The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments (2024) by Tom Mead

I mentioned in my review of the third Joseph Spector novel, Cabaret Macabre (2024), Tom Mead has been a busy bee with not only working on the fourth title in the series, The House at Devil's Neck (2025), but branching out in translating French detective short stories and novels – starting with Pierre Véry's Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937). Mead has been commissioned by Bedford Square Publishers to translate Paul Halter's impossible crime novels. Fingers crossed for a translation of Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past, 2012). But wait... there's more!

Last November, Crippen & Landru published a short story collection with a selection of Mead's own work. The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments (2024), introduced by Martin Edwards, containing eleven short stories. Three of which appearing in print for the first time. I thought it would make for a perfect follow up to the previous review of John Dickson Carr's collection of short stories The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963). So let's dig in!

"The Indian Rope Trick," originally published in the July/August, 2020, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, finds Joseph Spector refereeing a challenge between two magicians, Ferdinand le Sueur and Doctor Gupta, who have been arguing about the Indian Rope Trick – former claims to have come up with "a perfect mechanism for working the trick." Something entirely new and revolutionary. Doctor Gupta performs the trick under traditional circumstances, inside a theater, but Le Sueur demonstrates his version of the trick under an open sky! Even more, he pulls off the trick and that alone should earn the story a spot in a future locked room anthology. But murder interrupts the challenge when one of the magicians is strangled without leaving behind a single footprint on the muddy driveway. Spector is the impartial witness to the cast-iron alibi of both suspects.

The solution to the impossible murder is not bad. Just a bit skeptical about one part of the trick, because I don't think doing that, so casually, is as easy as the story suggests. Even with that to help. Still a pretty good impossible crime story, overall, succeeding where John Basye Price's abysmal "Death and the Rope Trick" (1954) failed all those decades ago.

I can only imagine "The Octagonal Room," originally published in the anthology Millhaven Tales (2018), came about after Mead read the shin honkaku mysteries by Soji Shimada, Yukito Ayatsuji, Takemaru Abiko and saying, "I'll give it the old college try." Spector is drawn to the home of Simon Eldridge, an American writer, who moved to England and took residence of a reputedly haunted house, Black Mill. Beside stories of robed figures, satanic rites and "bonfires blazing in unoccupied rooms," Black Mill has an architectural mystery. The place has a strange, octagonal room not any of the original architectural plans and sketches, but nobody knows who or when it was added to the house. Some malevolent, otherworldly force or eldritch horror appears to reside in the octagonal room and has taken possession of Eldridge. Spector is not the only one who came to Black Mill to investigate, but the magician-detective eventually has to solve another impossible crime when Eldridge's decapitated body is found lying inside a pentagram in the locked octagonal room.

I figured out for the most part how the trick was pulled off and who was behind it, but nothing to the detriment of this fantastic and original locked room mystery, nor my immense enjoyment. "The Octagonal Room" is the best short story in this collection and now my favorite Mead locked room mystery.

"Incident at Widow's Perch," originally published in the September/October, 2019, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, has a great backdrop for a detective story with impossible crime to match taking place at a house built into peak – known as Widow's Perch. A desolate summit so remote "it was accessible only by cable car." Giles Latimer's body was found by his wife, Margot, sprawled on the rocks at the foot of the cliff. The police wrote it off as an unfortunate accident, but Margot has good reasons to believe he was murdered and now murderer is out to get her. So she turns to the magician-detective, Joseph Spector, who quickly loses his client under seemingly impossible circumstances. Spector is one of the people who sees Margot enter the cable car alone, pulled the glass door shut and began its descent downwards from the peak, but mid-way through, Margot burst into flames. So another rock solid impossible crime story, curiously more reminiscent of Arthur Porges than Clayton Rawson.

"The Sleeper in Coldwreath," originally published in the March/April, 2023, issue of EQMM, wonderfully plays on that old, hoary trope from the pulps. Hypnosis! Something that makes most of us shudder whenever it turns up in a proper detective story or locked room mystery, but Mead found a good use for it in this short story.

Forty years earlier, in 1893, the house known as Coldwreath was the property of a psychic researcher, Dr. Peberby, who specialized in "sleep, dreams and hypnosis" ("a cocktail of mysticism and blasphemy"). One day, Peberby locked horns with a skeptic, Lester Brownlow, who challenged him to demonstrate and prove his hypnotic powers. What happened next has haunted Coldwreath ever since. Peberby invited Brownlow to Coldwreath to be placed in a hypnotic trance, while witnesses were present, before being guided to an upstairs bedroom – commands him to lock and bolt the door behind him. Thirty minutes later, the house is rocked by an unearthly scream and three men had to break down the bedroom door, but the room was empty without a trace of Brownlow. Ever since, the place has been haunted by an apparition with half-lidded eyes as though in a trance ("a phantom sleepwalker, wandering between the worlds"). Spector comes to investigate and naturally is present when somebody else impossibly vanishes from a locked room and a body turns up under equally impossible circumstances of the no-footprints variety. This story would have made for a great Jonathan Creek episode and enjoyed the solution to the disappearance from the locked bedroom. A trick based on a locked room idea, or concept, that always amuses me (ROT13: qbbef gung nccrne gb or ybpxrq, obygrq naq frnyrq).

"The Footless Phantom," originally published in the March/April, 2022, issue of EQMM, brings Spector to the dying mining village of Greeley in the Cotswolds of western England. A village that had been dealt a fatal wound when a mining accident killed numerous miners and workers moved to others mines in the region, which left behind a dwindling population who stuck around. So the village has problem of its own and more problem is added to the list when the troublesome Danny Snape is found dead with the back of his head caved in at the foot of a cliff. There's only a single track of footprints going from Snape's van to his body and if the weapon was dropped from the top of the cliff, then what happened to it? So it appears the murder could have only been committed by "a weightless, invisible assassin."

Not a bad premise for an impossible crime story, nor is the backdrop of a dying mining village, but plot-wise, it felt ropy – especially how the whole impossibility was rigged up. So not the best impossible crime story to be found in this collection.

"What Happened to Mathwig," first published in the anthology Wrong Turn (2018), is Mead's take on Herbert Brean's The Traces of Brillhart (1961). A Harley Street psychiatrist begins a relationship with one of his patients, Claire Mathwig, who ends up agreeing to kill her husband, Chester Mathwig. And how! Chester Mathwig ends up with three bullets ("...final bullet hit him in the skull...") before disappearing into the waters of the Thames. So imagine the murderer's shock when his victim turns up, alive and well, with nary a scratch or flesh wound. Enough to run to Spector to confess and ask him to explain how Mathwig pulled a Rasputin. The solution is as grim as that historical, hard-to-kill figure. One of the better and stronger plotted stories in the collection with a tantalizing premise that has barely been scratched by impossible crime and locked room specialists, past and present.

The next non-series short story, "Invisible Death" (2018), but already reviewed it a few years ago together with Mead's "The Walnut Creek Vampire" (2020).

"The Three-Minute Miracle," first of the three previously unpublished short stories, which combines the problem of the unbreakable alibi with the head scratching phenomena of bi-location. Spector is consulted by his old friend, Inspector George Flint, who's investigating the murder of a rich philanthropist, Mrs. Anthea Wheeldon. She was shot and killed by her no good, criminally charged nephew, Alec Mellors, whose little blackmailing enterprise is possibly going to land him in prison. And his aunt is determined to cut him out the will. Alec not only has a motive, but he was seen entering the house and pulling the trigger by an impartial witness. There is, however, another equally credible witness swearing he was fifty miles away, three minutes before he was seen firing the fatal shots!

