Time Wants a Skeleton: C.M.B. vol. 9-10 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 9 opens with a two-part, two chapter story, "The Sun and a Folklore," which brings Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to Machu Picchu, Peru, accompanied by their mutual frenemy, Mau Sugal – a black market broker and professional nuisance. Sugal explains to a skeptical Shinra a piece of Inca gold has turned up ("most of the Inca gold was melted down by the Spanish into gold ingots"). It happened during a curious incident two weeks ago.

Professor Polaiyu discovered in the university archives an uncatalogued quipu ("a necklace that conveys a message using the number of knots") with knots and markings he had never seen before. After studying the quipu, Professor Polaiyu became convinced it conveyed a coded map of the underground tunnels leading "from the Temple of Sunlight to the Golden City." So he organized a small expedition into the tunnel system with a local guide, Hulio, but only the young guide came back out clutching a piece of Inca gold. Hulio's story is that he lost the professor when the batteries of his flashlight died, but refuses to tell where he found the gold. Not long after getting involved in the case, the body of the professor is found near the exit along with his digital camera with blurry pictures on it. And the first part ends with an unambiguous murder.

I wouldn't call "The Sun and a Folklore" a typical, traditional whodunit, more an adventures mystery of myth and folklore, but thought the problem of batteries presented an inspired piece of clueing – strengthened by its conclusion. A slightly unexpected and unusual conclusion with the last two panels adding a touch of sad tragedy to the whole case. So, in many ways, a typical Katou story and a good one at that!

The second story, "The Metamorphosis," is a one-chapter short taking place at Meiyuu Private High School's library. Shinra and Tatsuki are in the library, helping out with chores, when they spot a picture hanging above the door. A strange picture depicting "a beautiful butterfly with a grotesque looking caterpillar," which turns out to be relatively valuable drawing by the 17th century entomologist and scientific illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. So, of course, they let it hang above the door and, as to be expected, it disappeared. The circumstances under which it disappeared makes it something of an impossible crime. There was only one student present in the library and the picture vanished during a 30 minute window, during which nobody could have taken the picture out of its frame without being noticed by the student ("the windows, they were all locked"). So, if the student is innocent, who stole the picture and how? Shinra's solution is as ingenious as it's impractical and liable to misfire, but Katou was obviously aware of the problem and worked the difficulty of pulling off this trick into the solution. I allow it! :)

The third and last one-chapter story from this volume is "Abortive Migration" and brings Shinra and Tatsuki to the island of Okinawa to photograph marine wildlife. They have two diving instructors to along with them, Tsuruoka Nobuaki and his wife Miki, but the two have a badly disguised argument and it later turns out to be related to his first wife, Keiko – who died in a tragic diving accident. Tsuruoka and Keiko had been diving when encountering a lot of dead fish and eventually a humpback whale. But he "lost track of her beneath the shadow of the whale." Keiko's body would not be found until a week later. Tsuruoka Nobuaki has ever since lived under a cloud of suspicion and now it's coming to a head with his second wife. I guess you can pigeonhole this story in the psychological crime slot, but personally found a dull and weak story to close out this otherwise excellent volume.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 10 has four, one-chapter stories starting with a personal favorite, "Sixty Million Years," in which a brother-and-sister team of archaeologists, Hera and Joyce Colbert, ask Shinra to come out to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Hera and Joyce unearthed, what can only be called, an impossible fossil, "human and dinosaur fossils, together in the same strata." But there they are, "together with the dinosaur fossil placed above the human fossil" ("this is clearly impossible"). Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, is called upon to authenticate and, if possible, explain what they found. It's to be regretted Katou only gave the story a single chapter instead of two, or three, chapters to explore the possibility of faking such a fossil and some of the fringe theories ("...an advanced ancient civilization existed"), which were only mentioned passing. However, Shinra's explanation places this story in the same category as Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941) and James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977) without treading into science-fiction or hybrid mystery territory. "Sixty Million Years" simply is an impressive piece of 19th century-style naturalist impossible crime fiction reimagined in the 21st century with a 65 million year old conundrum. To say I liked this story would be the understatement of the Holocene Epoch!

Unfortunately, the next two, one-chapter stories, "The Nail" and "Summer Holiday at the World End," were both very minor and disappointing stories. "The Nail" begins with a series of good, old-fashioned creepy chain mails, "if you don't make this picture into your background wallpaper, you will receive grave misfortunes," going round Shinra and Tatsuki's school. The place in the picture is easily identified and this leads to hit-and-run incident where the culprits claims the victim was pushed in front of his car. I thought this story was uncharacteristically uninspired as Katou simply retreaded the core idea from "Abortive Migration" (SPOILER/ROT13: gur fhccbfrqyl vaabprag fhfcrpg jub gheaf bhg gb or thvygl nsgre nyy) with pretty much the same results. "Summer Holiday at the World End" is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart taking place on the last day of summer break as Shinra, Tatsuki and classmates go the beach. There they hear a strange story of a student who briefly disappeared while exploring a mysterious cave with their friends. So they go explore it for themselves. Not really a bad story. Just very minor and very forgettable.

