The Hangman's Tree (1949) by Dorothy Cameron Disney

Dorothy Cameron Disney was an American journalist, writer and columnist whose column, "Can This Marriage Be Saved," ran for three decades in Ladies' Home Journal, but she also authored nine detective novels – published between 1936 and 1949. I remember some were amused a woman named Disney wrote suspenseful, bloodcurdling tales of murder and detection when her work briefly resurfaced in the early 2010s. Disney's Death in the Backseat (1937) and The Strawstack Murders (1939) showed her novels aren't novelties on account of the name on the cover.

Mike Grost called Disney "one of Rinehart's most gifted followers" who "deserves to be revived." I highly rated Disney's two aforementioned novels, but, despite recent reprints from Wildside Press and Stark House Press of Death in the Backseat, Crimson Friday (1943) and The 17th Letter (1945), she remains largely forgotten, mostly out-of-print today. It probably didn't help Disney was not a wildly prolific writer who only wrote standalone mysteries. I honestly forgot about Disney as well, until I recently came across my copy of The Hangman's Tree (1949). Disney's ninth and final mystery novel. So decided to give it a go as it practically guarantees something good and different.

The Hangman's Tree brings a holidaying Dr. Victoria Grant from Connecticut to Charleston, South Carolina, to stay with an old friend during the town's Azalea Festival. Victoria's old friend is Margaret "Maggie" Fairlee, a rich woman, who abandoned a successful, self-made retail career to become the second wife of an old Charlestonian widower, Tradd Fairlee – whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. She arrives when Charleston had already began its week of celebration and parades. Flags flying every where, battleships in the harbor open to the public, bomber squadrons flying above the city in formation and "contingent of pretty girls" who "were flocking in from small towns over the state to reign as Azalea Queens at the week-long festival." Pretty soon, Victoria notices something is brewing underneath the festive atmosphere.

She hasn't seen Maggie for years and finds her not only completely changed, but her physical changes appear to be a conscious copy of the looks and style of her predecessor, Rose Fairlee. Maggie has also desperately been trying to find out what, exactly, happened to Rose. And why there's a veil of mystery surrounding her passing. But a marriage haunted by her memory is not the only problem festering in the Fairlee household.

Maggie has a stepson, Stephen, whom she has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart, Valeria Trevelyn, because it was "the dearest dream of Stephen's mother to see them married." There are, however, two problems. Valeria is returning to Charleston to ride, as the Queen of Bodes Crossing, on the Azalea Parade, but the crown was handed over to her after it had been awarded to another girl – something Maggie fixed with the mayor of Bodes Crossing. So now Rena Mae Thripp, the girl in question, has come to Charleston to raise hell ("...I'll kill her and then I'll kill myself"). There's another woman, Deborah Parr, who arrived in town with designs of her own involving Stephen. So enough emotions, strained nerves, closely guarded secrets and potential motives for something bad to happen. Something bad happens when somebody is given a fatal dose of morphine and dies in Victoria's arms. A death that looks more like murder than suicide. That's when the problems really begin as nobody is willing to tell the truth, while a second dose of the stolen morphine and a loaded gun remain unaccounted for.

Victoria is determined to get to the bottom of the matter, but, in a place like Charleston, she very much is the trope of the outsider-on-the-inside ("...a visiting northerner, an outsider..."). Not merely an outsider to a close-knit group of family, friends and neighbors, but a close-knit community with its cultural heritage, history and families as a bulwark against any outsiders wanting cause trouble. Even if that trouble is someone trying to find the truth or help. Some of these people wouldn't turn a hair at the thought of covering up a murder or blackmail, but turn pale at the thought of scandal and the generational damage it would do their reputation and family's standing. She's not the only person who has to watch their step. The victim was the cousin of Lieutenant Sanford Clayton, of Homicide, but "acked the backing of the Charleston police force" on even this case ("...he didn't represent the law, but merely himself"). So this allows Victoria to eventually do some actual digging and amateur detective worked helped by a lucky break, or two, by being in the right place and time to see or overhear something she wasn't supposed to.

This case not involves a poisoning, long buried family secrets and other relatives, but also a bit of blackmail, a second murder and the dreary hangman's tree near Harmony Hall – a local hotel run by Penelope and Philo Higgs. The Hangman's Tree is tightly packed novel perhaps more reminiscent of those early, small town American mystery-thrillers like Herbert Brean's Wilders Walk Away (1949) and Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) or Theodore Roscoe's "Four Corners" series rather than the "Had-I-But-Known" writers Dorothy is associated with. Not a bad one either! I know The Hangman's Tree is not one of Disney's most celebrated novels as some have commented it's simply not as good as her earlier novels like Death in the Backseat, The Strawstack Murder or even The Balcony (1940). Suppose it helped not being able to clearly remembering those early novels, but genuinely enjoyed The Hangman's Tree. Disney even succeeded to sneak something pass my attention (because I can be shockingly dense at times) that sprang a genuinely surprising twist on me. I always appreciate a good twist. While the question of who-and why ran along more or less expected lines, it all holds together nicely.