I'm in two minds whether, or not, the story qualifies as an impossible crime. I think most of you are aware of my hesitation to qualify unbreakable alibis as impossible crime, unless the alibi hinges on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the crime. Not when the alibi turns on witnesses or paperwork. On the other hand, the murder committed in front of a witness in combination with the alibi gives it the appearance of bi-location. Either way, Spector finds a way to break his cast-iron alibi down with the only smudge on his ingenious solution is that one, not unimportant, detail is impossible to anticipate. Other than than, "The Three-Minute Miracle" will please fans of Christopher Bush and Tetsuya Ayukawa.

"The Problem of the Velvet Mask," second previously unpublished short story, takes place during Christmas, 1931, which begins when Juliette Lapine comes to Joseph Spector on behalf of her father, Lucien Lapine – a retired French diplomat. She believes her father is in danger from their new next door neighbor, Eustace Dauger, who arrived in a funeral car ("like the grim reaper himself") and always wears a velvet black mask. Lucien Lapine reacted to his arrival "as though he had been expecting him for many years." Eustace Dauger possibly is Felix Duchesne. One of the two main players in the "the Duchesne Affair," an espionage case from some twenty-five years ago, whose downfall came at the hands of Lapine. Felix Duchesne, "accused spy," reportedly died as a prisoner on Devil's Island. Or did he?

Lucien Lapine is shot and killed in "an impenetrable room" with the windows locked from the inside, the door locked with the key inside the lock and the two detectives were standing outside the door. Not the mention that the snow outside is unmarked. Interestingly, there's a good amount of "the blinkin' cussedness of things in general" going on, but not used to create the locked room murder. A route Carr would have taken. Here it takes place all around the locked room murder, which has a somewhat prosaic solution, but also a good example a touch of cleverness and ingenuity can be applied to a simple idea. I was entertained!

"Lethal Symmetry," third and last of the previously unpublished stories, is one of the shortest works in the collection and an unexpected gem. Inspector Flint calls upon Spector to help him out with the strange murder of Conrad Darnoe. A man who "prized symmetry above all things" and got himself impossibly poisoned in a locked room. The brilliant solution is a clever and even original variation on a impossible poisoning situation/trick I've seen only once before. No idea if Mead has read that particularly story, but this is a good, new way to use that trick.

There's one last story, "Jack Magg's Jaw" (2022), but reviewed it last year as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 4." The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments ended on a high note for me with the strong, short and excellent "Lethal Symmetry."

Strong, short and (mostly) excellent perfectly sums up The Indian Rope Trick and Other Violent Entertainments. A collection of a short impossible crime stories representing another fresh and promising page in the budding locked room revival and should entertain fans of the Joseph Spector novels until The House at Devil's Neck is released.

Speaking of the locked room revival, I've accumulated a small pile of modern impossible crime novels over the past two months and holidays. So I'll begin decimating it presently, but first, back to the Golden Age!

The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963) by John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr's The Men Who Explained Miracles (1963) is a short story collection, comprising of half a dozen short stories and a novella, featuring his "famous 'tec trio" of Dr. Gideon Fell, Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonel March – who specialize in explaining so-called "miracles." Or, as they're known around these parts, impossible crimes and locked room mysteries. Additionally, the collection has two standalone short stories in which "espionage and assassins spark two tales of international intrigue." One of these "Secret Service Stories" is a historical mystery-thriller akin to Carr's stage-play "She Slept Lightly" (1945) and the novel Captain Cut-Throat (1955). So a bit of an eclectic melange of crime fiction, but a treat for fans of Carr and detective fiction in general.

The Men Who Explained Miracles begins with two short stories from "The Department of Queer Complaints" series, starring Colonel March, which weren't included in The Department of Queer Complaints (1940) collection. The first story hadn't been published yet and the second story possibly was left out because it used a similar murder method as a then recently published Sir Henry Merrivale novel. It would not be until March, Merrivale and Murder (1991) that the whole series appeared together in a single collection. Note that the Colonel March short stories and the H.M. novella were published under Carr's penname of "Carter Dickson."

"William Wilson's Racket," originally published in the February, 1941, issue of The Strand Magazine, brings Lady Patricia Mortlake, only daughter of the Earl of Cray, to Colonel March's Department D-3 of Scotland Yard. Lady Patricia has been baffled by the behavior of her fiancé, Right Hon. Francis Hale, who's "a man of almost painfully straitlaced life" with a spotless reputation, but lately, he has been acting out-of-character and obsessing over a newspaper add – simply stating "William and Wilhelmina Wilson, 250a, Piccadilly" ("nothing more"). Lady Patricia decided to investigate Mr. Wilson at his office, but what she found shocked her. Francis was sitting in Mr. Wilson's office with a redheaded woman sitting on his lap in a loving embrace. She turned around, left the room and, when she composed herself, returned to get answers, but Francis has disappeared. William and Wilhelmina Wilson claim they never heard of, or know, a Francis Hale. However, Lady Patricia spotted his coat and other personal items in the cloakroom. And he's still missing. So what happened?

Colonel March is seriously amused by what he has been told, but tells Lady Patricia to go home as he has a pretty shrewd idea about the true nature of "the profession of William and Wilhelmina Wilson." The splendidly clued answer lives up to its brilliantly presented premise. Admittedly, "Mr. Wilson's Racket" is relatively minor detective story, but a tremendously fun, cleverly crafted detective story hearkening back to the days of Conan Doyle and the best of Sherlock Holmes (e.g. "The Red-Headed League," 1891). So it's actually surprising Carr didn't rewrite it as "The Adventure of Mr. Wilson Racket" for The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954), co-written with Adrian Conan Doyle, because it would have been a perfect fit for that collection.

"The Empty Flat," first published in the May, 1939, issue of The Strand Magazine, is regrettably a marked stepped down from the previous story. Two rivaling academics, Douglas Chase and Miss Kathleen Mills, discover they live in the same building when the "detestable cacophony" of a radio going full blast distracts them from their studies. They discover the noise is coming from an empty flat, only one in the building, which Chase manages to enter through the service hatch. What he finds, beside a radio playing in a dark, empty flat, is the body of a man who had apparently died of fright. Colonel March is posed with two questions: why would a man afraid of the dark go ghost hunting after dark and how was he killed?

So a good, solid premise with enough intrigue abound to fill a novel, "find a way to kill someone by fright, and you can commit murder almost with impunity," which is exactly the problem. The short story form is simply too short for the plot to do the premise any justice and the disappointing combo of murderer/motive didn't help either. A rare miss by Carr.

"The Incautious Burglar," originally published in the October, 1940, issue of The Strand Magazine under the title "A Guest in the House," is the first of two short stories featuring Dr. Gideon Fell. This is a non-impossible crime short story, but therefore not any less brilliant. On the contrary, it's a gem of a Golden Age mystery and one of Carr's best short stories! The backdrop of the story is a house party at the home of Marcus Hunt, "the Colossus of Business," who has two Rembrandts and a Van Dyck "hanging in an unprotected downstairs room with French windows giving on a terrace." Hunt had even removed the burglar alarms as though he wanted the house to be burgled. That evening, a masked burglar enters Cranleigh Court, however, someone within the house caught him red handed and killed the burglar in the ensuing struggle – stabbing through the heart with a thin fruit knife. What looks like a botched burglary turns into a deep, contradictory mystery when the mask is removed from the body to reveal the face of Marcus Hunt. Why would a man burgle his own house to steal valuable paintings he refused to insure for even a penny? More importantly, who killed him?