Katou pulls it together with the last story and ends C.M.B. vol 10 on a banger. "The Hydraulis" finds Shinra and Tatsuki in Milan, Italy, where Mau Sugal wants them to investigate a music chapel, located on a lonely mountain top, which has a hydraulis – a prototype of the pipe organ. That's the first of two mysteries attached to the music chapel. What's an out-of-date hydraulis doing in a 16th century music chapel? The second mystery has to do with its haunted reputation as a room that kills and harms. Everyone who tries to play the organ either dies or get seriously ill ("...there have been over 10 people who died inside that chapel"). "The Hydraulis" shares the same strengths and one weakness with "Sixty Million Years." Shinra's explanation of both how the music chapel poses a danger to people and why it was designed to do so are brilliant. But it needed another chapter to fully flesh everything out. Like the not unimportant historical background of the chapel and location. Other than that, this is a first-rate impossible crime story and original take of the room-that-kills. Highly recommended!

So, all in all, not a bad score for these two volumes. "Abortive Migration" and "The Nail" are the only two stinkers with "Summer Holiday at the World End" merely being forgettable. "The Sun and a Folklore" and "The Metamorphosis" are both good, solid efforts with "Sixty Million Years" and "The Hydraulis" being the two standouts. You expect one of them to turn up on that future "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B." Not at all disappointed with these two volumes on a whole. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I'm going with C.M.B. vol. 11 and 12 next or start on Q.E.D. iff series. You'll see eventually.

The Ring of Innocent (1952) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's The Ring of Innocent (1952), the fortieth title in the Anthony Bathurst series, begins with Martin Scudamore going to see a flick and getting the good, old-fashioned cinema experience – two men sitting behind him talking. The conversation he overhears raises an eyebrow.

Scudamore heard the two men, "the big fellow" and "the little bloke," talk about four rings and how "the colours were confirmed, too" ("green, blue, red and yellow"). Several names are mentioned and a muttered comment about proving somebody's innocence, but what unsettled Scudamore was hearing the big fellow saying he was ready to remove a human obstacle ("...if Lovelace stands in my way I'll slit his throat") in combination with a place called Loveridge. Scudamore happens to be friends with someone named Lovelace who lives in Loveridge. So he goes with this story to Helen Repton, of Scotland Yard, who in turns brings him to Anthony Bathurst.

Anthony Bathurst listens to the story and suspects trouble is afoot, which is why he immediately wants to go the Lovelace's home, Cherry Fair, but they arrived too late. They're greeted by a police sergeant telling them that Lovelace "was set upon last night very savagely," found dying from head wound in the library, moved to the local hospital – where he died that morning. Before dying, the doctors heard Lovelace saying the words innocent or innocence and teaspoon. Bathurst asks the sergeant to contact Chief Detective-Inspector MacMorran, of the Yard, and simply takes charge of the investigation. However, this is not a simple case of interrogating suspects and witnesses, digging for motives and checking alibis. Simply because there really aren't any at first. Bathurst has to find them first by playing psycho-analyst, of sorts.

What can be called clues, or semi-clues, comprise of little more than the whispered conversation overheard in the cinema, Lovelace's cryptic dying message and the cryptic doodles discovered on his blotting pad. So the opening part of the investigation is more in the spirit of word association games and rebus puzzles. Following the possible answers to those word-and picture puzzles leads Bathurst to a respectable antique store, a funeral parlor and the home of a writer who published a book on the long, storied history of Lovelace's twelfth century house. And a second body. This is, of course, only a small selection of leads, dead ends and other complications Bathurst and MacMorran have to clear up along the way towards the solution. So, as to be expected from Flynn, The Ring of Innocent is a detective story that doesn't always move along traditional lines.

I think that speaks very well for Flynn as a detective novelist. Even after a quarter of a century and forty books, Flynn refused to phone it in and kept trying to give his readers something worth their time and money. Flynn was a mystery writer who wanted to surprise his readers in more ways than one, which is way going through his body of work is like a tour of the early 20th century detective-and thriller story – going from whodunits and impossible crimes to courtroom dramas and serial killers. Or, like here, simply finding a different route to tell a detective story. On the downside, it can make his work a little uneven at times. The Ring of Innocent is at its best in its opening and closing parts with the middle portion sometimes lacking some urgency, but, on a whole, a solid, late-period entry in the series.

