The Fifth Tumbler (1936) by Clyde B. Clason

Clyde B. Clason was an American copywriter, trade magazine editor and author of ten once very popular, critically acclaimed Van Dinean detective novels about a mild mannered Roman historian turned amateur sleuth, Theocritus Lucius Westborough – blessed with "the instincts of a ferret and the brain of a Holmes." Clason certainly was one of the more sophisticated, literate writers to come out of the Van Dine-Queen School driven by a genuine curiosity and knowledge of art, culture and science. Despite his weighty name and occupation, Westborough never becomes a lecturing snob like Van Dine's Philo Vance or early period Ellery Queen.

More importantly, Clason was not an incompetent plotter with a healthy interest in locked room mysteries and impossible crimes. Seven of the ten Westborough mysteries count as impossible crime novels making Clason one of the leading locked room specialists of his day, right alongside John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson. Clason's best locked room mysteries are admittedly fairly minor affairs compared to the best locked room trickery from Carr or Rawson. They tend to be practical tricks and smaller parts of a bigger, more complicated plot overall, not the focal point, but Clason usually delivers a cleverly constructed, often fairly clued mysteries. Clason regrettably believed "his kind of book had gone out of fashion with the emphasis on blood-and-guts hardboiled fiction during the post-World War II period" and exited the genre in the early 1940s.

Clason and his ten Westborough novels fell into obscurity for decades. Only people who remembered them were collectors of vintage hardbacks, genre scholars and feverish impossible crime addicts looking for their next fix. So, yeah, there probably was a point somewhere in the late 1970s or early '80s when only Bill Pronzini knew about Clason. Yet, Clason was among the first wave of obscure, long-forgotten mystery writers to return to print when the Rue Morgue Press reprinted his now most well-known locked room mystery, The Man from Tibet (1938), in 1998 – which slowly snowballed into a reprint renaissance and revival. Along the way, Rue Morgue Press reissued all but two of Clason's Westborough mysteries before closing down in 2015. The Death Angel (1936), second title in the series, was one of the last reprints Rue Morgue Press published.

So only The Fifth Tumbler (1936) and The Whispering Ear (1938) missed out on getting reprinted that would have given us a complete, uniform set of reprints. No other publisher has picked up the series since 2015, until recently.

Chosho Publishing, an indy print-on-demand outfit, has reissued a modest selection of slightly overpriced of Golden Age detective novels over the past two, three years. I reviewed their reprint of Isabel Briggs Myers' Murder Yet to Come (1929/30) last year, but they also reprinted Clason's The Fifth Tumbler, The Man from Tibet, The Purple Parrot (1937), Murder Gone Minoan (1939) and Green Shiver (1941). Just be warned The Purple Parrot is the weak link in the series and Murder Gone Minoan too text book-y. I gladly took their reprint of The Fifth Tumbler to get one step closer to that complete set of reprints and crossing another, once rare, title off the locked room wishlist.

The Fifth Tumbler is Clason's debut as a mystery writer and introduces the genial, mild mannered history professor as one of about half a dozen guests in the west corridor, on the third floor, of the Equable Hotel in Chicago – where one of the guests dies under bizarre circumstances. Mr. Elmo Swink is not the most esteemed or popular hotel guests, referred to by various characters in the opening chapters as "that fat mug," "dirty hog" and generally considered to be a bit nasty, who's found lying doubled up in the doorway of his room. Swink died from inhaling a strong whiff of hydrocyanic gas delivered by a booby trap attached to the inside of the door. When the victim opened the door, a test tube dropped containing chemicals that would mix and release the poisonous gas. So the immediate question arising from this situation is how the murderer manage to rig up the booby trap when the door, connecting doors and windows were all locked and bolted on the inside. And the door to the hall is out, anyway, as it could been used without disturbing the booby trap or knocking down the tube ("just like one of the 'murder in a sealed room' things that you read about in detective stories").

This strange murder is officially investigated by Captain Terence O'Ryan and Lieutenant John Mack, but Westborough uses the name of his dead brother, Jim Westborough, to get to sit on the investigation as a quiet spectator. Apparently, Jim Westborough saved Mack's neck when he was framed in "as dirty a deal as was ever cooked up." Westborough gets to sit-in on the investigation and silently begins woolgathering from an armchair in the corner. Even though Mack believes "crimes aren't solved by a guy sitting around on his fanny and thinking about 'em," but simply by old-fashioned legwork to chase the facts. However, I think this division between the leg work done by the police and reasoning largely from an armchair by the amateur detective is the most attractive, well-done part of The Fifth Tumbler. I appreciated "From the Notebook of Theocritus Lucius Westborough" was included early in the story.