Dr. Gideon Fell is asked to give the case a look and sees red hot, tell-tale clues where the police perceives only "negative evidence." Dr. Fell is not blinded by the central question why Hunt would try to steal his own, uninsured paintings ("don't become hypnotized by it") and focuses instead on finding the person who stabbed him. The perfectly reasoned solution Dr. Fell constructs out of the given clues is excellent demonstrating that the short story form is no excuse to forego fair play. A vintage whodunit from the master of the locked room mystery!

"Invisible Hands," originally published under the title "King Arthur's Chair" in the August, 1957, issue of Lilliput, is an odd impossible crime story of the no-footprints variety. Dan Fraser, "the luckiest man in London," is traveling to North Cornwall to see Brenda Lestrange ("...she had wanted him"), but is told upon arrival she had under tragic, inexplicable circumstances. She had gone down to the beach to swim and her strangled body was found later that morning lying in front of small, natural rock formation known as King Arthur's Chair. Impossibly, there weren't any footprints in the sand around the rock formation except Brenda's own!

A classic no-footprints situation, however, the trick employed is something most would probably associate or expect from the pulps or pulp-style mysteries – notably a particular item. It's something I have come across in the works of several, non-pulpy mystery writers and they got a lot of mileage and variety out of it. Carr used it before in one of his 1940s radio-plays to create an impossible disappearance and here it has a dual purpose (ROT13: n fvqr-rssrpg vf gung gur zheqrere hfrq gur fbhaq bs gur zheqre jrncba sbe na nyvov). So not exactly your standard no-footprints-in-the-sand puzzle and, plot-wise, it almost reads like a Paul Halter short story. Another thing making this a bit of an odd story in Carr's catalog is that the characterization is a tick sharper than the plotting. One more thing worth mentioning is Dr. Gideon Fell making one of his greatest entries into a case ever!

So, on a whole, "Invisible Hands" is a solid and logical detective story, despite its outre method, demonstrating that only one of the suspects could have done it.

"Strictly Diplomatic," originally published in the December, 1939, issue of The Strand Magazine, is the first of two standalone short stories of international intrigue. Andrew Dermot, an overworked barrister, is prescribed a holiday on the continent, "tension which tautened nerves in the rest of Europe did not exist in Ile St. Cathérine," where he promptly falls in love Betty Weatherill. She mysterious disappears from the arbor of their hotel. Dermot was standing at one end, watching her go inside, while a Dutch hotel guest was sitting at the other end. Dr. Henrik Vanderver, special diplomat for the Sylvanian Embassy, swears she didn't emerge from his end of the arbor. What's going on? A very minor espionage mystery with the reason for the disappearance being better and more interesting than how she vanished, which is a variation on a shopworn piece of misdirection. Still not a bad short story. Just not an especially memorable one.

"The Black Cabinet" first appeared 20 Great Tales of Murder (1951) and reprinted in the January, 1952, issue of Robert Arthur's The Mysterious Traveler Magazine. This story is a historical character piece full of adventure and revolution as a young woman, Nina, is determined to assassinate the French emperor Napoleon III. Aunt Maria, an ex-revolutionary, tries to change her mind and the story is largely a discussion between these two characters – until a mysterious gentleman appears on the scene. This mysterious man succeeds in foiling the assassination with his identity providing the story with an unexpected, but satisfying, historical twist. If you're not a fan of Carr's historical fiction, or historical fiction in general, "The Black Cabinet" is not going to do anything for you.

"All in a Maze," originally appeared under title "Ministry of Miracles" in the January, 1956, issue of The Housewife and reprinted in the March, 1956, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as "The Man Who Explained Miracles." It finally appeared under its generally accepted title, "All in a Maze," in this collection.

Arguably, "All in a Maze" is the most important story in The Men Who Explained Miracles giving a proper sendoff to Sir Henry Merrivale after his less than stellar performance in The Cavalier's Cup (1953). H.M. is back in Britain following his shenanigans adventures abroad, "you wrecked the subway at Grand Central Station and nabbed the right murderer on the wrong evidence," which got him into trouble upon his return. Mostly on account of having spent more money than he can account for. And in order to atone and payback for his sins, H.M. is put back in charge of the Central Office Eight of the Metropolitan Police. A quasi-official department that gets handed all the strange, rummy cases the ordinary police can't be bothered with, however, H.M. promises "anybody who calls it The Ministry of Miracles is going to get a thick ear" ("they had enough fun, curse 'em, with the late Ministry of Information"). Tom Lockwood, a journalist, presents H.M. with one of those strange, rummy cases. Lockwood bumped into a young woman, Jenny Holden, on the steps of St. Paul's. Obviously in distressed mumbling something about a voice coming "where no voice could have spoken" and some trying to kill her the previous night "by some miracle no one can understand."

So he drags her to a tea shop and get the whole story out of her. Firstly, the previous night someone had entered her bedroom and turned on the gas-tap, but the door and windows were securely locked and double bolted on the inside. Secondly, she heard a disembodied voice in the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul's cathedral telling her she was going to die. Lockwood urges her to go to H.M. with her story, because explaining miracles is his specialty, but Lockwood and H.M. have more to contend with than a disembodied voice and an attempted murder in a locked bedroom – they have to contend with Jenny's formidable aunt. Aunt Hester is determined to take Jenny back to Paris and marry her off to a successful businessman, Armand de Senneville. But they find an unexpected ally in De Sennevilla's hired spy who witnessed these so-called miracles. And realizes how close Jenny came to dying. Not everyone in this story is lucky enough to escape a trip to the morgue. It all makes for a pleasantly busy, engaging locked room mystery.

Well, the solution to the disembodied voice is as obvious and simple as it sounds, but, plot-wise, it served its purpose. The attempted gassing of Jenny in her locked room bedroom, on the other hand, is a gem of brilliant simplicity in both presentation and solution. All very neatly clued, tightly-drawn together and comes to an end in the famous maze at Hampton Court Palace. Only thing you can say against "All in a Maze" is that it can't hold a candle to first of only two H.M. novellas, "The House in Goblin Wood" (1947), which is an undisputed masterpiece in a miniature. In every other way, it's a finely crafted impossible crime story and a better swan song for H.M. than his last three or four novel-length outings. Highly recommended!

The Men Who Explained Miracles is a splendid, nicely balanced collection of Carr's older and some of his then somewhat more recent work. "The Empty Flat" is the only dud in the collection and "Strictly Diplomatic" a little bland, but "William Wilson's Racket," "The Incautious Burglar" and "All in a Maze" are first-rate with "Invisible Hands" and "The Black Cabinet" not all that far behind. So, all in all, a lot to recommend here to fans of John Dickson Carr and Golden Age (locked room) mysteries.

The Black Swan Mystery (1960) by Tetsuya Ayukawa

I pontificated in "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century" on how today's translation wave started when Keigo Higashino's 2011 translation of Yogisha X no kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) became an unexpected, international bestseller opening the door to invite future translation – which the late John Pugmire accepted in 2015. Locked Room International published the first-ever English edition of Yukito Ayatsuji's epochal Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) opening the floodgates to even more translations. And attracting other publishers to the joys of the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries.