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries

In 2021, John Pugmire's Locked Room International published Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017), translated by Ho-Ling Wong, which at the time made "enormous waves in the world of Japanese mystery fiction" not seen since the debuts of Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji – not without reason. Imamura's Death Among the Undead placed your typical, traditionally-plotted shin honkaku mystery in the middle of a zombie outbreak! Don't mistake it for a gimmick or novelty mystery. Imamura masterfully demonstrated fantastical elements can be inserted into the traditional, fair play detective story without ruining either. In fact, when handled correctly, it opens doors and unlocks new possibilities previously inaccessible to the normally grounded detective story.

Imamura's Death Among the Undead signaled a change and seems like the hybrid mystery's time has finally arrive, because it has been tried before. But never took root.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) is not only the first (modern-ish) detective story and locked room mystery, but also the first mystery-horror hybrid on account of the solution. Another early example is Fitz-James O'Brien's "The Diamond Lens" (1858) blending mystery with fantasy. There are a few pre-Asimov attempts at science-fiction mysteries, but the only noteworthy example is Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet (1942). David V. Reed's Murder in Space (1944) is irredeemably bad, while John Russell Fearn's The Master Must Die (1953) and The Lonely Astronomer (1954) are hampered by one of the most irritating detective characters ever created. They all offer an unimaginative, poverty stricken vision of the future with clunky robots and snail mail between planets. There is, of course, Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians (1966), a fantasy mystery, but, as you probably know, I'm famously not a fan of it.

So beside a couple of noteworthy titles, even a few first-rate examples from Japan, the hybrid mystery didn't take off, until Imamura's Death Among the Undead. The translation also made the hybrid mystery a subject of interest around these parts of the mystery fandom and got bitten myself by the hybrid mystery bug, which could have been as serious as my locked room obsession saved only by a lack of material, not for a lack of trying! I have gone through enough hybrid mysteries now to compile a top 10 and there were enough good titles that some had to be left on the cutting room floor. I also left out a couple of titles, because I didn't want it seven or eight of the titles to be Japanese translations. For example, I left Imamura's Death Among the Undead off the list as it already made "Top 10 Best Translations & Reprints from Locked Room International" and have another zombie mystery to take its spot on this filler-post list. So along with future releases, there's more than enough left for a part two, if anyone's interested after this one. Let me know down below.

The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935) by Wallace Irwin

In 1935, The Julius Caesar Murder Case was little more than an amusing curiosity, a cross between historical fiction and a pulp-style mystery, because historical mysteries didn't exist back then. Wallace Irwin is credited with writing one of the first "toga mysteries," but the book is essentially a parody of a genre that had yet to be born. The book is hilarious, written in the style of the pulps, following the star reporter of the Evening Tiber, Publius Manlius "Mannie" Scribo, who gets involved in the most notorious murder case of ancient Rome. If you love historical mysteries and have sense of humor, Irwin wrote The Julius Caesar Murder Case for you.

The Caves of Steel (1953/54) by Isaac Asimov

Considered by many to be the OG hybrid novel. At least, the first truly successful one as Asimov penned a triple masterpiece of detective fiction, science-fiction and dystopian rolled up into one classic – maybe one of the best post-Golden Age mysteries from the previous century. Most importantly, The Caves of Steel demolished the argument that advancements in science and technology made the traditional detective story obsolete before it was put forward. Asimov wrote a pure whodunit in a world full with AI robots, mind probes and space-faring breakaway civilizations. So its only shortcoming is not becoming a trendsetter that launched the hybrid mystery as a legitimate subgenre or off-shoot back in the '50s.

"The Closed Door" (1953) by Kendell Foster Crossen

The only short story on the list and a short story that should have been a novel-length mystery, because the premise and solution is brilliant. A story taking place on a space hotel constructed out of hundreds of different type of plastics to accommodate every life form in our galaxy. A murder of silicon-based alien is murdered inside a locked room during a galactic conference with the solution making almost perfect use of its future backdrop, which could have been the equal of Asimov's The Case of Steel had been a novella or novel-length. So had to include on the list.

Inherit the Stars (1977) by James P. Hogan

Technically, Hogan's Inherit the Stars is a pure science-fiction novel, not a hybrid mystery, but the book secured a high-ranking spot on Tozai Mystery Best 100 and Ho-Ling posted a fascinating review on his blog – which caught the attention of our corner of the genre. What we found was a detective story on a celestial scale, presented as pure science-fiction, but the answer how a skeleton in a space suit ended up being buried on the moon thousands of years ago is a tour de force. I expected time travel shenanigans or a cross between the Piltdown hoax and the stories of lost Soviet cosmonauts, but never imagined anything like that. We have since appropriated Hogan's Inherit the Stars from the science genre. It's ours now!

Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989) by Yamaguchi Masaya

This zombie mystery predates Imamura's Death Among the Undead by nearly three decades, however, Death of the Living Dead is an entirely different kind of zombie mystery. The zombies here aren't mindless ghouls hunting in packs, snack attacking everything that moves, because they're still in full possession of the personality and mental capacities. So they're literally the living dead and placing them in a traditional detective story places a completely new complexities on the Golden Age-style mystery with a great detective and cast of characters. Masaya's Death of the Living Dead probably is, conceptually, even better than Imamura's take on the zombie mystery and a genuine classic of the horror-mystery hybrid. It's a shame it's English debut was largely ignored to the point where the publisher gave up on future translations.

Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995) by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

The most recent translation on this list merges the detective story with the time loop dodge involving a high school student, Kyutaro, who regularly finds himself stuck in eight day time loops. Great when you need to ace a school exam, but not so much when a murder crops up during a loop. Even less so when the murder involves members of his own family! Like I said in my original review, if The Man Who Died Seven Times is not perfect, it's close enough.

By the way, I think the time loop device works really well when paired with the detective story, because it's basically the dueling/multiple narrative device on steroids. Yukito Ayatsuji could probably write one hell of a time loop mystery!

The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales (1997) by Edward D. Hoch

A western mystery is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of hybrid mysteries. Nothing more than a change of scenery and time period, historical mysteries than genre crossovers, but westerns are a genre with a Golden Age of its own – mixing westerns with mysteries counts in my book. Nobody did the western-mystery better than Edward D. Hoch in his long-running series of short stories about his gunslinging detective, Ben Snow, who has an uncanny resemblance to Billy the Kid. The Ripper of Storyville is a first-rate collection of short stories and probably the best Hoch collection published by Crippen & Landru without a single bad story. Maybe we'll finally get a second Ben Snow collection in 2027 to mark the 30th anniversary of the first collection. Fingers crossed!

Rurijou satsujin jiken (The "Lapis Lazuli" Castle Murders, 2002) by Takekuni Kitayama

Another early, Japanese experiment predating Imamura and not easily pigeonholed or briefly summarized. It can be described as an unadulterated flight of fancy in which cursed daggers bind the main characters together through a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth stretching from 13th century France and trenches of the First World War to a library in 1980s Japan. A hybrid mystery that has to be read to be believed and that goes double for the locked room mystery in the Library at the End of the World!

Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokai (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) by Kie Houjou

I could have picked any of the three novels in Houjou's "Ryuuzen Clan" series for this list, because they're modern masterpieces and future classics. So why not go with the first one in the series? Like the title suggests, The Time Traveler's Hourglass involves time travel as Kamo Touma, a magazine writer, gets an opportunity to go back to the 1960s to prevent a tragedy that destroyed his wife's family. The plot is as sound a piece of craftsmanship as we come to expect from the Japanese shin honkaku writers, but what sets The Time Traveler's Hourglass apart is the heart and humanity underneath it all. To quote Mitsuda Madoy, "Houjou may write with the laser focus of a true Kyoto U. Mystery Club graduate, but there's a heart to her characters that I rare see even in non-mystery writers." It's time this series gets an official translation/release.

Black Lake Manor (2022) by Guy Morpuss

So, as you can see, the Japanese have already terribly spoiled me with their third wave shin honkaku hybrid mysteries, as well as some of its precursors, which is why I approached Black Lake Manor with skepticism and lowered expectations – considering the stiff competition it was up against. Morpuss and Black Lake Manor proved to be worthy competition to their Japanese counterparts. A web-like plot casually toying around with various timelines, time resets and hard light technology without the plot or story getting muddled. It's therefore unfortunate Morpuss is only interested at the moment in writing standalones and unlikely to return to this fascinating world he created anytime soon.

Like I stated, there's more than enough left to compile another list, but should note that not every hybrid mystery reviewed has been a success story. On the contrary!

For example, Asimov's series of short stories featuring Wendell Urth has a fantastic premise: an earthbound extraterrologist and armchair detective who uses Earth as the biggest, most comfortable armchair in our Solar System to ponder the mysteries of the universe – criminal or otherwise. Regrettably, the stories betrayed Asimov had been unable to mine the series full potential. Only the second story, "The Talking Stone" (1955), is any good. Ross Rocklynne and Arthur Jean Cox's The Asteroid Murder Case (1970/2011) has a razor thin plot ruining a genuinely original motive. Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022) is a very entertaining fan pleaser, but the parallel universe angle is only there to have some fun with the main characters. André Bjerke's De dødes tjern (The Lake of the Dead, 1942) and Natsuhiko Kyogoku's Ubume no natsu (The Summer of the Ubume, 1994) blending of mystery, horror, folklore and the occult failed to capture my imagination.

