The Crossword Mystery (1979) by Robert B. Gillespie

Robert B. Gillespie is, or perhaps was, an American writer who authored eight now largely forgotten, out-of-print crime, detective and thriller novels – published between 1979 and 1990. Only his first mystery novel appears to have left a visible trace on the genre.

First of all, The Crossword Mystery was reprinted by Raven House, a short-lived imprint of Harlequin Books, which was a line of paperback mysteries published with a recognizable, uniform cover designs. That makes them collectibles to some people. Despite only lasting two years, Raven House appears to be better remembered today than Harlequin's disastrous 2009 publication of a set of horrifically mutilated thoughtfully censored reprints of vintage hardboiled crime novels. Mysteries plotted around crossword puzzles is a-niche-within-a-niche with its loyal following who enjoy their daily crossword puzzle as much as their regular detective fix. More importantly, Robert Adey listed The Crossword Mystery in Locked Room Murders (1991) with a fascinating description of the impossibility ("starvation in a locked apartment") and briefly highlights it in his introduction ("...dry and unusual"). So it was bound to turn up here sooner or later.

Rocco "Rocky" Caputo is an English teacher at St. Malachy's, New York, who enjoys crossword puzzles, cryptograms and word games – solving and creating them. Rocky has been constructing crossword puzzles for Muriel van Dyne, puzzle editor of the New York Herald-Courier and the Herald-Courier syndicate, who's better known under her nom-de-plume of "Mary Cross." Now that she has passed away under tragic and somewhat mysterious circumstances, the newspaper is in desperate need for a new puzzle editor. Chuck Godbold, director of the New York Herald-Courier, is an old friend of Rocky and had shanghaied him before to take over for Van Dyne when her liver acted up for the first time. And practically demands he takes over again as readers expect their daily crosswords.

Rocky accepts to take a hiatus as a teacher and becomes the third person to inherit the "Mary Cross" name, but also inherits Van Dyne's aide and protege, Amy Gross. She believes Van Dyne didn't die naturally, or accidentally, but someone had a hand in her death.

The circumstances under which Van Dyne died can be called a little unusual. Van Dyne hadn't been seen, or heard of, for several weeks until Amy decided to get the janitor to enter her apartment where they found her dead in bed – surrounded by empty bottles. Van Dyne was an ex-alcoholic suffering from liver sclerosis. So everyone assumes she relapsed and died due complications, or a drunken accident, but the autopsy revealed the cause of death is starvation! The locked room fanatics among you will probably think The Crossword Mystery is a 1979 take on Ronald A. Knox's "Solved by Inspection" (1931), which deals with murder by starvation in a locked room. However, The Crossword Mystery can only under the most generous of terms be qualified as a locked room mystery. Technically, it's a howdunit employing something that could be, technically, termed as a locked room-trick (SPOILER/ROT13: gur zheqrere fghaarq Ina Qlar naq ybpxrq ure hc va ure bja fbhaqcebbs, jvaqbjyrff jbex qra ol hafperjvat naq erirefvat gur ybpx cyngr. Fb gur fbhaqcebbs ebbz pbhyq bayl or bcrarq sebz gur bhgfvqr, juvyr abobql pbhyq ure fpernz sbe uryc. Nsgre fur qvrq, gur zheqrere (jub hfrq n qhcyvpngr xrl) erghearq gb zbir ure obql gb gur orqebbz. But that's not much of a mystery for very long as Rocky (ROT13) svaqf gur gnyr-gryy fpengpurf ba gur cyngr, fperjf naq ybpx. One of the things he comes across that convinces him Van Dyne was deliberately murdered and begins to privately investigate together with Amy.

