Reunion with Murder (1941) by Timothy Fuller

Reunion with Murder (1941) is Timothy Fuller's third novel about Harvard man and amateur sleuth, Edmund "Jupiter" Jones, who appeared in a handful of mysteries starting with Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) – ending with the previously discussed Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950). A tightly-packed crime yarn clearly intended to modernize and reboot the series, but Fuller abandoned the series after its publication. Nonetheless, it rekindled my interest in the series and tracked down a copy of This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943). A mystery from the American murder-can-be-fun school that would have been right at home in the catalog of the Rue Morgue Press. I fortunately had the foresight to also get a copy of Reunion with Murder. Three times must be the charm as it's Fuller's most accomplished, fully rounded detective novel.

The titular event of Fuller's Reunion with Murder is the first reunion of the Class of '31, Harvard College, that brought over a hundred alumni to the Syonsett Beach Hotel.

On the second day of the reunion, two alumni out on an early morning round of golf find the body of Sherman North near the eleventh tee of the Syonsett Golf Club. North's body was still dressed in dinner jacket, color rumpled and black tie twisted, but more concerting is the gaping bullet hole in his chest. North was rooming at the hotel with fellow attendee Edmund Rice, a humorist, who wakes up that morning with a hangover and scraped, bloodied hands. No memory of what happened when he was blackout drunk. What's more, Rice has to be the best man next day at a wedding of his college chum, Jupiter Jones, currently teaching at Harvard's Fine Arts Department. That's when he remembers, "Sleuth Jones."

So the best man getting involved in a murder at his tenth college reunion a day is "damned inconvenient," but Betty Mahan joins her soon-to-be husband for a day of prenuptial sleuthing.

There's much more to the murder than an apparent drunken, motiveless shooting on the golf course under cover of night. Firstly, North was knocked unconscious, driven in his own car to the scene of the crime and shot, which is a reasonable precaution, but why attract attention by firing half a dozen of extra shots – which were noticed. Secondly, there's a trail of high heeled woman's footprints "coming across from the clubhouse and ending at the top of the tee" where they stop and vanish ("...must be some explanation for their disappearance"). Yeah, I didn't expect a (minor) impossible situation of no-footprints variety not mentioned in either Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) nor Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). But there are also slightly more traditional clues strewn around the crime scene. Like a broken watch and watch charm in the form of a miniature sword. So both police and amateur detective have their work cut out. Really enjoyed how Jupiter buttered himself up in order to slip himself into the investigation.

Reunion with Murder is as humorous and satirical in tone as This is Murder, Mr. Jones. Fuller lightheartedly poked fun at Harvard culture, detective fiction and reunions ("probably some Stone Age massacre had gone off rather well and the participants vowed to meet again in a year and talk things over"), but Reunion with Murder has a serious pall hanging over it in the shape of the war raging on in Europe and the feeling they'll be soon dragged into it. This comes especially to the front during the second-half of the story fueling discussions, but just as serious is Jupiter transforming into a White Knight for North's widow, Ann North. At one point, Jupiter even comes to see her as the "symbol of the Perfect Girl, the Dream Girl who didn't exist," while Betty is standing right next to her. Over the course of his private investigation, Jupiter breaks enough laws to potentially get him thirty years in prison simply to protect Ann. And he's very serious about it.

So not everything is played for laughs and the armchair detectives out there better keep that in mind when trying to piece together this "macabre puzzle." I think the conclusion, and the twisted path it takes towards that conclusion, is what makes Reunion with Murder Fuller's best contribution to the American detective novel.

First of all, there's the unusual and unforgettable circumstances of the denouement taking place right after the wedding and during the costumed parade closing out the reunion. Jupiter, dressed as Superman, gathers the principle players to explain what happened. Or, at least, the parts he knows about. Jupiter's ingenious, fractured solution is a Golden Age delight of plotting succeeding in having its cake and eat it too. You know what I mean when you read it. The core idea is admittedly not original with Fuller, but he sure did something different and original with it to make it his own. Something that pleasantly took me by surprise, but a lot made sense the moment the truth dawned on me. Of, course, how the murder is resolved among the Harvard boys is something most readers today will find hard to swallow and perhaps is easy to point to the looming war as a motive. However, I think Fuller simply had been reading a lot of John Dickson Carr at the time and got inspired. Everything from the murderer inexplicably attracting attention post-murder and the vanishing footprints to letting a cleverly hidden, but exposed, killer get away for morally dubious reasons just smacks of Carr – not to mention old-world chivalry streaking the characters and plot. No wonder I enjoyed it so much!

Fuller's Reunion with Murder is a first-class Golden Age mystery, one of the better American collegian detective novels, which deserves to be reprinted. It would be a great fit for Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics line of reprints. I suppose I'll finish the series, backwards, by rereading Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941) next and closing out with Harvard Has a Homicide. Stay tuned!

Note for the curious: while churning out this review, I stumbled across the fact Fuller wrote short stories and one of his stories, "The Second Visitor," features Jupiter Jones. “The Second Visitor” made its first and only appearance in the September, 1937, issue of The American Magazine. So it has slipped through the cracks and forgotten about, but perhaps a short story worth reviving for a future American Mystery Classics anthology. Fuller wrote a few more short stories that appear to be (possibly) criminal in nature: "An Acquaintance with Thieves" (Britannia and Eve, Jun. 1948), "The Husband Who Disappeared" (Cosmopolitan, Jan. 1950), "His Wife Cried Wolf" (This Week, Jul. 10, 1955) and "A Shot in the Dark" (Bluebook, Apr. 1956).

Hold on a second! Just one more thing: Just discovered "The Second Visitor”" was reprinted, only once, in the Spring, 1953, issue of Triple Detective. Strange that the only Jupiter Jones short story was never reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or any of the Ellery Queen anthologies. So it either was really overlooked and forgotten about or it's just shit.

The Case of the Curious Heel (1943/44) by Ken Crossen

Back in February, I reviewed Ken Crossen's The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1944), second and last novel in the Jason Jones and Necessary Smith series, which is an incredibly fun, pulpy impossible crime tale with Crossen fanboying all over his favorite mystery writers, characters and novels – complete with a locked room lecture ("...guess I can say a few words on impossible situations"). So pulp at its most entertaining. On the other hand, Crossen's The Laughing Buddha Murders (1944), starring the American-Tibetan detective Chin Kwang Kham, turned out to be a letdown. Disappointing since Crossen used The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints to promote The Laughing Buddha Murders and that raised certain expectations. Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel (1943/44) and Murder Out of Mind (1945) fortunately still looked very promising.

In fact, Anthony Boucher praised Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel as "a high-grade pulp yarn" about impossible murders piling up around an obnoxious ex-pulp writer "whose identity is fun to guess."

The Case of the Curious Heel was originally published in the May, 1943, issue of Baffling Detective Mysteries and opens with the introduction to that obnoxious ex-pulp writer, Johnny Bell, who got his start in pulp magazines like Detective Yarns Weekly – before getting moving on to the slicks and Hollywood ("writing pictures for Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, Rita Hayworth"). Bell is currently working on a mystery play written, directed and produced by himself. So every time Bell completed a scene, he gathers a group to act out the scene as a test run. The Case of the Curious Heel begins on the evening of one such rehearsal and it's a full house. There's his wife, Betty Bell, his private secretary, June Hayes, and his ghost writer, Bennett Barlay, who carries on the Johnny Bell magazine stories so his employer can concentrate on his movie scripts and stage play. Further more, there are Willard Duncan, a literary agent, Manny Ladd, press agent, Ray Martin, a Hollywood columnist, and the author of the Freddy Hack mysteries, Gregor Fain. Lastly, the actress Karen Russell and the man who coughed up ten grand to back the play, George Porter.