Nevertheless, after several years of rooting around for these once too often dismissed hybrid mysteries, especially the Japanese variant, gave me a vision of the detective story's potential future. The hybrid mystery, a good, well-done hybrid mystery, simply offers too many new possibilities to the write and plot new, fresh and original detective fiction to leave it at the wayside again. They're also an open invitation to new or even outside talent. So can see the hybrid mystery following a similar trajectory as the historical mystery and police procedural in becoming an off-shoot/subgenre of its own. At least in Japan. But, if it catches on over here, I can see the hybrid becoming one of two dominant forms in our traditionalist corner of the genre in the decades ahead. The other being historical mysteries with a Golden Age or 20th century setting.

Death Below the Dam (1936) by Esther Fonseca

Not much is known today of Esther Haven Fonseca, except for scraps and pieces of bio-and bibliographical information, but, what can be said for sure, is that she studied journalism and wrote three, now long out-of-print, detective novels – published between 1936 and 1939. Fonseca's first two novels, Death Below the Dam (1936) and The Thirteenth Bed in the Ballroom (1937), seem to have been relatively well received with the latter even being optioned for a movie adaptation. The third novel, The Affair at the Grotto (1939), looks to be her most obscure mystery. All I have been able to find is that it takes place at some luxurious health resort.

There are two obvious reason for Fonseca's obscurity: she only wrote three novels that are also standalone mysteries. It's an unfortunate fact that mystery writers without a series character tend to fall into obscurity more easily, regardless of quality (e.g. Max Murray). On the other hand, it's probably also the reason why Death Below the Dam is the least obscure, relatively speaking, of the three. There are still used, if somewhat expensive, copies for sale online and an audio edition is available through LibriVox. Why it weathered the sands of time better than Fonseca's two succeeding novels has all to do with how it combined the 1930s whodunit with the disaster thriller ("a breaking dam... raging flood waters... an isolated island... and a murderer at large").

Fonseca's Death Below the Dam takes place on Winnatchee Island, in the middle of Beaver River, connected to the mainland and nearby city by two bridges – on the east and west side of the island. There are several dams protecting the island from excessive flooding. So the island has been the home of two families, the Murrays and Pierdecks. Murrays own nearly the entire lower half of the island, live in a huge colonial house and have two children, Wanda and Hamilton. A writer and friend/love interest of Wanda, Peter Kerrigan, currently occupies a cottage to work on his book. So the upper half is the domain of Mr. and Mrs. Pierdeck. They have three children and a stepdaughter. There's the eldest daughter, Marie, who's married Jim Sears, their youngest daughter, Alice, and only son, Andy. Antonia, a young divorcée, is the Pierdeck's unhappy stepdaughter who returned to the island when her marriage ended much to the horror of her mother ("you know how old-fashioned Mother is"). Lastly, young Sidney Brown, a school friend of Alice, who comes to regret accepting the invitation to the dinner party.

Murrays and Pierdecks have not always been perfect neighbors over the years, "disputes about the use of the east driveway and about a clump of blue spruce," even a thwarted elopement between Antonia and Hamilton. Nothing serious enough for the Murrays to turn down an invitation to a dinner party at the Pierdecks, but the dinner party is interrupted by the worst storm the island has seen in decades. A freak storm that first took down the bridges and then all the electricity, gas, water and communications lines partially flooded the island ("the island was now completely isolated from the city that had seemed so close only that afternoon"). And then they hear an earth shattering roar coming from up river ("the dam!"). During the deluge, they hear the crack of a gunshot. One of them goes missing with a thorough search of the island turning up a body with a bullet hole in the back of the head. So both parties find themselves marooned at home with a dead body, an unknown murderer and the possibility of a stowaway on the island, because someone had spotted, what appeared to be, "a white blur in human form pattering off through the mud." What can they do on a half flooded island without help from the mainland for at least a few days?

A contemporary review described the investigation as "the families organize to form a detective bureau," which is an interesting take, but not exactly what happened. The divide here is not so much across family lines and friendships, but between those who were out of the house and those who were inside when the shot was heard. Not that this divide matters as suspicion is smeared thickly around, however, this still makes it hardly a traditional detective story. The isolation from the outside world and suspicion of murder is getting to some of them, especially towards the end when one of them unravels under the stress. There's also the excursions of the island itself like the old, long since abandoned Pierdeck brewery with its storage caves and Peter Kerrigan flood damaged cottage.