Funnily enough, neither The Decagon House Murders nor The Devotion of Suspect X can be labeled as a locked room mystery or impossible crime, but the translation wave has been dominated by locked room novels and impossible crime stories. So the past ten years have been something of a locked room renaissance and the translation wave infused the form with some much needed fresh blood, which helped to revitalize it and even lead to a revival.

However, the locked room mystery is not the end-all of detective fiction, you don't always get that impression from reading this blog, but the impossible crime story is merely my favorite hobby horse – a hobby horse I enjoy riding into oblivion. I love and welcome good, craftily-plotted detective stories in any shape or form and wanted to see what the Japanese detective story can do outside a locked room or field of untrodden snow. This is one of the reasons why I've been so intrigued by their hybrid mysteries, tracked down Seimaru Amagi's Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) and jumped at the opportunity to sample Jun Kurachi's Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). So was not dismayed at all when it became apparent Pushkin Vertigo was going to diversify their output of honkaku and shin honkaku translations.

This year, they're going to publish Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-looping, hybrid mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995), Taku Ashibe's classically-styled whodunit Oomarike satsujin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021) and two strange novels by horror Youtuber "Uketsu." I'm not sure about Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947), but it appears to be a whodunit without any impossible crimes. Don't worry. I'll be getting my Japanese impossible crime fix through Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991), MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996) and the various anime-and manga detective series. This move began last November with their publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960), translated by Bryan Karetnyk, whom readers will remember from the short story collection The Red Locked Room (2020).

Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery is best summed as a police procedural in the tradition of Seicho Matsumoto's Ten to sen (Points and Lines, 1958), but with the heart, soul and plot of the traditional, fair play detective novel – particularly Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts. Yes, the story largely hinges on the question of alibis, complete with time tables and railway schedules, but it's much more than simply retracing people's movement and breaking down alibis. It's also an excellent and absorbing police procedural/whodunit.

The investigation at the heart of The Black Swan Mystery is an involved one starting with the murder of Gosuke Nishinohata, director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to railway tracks near Kuki Station with a bullet in his back. Detective Inspector Sudo and Constable Seki get to take a crack at the case first and they get a lucky break as Nishinohata's body had been thrown from an overpass and landed on a train passing under the Ryodaishi Bridge. So the blood on the bridge and roof of the train gives the police an exact time and place to check everyone's alibis ("my, my, that's awfully precise, Inspector"). There are, of course, enough complications to make this everything but a routine murder investigation. This is a detective story, after all.

Firstly, the owners of the Towa Textiles Company are at "loggerheads" with the trade union who presented them with "a four-point list of demands and called a strike." One of the four demands is freedom of religious expression, because Nishinohata was a follower of the Shaman, a new sect of Shintoism, who tried to push his religion on the workers and that didn't sit well – neither with the workers nor the the Shaman. The Shaman have stranglehold on their followers, figuratively and literally, which is why they're not happy Towa Textiles is willing to give in on that specific demand. It would mean losing thousands of members at once. They employ an ex-secret serviceman, Hanpei Chita, who's job is to dissuade people from leaving the Shaman and considered to be capable of everything ("...even of killing a man"). Secondly, Nishinohata was a known philanderer coming with the usual complications and his position as director gets entangled with the personal lives of the people at the company. His private secretary, Takeshi Haibara, wants to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the directors, Atsuko, but she's in a secret relationship with the vice-chairman of the trade union, Narumi.

So enough to keep Sudo and Seki pleasantly occupied with trying to entangle this complicated knot of relationships, potential motives and those pesky, rock solid alibis, but then more bodies begin to turn up along the way – all curiously connected to the first murder. Sudo and Seki eventually hit a dead end and the top brass decides to assign the case to Inspector Onitsura to give it a second look.

Inspector Onitsura previously appeared in several short stories from The Red Locked Room, translated by Ho-Ling Wong, who described him "Ellery Queen wearing the face of Inspector French" and his short stories/novels are generally regarded as early police procedurals. But they're crammed with original tricks and EQ-style chain of logic/deduction. Tetsuya Ayukawa certainly allowed Onitsura to live up to his reputation in The Black Swan Mystery. Onitsura is as logical and methodical as French, but neither is above making the occasional mistake or overlooking a small detail. Once they got hold of something, they follow it to its logical conclusion. Whether there's a murderer waiting at the end of that specific trail or not. There's something really comfy about following Onitsura on those leisure train rides pass the small stations along the less frequent traveled lines. Or, to quote the story itself, "writer of children's stories with a fantastical mindset might have imagined that the train were a tortoise and that he were riding on its back towards the Palace of the Dragon King" ("...the inspector himself was too much of a realist to have such fairy tales in his mind"). So the first and second-half of The Black Swan Mystery already form an excellent, slightly classically-styled, police procedural published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction. The story definitely has a strong flavoring of the social school with a strike going on in the background and addressing certain issues of post-war Japan, but the overall plot and uncluttered, clear solution possesses all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective stories of the West.

A solution that naturally turn on the question of alibis and opportunity, but those alibis don't come into play until Onitsura has identified the murderer with roughly a quarter of the story left to go, only to be stonewalled by a pair of cast-iron alibis – "unassailable from every angle." But the "very perfection" of those alibis makes him only more determined to tear them down. And tearing them down, he does! The tricks behind the two alibis honestly are something you would expect from a honkaku mystery novel rather than a police procedural with obvious ties to the Seicho Matsumoto's social school of crime fiction. Bush, Crofts and Queen could have hardly done better! That fact is also depressing as hell. Even when Japan moved away from the traditional, plot-oriented detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo and Akimitsu Takagi to make way for the social school, they continued to produce first-class detective fiction. Sure, it was often disguised as historical fiction or police procedurals, but they were still there. When the West abandoned the traditional detective stories of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, the genre descended into a dark age.

So, to cut long story short, Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery comes heartily recommended as one of those rare mysteries that fans of the classic detective story and modern crime novel can enjoy, but the former have to keep in mind it's a little different from what most have come to expect from a Japanese detective novel. A little different, but just as good.

The Case of the Second Chance (1946) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Second Chance (1946), 31st entry in the Ludovic Travers series, is best described as an "in-between" novel for more reasons than one.

The Case of the Second Chance is a post-WWII detective novel, a time of austerity, social malaise and imperial decay, during which Bush was in the process of transforming the series by turning Travers from an amateur detective with police credentials into an independent private investigator – a process that started in The Case of the Murdered Major (1941). A move partially inspired by the rise of the American hardboiled detective and partially in genuine admiration for writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The Case of the Corner Cottage (1951) reportedly reads like a homage to Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930) and one of the reasons why Travers had been dubbed the "English Marlowe" during the fifties.

The Case of the Second Chance takes place over a three-year period beginning when Travers returns to London on a fourteen day leave from the army in October 1942. During this time, Travers still fulfilled his role as special consultant to Scotland Yard's Superintendent George Wharton, "considered sufficiently useful to act as George's factotum," but, upon his return, was "feeling regretful that there was nothing doing in the murder line." A dangerous thing to say or even think in a detective story, because the next morning Wharton calls him with the news that Charles Manfrey has been killed.