A thorough investigation narrows down the list of potential suspects down to the people along the west corridor of the third floor and an employee or two. Like the lovesick night clerk and chemistry student, Chris Larson. The lovely, currently unemployed stenographer, Yvonne Grant. A self-proclaimed broker named James Chilton. A commercial artist, Ronald Graham, who's staying at the hotel with his wife and son. An acid-tongued, gossip mongering hotel widow, Sarah Blakely, and a pair of questionable traveling salesmen, Fred Hammond and Ben Devon. So the problem is not a lack of suspects or even the booby trap method, but that there apparently is not "a motive worth a damn." That actually causes a problem with the solution, but I'll get back to the solution in a second.

The Fifth Tumbler is Clason's first stab at the detective story and firsts rarely translate into classics or practically unblemished gems in our genre. Clason's maiden effort is no exception. For one, it feels much more of an imitation of the Van Dinean detective story than some of the latter books, which mostly comes down to establishing an amateur detective/official police working relationship and the story almost entirely taking place at the crime scene – a staple of the early 1930s Van Dinean detective story. Very different from novels like Blind Drifts (1937), Poison Jasmine (1940) and Murder Gone Minoan. A second problem is that despite the ingenuity shown in setting up an original locked room situation and various promising plot-threads, the solutions are routine and lack imagination. Something the author admitted when Mack groaned upon hearing Westborough's explanation, "the oldest trick known to detective story writers." If this had been all, The Fifth Tumbler would have been pleasant, competently routine first stab, but Clason tried to go for an Agatha Christie-style rug pull. Well, it's kind of impressive to see a mystery writer pull the legs from underneath himself. That's a trick I hadn't seen before!

Not that it did the story any favors. The problem is the extremely well-hidden, vaguely clued motive. There are, technically, "clues" to the motive, but they're just not very helpful and motive really is the key to solution. So what should have been a "surprise twist" to explain an apparent "murder without a motive" simply falls flat. John Norris likened it in his 2011 review to a kangaroo popping out to thumb its nose at the stunned, silent and cheated reader. I found the solution to be both disappointing and somewhat of a cheat, but up until that point, I enjoyed the story that definitely had its moments. Like the gossipy Mrs. Blakely giving a stunned Mack an unexpected demonstration of her psychometric abilities (predictable solution, but fun) or the Van Dinean mini-lectures on a variety of subjects (e.g. chemistry and locks). Westborough interestingly compares the case to "the mechanism of a pin-tumbler lock" with four of his five tumblers (i.e. suspects) in place, but "an obstinate fifth prevents the lock from opening." However, the lock analogies demanded a better locked room-trick.

So the routine plot and clumsily-handled, bungled ending makes it impossible to recommend Clason's The Fifth Tumbler to anyone, except completists or connoisseurs of the obscure.

Note for the curious: because the important motive is so well-hidden, I got hold of a red herring I thought offered a simple and practical solution to the whole mess and a murderer tailor-made for the story. My entirely wrong armchair solution (ROT13) crttrq gur rk-cbyvprzna naq pheerag ubgry qrgrpgvir, Wreel Fcnatre, nf gur zheqrere, orpnhfr uvf cnfg nf n cbyvprzna pbhyq unir oebhtug uvz vagb pbagnpg jvgu Ryzb Fjvax – n pbazna naq cneg gvzr oynpxznvyre. Fb gurer pbhyq unir orra bccbeghavgl sbe oynpxznvy naq cebivqvat gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir jvgu n zbgvir sbe zheqre. Vg'f rnfvre sbe gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir gb trg ubyq bs cnff xrlf gb perngr n cngujnl gb gur ivpgvz'f ebbz guebhtu gur pbaarpgvat qbbef guna vg jbhyq or sbe bar bs gur thrfgf/bhgfvqref. Abg gur zbfg fcrpgnphyne be bevtvany fbyhgvba gb n qrgrpgvir fgbel, ohg qrprag rabhtu naq yvxrq gur vqrn bs gur ubhfr qrgrpgvir orvat gur svefg zheqrere Jrfgobebhtu pngpurf. Maybe I wouldn't cut as an Ellery Queen or Philo Vance, but I would make one hell of Simon Brimmer!

The Hit List: Top 10 Locked Room Mystery Novels That Need to Be Reprinted

In 2022, I posted an addendum to Nick Fuller's "Detective Stories to Reprint" entitled "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Detective Novels That Need to Be Reprinted" going over a lengthy list of tantalizingly obscure, out-of-print mystery novels that remained out-of-reach – even in the midst of a reprint renaissance. Some writers and novels on the list have since returned to print. Such as Anthony Gilbert's The Tragedy at Freyne (1927), Mignon G. Eberhart's From This Dark Stairway (1931) and the complete works of Eunice Mays Boyd and James Ronald, but most remain annoyingly out-of-print today.

So wanted to do a shorter, trimmed down version focusing on out-of-print locked room mysteries and impossible crime novels (because, of course). Not simply as an excuse to climb on my favorite hobbyhorse, but because I really needed a filler-post to replenish the diminished backlog of blog-posts and reviews.

