The Argosy Library: Four Corners, vol. 2 (2020) by Theodore Roscoe

Theodore Roscoe was an American biographer, historian and one of the finest pulp writers of the day, known for his gripping tales of exotic adventure and thrilling horror that appeared in magazines like Argosy, Adventure and Short Stories, but detective fans know him for his novels Murder on the Way! (1935), I'll Grind Their Bones (1936) and Z is for Zombie (1937) – all reprinted during the past ten years. Three utterly bizarre, wildly imaginative takes on the locked room mystery and the reason why I call Roscoe "the John Dickson Carr of the Pulps." And, as it turned out, there are many more detective novels and impossible crime stories to be found among Roscoe's work. Such as Roscoe's Four Corners series published in Argosy from 1937 to 1941.

The Argosy Library: Four Corners, vol. 1 (2015), published by Steeger Books, collects the first five, of ten, novelettes about the good citizens of a small town a 100 miles outside of New York. So, technically, this is not a series of pure detective stories, but stories about a small American town and its people. There is, however, always something happening in Four Corners involving crime, mystery, rural intrigue and the occasional witch hunt. I wouldn't be surprised if Four Corners was the model for Ellery Queen's Wrightsville and Shinn Corners from The Glass Village (1954).

The Argosy Library: Four Corners, vol. 2 (2020) collects the remaining five novelettes and begins with a banger, "Ghoul's Paradise," originally published in the November 26, 1938, issue of Argosy – telling the story of the Easter clan. "King" Isaac Easter, now nearly in his nineties, made a fortune as "a patent medicine king" before the war and rules over his family from their curious, multi-colored house. King Isaac lives on the top floor of the red cupola, "sittin' on the moneybags," where he keeps his children on a short leash by “dolin' out a penny here and a nickel there.” So his children aren't exactly fond of him, but neither do they particularly like each other and each painted their part of the house in a different color to mark their territory. They're the kind of family, living in the type of house, you expect to find in one of EQ's Ellery-in-Wonderland novels like There Was an Old Woman (1943) or The Player on the Other Side (1963). Horror is waiting in the wings to take the stage.

King Isaac is not planning on dying, or staying dead forever, because he saved a bottle of Easter's Elixir of Life ("...it says on the bottle it can raise the dead...") and even had a special tomb built behind the house. A tomb with a lock on the front door that would take "a blowtorch to open it" and, unique to this tomb, a backdoor that "only be opened from the inside." King Isaac is to be put in the tomb with the elixir and the key to the back door, which is done when he not wholly unexpected passed away. Someone even puts a bullet into the body to ensure the old man stays down, but days after the funeral, they find the back door standing open, the coffin empty and the bottle half emptied. King Isaac was gone! This apparent resurrection cause the first wave of panic and sensation in Four Corners, but people really begin to panic when the undead figure of King Isaac returns with his trusty hunting bow and quivers of arrows to pick off his own children, one by one. King Isaac's return from the dead is followed by a string of seemingly impossible situations and crimes.

There's the locked tomb and a dead man walking about who not only leaves fingerprints behind, but a scent trail the police dog picked up. One of the Easter children is killed inside a locked bedroom, the dead man appearing in the flesh and vanishes from his pursuers as by magic. This story is one of those impossible crime extravaganzas in miniature and the explanation for how the dead man walked is memorable, to say the least, hampered only by a lack of rigor normally to be expected from a detective story featuring a series of impossible crimes – which, technically speaking, it isn't. But where "Ghoul's Paradise" lacked in rigor, it made up for in sheer imagination and a terrifying atmosphere.

So my only real complaint is that Roscoe didn't expand this novelette into a full-fledged detective novel. A novel-length treatment of "Ghoul's Paradise" would have given Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944) a run for its money. Yes, I should have reviewed this story separately, but I'll try to keep it short from here on out.