Charles Manfrey was a holdover of "the great days of the actor-manager" and "not too nice a character, so we've gathered," who handed out motives like they were business cards and counted plenty of enemies among his acquaintances. So more than enough potential suspects and motives to go around, but there are complications and peculiar features to the case. Why was Manfrey wearing a thin summer coat in a stone cold room and what happened to his other coat? Who was the man the cook and secretary overheard having "a fine old row" with Manfrey in his room? Why does every promising suspect turn out to have a watertight alibi? And that's not all. Travers observes to Wharton they're dealing with actors, "people used to acting and playing parts," who are unlikely "to make any slips." Prophetic words as the fourteen days come and go without an arrest or even an idea who could have delivered the fatal blow. So the investigation comes to an end and the Manfrey case is filed as unsolved.

The story picks up again three years later, in 1945, when the war has ended and Travers finds himself in-between jobs. Travers retired from his position as special consultant to go into the private detective business with Wharton, but Wharton won't be freed up until the end of the years and is spending time at Bill Ellice's Broad Street Detective Agency – a discreet, highly regarded agency they want to buy. Ellice has just been handed a blackmail job and is more than glad to have Travers' expert opinion on his prospective client and her story, but, after eavesdropping on the interview, it comes to light the client was someone who figured in the Manfrey murder case. Travers suddenly realized they were "handling dynamite." But decides to keep that information from Ellice, until he has satisfied "the itch to know just a little bit more." And carefully approach a second chance to bring Manfrey's killer to justice. Not before another murder adds one last complication to their investigation.

The Case of the Second Chance is fascinating, not only as a transitional novel, but as a snapshot of that years-long process with Travers going from still being a special consultant in 1942 to making his first, tentative steps as an independent investigator once the war had ended. Bush had began to trim down his plots ("we've broken better alibis than his") and Americanizing his storytelling in earnest. For example, Travers has a scrap and takes one on the chin from someone Wharton refers to as his "pugilistic friend" or one of the female characters frankly telling she could have had an acting career had she taken one of the "short cuts" ("...she hadn't been prepared to take them"). I can't imagine a line like that cropping up in one of Bush's mysteries from the 1920s or '30s. On the other hand, Travers speaks several times directly to the reader in a-challenge-to-the-reader or had-i-but-known manner ("maybe by now you've satisfied yourself that you really do know both how Manfrey was killed and the one who killed him"). That would have been suited for earlier novels like The Perfect Murder Case (1929), Dead Man Twice (1930) or The Case of the April Fools (1933).

So it rather regrettably and disappointing that such an interesting novel depicting the turbulent upheavals in both the world and the series itself had to settle for an exceptionally uninspired plot. Not that the plot is actually bad or ghostly thin, but the plots feels tired, labored and ultimately hoary with the ending, or the moment when all the plot-strands get pulled together left me unimpressed. A shame as The Case of the Second Chance has everything to craft a good, old-fashioned and first-rate detective novel, but finished as one of Bush's second-tier mysteries. I still think it's a shade better than other second-tier novels, such as The Case of the Seven Bells (1949) or The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951), which will no doubt please fans of Bush, Travers and Wharton. But if you're new to the series and looking for a good detective yarn, I recommend starting at an earlier or later point in the series. I consider The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) to be among Bush's Golden Age treasures and he rebounded in the fifties with novels like The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) and The Case of the Russian Cross (1957). More importantly, I recommend giving this still criminally underrated series a try. Even if this particular example doesn't make for a very convincing case.

Stuff of Legends: C.M.B. vol. 3-4 by Motohiro Katou

Yes, I know, I know. The plan was to have gotten well on the way towards Q.E.D. vol. 50 and the crossover with C.M.B. out of the way, which once again got sidetracked, but this time I have a scapegoat an excuse – namely the "New Locked Room Library." So you can blame Alexander for organizing that massive distraction. That was last year. I intend to pick up where I left off with last years reviews of C.M.B. vol. 1-2 and Q.E.D. vol. 39-40 with a review of C.M.B. vol. 3-4, before finally tackling the crossover event between these sibling series. I recommend taking a look at the review of the first two volumes, if you need a refresher what this series is about.

The first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 3, "Lost Relief," centers on the three rings, "C," "M," and "B," the three curators of the British Museum gifted to their 14-year-old apprentice, Sakaki Shinra. Whomever possesses one of the rings can count on plenty of funding and unfettered access to normally restricted archives for their research, archaeological digs or building up a collection or museum. So giving all three rings to one person, let alone a teenager, is unprecedented in the 200 year old tradition.

"Lost Relief" introduces a rival for the young museum curator and amateur detective in Shaw Bentley, head of research at the British Museum, who believes Professor Stan, Professor Ray and Professor Morris had no right to hand the rings over Shinra ("those rings have been demoted to a toy for some kid in the east"). So "the youngest researcher in history" is determined to pry one of the rings, but the only way to officially come into possession of a ring is if Shinra gifts him one. Shaw travels to Japan to visit Shinra at his hidden museum to propose a sporting challenge for one of his rings. A month ago, a ship was intercepted with a cargo of stolen historical artifacts, en route to a shady collector, which included a stone relief illustrating an Aztec sacrificial ceremony – except the part depicting the part of the altar has gone missing. Smugglers claimed it was complete, but when it arrived at the Japanese warehouse for inspection, the altar piece was missing.

Shaw proposes that the first one to find the missing piece wins. If he finds it, Shinra has to give him one of the rings, but if Shinra finds it first, Shaw will give him a solid gold statue he found in Columbia for his museum. Shinra even sweetens the deal with a challenge of his own. In case the missing piece isn't found, but Shaw can deduce what's depicted on top of the altar, Shinra will accept defeat. This story is obviously intended to introduce the characters of Shaw Bentley and his bratty, personal chef, Linda, while filling in some of the details of Shinra's backstory. That being said, the problem of the missing relief piece is not half bad and, more importantly, perfectly solvable for the keen-eyed armchair detective. So a good, fun opener of the third volume.

By the way, Shaw called Shinra's museum "a warehouse of trash" that's "full of strange children's junk," which is not true, but also betrays a body without a romantic bone in it and perhaps even lacking a soul. I would love to climb a tree to get into Shinra's museum (it's only entrance/exit) to roam around all those displays with ancient artifacts or horsey-ride the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

The second story of this volume, "Modern Legend," is one of those strange, character-driven, human-shaped puzzle stories I have come to associate with Q.E.D. A story playing on Japanese urban legends like "Hanako-san of the Toilet" or "The Slit-Mouthed Woman."

Meiyuu Private High School becomes a hotbed for gruesome, terrifying urban legends about bodies being found in horrific circumstances ("a dead body found in the mountains... a body beaten by the branches of a willow... and a body buried in a bamboo grove..."). Shinra sets his classmate searching for the person behind the urban legends when he suggested the stories might have originated from one and the same person. This leads them to the crusty owner of a music store, his shed and talk about a bone-colored boat. But is he's hiding some horrific crime inside that shed? Meanwhile, Nanase Tatsuki, the Kana Mizuhara to Shinra's Sou Touma, learns more about Shinra's family and circumstances. And at the same time trying to civilize socialize him. Another good, fun little mystery with an interesting solution (ROT13: gung'f bar jnl gb fraq fbzrbar n zrffntr, V fhccbfr), but not as solvable (for western readers anyway) as the previous one with the spotlight being on Shinra's character and background. It was really sad seeing Shinra cleaning his museum, open its doors and waiting for visitors who never came. But a good story to close out this volume.

