacteristically of Carr, very uneven. Firstly, there are the two impossible falls from the tower. The second victim is Angus' brother and heir, Dr. Colin Campbell, who decides the spend the night in the room after a ghost is seen standing in the window and is seriously wounded when he falls out of the window during the night. The solution to the (attempted) murders in the tower is ingeniously simple and particularly the role of the empty dog carrier found inside the room. Something that should have reeked of the worst of the pulps, but convincingly presented and handled. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the third, entirely different, locked room situation. Dr. Gideon Fell finds one of his potential suspects dangling from a rope at a remote cottage, bolted from the inside and windows covered with a wire mesh, but the locked room-trick is shockingly second-rate – begging the question why Carr even bothered to make it a locked room mystery. I lavished praise in the past on Carr's nearly unmatched skills to rub the truth in your eyes with one hand and pull the wool over your eye with the other (e.g. The Problem of the Green Capsule, 1939), but even that was uneven and a little spotty. I know that's not a widely held opinion.

I admit that the casually uttered line (SPOILER/ROT13), “uvpu Pnzcoryy ner lbh,” is a brilliantly delivered clue, but didn't think the clueing or misdirection was, on a whole, up to Carr's usual high standards. And the identity of the murderer is, perhaps, a bit too obscure. I actually remembered (ROT13) Fjna jnf gur zheqrere naq gur fprar jvgu gur cubgbtencu nyohz nccrnerq gb fhccbeg zl fubqql zrzbel. Jul ryfr pnhfr fhpu na boivbhf qvfgenpgvba jura rirelbar jnf jngpuvat ng n cvpgher bs Eboreg Pnzcoryy, “Pevcrf, jung n ornhgl! Jub'f gur tbbq-ybbxvat jbzna?” Once again, I know I'm in the minority here and The Case of the Constant Suicides is not a bad detective novel. On the contrary. It's one of Carr's best paced, tightly packaged detective novels with some genuinely funny humor and character interactions, but plot-wise, not anywhere near as good as some of Carr's better (known) work. Carr has written at least twenty, or so, mysteries that I would pick for a top 20, before The Case of the Constant Suicides would come up for consideration. Once again, not a bad detective novel, one that would have perhaps worked better as a standalone, but not a bad locked room mystery. And had someone else's name been on the cover, I would probably regard a bit more highly. But have come to expect better from the grandmaster himself.

So, yeah, a John Dickson Carr review not thick with praise or hero worship. No wonder it reads back like a mess. Well, more messy than usual. I'm in new territory here and feel like I should do some kind penance to wash away the sin and exorcise those impure thoughts. Maybe I'll revisit one of the early Merrivale novels sometime soon.

Read All About It: "The Late Edition" (1928) by Kelman Frost

Kelman Dalgety Frost was a prolific British writer of fiction who wrote his first published story in the trenches during the First World War, aged sixteen, which started a fifty-year career as a professional storyteller – estimated to have "written almost 70 million words of fiction." Frost contributed prolifically to the popular boys' papers and pulp magazines of the day in addition to penning numerous westerns for children like Terror at Nameless Creek (1965) and Hoofbeats on the Prairie (1966).

Despite his prolific output and reaching five million readers, when D.C. Thomson's boys' story papers were at their peak, Frost is barely remembered today. And most of his output is, sort of, lost. A lot of Frost's work was published anonymously and largely disappeared, uncredited, in the murky maze of early twentieth century magazine publications. And his novels didn't fare much better. Frost reportedly wrote over forty children's adventure books, but less than twenty have been identified. Nor has his brief dalliance with the detective genre weathered the passage of time gracefully.

Death Registers at the Eagle Arms (1947), a charming, uncomplicated mystery, is practically forgotten with copies having become scarce and ridiculous expensive, but Frost's second mystery novel, Something Scandalous at Lilac Cottage, apparently never made it to print – only announced by the Oberon Press as "in preparation." Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) lists one of Frost's many obscure short stories, however, the locked room-angle of Death Registers at the Eagle left me unimpressed. So the short story dropped on the locked room priority list, until recently. More on that in a moment.

Kelman Frost's "The Late Edition" was originally published in the March, 1928, issue of Clues, reprinted in Hutchinson's Adventure & Mystery Story Magazine and finally collected in The Best English Detective Stories of 1928 (1929).

"The Late Editions" begins with Sergeant Gosling, of the Swinwood Police, out on patrol when sees young Malcolm Lovibond coming down from London in his two-seater to see his father ("...the old skinflint"). Several minutes later, Lovibond is back to ask the Gosling to come back to the home, because something appears to have happened to his father. Lovibond arrived at the house to find no trace of his father, until he noticed a very strong smell of gas coming from under the kitched door. However, the door was locked from the inside.

So they go to the house together to break down the door and find the body of James Lovibond lying on the kitchen floor with his head stuck inside the oven. The kitchen door was locked from the inside and a thick mat was pushed up against the wide crack at the bottom of the door, while the backdoor is locked and bolted and the windows securely shuttered. Every other crack or opening of the backdoor and shuttered windows had been "crammed tightly with rolled newspapers in order to make it air-tight" and "a big ball of rolled up newspapers had been thrust into the chimney opening." A clear case of suicide until Dr. Francis Farrar, "a middle-aged practitioner who was comparatively new to Swinwood," arrived on the scene.

Dr. Farrar must have been aware he's playing the role of detective in a short story, because he makes a mad dash towards the ending the moment he arrived. From his preliminary investigation to apprehending the murderer, which is the most amusing part of the story. And finally explain the whole thing to the baffled Sergeant Gosling ("but it was a plain case of suicide, doctor"). So not much detection or fair play in this crime story with a locked room hook. However, "The Late Edition" has an admirably layered plot for a 1920s short story. The murderer and motive are obvious, of course, but the how also concerned a cleverly arranged alibi reinforced by locked room setup suggesting suicide. And pointing out the fatal mistakes the murderer made along the way (ROT13: "...gung cncre unf n ybg gb nafjre sbe... gung cncre'f tbvat gb unat lbh").

So about that locked room setup and trick. This short story came back to my attention following a comment on my review of Ooyama Seiichiro's short story "Kanojo ga Patience wo korosu hazu ga nai" ("She Wouldn't Kill Patience," 2002). Stephen M. Pierce commented that he was working on a "Top 5 Taped Room Mysteries." Being the incorrigible impossible crime fanboy that I'm, the list doubled in size in mere minutes and promised to keep an eye out for other “tape tomb” short stories and novels. I remembered "The Late Edition" centered on a gassing inside a locked room and decided to track it down to see if it qualifies, because it would have been the earliest known "taped tomb" on record, but doubt Stephen will accept a room only partially "sealed" with newspapers – nor would he rank it very highly. The locked room-trick is minor and routine. Something that gets rejected as soon as it's suggested in today's locked room mysteries. But, on a whole, not a bad crime story for 1928. Still perfectly readable today.