The second story is "The Man Who Hated Lincoln," originally published in the February 18, 1939, issue of Argosy, which is another great yarn, but for vastly different reasons – a surrealistic blending of history and fiction. This story actually begins with a brief, nicely done introduction of Four Corners as our narrator is passing through the small, out-of-the-way town. The narrator, a history student and writer "fascinated by the mystery of John Wilkes Booth," is told by the hotel keeper about an elderly recluse living on Blackberry Hill who "saw Abraham Lincoln assassinated." So decides to pay the nearly 100-year-old hermit a visit and is greeted by "a bloodless museum dummy in the costume of another period" wearing a tall, black stovepipe hat. This lively, chattering skeleton has a lot to say about President Lincoln's assassination and his opinions do not conform to the accepted story or sentiments ("my dear young man, many people in 1865 quite approved the assassination"). And the longer the conversation goes on, the more sneering the recluse becomes to the memory of Lincoln, "the scarecrow from Illinois," very much to the shock of the narrator. This concoction of accepted history, conspiracy theories and lingering, unsolved questions ("the aftermath of Lincoln's murder was a-foul with such creeping mysteries") blends "delirium and reality" as the story climaxes with the recluse reconstructing the murder in his living room for a one-man audience. That leads to answering that all-important question: who's the hermit? What else can be said except that Roscoe was a fantastic storyteller and yarn spinner.

"There Are Smiles That Make You Happy," originally published in the March 11, 1939, issue of Argosy, sees the return of the Sheriff Whittier's 12-year-old son, Bud, who figured in "I Was the Kid with the Drum" from Four Corners, vol. 1. Bud becomes involved in the eternal triangle between his cousin Mary Farwell and her two suitors, "Smiling" Charlie Knight and "Horse" Horace Dangler. Bud prefers "Smiling" Charlie or "Horse" Dangler, because Charlie's "jovial, gold-grinning, full of jokes and laughter." Dangler is the village dentist with awls, picks and drills. When war breaks out in 1914, Charlie enlisted in the Canadian kilties while Dangler stayed behind. Charlie never returns home, presumably killed in action, Mary promises to marry Dangler if she hadn't heard from Charlie within a year.

Well, a year goes by and the wedding is ready to go, but, the night before the wedding, Charlie turns up out of the blue – a returned witnessed by Bud and Dangler. However, Charlie vanishes as quickly, and mysteriously, as he appeared under, what can be called, quasi-impossible circumstances. Every road out of Four Corners that night was either blocked by repairs, construction work and accidents or under observation by state troopers hunting for bootleggers. Charlie, nor his red car, is anywhere to be found along the way as speculation, rumors and tall stories run rampant, but the accepted wisdom is that they get answers when the ice goes. So the story slowly unfolds over a period of months ("...a winter of sensations") along mostly expected lines, except for one small twist giving the story one of those wonderfully macabre scenes. Once again, Roscoe was a marvelous storyteller and agree with Jim he had a talent for making normally minor affairs feel like the big, impactful events that they really are in such a small community like Four Corners.

"Stay As Sweet As You Are," originally published in the May 20, 1939, issue of Argosy, again has a part for Bud to play, but the main stage is the candy store on the corner of Maple and Walnut Street run by the Anvegine sisters, Melina and Belle. Melina is older, dominating sister who keeps Belle on a short leash and inside the house. So that becomes a problem when the newly arrived town pharmacist, Stick Hilton, begins courting Belle. Only to end up getting engaged to Melina and eating poisoned chocolates. This story could have been the weakest of the collection, perhaps even series, however, Roscoe's ability to create convincing child characters deserves credit when compared to some of his contemporaries. I was also amused Roscoe (ROT13) ghearq guvf pevzr qenzn vagb n fyvpr bs yvsr zlfgrel jvgu gur fvfgref nf gur chmmyr gung arrqrq gb or fbyirq va gur raq. So not the best story the series has to offer, but readable as ever with a few good bits and scenes.

"Ghost On Lonesome Hill," originally published in the December 27, 1941, issue of Argosy, is the shortest story and closes out this collection, and series, with a deafening dud that should have been a standalone pulp thriller. Johnny Harter, a reporter on a fishing holiday, becomes interested in the local haunted house. It was once the home of the Colebaugh brothers, until one murdered the other during an argument. Presumably an argument over money ("...said the fight had started over an arg'ment about Calvin Coolidge"), which was never found and the place had been abandoned for nearly twenty years. So basically a treasure hunt in an old, haunted house that becomes a thriller when Harter finds himself neck deep in trouble, but culprit turned out to be a prize idiot. Not the good, amusing kind of prize idiot. It's not necessarily a bad story, but, by the standards of this series, it's wildly unimaginative.

So maybe it's good thing Roscoe ended the series with "Ghost On Lonesome Hill," because the last two stories were no patch on the first eight, often superb and evocative stories and obviously had run its course. However, the first three are absolutely great, all for different reasons, and worth the price of admission. I think the regulars of this blog will particularly enjoy "Ghoul's Paradise" as reads like a fever dream of Talbot's lost third impossible crime novel. A unique series of borderline crime-and detective fiction that I highly recommend.