C.M.B. vol. 4 comprises of a single, long story, "Judean Fortune," which is best described as Dan Brown getting the shin honkaku treatment. A international despite has arisen from a potential discovery in the Roman Colosseum, Italy, which was called in by special investigator working on historical sites. A special investigator working for the not so catchy named Private Historical Site Investigation Company, run by Jamie Charles, who was hired by Israel to investigate certain claims regarding a mysteries treasure. Her investigator called in to report he had actually found the treasure, "a Judean treasure," but got himself killed in the ruins of the Colosseum under very mysterious, borderline impossible, circumstances – impaled through the chest with a trident. The place where he was murdered makes it incredibly difficult to effectively wield a trident as a murder weapon. Even if he was attacked from above. Not a full-blown locked room murder, but enough to make for an intriguing howdunit with a visually pleasing solution. The victim also left something that functions as a dying message regarding the treasure.

However, the case started a diplomatic incident between Italy, Israel, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta. So the British Museum is assigned with the investigation as a neutral, third party and they delegated the investigation to the keeper of the three CMB rings. Shinra nearly causes another international incident when he initially refuses the assignment, but agrees when he gets to bring Nanase Tatsuki along to Italy.

"Judean Fortune" basically is "Lost Relief" on a much bigger, grander scale and pretty fun adventure mystery with a couple of clever touches. Most notably, the solution to the quasi-impossible murder at the ruins which has a solution that's just perfect for the visual detective story. There's a second, quasi-impossible situation when they get attacked at night in the streets of Rome by an ax-wielding knight in armor, but, when the police investigates the site of the attack the next day, no strike marks from the ax are found on the walls. Neither are full-blown impossible crimes, but once again, they make for a couple of visually appealing howdunits. The historical plot-thread about the long-lost, hidden treasure has an answer of epic historical proportions with potential world destabilizing consequences. So it ends with (ROT13) gur jubyr guvat trggvat pbirerq onpx hc, but nothing to take away from this extremely fun, richly-plotted historical adventure mystery. Although it cannot be denied that the rich plot would have been more at home in a Ruritanian setting than one resembling the real world.

So have now read the first four volumes, but think I can see the most important difference between C.M.B. and Q.E.D. Katou used the shonen manga format in Q.E.D. as a vehicle for the detective story and the detective story as a vehicle for a shonen manga in C.M.B., if that makes any sense. Which is why Q.E.D. feels more grounded and realistic compared to C.M.B. with its less than realistic premise and a protagonist who's the personification of Peter Pan Syndrome. Sou Touma is just an introverted math genius and teenage detective. You remember the type from high school. But both series compliment each other splendidly. And fascinating how they both use their premises and medium to find new ways to tell a good, old-fashioned detective stories. So very much look forward to their big crossover story, finishing Q.E.D. and exploring C.M.B. further in the near future.

The Burning Court (1937) by John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court (1937), published during the Goldilocks years of the Golden Age, enjoys the status of a fan favorite and hailed by its champions as "a standalone tour-de-force" for its unconventional conclusion – ending with a gutsy, genre-defying twist. Carr reportedly claimed (Douglas G. Greene's The Man Who Explained Miracles, 1995) he wrote The Burning Court in response to "a critic who said that no really terrifying supernatural story could have an American setting" and delivered one of the strangest mystery novels of the decade. A strange mystery novel that, as said, has become something of a fan favorite, but the book also has its fair share of critics.

The critic comes down to that final, genre-defying twist. A twist not like other twists of the period that gets applauded by some for its daring brazenness, while others think it ruined a perfectly good detective novel. For example, Nick Fuller noted in his 2003 review how that twist filled "a highly logical and convincing solution" with "all manner of logical holes."

I didn't get to complain about the twisted epilogue, because The Burning Court as a whole failed to impress. Notably the atmosphere. However, I read a Dutch translation at the time, Het lijk in de crypte (The Corpse in the Crypt), and over the years began to suspect something might have been lost in translation – considering its popularity among fans. So decided to get a copy in English and give The Burning Court a retrial.

If memory is not betraying me, I'll say right off the bat the translation was definitely the problem when it comes to the brooding, creepy atmosphere. Just the opening chapter alone is a case in point why Carr himself is a fan favorite as he was the only one who consistently wrote detective yarns that have very little to do with ordinary, everyday life, but crafted highly imaginative and fantastic tales of mystery, wonder and horror presented as fair play detective stories. I suppose you can describe Carr's best and most imaginative works like The Three Coffins (1935), The Arabian Nights Murder (1936), The Crooked Hinge (1938) and The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) as grounded precursors to the The Twilight Zone (mostly) without the supernatural or extraterrestrial elements. Well, mostly without those elements. And often start out with a fantastic events or outlandish incidents mysterious enough that could sustain a detective story without anyone getting impossibly killed or disappeared. The Burning Court is a perfect example of Carr spinning a very unlikely, but intriguing, yarn and stringing the reader along on one of the most outre detective novels of the 1930s.

The Burning Court, set in 1929, takes place in the fictitious Pennsylvanian town of Crispen where Edward Stevens, of the publishing house Herald & Sons, has a cottage and headed that way to meet his wife, Marie. Stevens has brought along the manuscript of the new Gaudan Cross book. Cross is a hermit writer devoted to retelling the histories of famous murder cases or "unearthing picturesque crimes" with "a narrative vividness which was like that of an eye-witness." And his latest manuscript is dedicated to women poisoners ("...strong stuff") throughout history. So, on his way to the cottage, Stevens looks through the manuscript and is shocked to find an old photograph of his wife accompanying the sensationally-titled chapter "The Affair of the Non-dead Mistress" – photograph is captioned, "Marie D'Aubray: Guillotined for Murder, 1861." Marie D'Aubray is not only the spitting image of Marie Stevens, but she had an identical mole on her jaw and an identical-looking, antique bracelet on her left wrist "he had seen Marie wear a hundred times." Even her expression is uncannily like Marie Stevens.

Was the Marie who was guillotined over seventy years ago a relative of the present-day Marie? Maybe something weirder and unsettling? Stevens is not given much time to consider this extraordinary problem as their next door neighbor, Mark Despard, comes knocking with another problem and an even stranger request.

Old Miles Despard, "that stately reprobate," died two weeks ago from gastro-enteritis, "after reducing the lining of his stomach to a pulp with nearly forty years' high living," but there are some suspicious features to his not entirely unexpected passing. Firstly, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning resemble those of gastro-enteritis. Secondly, the cook, Mrs. Henderson, swears she saw a woman in "queer old-fashioned clothes" standing in Miles' bedroom on the day he died. Mrs. Henderson witnessed the woman handing Miles a cup, turning around and exited through "a door which does not exist." A door bricked up and paneled over for over two hundred years! That's not all. On that night, Mark and his wife, Lucy, went to a masquerade ball at St. Davids. Lucy was dressed as Madame de Montespan in a period clothing.

As noted above, Carr knew how to lay the groundwork for a detective story and this has been merely the prelude. Mark wants to secretly break open the crypt under cover of night and test the body of his uncle for arsenic poison, which is why he brought along a disgraced physician, Mr. Partington. Mark asks Stevens to help them open the crypt together with Mr. Henderson. A four-men job that took two hours and "making a racket fit to wake the dead," but, when they finally can enter the underground crypt, they discover the body of Miles Despard has somehow disappeared from what was supposed to be his final resting place.