Before they play out the scene, the reader gets an example why some might consider their host to be a perfectly viable target for shooting practice. Bell calls everyone present leeches, parasites and sponges ("every one of you would starve to death if it weren't for me"). When everyone there knew Bell's "a real vampire" living "on the literary blood of others," among other charming personality traits and habits.

Surprisingly, it's not Johnny Bell who bites the dust during the rehearsal. The scene they rehearse has Karen Russell's character picking up a gun to shoot Manny Ladd's character, but, when she pulls the trigger, it actually goes off. Ladd getting fatally shot is the first (quasi) impossible situation of the story. The gun was not only supposed to be empty, but was proved to be empty when "Bell put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger five times" to show it was a harmless prop. Bell "then he tossed the gun to the girl" and "she held it until she pulled the trigger." They all swore the gun was empty when it fired a very real bullet. Another peculiar aspect is that only Bell and June Hayes knew beforehand what the scene was about and that it involved a gun. Only two people knew beforehand what was going to happen in the scene, Bell and June Hayes. So only they knew it would involve the gun he had brought back from Hollywood. That looks bad for Bell.. or was there a mix-up with him being the intended victim? Bell hires a private investigator, Necessary Smith, to look after his interests and work alongside the "poor man's Nero Wolfe," First Grade Detective Jason Jones. They're two characters who deserved a longer run than they got.

Jason Jones, round, red and jovial, has "a working agreement" with his superiors to never get promoted in exchange for solving those pesky cases "that the captain said couldn't be solved." That way, Jones can attend to his wife's cooking and tending his geraniums in his rooftop hothouse instead of having to worry about work floor politics and rivalries. This arrangement also allows Jones to handle cases according to his own unhurried, armchair methods. Jones believes the right technique is simply waiting rather than wear himself out chasing around or thinking deeply about clues, "murderer feels pretty safe as long as he sees all that activity," but when the detective sits around, ignores the clues and ask a few routine questions the murderer gets nervous – which is when they make mistakes. Jones very much admires characters like Nero Wolfe and Mycroft Holmes. Necessary Smith is your average, 1940s American gumshoe who legally changed when his ex-boss, Bruce Elliott (the Bruce Elliott?), regularly interrupted his verbal reports with the question, "was that necessary, Smith?" His boss thought that was funny. So, when he retired, handed the business over to Smith.

Jones and Smith make for a fun detective duo who have their work cutout for them as it becomes ever clear they're dealing with a killer who has "the fiction mind." Not only the dubious shooting of Manny Ladd and it's various possibilities, but also second body turning up behind the locked door of a lavatory and "a fly couldn't get in that room without the door opening for him." Boucher wasn't wrong to call this a high-grade pulp yarn, but I'll get to the plot in a moment.

The Case of the Curious Heel is still a pulp mystery. Even the best pulp mysteries lacked the rigorous plotting and polish of their Golden Age counterparts, because they were written at piece rate with much shorter deadlines. Every now and then, a pulp writer would deliver a more polished detective novel, like James Ronald's Murder in the Family (1936) or John Russell Fearn's posthumously published Pattern of Murder (2006), but they're the exceptions and The Case of the Curious Heel is not. For example, Crossen lightly rewrote/copied passages between Jones and Smith from The Case of the Curious Heel for The Laughing Buddha Murders. Jones even launches into a locked room lecture. So the story more than once gave me a light sense of déjà vu, but there's also the occasional sloppiness in details. In the first chapter, Barlay is scolded for pointing out the locked room murder from Bell's stage play is practically the same as the impossible shooting from his short story "Thumbs Up for Death." This story is referred to again later on in the story as "Thumbs Up for Murder." Something you can't help but notice. By the way, as an aside, Bennett Barlay is one of Crossen's pseudonyms.

Anyway, the plot is definitely a cut, or two, above the average '40s pulp yarn. Not for the usual reasons either. Normally, the impossible crime in a pulp-style locked room mystery is the most substantial plot piece with the who and why usually being obvious from early on in the story – which here was the other way round. I suppose that's on theme as 2025 has not been a great year for finding an abundance of excellent impossible crime and locked room mysteries. Crossen handled the murderer's identity and motive with more skill than expected going by my previous two reads. Solution is only really hampered by the trick used to shoot the first victim, which is dodgy from start to finish. So much could have gone wrong, (SPOILER/ROT13: jung vs, nsgre chyyvat gur gevttre svir gvzrf, chyyrq vg n fvkgu gvzr gb naabl gur areibhf tngurevat rira zber? Jung vs gur tha jnf cbvagrq ng fbzrbar ryfr gung fvkgu gvzr? Jung vs Oryy unq chyyrq gur gevttre n fvkgu gvzr juvyr gur tha jnf cbvagrq ng Ynqq be gur zheqrere? Jung vs Oryy fvzcyl unqa'g chyyrq gung fghag? Which would not have been out-of-character and would have tossed a huge spanner into the murderer's plans. The locked room-trick used in the second murder is perfunctory, but neatly used for a false-solution and providing an even neater twist to Jones' explanation.

Crossen's The Case of the Curious Heel is indeed a quality piece of pulp fiction. Maybe not the very best locked room pulp, plotwise, but Necessary Smith and Jason Jones make up where the plot lacked. I would have like to have seen more of them or at least gotten a few short stories out of those apocryphal cases Jones mentioned. Jones' short teaser of "The Case of the Missing G-String" sounds like a trip!

Note for the curious: the locked room from the stage play is briefly described, but not in too great detail and no solution given. The gist of the locked room is that a man is found under circumstances giving "a perfect picture of suicide." A room with every door and window locked from the inside ("...impossible for anyone to get into the room without crawling through the keyhole"). Only real detail is the thumb print of one of the (innocent) suspects being discovered in the center of the ceiling. So not much to build an armchair solution around, except that the thumb print on the ceiling probably means a wire/pulley trick was involved to turn the key from the inside. A trick requiring a ladder to setup and that allowed for the artistic touch of the faked thumb print on the ceiling. Otherwise, it would be too inconvenient and risky to lug a ladder around the house just to put a thumb print on the ceiling. Why not simply put it on an untampered window catch to muddy the waters? But if a ladder was needed to setup a wire/pulley trick, the ceiling print would be even more incriminating for a frame job than a print on a window catch. There's no reason why people wouldn't leave prints on window catches. They were made to be handled, but the ceiling of a crime scene is a different. I'll shut up now. :)

A Challenger Appears: C.M.B. vol. 5-6 by Motohiro Katou

Three months ago, I finished Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series with my review of vol. 50 and compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50" as a follow-up to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25" shortly after – decided to take a short break from Katou's detective fiction. A short break that lasted about a month longer than originally intended. Having "spammed" Q.E.D. reviews earlier in the year, I wanted to return to C.M.B. before starting on Q.E.D. iff.