It all makes for a memorable debut and helps smoothing out some of the imperfections and rough spots bound to turn up in a first detective novel. However, the only real shortcoming of the story, or rather plot, is that the cynical and experienced armchair detective will have no trouble identifying, or becoming suspicious, of the murderer, but kudos to Fonseca for making me second guess myself with a second murder – second victim is even more unexpected than the first. That threw me off the correct trail for a moment. A second flaw that would have been a real problem had the murderer been better camouflaged is that the clueing is a bit clunky, but you can strike them off against everything else the book did right in telling an engrossing story of disaster and murder. What can be held against Fonseca is missing a golden opportunity in (SPOILER/ROT13) fhttrfgvat gur zheqrere fubg gur jebat crefba, orpnhfr gur ivpgvz jnf fubg sebz oruvaq va irel, irel onq jrngure. Guvf vf, bs pbhefr, abg gur pnfr sbe gur svefg zheqre, ohg rknpgyl jung unccrarq jvgu gur frpbaq zheqre. You know, something her more famous contemporaries would have done.

But other than those smudgy details, Fonseca's Death Below the Dam is a diamond in the rough making me even more curious about her other two extremely rare, out-of-print novels. Particularly to see what Fonesca was capable of doing with the impossible crime story in The Thirteenth Bed in the Ballroom. Unfortunately, the last two are not going to be as easy to track down, unless they get reprinted. Just based on Death Below the Dam, it probably wouldn't be waste of paper and ink to reprint Fonseca's three detective novels.

Masterclass: "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand" (2000) by Phil Mann

If you read my recent review of Fredric Brown's "Handbook for Homicide" (1943), you know the intention the intersperse the locked room reviews with reviews of non-impossible crime fiction, which is why I picked Brown's shortish novel as a followup to Carter Dickson's The Unicorn Murders (1935) and Newton Gayle's The Sentry-Box Murder (1935) – only for it to contain a trifling locked room element. So decided to take a look at Bertil Falk's Mind-Boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010), before dipping back into writers like Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn. That collection of short stories was not exactly "as described on tin." Now I really wanted a good locked room before mixing things up again.

I was tempted to go with Danro Kamosaki's third novel, stringing together eight impossible crimes, but decided to go with something shorter.

Phil Mann, an American attorney from Los Angeles, has authored textbooks, wrote film scripts and short fiction for magazines and anthologies. "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand," published in A Deadly Dozen: Tales of Murder from Los Angeles (2000), appears to have been Mann's only detective story and locked room mystery, but one that was overlooked by Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) and not often referenced everywhere else – except for one place. Mike Grost briefly discussed "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand" on his website, calling it "a nicely done locked room short story" with a detective recalling some of John Dickson Carr's characters. So probably would have never known of this short story's existence without that brief notice. Thanks, Mike!

Horace Masters, a mathematics professor, is approached after a lecture by young man, Tony Reed, who has heard of the professor's "experience with locked rooms." Well, a murder inside a locked room happened at the mansion of his father, Martin Reed.

Martin Reed is a filmmaker of direct-to-DVD movies, "filled with large-breasted women running around with large guns," who had his casting agent, Conrad Armstrong, camping out in one of his room while working on a movie. Armstrong is not a particular likable person ("you've heard of the casting couch?") as "everything he did seemed to be calculated to degrade someone." And causes enough friction in the Reed household that ends up murdered in his makeshift office under bizarre, seemingly impossible circumstances. The body is spotted through the glass panel of the office door, which is locked from the inside by its broken key. So the door can only be locked and unlocked from the inside, but the glass has glazed artwork on it and breaking it to unlock the door is not an option. They have to break open one of the french doors on the other side of the house. Once inside the office, it becomes apparent they really dealing with an impossible murder inside a hermetically sealed room without a place for someone to hide. Horace Masters is only a visiting lecturer who only has a day, or so, to solve the case before flying back home.

Solving it, he does, in the grand old traditional way by gathering everyone involved for a classic drawing room revelation. Masters sums up all the facts and nebulous clues to show who murdered Armstrong, why and, most importantly, how the locked room-trick was done – which is definitely the story's strongest aspect. I think most seasoned armchair detectives will have their suspicions about the murderer, but not how it could have been done. Well, there's one obvious trick to do it under these circumstances, but Mann opted for something different. The principle of the locked room-trick is one impossible crime fanatics have seen before, but Mann found a different way to put it to use. So a new wrinkle on an old conceit, but a very well done one, scratching that impossible crime itch, that should have been picked up by Mike Ashley for The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000).

Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010) by Bertil Falk

Bertil Falk was a Swedish newspaper reporter, TV journalist, magazine editor, translator, writer and something of a pop-fiction historian who published a three volume science-fiction history – Faktasin: den svenskspråkiga science-fiction litteraturens historia (Faktasin: the History of the Swedish-language science-fiction literature, 2020). Falk also wrote a well received biography of Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi (2016) and completed a 60 year translation project of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939) before his death, aged 90, in 2023.

Beside science-fiction, Falk was a fan of detective fiction and published his first detective novel, Den maskerade ligachefen (The Masked Gangleader, 1954), when he was twenty years old. A second detective novel, Mord & orkidéer (Murder & Orchids, 1996), appeared decades later, but neither received translations. So us non-Swedish mystery fans primarily know Falk as the translator of Ulf Durling's Gammal ost (Hard Cheese, 1971) and Locked Rooms and Open Spaces: An Anthology of 150 years of Swedish Crime & Mystery Fiction of the Impossible Sort (2007). What has been surprisingly overlooked is a volume with Falk's own crime and detective fiction published over fifteen years ago.

Falk's Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary (2010) was published by Lighthouse Publishing. Yes, the same publisher that put out one of the three bellwethers of the then coming Golden Age revival, Dean White's The Mysteries of Reverend Dean (2008). So was both pleasantly surprised and a bit baffled to stumble across another such volume in their catalog from a highly regarded writer, translator and genre historian, because nobody has discussed this collection or even mentioned it – aside from a few mentions on Swedish websites. Even stranger, Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary is presented as a collection of impossible crime stories ("...feature the kind of impossible crime that the missionary is facing..."). Not exactly as advertised as only a few of the stories can be counted as impossible crime fiction, some borderline cases and impossible crime adjacent stories. And some non-impossible crime stories.

The main character in these nine short stories is a retired, unnamed missionary who now lives on an island, in the archipelago of Stockholm, where he either tells or listens to stories from the past. Stories about strange crimes and bizarre incidents, but for few exceptions, they're armchair fiction rather than armchair detective stories. Not bad armchair fiction. However, if you pick up this collection expecting traditional armchair detective stories littered with locked room puzzles, you're going to be disappointed. So adjust your expectations for your own enjoyment.

Just one more thing, before delving into this collection, I normally add original titles and publication dates when reviewing translated mysteries, but have been unable to find if any of these stories first appeared in Swedish. So have to do with their English publication history. Now with that out of the way, let's dig in!

"There Are No Pockets in Our Grave Clothes," first published in the Sept/Oct. 2004 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Passport to Crime (2007), serves as an introduction as the missionary tells his neighbor about an incident from a decade ago. The elderly, dying and widowed Mrs. Laura Svensson is on her death bed and her family is hovering around her fortune like vultures – telling him "soon the brats will have their way." And laments "there are no pockets in the cerements," so she could take it all to the other side. One of her possessions is uncut diamond, "a piece of uncut coal that is worth a fortune," which she keeps at her bedside. When she died three days later, the case with the uncut diamond has vanished. The house is turned upside down and they go as far as performing a clandestine autopsy without result. So how could a frail, dying woman disappear an uncut diamond from her deathbed? The missionary discovers the solution rather than deducing it, however, the astute reader should be able to make an educated guess how she did it.

"The Multicolored Herring," first appearing in the Sept/Oct. 2006, issue Crime Spree Magazine, brings an old friend of the missionary to the island. Roland Franzén is a retired police inspector and had previously appeared, as a teenager, in Falk's The Masked Gangleader helping to expose a spy ring. Franzén tells the missionary about a case from before he was placed in charge of homicide in southern Sweden, which he solved by mistaking a red herring for clue.

A wheelchair bound woman, Kristina Larsson, reported that her husband had gone missing longer than usual ("he goes to other women because of my ill-health"). It takes a while before the police apparatus starts moving, but, when they start looking into his disappearance, the police finds the husband had been doing more than just philandering. However, the trail pretty quickly leads back to his own doorstep and the story becomes a how-did-she-do-it? Kristina Larsson spends most of her time weaving rag carpets at her modified handloom. Franzén perceived a clue in the color scheme of one of her rag carpets and deduced the correct solution from what proved to be the titular, multicolored herring. I liked the idea of a wrong clue that's not misleading, but, on a whole, it needed more than the 15 pages it got.

"Accrued Murder Prevented" appears to be original to this collections in which the missionary returns the favor by telling Franzén a story that happened in New Jersey. A story related to him by one George Gonzales, a family man, who had been innocently convicted of murdering his business partner, Edward King – because nobody else could have pulled the trigger. Nobody with a viable motive. So he was convicted and released after seven years, but still claiming to be innocent, promises to hunt down the real killer and tells the promise society now owes him a murder. When an original, missing piece of evidence resurfaces, it throws a new perspective on the situation and possible solution. So more of a crime story with human interest than a detective story proper. Only part I found interesting was Gonzales' notion that going to jail innocently should "accrue the right to kill" that came from "a science-fiction story he's once read" without mentioning the title or name of the writer.