What follows has to be one of the most intimate, tightly drawn mysteries Carr has written. Not because of the small pool of potential suspects or their movement being largely limited to a single location, but because the problems they're trying to untangle makes it feel like they're marooned from the rest of the world – like they piece of space-time broke-off from reality. After all, this is a detective story involving dead poisoners decapitated or burnt decades or even centuries ago on order of the Burning Court ("...established to deal with poisoning cases"), talks of the un-dead, witchcraft and satanism. A woman in period dressing making her exit through a phantom door and a dead man inexplicably vanishing from a burial vault closed with a stone slab, soil, gravel and a concrete-sealed pavement ("...which one witness is willing to swear has not been disturbed"). The disappearance, and reappearance, of a bottle of morphine tablets and several pieces of knotted string are fairly normal complications by comparison. But does it all hold up?

First of all, The Burning Court is unquestionably better than I remembered and the problem probably was the translation. However, I don't think The Burning Court is the best (locked room) mystery Carr wrote during this period. The detective portion of the story comes with one hell of a premise and a solid enough plot complimented by a very well done "physical explanation" ("...a thing of sizes and dimensions and stone walls..."). But the locked room trickery is not even the best part. Carr had already put together better, more original locked room mysteries at this point. What makes The Burning Court particularly enjoyable is Carr's often overlooked, maybe even misunderstood, talent to grab the utterly fantastic or otherworldly and whittle it back down to human proportions. Carr exaggerated in order to clarify and find it a very attractive approach to crafting a detective novel or locked room mystery. Like creating a canal system for wild, imaginative ideas to flow freely without swamping half the land/story. Just compare Carr's The Unicorn Murders (1935; as by "Carter Dickson") with John Rhode's Invisible Weapons (1938), which center on similar kind of impossible crimes regarding unseen murder weapons and murderers. Rhode delivered a solid locked room mystery, but I think everyone agrees The Unicorn Murders is the most attractive and memorable of the two.

So with that out of the way, I come to the controversial epilogue kicking open the door to another genre. The short and simple answer is that I didn't care for the twist, but not because I resent Carr trying to mix genres. Something he would go on to do with much more success in his historical time travel mysteries like The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fire, Burn! (1957). You only have to look under the "Hybrid Mysteries" toe-tag to see my growing interest in this rare bird. My problem is that the shocking, genre-defying twist here is just that. A shocking twist for the sake of having a shocking twist, which is never good and Carr is no exception. Fortunately, Carr saved it for the epilogue. So you can take it or leave it. But it's a regrettably missed opportunity. If the supernatural element had been better integrated into the plot, the epilogue could created a very pleasing effect of seamlessly turning a perfectly rational detective story into waking nightmare. A reversal of what he normally does or a prose version of the old woman/young woman optical illusion. Is it a G.K. Chesterton-style detective story or M.R. James-like ghost yarn?

I didn't care about the twist-ending and opt to ignore it, because the rational detective novel preceding the epilogue with its fantastic premise, two impossibilities, bizarre clues and solution presents Carr at the top of his game. If not exactly a legitimate, Golden Age classic, The Burning Court is at least a deserved fan favorite.

A note for the curious: speaking of fan favorites... Hake Talbot style of detective fiction inextricably-linking him to Carr and often referenced Talbot's third, unpublished and lost novel on this blog. Having now reread The Burning Court, I wonder if The Affair of the Half-Witness was Talbot's take on the impossible exit of the woman in period dress witnessed by Mrs. Henderson. The book title could be a nod to the chapter titles ("each was called The Affair of the—Something") from Gaudan Cross' manuscript. Just a bit of fan speculation.

Entering the Ring: "The Man Who Boxed Forever" (2001) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "The Man Who Boxed Forever" was written for Otto Penzler's Murder on the Ropes (2001), an anthology of original boxing mysteries, bringing together some heavyweights of the American crime-and detective fiction ("...provide knock-out combinations for your reading pleasure") – which wouldn't be complete without the champion of the short detective story. This short story is practically tailored for Hoch's oldest series-detective, Simon Ark.

Simon Ark is not only an elderly man, apparently somewhere in his sixties, but claims "to have been a Coptic priest in first-century Egypt" wandering "the earth ever since in search of evil, hoping for a confrontation someday with Satan himself." Until that day arrives, Ark's quest for evil uncovers all kind of dirty deeds forcing him to act as a detective. Even his longtime, nameless narrator "had to admit that he hadn't changed much in those forty years" he knew Ark.

"The Man Who Boxed Forever" finds the two at the Barbican Arena, in London, to watch the sold out heavyweight championship fight between Desmond "Dragon" Moore and Clayt Sprague. There they bump into a sports writer, Roger Russell, who asks if Ark is there to investigate the rumors about Dragon Moore ("the age thing, you know"). And asks them to come the next day to Leather's Gym to show them some clippings. But when they arrive at the gym, they find Russell's body lying in the middle of a boxing ring. Russell is bare to the waist, "boxing gloves were laced onto each of his hands" and punched into eternity with a studded leather hand covering ("a cestus from ancient Rome"). So a sparring match gone wrong or a clever murder? That's not all.

Before his murder, Russell was obsessing over Desmond "Dragon" Moore, "a Creole from New Orleans," who has no official records of where and when he was born, but bits and pieces of information, culled from various online archives, implies the boxer has been around for a very long time – covering a nearly 200 year period. There's an account of a wrestling match involving someone called the "Masked Dragon" ("...he also boxed without his mask as Desmond Moore" in 1939 and 1892 report on a bout in New Orleans between Dragon Moore and Reefer Foxx ("one of the first to be fought since bare-knuckle fights were outlawed"). It comes with a nineteenth century photograph depicting the spitting image of the modern-day Dragon Moore with the caption, "the Creole Dragon Moore, one of the first to fight with gloves under the new rules." Even stranger, the Dragon Moore in the old photograph and the current Dragon Moore have identical, dragon-shaped birthmarks on their left cheek. Dragon Moore brags to Ark he remembers the Battle of New Orleans and the Roman gladiators. So what's going on?

Like I said, "The Man Who Boxed Forever" is tailored for a detective like Simon Ark and loved the brief scene in which he's asked if he ever heard of someone living over a hundred and twenty years. So it's unfortunate the plot turned out to be a little uneven in its execution.

The apparent immortality of the man who boxed forever, seemingly backed up by historical records, is the most intriguing aspect of the story, but the answer is very prosaic. Fitting enough for both the story and modern, classically-styled detective stories in general (ROT13: hfvat gur vagrearg gb ohvyq hc gur zlgu bs na vzzbegny obkre naq pnfuvat va ba vg jura “Nzrevpna zngpuznxref jbhyq unir bssrerq ovt chefrf gb yher Qentba onpx npebff gur bprna sbe n svtug”). But when presented as a classically-styled, you expect/hope a little bit more ingenuity to be applied to such a fascinating premise. Fortunately, Hoch brought some of his customary ingenuity, craftsmanship and a practiced hand to the murder – reason why the murder was committed in that particular way is genuinely clever. It just didn't have the room to be truly effective as half the attention went to a centenarian prize fighter.

"The Man Who Boxed Forever" is still a good, fun effort from Hoch with one of his most creative premises, but the execution feels uneven and dropping one of the two plot-threads would probably have made for a better, tighter detective story. Like I said, it's still a fun, good enough short story that reminded me The Judges of Hades (1971) and The Quests of Simon Ark (1975) are still somewhere on the big pile.