The first, of two, stories from C.M.B. vol. 5, "Gutenberg Bible," brings a rare visitor to Sakaki Shinra's strange, hidden Museum of Antiquity. A young, foreign woman, Mau Sugal, who carries around a huge, briefcase-like backpack and speaks Japanese perfectly.

What she brought along is a historical treasure: a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible. She wants Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, to give his expert opinion and, if possible, authenticate it. When he asks where the page came from and under which circumstances it was obtained, Sugal tells him she "cannot reveal that due to the exact wishes of the customer." Shinra flat out refuses to authenticate the page much to the annoyance of his friend, Nanase Tatsuki ("she's in trouble and needs your help"), but he can't risk the Gutenberg page being sold on the black market with his seal of authenticity stamped on it. The black market in stolen art and archaeological artifacts is at the heart of this story, because the page naturally attracts the attention from both criminals and the law. A case that also involves a rumored, hitherto unknown copy of the Gutenberg Bible locked away in a safety deposit box.

So a really fun story, but, plot-wise, impossible to spoil as the story introduces Mau Sugal with the ending revealing and setting her up as an antagonist to Shinra – more like a good natured frenemy. Mau Sugal returns in the next story.

"Spirit of the Forest," second and last story of vol. 5, sees Sugal coming back to Shinra's museum ("are you here to steal again?"). She wants him to accompany her to the jungles of Borneo to help find someone he knows, Sadaman the herbalist, who "can cure people with his knowledge of the different types of herbs growing in the forest." That talent attracted the attention of the CEO of Navaro Pharmaceuticals, Levy Noble. She saw possibilities to create new medicines to combat the bacteria that start to show immunity to current medicines, but an incident happened. Lloyd Shorts, a plant hunter, accompanied by an investigator, John Baits, were dispatched to make contact with Sadaman, but, on their second meeting, Baits was killed ("...his head was cut off") and Lloyd run into the jungle in a panic – screaming he's "gonna be killed by Sadaman as well." This murder comes with a ghostly impossibility. Right before the body was found, someone saw Baits walking across a bridge and followed him, but only bumped into Lloyd on the other side. And he hadn't seen Baits come by. So a dead man walking inexplicably vanished into thin air!

However, "Spirit of the Forest" is more like one of those character-driven puzzles from Q.E.D. in which the importance is on Shinra trying to find and understand the lessons Shadaman taught him as a kid. Not necessarily the criminal scheme playing out behind the scenes. While the ghostly disappearance on the bridge has a glimmer of originality, the solution represents one of those rare instances where the visual language of manga is not at all complimentary to trick. Normally, they show the still largely untapped potential of visual impossible crimes, but this just looked preposterous. A trick that should have been described and left to the imagination. This has not been a great year for finding gems of locked room mystery and impossible crime story.

So, on a whole, a fun enough, if unchallenging, story which also sums up this fifth volume in toto. Fun but not especially challenging, plotwise. You can write that down to being early in the series and having to introduce and setting up recurring characters and storylines. But fine for getting back into the series after a hiatus.

C.M.B. vol. 6 is made up a single, longish story, "Canopus," digging into Shinra's sometimes tragic background. The story takes place in Cairo, Egypt, where a deranged serial killer is taking a scenic tour of the historic city and generally being a bad guest in a foreign country. First stop of this serial killer is Cairo's Museum of Antiquity where a man is shot, killed and mutilated. Only other thing the killer left behind was a shell casing engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, the bullet damaged an ancient artifact that had been excavated by Shinra's late mother, Haruna. That brings a distraught Shinra to Cairo to hunt down the shooter who damaged the artifact.

Speaking of Shinra's family, "Canopus" is the other part of the crossover with Q.E.D. that began in "Pharaoh's Necklace" from vol. 28. Shinra and his cousin Sou Touma, along with Kana Mizuhara, happened to be in Cairo at the same time, which means they get to interact and exchange advise. Tatsuki uses the meeting to subtly get more background information on Shinra out of Touma and Mizuhara. Meanwhile, the serial killer continues his murder spree as more mutilated bodies and hieroglyphics shell casing turn up near Egypt's historical landmarks.

So there's plenty going on with enough room to work out the three major plot points. Firstly, the very sad, sometimes brutal backstory of Shinra's relationship with his mother and how he lost her. Secondly, while the serial killer doesn't pose a terribly complicated plot-thread, there's reason to the killer's madness to give it that good, old-fashioned whodunit tug. Thirdly, Shinra playing armchair detective to dispel the countless myths, conspiracy theories and apparent anomalies surrounding the construction of the pyramids – acknowledging his take is “just a hypothesis" with "no tangible evidence." I really enjoyed this segment short as it was! It reminded me of MORI Hiroshi's short story "Sekito no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999) in which several armchair sleuths pore over an architectural conundrum from 7th century India. The crossover part simply is a bonus!

C.M.B. vol. 6 is a solid, single story volume doing an admirable job in balancing character-and series building with the various plot-threads, past and present. So probably going to read up to vol. 10, before starting on Q.E.D. iff and alternate between the two series. Stay tuned!

A Yacht Sets Sail (1947) by Deck Dorval

"Deck Dorval" is the joined pseudonym of three Belgian authors, Frans van Dooren, Jef Beeckmans and Jos Deckkers, who had a forty-year friendship "based on their mutual interest in Esperanto, philosophy and literature" – evidently they loved detective stories. Together, they collaborated on two detective novels, Zwarte kunst (Black Arts, 1947) and Een jacht vaart uit (A Yacht Sets Sail, 1947). Van Dooren took on the bulk of the plotting and writing, Deckkers edited and Beeckmans gave it his critical eye.

That's the shortened, simplified history of the short-lived "Deck Dorval" series of detective novels, but putting its backstory together was a mini-puzzle.

Not every source mentions/recognizes Van Dooren's co-authors and some confusion exists over the original publication year of Black Arts and A Yacht Sets Sail, which is either 1945 or 1947. I believe the latter is the correct year as the 1945 date comes from a single source and it probably wasn't best year to launch a book with the whole World War II kerfuffle coming to an end. Curiously, the same source also mentions Van Dooren was known for a popular radio-series, Inspecteur Kant knapt het op (Inspector Kant Fixes It), that aired for 104 episodes on Radio-Antwerpen, but nothing can be found online – no air dates, episode descriptions or cast listings. So don't know if there's any relation between the Inspector Kant from the radio-series and Inspector Xaverius Kant from A Yacht Sets Sail. Nor am I sure if their books were originally written in Esperanto and then translated into Dutch/Flemish or the other way round. If they were written in Esperanto first, the translator, Christian Declerk, can probably be counted as the fourth collaborator to complete this "Quentin Quartet." Finally, the "Deck Dorval" name resurfaced after a forty year hiatus when Black Arts and A Yacht Sets Sail were reissued in the 1983 and 1990 as Boze geesten (Angry Spirits) and De dood aan boord (Death on Board). A few years later, Van Doorner, now in his late eighties, unsuccessfully tried to revive the series with two new novels, Kazinski komt te laat (Kazinski Arrives Too Late, 1992) and Urd Hadda werd vermoord (Urd Hadda was Murdered, 1993). Deckkers and Beeckmans had both died by then and Van Dooren followed his friends in 1996. So a bit of a scattered history, but now you're all caught up.

