The Stars Spell Murder: "Handbook for Homicide" (1943) by Fredric Brown

Fredric Brown's "Handbook for Homicide," originally published in the March, 1943, issue of Detective Tales, can be described as either a longish short story or a short, very short, novel comprising eight chapters – all short and snappy. I was in the mood for something short, snappy and to the point. And remembered reading "Handbook for Homicide" is one of Brown's more conventional pieces of detective fiction in the Van Dinean traditional.

Bill Wunderly, an accountant, is braving a dangerous, winding mountain road during a worsening storm to see his love, Annabel Burke, who's a mathematician with "the astronomy bug." She works as an assistant at "the most isolated and inaccessible observatory in the country," Einar Observatory. During his drive up the mountain road, Bill meets a Native American, Charlie Lightfoot, who's transporting crates with rattlesnakes on his donkey, Archimedes. I should warn animal lovers poor Archimedes doesn't survive the trip and Bill gives Charlie, along with his snakes, a ride to the observatory.

Einar Observatory houses a small group of scientists. There are three astronomers, Abel Lecky, Fergus Fillmore and Darius Hill, who each have an assistant, Paul Bailey, Eric Andressen and Annabel. Additionally, the observatory has a staff consisting of an electrician, Rex Parker, Otto the Janitor, a handy man and a small household staff – rounded out by Bill and Charlie. Like I said, "Handbook for Homicide" is a longish short story that's short, snappy and wastes no time in getting to the murder after their arrival. Elsie Willis, the maid, is found dead in an upstairs room with a cracked skull. I should note here that this first murder is, technically speaking, a locked room mystery as she's found dead behind a bolted door. I had no idea this story qualified as an impossible crime story and one of the reasons for picking this story was to break up the locked room reviews. However, it's such a small, trifling plot detail that's solved practically immediately with a routine trick and never mentioned again, a recurring problem with this story, that I decided not to tag this review as a locked room mystery.

The murderer is not done yet and even pries open a crate with rattlesnakes, which has fatal consequences and, even worse, they're cutoff from the outside when the bridge collapses. And, of course, the phone lines are down as well. So they're trapped at the mountain top observatory with a murderer, rattlesnakes crawling outside and no way out for at least another day or two. One interesting aspect of the story between the murder and solution is Bill learning the foppish Darius Hill is something of an amateur criminologist who's working on a manuscript, The Murderer's Guide. While reading the manuscript, Bill starts getting some ideas about the murders at the observatory. What I also found interesting is that the characters speculate Hill might suffer from necrophobia, "fear of death, fear of the dead," which would make for a fascinating alibi, but nothing is really done with it. That's emblematic of this story.

Brown crammed "The Handbook for Homicide" with plenty of good ideas, bursting with potential, but only mentions them without doing anything with them. I already mentioned the simplistic, somewhat unnecessary, locked room angle and the necrophobia bit. A better example would be the character of Charlie Lightfoot who first appeared as one of those dated, poorly-aged characters, but dropped "the Big Chief Wahoo accent" the moment trouble started on the mountain road and Brown sketched out an interesting background story for him. Like when Bill mentioned Charlie seems to be very familiar with the layout of the observatory and Charlie answers, "I designed it." Nothing is done with it or mentioned again. So everything feels underdeveloped and thus a bit disappointing in the end, especially the genuinely good bits like the ingenious alibi-trick behind the first murder and the question of motives – which all needed more room to breath and be developed into their full potential. Now it reads like an early outline or draft of unfinished, unpolished manuscript not unlike the published plot outline Jack Vance's third Joe Bain novel "The Genesee Slough Murders" (1966).

So I think "Handbook for Homicide" would have fared better had Brown taken the time to flesh out the characters, plot and background into a novel-length mystery.

Note for the curious: as the resident locked room fanboy and impossible crime fanatic, I couldn't help but notice the ingenious alibi-trick could have doubled as a way to (accidentally) create a locked room scenario. So... (SPOILERS/ROT13) gur zheqrere hfrq yvdhrsvrq nve sebz n QrJne synfx gb serrmr gur ivpgvz'f yrtf, cebc gur obql hc va n pbeare naq yrsg gur ebbz gb perngr na nyvov fbzrjurer ryfr. Jura gur yrtf gunjrq, gur obql sryy naq gur crbcyr qbjafgnvef jrer nggenpgrq ol gur guhq. Jul obgure cynlvat nebhaq jvgu jverf gb znavchyngr gur obyg, jura gur obql pbhyq unir orra cynprq ntnvafg gur jnyy pybfre gb gur qbbe. Jura gur obql svanyyl sryy, vg raqrq hc oybpxvat gur qbbe naq nccneragyl phggvat bss gur zheqrere'f rkvg. Gur zheqrere pna fvzcyl ybpx gur qbbe oruvaq uvz jvgu n fcner xrl. Nsgre nyy, vg'f gur obql oybpxvat gur qbbe, abg gur ybpx be qenj-obyg. Uryy, lbh pna cebonoyl hfr gur yvdhrsvrq nve gb serrmr gur qbbe va cynpr gb znxr vg nccrne ybpxrq.