There are more than enough odd, suspicious looking or acting characters to keep them occupied for the next 180 pages. Such as Van Dyne's husband, Matthew, and their eccentric son, Robbie, who's a sculptor. The gruffy janitor of Van Dyne's apartment building and the figure of a tall man in fatigues carrying around a tool box who's often seen, but never really noticed. There's a woman by the name of Rose Hawkins who created crossword puzzles for Van Dyne and needed the money badly, but Van Dyne terminated their agreement when she found out Rose copied one of her crosswords ("...please look elsewhere for your food and shelter"). She also has an elusively, rarely seen son who might be a person of interest. Not to be overlooked are Chuck Godbold, half a dozen regulars of The Ink Spot ("...an oaken dive next door to the back entrance of the old Courier building...") or the fact that Van Dyne handed out spare keys to the male population of New York like candy bars to kids on Halloween. And she's been receiving threatening letters ("...YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED") melodramatically signed, "The Avenging Angel."

So the setup and characters certainly live up to the promise of an unusual, somewhat traditionally-styled detective novel, but the characters and characterization, or lack there of, can also be blamed why nothing lands as intended – everything simply falls flat on its face. Not only because of the shallow characterization (even by my shallow standards), but the first-half sees them acting more like school children than adults. From the barroom scene that got Van Dyne barred to Rocky challenging Masters to make a crossword puzzle, but the one he makes is not suitable for printing as every word was dirty and clean words were given "filthy clues" ("the word Pigtail was defined as 'Sloppy slut'"). Whenever the story tries to go for a serious note or attempts an emotional gut punch, it misses completely. The second murder with its unexpected and surprising victim should have come with that emotional gut punch considering the setup. And something that should have altered the tone of the story and left more of a mark on Rocky's mood. Both just walked it off.

Another problem is that everything of even remote interest is either left under developed, under utilized or something comes along to undermine it. For example, the combination of motive and method is quite good (more John Rhode than John Dickson Carr), but the identity of the murderer is preposterous. Rocky acknowledging the ridiculousness of it all doesn't automatically make it acceptable. Nor does the murderer hamming it up when exposed help things. Even worse, the titular crossword puzzle (a coded dying message) is poorly integrated into the plot. The crossword puzzle is included with the solved puzzle printed, upside down, on the next page, however, only certain clues were discussed in the story. Rocky tries to fit the clues to the known suspects without developing a single, fully-fledged false-solution.

That's another odd feature of the book. The Crossword Mystery has faint traces all over it of the Van Dine-Queen detective story. Most obviously, the victim's name, but Rocky's father is also a New York policeman and they exchange information on the case. A word-clue in the form of a crossword dying message, which should have been the focal point since nothing significant was done with the murder under bizarre and near impossible circumstances. Faint traces... like a pencil drawing that was erased and something new drawn on top of it, but you can still make out lines of the previous drawing. Interesting technique, artistically speaking, but not very satisfying for a detective flirting with so many classical tropes.

If experienced hadn't thought to expect nothing from these obscure, post-1950/pre-2015 one-off locked room novels and hope for the best, I would have been tremendously disappointed. The Crossword Mystery is pretty standard fare for these kind of between-eras (one-off) mysteries trying to work, one way or another, classical tropes like locked room murders and isolated mansions into a modern surrounding. Some definitely succeeded (e.g. John Sladek, Kip Chase, Charles Forsyte), while others ended up being neither fish nor fowl. These are your Stephen Frances' The Illusionist (1970), Tony Kenrick's A Tough One to Lose (1972), Richard Forrest's A Child's Garden of Death (1975) and Lionel Black's The Penny Murders (1979). Gillespie's The Crossword Mystery can be added to that list. So nothing really to recommend here, unless you happen to be a crossword historian or collector. Detective fans and especially locked room fanatics can safely cross this one off their wishlist.

A note for the curious: crosswords appear to have been hobby of Gillespie as he apparently wrote Cryptopic Crosswords (1983), which is even more obscure than his crime-and detective fiction. If you're still interested after my lukewarm review, Gillespie's other work include the mysteries Little Sally Does It Again (1982), Heads, You Loose (1985), The Last of the Honeywells (1988) and Deathstorm (1990). Print-Out (1983) appears to be an early techno-thriller. Empress of Coney Island (1986) and The Hell's Kitchen Connection (1987) sound like crime/thriller novels. I won't be seeking them out, but will try to pick something good next.