Kendell Foster Crossen was an American pulp writer of science-fiction, mysteries and a short stories during the 1940s before moving onto private eye and spy fiction in the '50s and '60s, which appeared under numerous different pennames – notably "M.E. Chaber," "Ken Crossen" and "Richard Foster." Just like other pulp writers covered on this blog, Crossen was a fan of impossible crime fiction and penned at least half a dozen of them.
In 2020, Steeger Books started reprinting the Milo March series in addition to several volumes with the pulp adventures of the Green Lama, but Crossen's pulp mysteries, especially his impossible crime novel, annoyingly remain out-of-print. Like the subject of today's review.
The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945), as by "Ken Crossen," is the second of only two novels, to my knowledge, starring Jason Jones and Necessary Smith – who first appeared together in The Case of the Curious Heel (1944). The book and particularly the two main characters read like a pulp-style send-up of Crossen's favorite mystery writers and fictional detectives. Detective Jason Jones, "fat beyond description," who has an agreement with the police department that they won't promote him as long as they hand him all the unusual cases. When he's not probing strange murder cases, Jones is growing geraniums in his rooftop hothouse. Smith calls him "the poor man's Nero Wolfe," but Jones can also be counted among Dr. Gideon Fell's literary relatives. Jones has a round, red face like Santa Claus that "rested comfortably upon three chins" and even launched into a locked room lecture of his own ("if Clayton Rawson, John Dickson Carr and H.H. Holmes can write long treatises on locked rooms, I guess I can say a few words on impossible situations"). The reason why Jones decides to do a poor man's version of Dr. Fell's locked room lecture is because this case presents the first time he came across a locked house mystery ("do you suppose it might start a whole new trend of methods in the impossible situation?").
The locked house in question a big, three-story private house in upper Manhattan belonging to a famous theatrical producer, Morris Block, who has set up a great and profitable racket. Block blackmails the best people in the theatrical world into working on his productions at "a reasonable salary," which guarantees money and success. But also a ton of enemies.
So it comes as no surprise to the guests when their backstabbing, blackmailing host is stabbed to death during a house party. Fortunately, the murderer left his bloody fingerprints all over the place and the police identity the prints as belonging to Max Thale. A publicity man, for the Mailer Studios out in Hollywood, who came to do publicity work for Block, but Thale has impossibly disappeared from the house when every door was guarded by policemen and the windows couldn't have been used as a exit without disturbing the snow on the outside ledge. There "a good four inches of snow on the ground all around the house without so much as a bird track in it." How could their prime suspect have vanished from the house?
Jason Jones is joined by Necessary Smith, a private investigator, who's hired by Thornton Rockwood, the drama critic of the Morning Star, to investigate the murder because everyone involved are Broadway people – intends to cover the case in his column. So wants someone on the inside of the investigation and promises a five-thousand dollar bonus, on top of his five-hundred dollar retainer, if he can beat the police to the solution. Unfortunately, that possible bone of contention between Jones and Smith is not developed to its full potential.
What follows, plot-wise, is fairly typical fare for a second-string, pulp-style mystery as more bodies and bloody hand prints turn up, which only proves the murderer is a prize idiot. More on that in a moment. The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints still has its moments. Firstly, Crossen indulges in a shameless, but forgivable, piece of self-promotion barely disguised as a plot-thread. One of the clues figuring in the story is a missing mystery novel, Richard Foster's The Laughing Buddha Murders, which is about to be published in the story with only a few advanced copies floating around. So they get to ask the suspects if they like detective stories and have they read The Laughing Buddha Murders. They even find someone, beside the murderer, who loves "the locked room mysteries of John Dickson Carr" and has read an advanced copy. And explains it's about "a Buddha, weighing a ton, which apparently vanished from a locked room." Vulcan Publications even gets in on the action! Secondly, the plot-thread of the missing mystery novel and its significant on the murders is not solved by Jones nor Smith, but by Smith's sharp secretary, Elsie Poll. She solves the whole problem from her office chair in the fine tradition of the great armchair detectives.
There are one, or two, other bits and pieces I enjoyed, but if you're looking for a good piece of impossible crime fiction with preferable a flicker of originality, The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints is not for you. The fingerprint-trick on which the murderer balanced his whole evil scheme was lifted from a Carr novel and Carr got the trick from Hans Gross' criminology handbook. And he was not the only one to use it. I strongly suspect Crossen learned the trick from Carr and think most readers will immediately recognize the trick, especially impossible crime fans, which also exposes how the Max Thale character vanished from the guarded house surrounded by virgin snow. I did like the idea behind the motive for the murder of Morris Block. That's one way to do crime, I suppose. :D But even as a pulp-style impossible crime novel, there's not much to recommend. Very much to my regret.
I liked The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints like a guilty pleasure. I know it's a second-string pulp and not even the best kind of second-string pulp. There's something infectious about Crossen fanboying over his favorite mystery writers, promoting one of his books inside one of his books and doing it without taking itself too seriously. It gives the story the kind of charm making you almost want to overlook the ramshackle, less than original, plotting and one of the dumbest murderer's I have come across in a while.
So The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints is not a great piece of impossible crime fiction, but it's at least entertaining and will be on the look out for The Case of the Curious Heel and the pair of Chin Kwang Kham locked room mysteries.
Note for the curious: Crossen references Nero Wolfe and John Dickson Carr in The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints. Funnily enough, the fingerprint-trick used here can be linked to both writers. I already mentioned Crossen likely got the idea from Carr, but there's an episode of The Adventures of Nero Wolfe radio show, "The Case of the Phantom Fingers" (1951), employing exactly the same trick. Considering how self-referential Crossen is, he might also have made a reference to one of his short stories, "The Case of the Fugitive Fingerprints," published in the June, 1941, issue of Double Detective – as by "Richard Foster." Jones makes a reference to a criminal in California who, years ago, had come up with a fingerprint-trick of his own.
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