Some of you know I like to poke around the desolate ruins of the Dutch-language detective story from time to time. You can find a short overview of my findings in the review of Ine van Etten's De moord in het openluchtmuseum (Murder at the Open Air Museum, 1954). While poking around, I came across a few references to Deck Dorval with A Yacht Sets Sail appearing to be the best of their efforts. So jotted it down for future reference, but copies of both the original editions and reprints aren't available in abundance. I kind of forgot about it until someone got me a copy! Let's see how well it stands up as a detective story.

As you probably guessed from the title, A Yacht Sets Sail takes place aboard a large, luxurious private yacht, Zeevalk, property of an American industrialist and millionaire, Otto S. Maxton – who invited a dozen notables along on this leisurely voyage. There's his fellow industrialist, Herman Steinmann, who's accompanied by his wife, Maria, and their son, Alex. Count and Countess de la Fosse. Jean Baptiste de Groot, doctor of medicine, who brought along his wife, Sophie. Jean Dubois, a poet, Juan Gulopez, a Spanish philosopher and European chess champion, and a Miss Stella Sterlen. Additionally, Maxton brought along his private secretary, Miss Yvonne Durlet, manservant/butler, Henry Higgs, and notary/lawyer, Theodore van der Meersch. Last, but not least, the Flemish policeman Inspector Xaverius Kant.

Inspector Kant is both a little baffled Maxton invited a simple policeman along on a pleasure cruise aboard a private yacht in the company of high society, but also scolds himself ("...old fool") for having falling for the charms of Miss Durlet. Other than that, the voyage is calm and peaceful, until an incident with a drunken sailor bothering Countess de la Fosse. A normally minor, forgettable incident that ends up giving the entire crew an alibi when a shot rings out from Maxton's cabin. Someone shot the millionaire through the back of his head with a heavy caliber weapon, which left a terrible mess on the cabin floor. A bloodied button in Maxton's hand appears to give an early solution to the case, but Kant exposes the tell-tale clue for the red herring it really is and a second death deepens the mystery even further. A murder presented as a suicide, but, once again, Kant spots the camouflage and cuts right through it.

This is the point where the plot becomes tricky to discuss in detail as A Yacht Sets Sail is a as-describe-on-tin detective novel, which is both its primary strength and biggest weakness.

Firstly, the plot holds together, technically speaking, which makes for a genuine, if somewhat bland, Golden Age shipboard mystery. However, the two central plot-pieces, first and second murder, retread old ground. So you can easily see in which direction the ending is heading, despite the sincere attempts to fairly hide it. It betrays the authors were amateurs, well-intended amateurs, but amateurs who simply lacked the experience, polish and confidence to carry this piece of fan fiction to the status of a respectable second-stringer – because they showed less confidence in their own (hidden) ideas. The ending reveals the (SPOILER/ROT13) pnova jurer Znkgba pbhyq unir orra n irel hahfhny naq bevtvany ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel, juvpu jnf “ybpxrq” ol gur furyy pnfvat. Jura gurl bcrarq gur qbbe, nsgre urnevat gur fubg, gur qbbe fjrcg nfvqr gur furyy pnfvat naq cebirf abobql pbhyq unir yrsg gur ebbz nsgre gur fubg jnf sverq. I suppose they feared developing this “missed clue” into a full-fledged plot-thread would have given away too much, but would also have given Kant a break from interviewing everyone to chew on that puzzling aspect of the case. It certainly would have put a stamp of their own on the plot.

So the only surprising bit about the ending is how Kant's solution is revealed to be a false-solution by another character, a rival detective is always fun, but here it really came at the expense of Kant's character. Why not make both their solutions kind of correct? It can be done without altering a single letter, or comma, to the story. Simply have the culprit from the false-solution intervene with the plans from the correct solution and the result would be exactly the same, but with a pleasing bit of complexity and some depth added to it. Yes, having multiple culprits can be hackwork, but it can work with the right story. A Yacht Sets Sail is one of those stories in which multiple culprits would not have only worked, but improved the plot with the professional's practical solution paired with the armchair musings of the amateur. So there's definitely more here than the three authors got out of it and had they shown a bit more confidence and daring, A Yacht Sets Sail could have been more than merely an average, inoffensive and lightweight shipboard mystery.

Well, I guess the search for good, classic, or classically-styled, Dutch detective fiction continues. Surely, there has to be another locked room gem like Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) or a treat like Ton Vervoort hidden somewhere?

Under Siege: "The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" (2000) by Edward D. Hoch

In 1995, Edward D. Hoch introduced a new character to his gallery of detectives, Alexander Swift, who's a civilian investigator and spy for General George Washington during the Revolutionary War – appearing in thirteen short stories between 1995 and 2007. Crippen & Landru collected the entire series under the title Constant Hearses and Other Revolutionary Stories (2022). I have not read anything from this series before, but one story was recommended, sometime, somewhere by someone, as an excellent historical impossible crime mystery. So decided to start as an appetizer to the series.

"The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" was first published in the December, 2000, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and takes place in September, 1781, "nearly a year since Benedict Arnold's treasonous attempt to surrender West Point to the British." General Washington received secret intelligence Benedict Arnold, now a general in the British army, has returned and is planning expedition somewhere in Connecticut to divert a part of the American army away from Washington's campaign in Virginia. Washington dispatches Swift to find out Arnold's exact plans and alert the militia in Connecticut.

That brings Swift to the city of New London, on the Thames River, defended by Fort Trumbull on the west bank and Fort Griswold on the eastern side of the river. Fort Griswold, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William Ledyard, is where Swift spends the night, but wakes up the next morning to the news "that British troops had landed under cover of darkness" and "were attacking on both sides of the harbor" – defenses were overwhelmed and eventually crumbled. Colonel Ledyard surrenders the fort and his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Potter, a Loyalist, who immediately plunged the sword into Ledyard's chest. Swift is together with the colonel's widow, two captains and two lieutenants the only survivors who now find themselves confined to guarded colonel's quarters.

Emily Ledyard demands her husband to be avenged, "one of you four, my husband's trusted officers, take revenge for his death by killing Colonel Potter by any means possible." She suggests the four draw straws, so none of them knows who really done it, which they do. Colonel Potter ends the day on the receiving end of a sword thrust, but the four officers were imprisoned together with Swift and Emily Ledyard when Potter was murdered. More pressingly than an apparent impossibility, Arnold telling he has to solve the murder because he intends to hang the murderer before departing. And if the murderer is not found before, they will all hang. So that's quite an incentive to play detective.

"The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" has a fantastic setup, plenty of historical drama and a few memorable scenes like the siege or the murder of Colonel Ledyard, but the plot is not one of Hoch's finest. I liked the idea of turning the locked-and guarded room inside to create an alibi that stands like a fortress, but found the explanation to be disappointingly unimaginative and second-rate. So, purely as a detective story or locked room mystery, "The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" came up short, but harmless as a fun, entertaining historical yarn.

Note for the curious: Mike Grost points out on his website that the Alexander Swift series can be read as an episodic novel as "the tales build on each other" to "form a united sequence, in some ways similar to a novel." So perhaps being chronologically challenged is the problem here.

