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.