However, I always try to avoid doing a standard top 10 list of favorite characters or mysteries by picking somewhat unusual, sometimes niche, topics allowing for a surprising list. For example, "Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels" starts with a novel from 1934 and ends with one from 2008. "Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated" lists ten mysteries from four continents, written in six different languages, peeking over the language-barrier at us. "Top 10 Works of Detective Fiction That Have Been Lost to History" goes over the list of unpublished manuscripts from some very well-known, celebrated mystery writers that were lost or destroyed – consigned to the phantom library in the sky. On a more positive note is the "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance." So didn't simply want to go over my personal locked room mystery wishlist and pick ten titles.

This list is basically split in two, mashed together halves. There are five titles directly plucked from my wishlist, while the other five have been reviewed before on this blog. But they all deserve or need to be reprinted for one reason or another. So publishers take note! Hope everyone else finds it an entertaining and interesting list with hopefully a few picks that'll surprise you.

The Case of the Gold Coins (1933) by Anthony Wynne

Robert McNair Wilson, a Scottish-born physician, is the man behind the "Anthony Wynne" pseudonym and, before John Dickson Carr, was the first Golden Age writer to specialize in novel-length locked room mysteries – producing twenty-one impossible crime novels and some short stories. The quality of Wynne's Dr. Eustace Hailey series is uneven, but The Case of the Gold Coins is considered to be one of his most ingenious takes on the impossible crime problem: a body found on a beach without any footprints. John Norris called the solution "simple and rather brilliant" and Curt Evans thought the explanation "worthy of John Dickson Carr." The Case of the Gold Coins sounds like a perfect, long overdue follow up to the British Library reprint edition of Wynne's Murder of a Lady (1931; a.k.a. The Silver Scale Mystery).

Three Dead, One Hurt (1934) by Scobie Mackenzie

Robert Adey highlighted Mackenzie's Three Dead, One Hurt in his introduction of Locked Room Murders (1991) as "something a little different." Something he described as a Buchanesque tale about a group of people marooned on a Scottish island with "a clever locked room situation." In 2022, Martin Edwards reviewed Three Dead, One Hurt and thought it "a notch or two above many others that were being written at the time." But, as he pointed out, the book has never been reprinted since its original publication over 90 years (!) ago.

Terror at Compass Lake (1935) by Tech Davis

Brian Skupin highlighted Tech Davis' Terror at Compass Lake in Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) as an intriguing mystery in which Aubrey Nash investigates the deaths of a chauffeur and his employer in upstate New York. The death of the chauffeur apparently that was "neither murder, suicide nor natural death" and the murder of his boss offers "a new twist on the locked room mystery." You should know that a review from 1990 by the late William F. Deeck points out that the book is better plotted than written ("recommended for locked room fanciers, and other problem solvers").

The Whispering Ear (1938) by Clyde B. Clason

Clyde B. Clason wrote only ten detective novels, over a five year period, but they're among the most sophisticated, well-written and often soundly plotted the American detective story produced during the Golden Age – making his obscurity all the more baffling. Rue Morgue Press reprinted eight of Clason's Theocritus Lucius Westborough mysteries in the 2000s and 2010s. The second novel in that series, The Dark Angel (1936), was one of the last reprints they published before closing their doors. So we missed out on a complete set of reprints that would have included The Fifth Tumbler (1936) and The Whispering Ear. Recently, Chosho Publishing reprinted The Fifth Tumbler, The Purple Parrot (1937), The Man from Tibet (1938), Murder Gone Minoan (1939) and Green Shiver (1941). The Whispering Ear remains the only title in the series that has not been reprinted since the 1930s or '40s. It could very well be Clason's most substantial impossible crime novel concerning "an impersonation problem in which a bad twin, taking the place of his famous brother, gets the latter's money and is killed" – shot in a locked bathroom. A 1938 review called it a "fair enough puzzler."

The Longstreet Legacy (1951) by Douglas Ashe

So the first of the previously read and reviewed titles on this list. Ashe's The Longstreet Legacy, alternatively published as A Shroud for Grandmama, was discussed earlier this year by Martin Edwards, "a classic whodunit with macabre trimmings," who linked to my review. Not only is this a classic whodunit from the twilight years of the Golden Age, but an imaginative and original impossible crime novel. The elderly victim, Ella Longstreet, is found lying at the bottom of staircase dressed in a bikini and surrounded by a circle of dusty, waltzing footprints with the rest of the hallway inexplicably free of footprints. Regrettably, The Longstreet Legacy is likely to remain out-of-print for the foreseeable future. John Norris tried to get the books reprinted in 2014, but the author's son is "sort of contentious and is holding on tight to the rights."