The Will o' the Wisp Mystery (2024) by Edward D. Hoch

The Will o' the Wisp Mystery (2024), introduced by Tom Mead, is the latest collection of Edward D. Hoch short stories from Crippen & Landru and covers two short, but complete, series with the first being "an incredibly audacious experiment in storytelling" – a short novel made up of short stories. Six short stories, "The Pawn," "The Rook," "The Knight," "The Bishop," "The Queen" and "The King," originally serialized in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from April to September 1971 under the name "Mr. X." The Will o' the Wisp Mystery was reprinted in complete form a decade later in the anthology Ellery Queen's Maze of Mysteries (1982), before descending into obscurity. A shame as it's one of Hoch's more inventive pieces of detective fiction. Not only for its storytelling structure!

The one-shot detective of this unusual mystery is David Piper, the Manhunter, who works for the fictitious, ambiguously-named and underfunded Department of Apprehension. Piper's department assists other law enforcement agencies in "the capture of escaped convicts, the location of parole violators" and "even on occasion the return of runaway teenagers to their parents."

So when a prison bus transferring six criminals to jail gets hijacked, the Manhunter has to track down and apprehend the escaped prisoners. Busting a prison bus that leaves two guards dead, one injured and half a dozen criminals being pursued by man nicknamed "The Manhunter" sounds hardboiled, but there's a traditionally, fairly-clued puzzle plot – cleverly hidden underneath its timely trappings. Over the course of half a dozen stories, Piper attempts to find a connection between Nick Bruno ("underworld king"), Hugh Courtney ("impostor and murderer"), Kate Gallery ("murderess"), Charlie Hall ("swindler and card cheat"), Jack Larner ("bank robber and car thief") and Joe Reilly ("forger"). And, again, why they were busted out considering the people who organized the prison van ambush paid big money ("...my theory that they're together on some sort of big caper"). Each of the six stories has a self-contained piece of the bigger picture, tied to each of the six escapees, but every story ends on a cliffhanger. And, of course, they start bleeding into each other.

For example, the second story, "The Rook," one of the escapees turns up dead and murdered in a hotel room, which is solved, but Piper has some lingering questions regarding the circumstances of the murder ("...we're being maneuvered into making exactly the moves that someone wants us to make"). So even with the killer in custody, the murder continues to cause trouble later on in the story. That makes for a very short, very compact novel of no more than six "chapters," but, as previously mentioned, The Will o' the Wisp Mystery is not merely a mystery novelty item. Solution to what lies behind the prison bust and trail of bodies, or what the hypothesized big caper could, is original, imaginative and fairly clued. Piper even tries to buy time in the last chapter by going over all six clues. I found one clue particularly ingenious and think many of today's detective fans would agree.

Let me tell you, I did some self-congratulatory back-patting when the solution I pieced together turned out to be correct. I half expected I got hold of a juicy red herring, but the modern-day Mycroft Holmes right on the money. When a detective story is actually good, like The Will o' the Wisp Mystery, the readers always wins whether you solve it or get properly hoodwinked – because both are satisfying for different reasons. For me, anyway. Just for its titular story, The Will o' the Wisp Mystery comes highly recommended.

This collection has more to offer as it includes all seven short stories in the short, but long-lived, series about an inner city priest, Father David Noone. Mead described Father Noone as "a decidedly off-beat creation," compared to other clerical sleuths, who deals with the grittier, urban crimes of modern America. Simply put, they tend to be more character focused stories than most of Hoch's mysteries. Well, they aim for that early post-WWII realism. Hoch himself has said in an interview Father Noone is a character he kept "around for just the right type of story" appearing only sporadically in his short stories. Father Noone's first three appearances were spread out over a twenty-some year period from 1963 to 1985, while the final four were published between 2002 and 2004.

"Game of Skill," originally published in the December, 1963, issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, introduces Father Noone as he takes over the duties of the absent Monsignor at St. Monica's. On a Monday evening, Father Noone gets a threatening phone call from a man, "I'm going to blow up your church on Sunday morning." The man calls back everyday with the same threat, but everyday with a bit more venom. Father Noone is, of course, much more interested in reaching out to this troubled soul and tries to engage with him every time the phone rings. This builds up towards the Sunday mass with, story-and character-wise, an effective ending, but otherwise not much of a detective story. Hoch's early work, especially from the 1960s, is a bit spotty as some stories were just typical, gloomy 1960s crime stories (e.g. "The Oblong Room," 1967).

The next story, "The Thing in Lovers' Lane," first appeared in the July, 1971, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and is a slight improvement on the first story published eight years previously. Father Noone's parish is rocked to its foundation when a young priest, Father Kling, is killed, under compromising circumstances, in a lovers' lane – dying in the arms of a woman named Stella. Both were "shot to death in the front seat of her car." Understanding the true relationship between the two victims is the key to solving the case. A marginal improvement over the first story with a little bit more meat to the plot, but the "clueing" here shows Hoch was more interested in the characters than the plot (ROT13: jul qebc gur X jura Y jbhyq unir orra fb zhpu orggre, orpnhfr Fgryyn Xvat fbhaqf orggre naq n yvggyr rnfvre gb zvff guna Fgryyn Yvat, juvpu whfg fgnaqf bhg).

I reviewed the third story in the series last year, but "The Sweating Statue" (1985) is the best of the three Father Noone stories published before the 2000s. Yes, it helped that has a solid and somewhat unique impossible situation to center the story and characters around.

"One More Circus," originally published in the May, 2002, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is the first Father Noone short story from the second, short-lived period in the series from the early 2000s. So you get a far more polished story from an older, experienced Hoch than the first two stories from the '60s and early '70s. And it shows! Father Noone is asked to take on the duties as temporary chaplain for the performers of the Breen Brothers circus out in Montana, because "the Catholic Church in America was besieged by an acute shortage of priests." Father Noone agrees as it's only a three-day job, "you wouldn't miss any Sunday Masses," but his stay at the circus ends with a terrible, tragic accident revealed to be a cleverly-disguised murder – before reverting back to being a tragedy. In some ways, “One More Circus” is a similar to "Game of Skill," but the ending is better handled and thus far more effective. Even though it's not much of a detective story.

"The Arrow of Ice," original to the anthology Murder Most Catholic: Divine Tales of Profane Crimes (2002), finds Father Noone's parish during a tumultuous period. A part of his parish, "clinging to the past," are in a uproar over the plans to renovate and modernized the church. They're demonstrating the plans and the architect, Porter Macklin, who's going to redesign the church. Meanwhile, the other parishioners are preparing for an upcoming festival featuring ice sculptures. Between all of this, the visiting architect is found murdered in the kitchen of the rectory with a sliver of ice sticking out of his bloodied throat. This is one of Hoch's lesser-known, rarely discussed stories and so hoped, based on the title, it would be some clever take on the impossible crimes with the normally trite icicle weapons, but no such thing. Just a competently put together, but unremarkable, whodunit. Same can be more or less said about the next story.

"The Hand of God," first published in the January, 2003, issue of EQMM, brings Father Noone to St. Joan of Arc college to attend a conference, but it gets cancelled when a sophomore student, Darcy Clemence, is shot and killed. A second body is soon found suggesting suicide with the victim having left behind a suicide note and confession on his computer ("I didn't mean to kill her"). So was it a murder/suicide or a double murder? I think the best aspects of "The Hand of God" is its college setting and Father Noone hitting upon the solution during a performance by college drama club of Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story. Both helped to prop up the plot and solution.