"The Hit of a Marksman," originally published in Bewildering Stories #256 (2007) and reprinted in the anthology Crime – the Swedish Way (2008), is not at all the spectacular miraculous crime described on the back cover, but a simple anecdote based around a bit of trivia. The missionary tells a story about his time in Kenya when a man named George, a white farmer, was shot by his rival in love, Cornelius – a young Dutch surgeon and marksman. Cornelius shot George straight in the heart. Not only did George survive the shooting, but no bullet penetrated his heart. You don't have to be Father Brown to dispel this miracle.

"The Apostolic Destruction," first published in Bewildering Stories #318 (2008), is an improvement over the previous story and an actual, if minor, impossible crime story. This time, the missionary tells his neighbor about the Apostolic Succession and its significance to some Christians. He also tells her how a mischievous Swedish bishop introduced the Apostolic Succession into the Danish National Church during the consecration of a Danish bishop, which lead to the murder of the Danish bishop some time later. The Danish bishop was murdered, presumably from drinking poisoned wine received at Communion, but the bishops who sipped the wine before and after him were unharmed. So why poisoned the bishop, why and how? Like I said, it's fairly minor as an impossible crime story, but it was a welcome change to see the missionary act as a detective.

"Don't Judge a Strangler by the Hair," published in the anthology (?) Darkest Before the Dawn (2009), regrettably is together with the last story the worst of the lot. A dull, uninteresting and predictable story about a woman who has two men vowing for her attention. One of the men ends up dead, strangled, but problem with the murder weapon, sort of, gives away the murderer.

"The Vicar Who Went Up in Smoke," original to this collection, is an impossible crime story. The missionary is entertaining Eva Lundström, the new bishop of the Swedish Church, and her husband, Herbert ("...a heathen"). So he tells them the story of the vanished vicar which he got to observe close at hand. The vicar in question on the foggy seashore with other pleasure anglers when he vanished into thin air. An angler had seen it happen through a gap in the fog, "one moment he was standing there, the other moment he was gone." This should have been the best story in the collection had the murderer and method not stood out like (ROT13) n Ivxvat va gur Jvyq Jrfg. You'll get it when you read the story.

"A Touch of Truth," first published in Bewildering Stories #371 (2010), is not only the grimmest story of the collection, but also its longest and it shows! It's the collection's most substantially-plotted story.

The missionary is asked by his neighbor why he became a missionary, instead of a private detective. Missionary tells her about the time he was mistaken for a private investigator and asked to kill a man who preyed on children. This man ends up dead in a murder-disguised-as-suicide with deliberate flaws to clue the police in that it was murder. But why? I'm not going to reveal any more details, but it was nice to see Falk making a spirited, not wholly unsuccessful, stab to plot a genuine detective story. Just be warned that the details of the "victim's" crimes are a bit gross. He was even reading a Nancy Drew novel when he was shot and apparently collected vintage girl books. A bullet well spent!

"An Impossible Equation," original to this collections, ended Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary on a sour note. This time, the readers travels alongside the missionary to Los Angeles to attend a consecration, but then a member of the congregation is shot dead in her home. Neighbors had seen her son, Harold Burns, arrive and leave shortly before the murder was discovered. However, Harold was Sydney when his mother was shot. No worries, because Harold has a twin brother, Henry, but Henry lived and worked in Tokyo for many years. So both twins have an unshakable alibi. You can probably anticipate the so-called surprise twist coming (ROT13), lrf, gur nafjre vf gevcyrgf. Unebyq naq Urael ragrerq vagb n pbafcvenpl jvgu gurve ybat-ybfg guveq gjva gb xvyy gurve nohfvir zbgure, orpnhfr abobql xarj nobhg gur guveq oebgure jub unq ercbegrqyl orra fgvyyobea. Just terrible!

So, like I said, the stories in Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary are mostly armchair fiction rather than armchair detective stories, which makes it difficult to recommend to the purists who tend to frequent this blog. I liked "There Are No Pockets in Our Grave Clothes," "The Multicolored Herring" and "The Apostolic Destruction," but "A Touch of Truth" is the only one that cut it as a satisfying detective story. So disappointing this was not an overlooked treasure trove of impossible crime fiction hiding in plain sight, but now I know and at least you breeze through this modern curiosity in no time. If you're still interested, Mind-boggling Mysteries of a Missionary is (as of this writing) still in print. I'll try to pick something good for the next one.