The Glass Spear (1950) by S.H. Courtier

This is going to be contentious entry! Wynne's The Case of the Gold Coins, Davis' Terror at Compass Lake and Clason's The Whispering Ear appear a little dubious when it comes to the overall quality (i.e. writing, characterization and plot), but they appear to be fully-fledged locked room mysteries. And two of them are reportedly excellent when it comes to the locked room-tricks. Courtier's The Glass Spear is, what John Norris called, an anthropological detective novel and a fine one at that. Simply as a regional detective novel it succeeded in what a regional detective novel is supposed to do: create a story, plot and crime that feels native to the setting. Something that feels like it could not have taken place anywhere else, except in the setting of the story. There's a locked room murder, but it's immediately solved and the locked room-trick routine. I decided to include it as a reminder Courtier is still waiting to be reprinted.

Note for the curious: John Norris (what, him again!?) reviewed Courtier's Let the Man Die (1961) earlier this year, describing it as "remarkable retro" and "truly feels like a love letter to the plot heavy books of the 1930s and 1940s." Something tells me the traditional, Australian detective story has been criminally overlooked by the rest of the world.

Withered Murder (1956) by A. & P. Shaffer

Many of the once extremely rare, prohibitively expensive and out-of-print (locked room) mystery novels returned to print in recent years. A notable example is Christianna Brand's Death of Jezebel (1948). It used to be one of the most wanted, next to impossible to obtain impossible crime novels in the genre as secondhand copies were scarce and often expensive. That list of ridiculous rare, out-of-print mysteries with the quality to match their legendary reputation has been thinned out considerably. I think the most famous title to top that list today is Shaffer's Withered Murder. Nick Fuller praised Withered Murder for being "as flamboyantly fantastical and fearsome as a Father Brown case" and "as brilliantly clued and surprising as a Carr." So you understand us locked room fanatics need a reprint of Withered Murder almost as much as oxygen.

Diving Death (1962) by Charles Forsyte

There were a few unsuccessful, short-lived attempts during the 1960s to continue and modernize the fair play, Golden Age-style detective novel. One of these short-lived attempts came from the husband-and-wife team of Gordon and Vicky Philo, writing as "Charles Forsyte," who penned a handful of classically-styled whodunits. Three of them feature their series-detective, Inspector Richard Left, who's confronted in Diving Death with a seemingly impossible murder during an archaeological expedition at sea. A reprint of this wonderful detective novel full with impossible murders, false-solutions, waterproof alibis and a fallible detective would be greatly appreciated by fellow mystery aficionados.

Black Aura (1974) by John Sladek

Sladek's wrote two famous and beloved, classically-styled detective novels featuring his equally popular detective, Thackeray Phin, whose specialty is solving locked room murders and other seemingly impossible crimes. Black Aura and Invisible Green (1977) are fan favorites often mentioned in same breath as John Dickson Carr and Hake Talbot. We've been arguing for years, some even decades, about which of the two Thackeray Phin novels is better. Fortunately, copies of Black Aura and Invisible Green are neither absurdly rare nor ridiculously expensive, but what's absurd and ridiculous is that neither have been reprinted since 1983.

Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin jiken (The New Kindaichi Files, 1994) by Seimaru Amagi

I wanted to include a translation, any translation, of a non-English locked room mystery in need of fresh printing-ink, but choices proved to be limited. I could pick between S.A. Steeman's Six hommes morts (Six Dead Men, 1930/31) or Chin Shunshin's Pekin yūyūkan (Murder in a Peking Studio, 1976). I then remembered there's another option, Seimaru Amagi, who in my opinion is the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story. Amagi co-created the anime/manga franchise The Kindaichi Case Files and penned a series of “light novels” about Hajime Kindaichi and his cohorts. A light novel is a relatively short-ish, illustrated novels and four of Amagi's Kindaichi light novels received English translations. However, Ho-Ling Wong pointed out the translations were intended for educational purposes and the reason why every edition has a long English-Japanese vocabulary list. So they were translated to help improve the English of Japanese readers.

That being said, they are generally excellent, shin honkaku-style detective stories with ready-made translations. Originally titled Opera House, the New Murder, the much more mundanely-titled The New Kindaichi Files is the best of the four. A theatrical mystery set on an island theater where an actress ends up underneath a crystal chandelier behind the locked doors of a theater. My second favorite is the fascinating Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998) with its strange setting and bizarre impossible murder. Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) is a solid detective story distinguished by incorporating early internet and internet culture into a classically-styled whodunit. Only Shanhai gyojin densetsu satsujin jiken (The Shanghai River Demon's Curse, 1997) failed to impress. Considering the current interest in Japanese detective fiction, these ready-made translations can be bundled together as an omnibus and all that needs to be added is an introduction to the characters and history of the series. Because it would a shame to have them waste away in obscurity when, now more than ever before, there's an actual audience for them.