"Searching for Sammy Sand," originally published in the August, 2004, issue of EQMM, is the seventh and final story in the Father Noone series. There's still a shortage of priests and Father Noone is asked to act as chaplain at the county jail, until they have a permanent replacement. One of the prisoners, Roger Colone, claims to be innocent and asks Father Noone to help him find a man by the name of Sammy Sand. Colone is a landlord who rented one of his houses, off the book, to this Sammy Sand, but turned the place into a drug house. What's more, the refrigerator, "often contains chemicals used to manufacture synthetic drugs," was booby trapped with a grenade. However, it was a police officer who opened the fridge and died in the explosion. And, of course, Sammy Sand is nowhere to be found. So it was Colone who was left holding the bag. Father Noone can never ignore a plea for help and begins to snoop around. The plot behind the elusive Sammy Sand and the booby trapped fridge is not terribly complex, but Hoch created some pleasing plot-patterns out of this atypical situation for a detective story. I suppose its fitting this series ends with Noone telling the culprit, "I can hear your confession."

So how to rate The Will o' the Wisp Mystery as a whole? The titular story, or short novel, is the main attraction of the collection and worth the price of admission alone, but the Father Noone stories are the customary mixed bag. "The Sweating Statue" is the standout of the series and “Searching for Sammy Sand” is probably the only other story that'll stick in my mind, which probably not going to be true for the other stories – especially the first two. But then again, I'm probably not the right person to appreciate this series. So get the collection for The Will o' the Wisp Mystery and take the Father Noone stories as an extra.

It's About Impossible Crime (2025) by James Scott Byrnside

Last time we heard of James Scott Byrnside was a short story, "The Silent Steps of Murder," posted on his blog as an appetizer to his upcoming, then untitled collection of original short stories – nearly all were still developmental stage at the time. So it took about a year and a half for the collection to materialize, but early June finally saw the publication of It's About Impossible Crime (2025). A collection of five, relatively longish stories dedicated to MacKinlay Kantor and William Spier. The title of the collection is, of course, a nod to Kantor's short story collection It's About Crime (1960) which include his two impossible crime stories "The Strange Case of Steinkelwintz" (1929) and "The Light at Three O'Clock" (1930). Spier was the radio director who worked on The Adventures of Sam Spade and Suspense series. So the tone for these stories is set!

It's About Impossible Crime starts out with the aforementioned "The Silent Steps of Murder," but already reviewed as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 4" after it was published on Byrnside's blog. I'm not going over the story again, however, there are a couple of differences between the original and final version of the story. Byrnside originally intended It's About Impossible Crime to have an overarching storyline, concerning an enterprising serial killer who had already strangled seven women, which got scrapped. So references to that case do not appear in this final version and the fun little challenge to the reader was scrapped as well. Other than those changes, "The Silent Steps of Murder" is true to the original version I read and enjoyed last year. Simply a great retro-GAD story.

The second story is the intriguingly-titled "Where There's Smoke, There's Pazuzu" which begins with an ominous phone call to Rowan Manory, the best private detective in 1920s Chicago. A muffled voice tells him a man, named Burt Parnell, is about to be slaughtered in his office, on the third floor of the Pinnacle Place, but warns the detective there will be nothing to solve – because "this murder will be a completely supernatural affair." Manory and his assistant, Walter Williams, go to the building to investigate. When they arrive, the fire brigade is already present to put out a fire in Parnell's office, but the door is locked from the inside and they need to get out an axe to open it. Inside the partially burned office, they find what's left of Parnell sitting behind his desk without a head and his entrails spilled out on the floor. The office was turned inside out, but "no one other than the victim was found inside."

So another seemingly impossible murder for the two Chicago gumshoes, but Manory knows "the solution always lies within the bounds of reality" even when demonology rears its ugly head. In this case, the ancient demon Pazuzu of The Exorcist fame who came along with a curse placed on Parnell. This case has a personal, painfully grounded aspect for Williams, a veteran of the Great War. The daughter of Parnell is engaged to the son of an old friend from the trenches. And learns from him most of their friends who made it out have fallen on hard times or passed away, which gives Williams a pang of survivor's guilt. So a jam packed story and a pretty good one at that. I only pieced together the locked room-trick, but the murderer's identity and well-hidden motive took me by surprise. Another very well-done retro-GAD locked room mystery.

"Instrument of Death" is a non-impossible crime story, but, curiously enough, probably the best piece of detective fiction Byrnside has produced so far. Violet Reynolds, outwardly happily married, who fears her husband, Bobby, no longer loves her and decides to consult a spiritual medium. Madame Dunkel has some bad news: she sees a man standing over her corpse. A big, ugly man. And it will happen very soon ("your fate is sealed"). This large, ugly man is introduced to the reader as Dickie Daubert when he's busy hiding the body of Julie McPhee in her attic. Julie is a friend of Violet, who recently came into possession of a valuable violin, which Dickie wants to get his hands on – no matter the cost. What he has to find out is whom, of Julie's friends in the orchestra, is taking care of the violin as the bodies begin to stack. There are, however, only so many bodies you can litter across Chicago, before it attracts the attention of Manory. This time assisted by Officer Kegan, because Williams is out of town.

So without an impossible crime and a big, dumb violent brute strangling and stabbing people, "Instrument of Death" sounds more like something out of an hardboiled pulp magazine than a detective story proper. But rarely has appearances been so deceiving, even in our genre. When Dickie closes in on Violet, the story begins to twist and turn with the same brutality as the murders. I didn't see that ending coming at all and that final scene was very effective. Like a hardboiled Ellery Queen or a substantially-plotted Mike Shayne story. My favorite from this collection!

"The Preminger Curse" is an unapologetic throwback to the Gothic tales of crimes and suspense from the Doylean era of the genre. Manory travels down to Cairo, Illinois, to attend the reading of the will of two ex-clients, Dolph and Sophie Preminger. Manory is mentioned in their will and takes Williams along to the rundown Preminger mansion to see what's all about, because late changes to a will is never a good sign. When they arrive, they find a tensely gathered family and the reading of the will does very little to lessen the strain. Jasper Dunn, family lawyer, tells their daughter and younger son, Beverly and Timothy, they'll receive one hundred thousand dollars each ("that's... significantly less than it used to be"). Robert, oldest son, only gets a measly twenty-five thousand dollars. Their adopted brother, Simon, gets two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for giving his adopted parents so much joy when they were abandoned by their own children. Finally, there's their only grandchild, Ernest, who was the only child of their late son Cornelius. He gets the mansion, grounds and two millions worth in assets under one peculiar condition that comes with even stranger comments.

They must remain at Preminger mansion for the next twenty-four hours and should Ernest "commit the crime of murder against any blood relative," his "inheritance shall be forfeit" and the estate to be liquidated – to be "divided equally among the surviving heirs." Reasoning behind this strange condition is the Preminger Curse. In the 1700s, the Premingers were saddled with a burdensome curse, "one of the Preminger offspring will go mad and attempt to kill the rest of the family" every other generation. It happened twice already and the last time nearly wiped out the entire family. Which is why there's only one grandchild. Cornelius was the only one who defied his parents wishes and had a child. So the whole family were terrified of Ernest and was treated abysmally as a child, which included being locked away in room with barred windows and a padlock on the door. That left him with a personality disorder.