The Labyrinth House Murders (1988) by Yukito Ayatsuji

Last year was great for fans of the Japanese honkaku and shin honkaku mysteries with new translations of Akimitsu Takagi's Noumen satsujin jiken (The Noh Mask Murder, 1949), Seishi Yokomizo's Akuma no temari uta (The Little Sparrow Murders, 1957/59) and MORI Hiroshi's Tsumetai mishitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996), but looked forward the most to Meirokan no satsujin (The Labyrinth House Murders, 1988) – written by Yukito Ayatsuji and translated by Ho-Ling Wong. From the occasional reviews over the years ("awesome meta-mystery") to the fascinating, labyrinthine floor plan of the titular house Ho-Ling blogged about in "The Quest of the Missing Map." Fast forward to today and this fabled detective novel is finally available in English courtesy of Pushkin Vertigo.

So immediately pounced on it the moment The Labyrinth House Murders became available for pre-order and only wish I had reread Ayatsuji's epoch-making debut first. The Labyrinth House Murders is a thematic sequel, of sorts, on the first two Shimada Kiyoshi novels, Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Suishakan no satsujin (The Mill House Murders, 1988), weaving compelling stories and plots around alternating narratives. The Decagon House Murders plays out in two different places, while The Mill House Murders has two narratives set a year apart. The Labyrinth House Murders has a very meta-ish story-within-a-story structure. So, basically, you're getting two The Labyrinth House Murders for the price of one!

The story begins with Shimada receiving an advanced copy of Shishiya Kadomi's The Labyrinth House Murders, "An Original Honkaku Murder Mystery! The Truth Behind the Labyrinth House Murder Case Finally Revealed," which finally promises to expose the truth of the real-life murder case at the Labyrinth House – "famous for its complex underground maze." The author claims the right to tell the story as Shishiya Kadomi was one of those present, but not under the penname of the book and presents it from the start as a mini-puzzle ("so which of the characters is Shishiya Kadomi?"). So the main body of the book is Shishiya Kadomi's The Labyrinth House Murders book-ended by Shimada starting to read the book in the prologue and meeting the author in the epilogue to cast a new light on the case.

Shishiya Kadomi's The Labyrinth House Murders tells the story of the 60th birthday party of legendary mystery writer, Miyagaki Yōtarō, who persisted in writing traditionally-plotted, fair play mysteries when "the wave of social detective novels took over the world of Japanese mystery fiction." Miyagaki is more than just a mystery writer. He's a mystery fan who dedicated his entire life to the detective story and through his magazine, Reverie, looked for new blood to carry on the genre.

So, on his 60th birthday, Miyagaki, invites ten people to his underground, labyrinthine lair to celebrate. A group comprising of Miyagaki's long-time editor, Utayama Hideyuki, and his pregnant wife, Keiko. Four promising mystery writers, Kiyomura Junichi, Suzaki Shōsuke, Funaoka Madoka and Hayashi Tomoo, who made their debut in Miyagaki's magazine. A well-known mystery critic, Samejima Tomoo, the housekeeper Fumie and, of course, Shimada. Shimada's is drawn to Labyrinth House because it was designed by that eccentric architect, Nakamura Seiji, who "had built a few curious building" like the Decagon House and Mill House – which all had seen their fair share of bloodshed and tragedy ("would the Labyrinth House be next?"). Labyrinth House is practically designed to court tragedy. A small, low stone building, "like a massive crag of rock," which is just the entrance to a massive, underground labyrinth with rooms clustered around them. All the rooms bare names of characters from Greek mythology. This veritable Minotaur's labyrinth has one entrance/exit in the reception room (Ariadne), brilliantly positioned right next to the kitchen. Nakamura Seiji, you genius, you!

When everyone has arrived, they're informed a tragedy has already happened before they arrived. The terminally-ill Miyagaki took his own life and left behind a curious testament on a cassette tape.

Miyagaki invited the four mystery writers because they're his favorites who got their starts in Reverie, but urges them to not assume he has been fully satisfied with their accomplishments. So poses a challenge to the four writers: over the next five days, they have to write a short story in which Labyrinth House is the setting, the characters in the story are the people gathered at the house and "every author must be the victim in their own story." There are three judges, Utayama, Samejima and Shimada, who have to pick the best story with the winner becoming heir to half of Miyagaki's fortune. And pretty much his successor. But if even one person refuses to participate, the contest is canceled and the testament void.

Not that leaving the underground house is an option as they soon find themselves trapped, or locked, inside the house. Before too long, the nearly decapitated body of one of the mystery writers is found in the drawing room (Minotaur). A murder that turns out to be copy of the murder described in the opening pages of the victim's short story, which becomes a pattern as the bodies pile on during their entrapment in Labyrinth House. And as to be expected from "an original honkaku murder mystery," even a fictitious one, succeeding victims leave behind a dying message or get themselves killed in a locked room. However, you shouldn't read it as "The Classic Japanese Locked Room Mystery" promised on the cover as it simply is not that kind of detective novel. The dying message, locked room and every other trope function here as smaller cogs and wheels in a larger plot, except, of course, the meta-narrative – which is the key to the story. Impressively, Ayatsuji uses the story's only genuine flaw to its advantage. Shishiya Kadomi's in-story novelization of the Labyrinth House murder case is fairly solvable. You can reach the in-story solution, or a big chunk of it, simply by asking a very simple and obvious question the characters stubbornly refuse to ask themselves. So the in-story novel reads and feels like a good, fun, but slightly imperfect, shin honkaku mystery.

In most cases, The Labyrinth House Murders would have been another example of the false-solution, flawed as it may be, outshining the correct solution. The slightly less impressive, but correct, solution has some elements that would have cheapened a detective novel of lesser quality. For example, the (ROT13) fbhepr bs gur oybbq gur zheqrere unq gb pbire hc jvgu gur qrpncvgngvba comes across as a bit cheap and banal (uneqyl jbegu gur jbex gung jrag vagb bofphevat gur zheqrere'f traqre) or the locked room-trick being the kind of shenanigans I normally frown upon. I simply worked on the assumption, a very incorrect assumption, the first victim was nearly decapitated because an ax was needed to break down into a locked room later. And destroying evidence in the process that the door was gimmicked to appear locked. Nevertheless, it served as a rock solid foundation for the correct solution to stand on making the false-solution one of the two biggest accomplishments of Ayatsuji and The Labyrinth House Murders. A fantastic use of the false-solution showing once again Ayatsuji is closer to Ellery Queen than John Dickson Carr. The second thing the book does very well is being a meta-mystery with the final meta-twist as the proverbial cherry on top!

So, yes, I tremendously enjoyed The Labyrinth House Murders. I'm not sure if I would rank it above The Decagon House Murders or The Mill House Murders, purely as traditional fair play mysteries, but as a fun, smart meta-mystery it's first-rate. Something very different from those two previous novels that at the same time feels like a logical next step in the series. Very much look forward to see what Ayatsuji is going to do next with his signature dueling narratives. Pushkin Vertigo has announced that the next translation in the "Bizarre House Mysteries" series is going to be Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991), which means they're skipping Ningyōkan no satsujin (The Doll Mansion Murders, 1989) for now. I don't mind. The Clock Mansion Murders sounds like another treat for detective fans. Anyway, 2025 is off to a good start!