So the conditions of the will, frayed family ties, money needs and a less idyllic atmosphere nicely sets the stage for murder, which is why Manory was asked to be present – who's guaranteed a fat fee no matter what happens. Next twenty-four hours aren't uneventful with people getting killed or disappearing from locked and watched rooms. A barefoot, messy haired and almost ghostly figure of woman was seen dancing wildly in the rain. While the locked room-tricks are simple, straightforward affairs, the strength of the story is how it all folded together in the end cleverly (SPOILER/ROT13) haoheqravat gur zheqrere sebz fhfcvpvba. "The Preminger Curse" is the longest story in this collection, but not one that overstayed its welcome for even a single page. A great, very well-done homage to those Victorian-era mysteries from Doyle's days.

The fifth, and final, story is "Cue, Murder!" begins on New Year's Eve in the apartment of Atlee Burroughs, a stage director and teacher, who's entertaining a student, Paul Chase. They interrupted by an argument coming from the apartment below, "pipes in this building carry noise," where a former, Hollywood-bound student lives. Burroughs and Chase overhear Jonathan Keltner arguing with someone who brought a knife and a plan, "when they find your corpse, the door will be locked and the key inside." So they call the police and the responding officer kicks down the door to reveal Jonathan Keltner's body, but why was his body rolled inside a rug? And why is there a pile of celluloid strips lying on the floor? A locked room murder in Chicago naturally brings Manory to the scene of the crime. I don't think the central conceit is going to trick the seasoned, cynical armchair detective, but how it was done is a little trickier with an interesting, risky (ROT13) hfr bs n pbhcyr bs hajvggvat nppbzcyvprf juvpu urer vf creuncf cersrenoyr gb n pehqr erpbeqvat bs na nethzrag orvat cynlrq. On top of that, the locked room-trick is, given the circumstances, simple and practical without being routine or old hat. And it played on a locked room principle that has always fascinated me (ROT13: znxvat na haybpxrq qbbe be jvaqbj nccrne gb or gvtugyl ybpxrq). This all placed against the seedy, backstage world and goings on of the theatrical world and its crowd makes "Cue, Murder!" a solid story to close out the collection.

So, when it comes to the overall quality, the stories collected here range from solid to superb and even with only a handful of stories that's an accomplishment. You always have to expect one, or two, duds, but not It's About Impossible Crime. They're all Golden Age worthy whodunits in which Byrnside showcases he as skilled in hiding murderers as he's at getting them out of tightly locked rooms and impossible situations. That's also my only complaint. For a collection titled It's About Impossible Crime, it hasn't all that much to say about its impossible crimes. "Where There's Smoke, There's Pazuzu" and "Cue, Murder!" are the only two stories really deliver as impossible crime stories with "Silent Steps of Murder" underplaying its impossible situation and the two locked room murders in "The Preminger Curse" being very minor. "Instrument of Death," best story of the collection, has none at all. Not that it takes anything away from them as first-rate, neo-GAD mysteries, but was looking forward to picking apart a few meaty locked room puzzles. So take the locked rooms as a little bonus on top of five excellently written and constructed detective stories. I hope to see more of Manory and Williams in the future. Don't pull a vanishing-act on us, James! Remember, you promised to write Time Seals All Rooms. :)

This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943) by Timothy Fuller

Last month, I looked at Timothy Fuller's fifth and final Jupiter Jones novel, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950), which appeared after a seven year hiatus following the publication This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943) – reads like a soft, updated reboot of the series. Well, I remember Jupiter Jones starting out in Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) and Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941) as a lighthearted, wisecracking take on the Van Dinean, Ellery Queen-style detective. But those memories have become hazy over the years. I recall just enough to notice the leap from young, fresh faced college snoop to a middle-aged man living in the suburbs with a wife and children.

Keep Cool, Mr. Jones is not a success story when it comes to trying to reinvent a Golden Age character for the second-half of the previous century or relaunching the series, but enjoyed it enough to track down a copy of This is Murder, Mr. Jones. That proved to be an unexpected surprise as I expected nothing more than a fun, lightweight mystery with a radio background and locked room murder. It certainly is a nimbly-plotted mystery novel satirizing radio dramas, but This is Murder, Mr. Jones got more out of both than appeared possible at first sight. Among some other noteworthy touches to the story and plot.

Following his outings in Harvard Has a Homicide and Three Thirds of a Ghost, Jupiter Jones is getting a reputation as an amateur detective. Jupiter's status as an amateur detective landed him an invitation from Emerson West to attend to one-year anniversary live show of his radio program, This is Murder. West, "the poor man's Woollcott," plans to mark the occasion with an reenactment of the century-old, unsolved murder at Parker Hall, in Molton, Massachusetts, where "Felicia Parker was done to death" – presumably by her husband. Robert Parker had "ample grounds to murder his wife" and a reliable enough alibi to clear him from suspicion. So the case entered the annals of crime as one of those tantalizingly unsolved mysteries that has been discussed for decades. Jupiter gladly accepts the invitation and travels with his wife, Betty, to now abandoned Parker Hall where the cast and crew has gathered to prepare and rehearse for the broadcast.

West attracted three well-known actors, Carla Blake, Gordon Dane and Katherine Moore, to play to principle players in the drama ("...amazing what blackmail can do"). The people behind the scene is the director, Rocky Davenport, Foley, the sound man, and the announcer, Burroughs. West is further assisted by his personal ghostwriter, Grant, and lovely "feminine assistant" named Miss Terry Stewart. There are also several guests, beside Jupiter and Betty Jones. Elmo T. Gillespie, "a fellow criminologist," is a collector of murder weapons who actually brought the knife from the Parker case along. A Mr. Brown, real estate agent and current owner of Parker Hall, who's brought along his wife. Finally, Mr. Jerome, a representative of the show's sponsor, who's also accompanied by his wife. Show goes off without a hitch, but when they go off the air, West announces to the group he's going to present them with the solution to the Parker case. A private showing, of sort, requiring "a short re-enactment of the crime itself" in which West locks himself away in the bathroom. But never comes back out. When they break open the door, they find West lying in a pool of blood. His throat cut with the Parker knife. What appeared to be suicide quickly proves to be an impossible murder. Not only how the murderer vanished from the bathroom, but how the knife was brought into the bathroom.

I should note here that the impossibility is quickly resolved and the bare-bones mechanics of the locked room-trick is nearly as old as time, but how this hoary, time-worn trick is employed was pleasingly original – a new wrinkle to an old trick. Basically, (SPOILER/ROT13) Jrfg unq uverq n pnecragre gb pbafgehpg n frperg qbbejnl va gur onguebbz, orpnhfr gur ubhfr jnf tbvat gb or qrzbyvfu naljnl. Fb gur cyna jnf gb cergraq ur unq sbhaq gur tncvat ubyr va Eboreg Cnexre'f onguebbz nyvov, ohg hajvggvatyl cebivqrq uvf zheqrere jvgu n tbyqra bccbeghavgl. Genuinely enjoyed that aspect of the plot, minor as it may be. What makes This is Murder, Mr. Jones a noteworthy mystery is not its locked room murder, or how it was treated, but its radio background.

After the first shock, they realize they can make radio history by doing "a direct broadcast from the scene of the crime" and "put the investigation on the air." And triple their audience over night. This part of the story feels decades ahead of its time and, to my knowledge, not something that has been used during the Golden Age of Radio. By the way, Orson Wells and his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast gets a mention ("it made Welles" and "it didn't hurt the Martians"). But my favorite part of this plan is the discussion on whether, or not, it would be appropriate to break the show for a word from their sponsors. Because, you know, one of them probably killed the show's host. So, breaking the show with this killer of a line, "well, ladies and gentlemen, any minute we may find that the lovely Carla Blake was the one who slashed Mr. West's throat, but in the meantime eat Chummies, the dandy candy," is perhaps bad optics.

That the police not only play along, but even allow the first round of questioning to be aired to a nationwide audience is preposterous. But therefore not any less fun. Not only a fun, cleverly done slant on the normally routine questioning of suspects, but really something that feels ahead of its time.

So the broadcast is howling success with the audience baying for more. And, as that second broad is prepared, the case continues to develop off-air. Those developments include two additional bodies, however, they're not page-filling corpses dropped to pad out the story, but flow directly from the first murder – provide clues to the who and why. Fuller continued to show some innovation and creativity with the ending, especially how Jupiter solves and resolves the whole case. Firstly, the way in which Jupiter finally puts together all the pieces together is not exactly conventional and "may well open up a whole new field of criminal detection." I'm sure Ronald Knox would disapprove, but it fitted the overall tone of the story and piled on another memorable feature to the story. The traditional gathering of the suspects for the denouement is conventional enough, despite taking place live on air, but became worried at this point the century-old murder case was forgotten about and doomed to remain an unresolved mystery. Right before signing off, only half a page left to go, Jupiter quickly gives his solution to the historical case and reminds the listeners/readers "to invest in War Bonds and Stamps."

I think it goes without saying This is Murder, Mr. Jones is grand fun with some clever, creative and even memorable touches to plot and a couple of old, dusty tropes. Even the motive came across as fresh and original for the time. It all added up to something surprisingly good and unexpectedly rewarding. However, I do fear my enthusiastic rambling might be misinterpreted. So don't expect This is Murder, Mr. Jones to deliver a locked room mystery from the caliber of John Dickson Carr with an Agatha Christie-style rug pull of an ending, but neither should you expect a solid second-string mystery. It's a little too good, and too original in parts, to be relegated to second-tier status. This is Murder, Mr. Jones is very much in the tradition of the better American murder-can-be-fun mysteries Rue Morgue Press specialized in reprinting like Kelley Roos, Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice. That's not a bad company to be in.

Note for the curious: I don't have a brilliant and dazzling alternative solution for the Parker murder case, but a simple possibility that was never mentioned. Now the details of the murder itself are scant and a bit sketchy, but one thing stands out. West mentioned many pet theories emerging over the years, "even heard scholarly gentlemen suggest that the good gardener perpetrated the dastardly crime," but no mention of the proverbial chink in the armor – namely the nurse who alibied Parker. So here's how I figured it (ROT13 to obscure plot details): Eboreg Cnexre jnf fvpx ng gur gvzr naq arrqrq n ahefr. Jura uvf jvsr jnf fgnoorq, Cnexre jnf va gur onguebbz jvgu gur ahefr jnvgvat bhgfvqr gur qbbe. Cnexre qvq vaqrrq fgno uvf jvsr naq rfpncrq whfgvpr jvgu uvf uloevq ybpxrq ebbz-nyvov, juvpu znxrf vg n dhrfgvba bs ubj ur qvq vg. Guvf nyfb tvirf ebbz sbe na nygreangvir rkcynangvba, orpnhfr vg zrnaf Cnexre qbrfa'g gnyx gb uvf ahefr jura ur'f va gur onguebbz. Naq fur whfg jnvgf hagvy ur pbzrf bhg. Fbzrguvat ahefr pbhyq hfr nf fur jbhyq cebonoyl xabj ubj ybat vg gnxrf ba nirentr sbe uvz gb or qbar. N ahefr gnxvat pner bs vainyvqf, be frzv-vainyvq, vf svg rabhtu gb eha orgjrra gjb sybbef, xabjf jurer gb fgno naq abg znxr n zrff bs vg. V fvzcyl nffhzrq gurl jrer univat na nssnve naq nyvovrq rnpu bgure, ohg vg jbhyq or rira orggre vs gur ahefr unq gur rknpgyl fnzr, gentvp zbgvir nf gur cerfrag-qnl zheqrere. History never repeats itself, but it rhymes from time to time.

Dead to Rights: "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" (1974) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer," originally appeared in the August, 1974, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Leopold's Way (1985), starts out with a routine case for Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher – a simple case "without a hint of ghosts or impossibilities." Captain Leopold is ready to go home when a fatal shooting is reported on the 15th floor of the Grant Tower.

Martha Aspeth, a cleaning woman working at the Grant Tower, was shot by her estranged husband, Kurt Aspeth ("he wanted younger ones"). Leopold and Fletcher has plenty of eyewitnesses, "five women who work with her," who all saw it happen. Kurt came up to the 15th floor, asked for Martha and "pulled out his gun and started shooting" the moment he laid eyes on her. He then made his exit through the fire escape. So all they basically have to do is send out an alert, wait for him to be picked up and hand the matter over to the prosecutor. A simple, clear cut and uncomplicated case that turns into an impossible crime over night.

Following morning, Fletches has a good news, bad news situation for Leopold. Good news is that they found they found their suspect. Kurt Aspeth had crashed his car into a bridge abutment, on the Expressway near the Grant Tower building, which killed him instantly. However, according to the evidence, the smashup happened about thirty minutes before the shooting where Kurt was "positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses" – who all knew him personally. I liked how Hoch immediately dismissed the obvious, hackneyed explanations. A discrepancy in the records appears out of the question as the accident report is backed up by the medical report. No error due to daylight-saving time or faulty clocks. Kurt's body was identified by his older brother, Felix, who has a passing, brotherly resemblance, but couldn't pass for his twin brother. Fingerprints back up the identification! Felix believes "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident." 

Leopold and Fletcher are far too grounded and sober minded to take any stock in Felix's claims that "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident," but then what happened during those thirty minutes?

"Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" is one of Hoch's most John Dickson Carr-like impossible crime stories, despite not being a typical impossible crime or traditional locked room mystery. A cross between ghostly phenomenon and bi-location. Hoch brings more than his usual competent craftsmanship to the table in order to explain away this apparent miracle with an inspired solution both imaginative and completely satisfying. There is, perhaps, one coincidence some readers might find a little hard to swallow, but that's that Merrivalean cussedness of all things general for you. However, what I found even more impressive is the overall structure of the story. Hoch took an unfortunate, every day case of spousal murder without a hint of planning or touch of subtlety (i.e. manufactured alibis, locked rooms, etc) and turned it into a Carr-like impossible crime story by introducing an apparent "glitch" in the timeline. It worked. Mike Grost called "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" a "landmark in such time-centered mysteries" in the Chesterton-Carr tradition and I couldn't agree more. If there's ever going to be a Hoch best-of collection, "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" deserves to be included.