I'm sure if I reread Disney's Death in the Backseat or The Strawstack Murder next, I would find them to be better detective novels, but by itself, The Hangman's Tree is not a bad if you can enjoy a small town mystery-thriller – served with a thick slice of Americana. Nor is it a terrible novel to go out on. This genre, of ours, has seen some truly terrible swan songs from once respected mystery writers. Disney's The Hangman's Tree is not one of them.

Locked and Loaded, Part 8: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

Back in 2020, I posted the first "Locked and Loaded" blog-post reviewing five, or six, randomly picked, usually uncollected short stories of the impossible variety and covered a 118 year period of short locked room mystery stories in the previous seven reviews – stretching from 1905 all the way up to 2023. So, as to be expected, the quality varies from story to story. However, the stories reviewed in the last two "Locked and Loaded" posts only had one really good short story, James H. Cobb's "Over the Edge" (2007). I wanted to do another one, before the end of the year, hoping to find another really good story or two. Fingers crossed!

So, before delving into the stories making up part 8, you can find my previous "Locked and Loaded" reviews here: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

The first story is James Yaffe's "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes," originally published in the March, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which he wrote when he was a 16-year-old locked room mystery enthusiast. Between 1943 and 1946, EQMM published six of Yaffe's short stories featuring the only member of the Department of Impossible Crimes ("...New York Homicide Squad's most obscure office"), Paul Dawn. This second story in the series takes place aboard the Florida Special where a holidaying Dawn is recognized by Dr. Howard Kiroshibu, of Kiroshibu Brothers Oriental Pottery, who's traveling with a black, copper urn – containing his late brother's ashes. Kiroshibu is afraid something is going to happen to the urn and asks Dawn to take urn to his compartment, but Dawn turns him down as he exclusively deals in impossible crimes. Shortly after their chat, Kiroshibu is shot behind the locked door of a railway carriage. Dawn has his locked room murder and excuse to start investigating.

Well, Yaffe was only sixteen when he wrote "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes" and so this story lacks the polish that comes with experience and maturity, but brash, youthful fallibility and the tact of a teenager has a charm of its own. I snickered when Dawn summarized Kiroshibu's story, "so you're traveling to Miami Beach to toss your brother's ashes into the Atlantic," or taking a peek inside the urn ("Henry Kiroshibu was of a non-descript, grayish color, and he only filled about half the urn"). Yaffe's choice of murderer and method aren't without interest, but failed to present the overall solution as something even remotely plausible or convincing. So not bad, but not great either.

Next up is "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys," published in the January, 1982, issue of EQMM, written by the author of the Lyon and Bea Wentworth series, Richard Forrest. Several novels from this series are locked rooms and impossible crimes, but Forrest proved to be an extremely frustrating novelist. Forrest had some good impossible crime ideas, such as the false-solution from A Child's Garden of Death (1975) or the whole locked room setup and trick in Death at King's Arthur Court (2005), but always mired in bad or mediocre novels. So was curious to see what Forrest could do with the impossible crime in short story format.

Forrest's "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys" reads like the introduction of a new series, but, apparently, this is the only appearance of the unnamed headmaster-detective of Greenfield Academy, New England – who helps out a student named Braxton. Braxton has serious problems back home as his mother is indicted for murdering her second husband, because she was the only other person inside their securely locked bedroom. So the headmaster decides to help his troubled pupil and begins to call in favors from ex-students to get his hands on information in order to solve the murder. It's funny how this short story is the exact opposite of Forrest's novel-length mysteries. This is a good, well-written short story with a fun detective who could have headed his own series, but the impossible crime and locked room-trick is rubbish. Forrest remains the most frustrating writer of locked room mysteries.

Bill Pronzini netted his first Shamus Award for best P.I. short story with "Cat's Paw." A short story originally published in 1983 as a hardcover booklet.

"Cat's Paw" finds the Nameless Detective patrolling the grounds of San Francisco's Fleishacker Zoological Gardens during a cold, foggy night when the fog "makes everything look like capering phantoms or two-dimensional cutouts." Nameless has been hired as an extra guard following the theft of several rare birds and some other endangered animals that go for premium prizes on the black market, but the zoo covers roughly seventy acres and difficult to police with only a few guards. This was still a few years before security cameras became more widely adopted. While patrolling the grounds, a gunshot rings out from the Lion House where Nameless and a colleague discovers the body of another night guard lying in an empty, locked feeding case – shot through the chest and clutching a gun. So it appears to be suicide as the building was locked up and they arrived less than 30 seconds after hearing the shot. That makes the only possible exit through one of the open cat-grottos at the rear of the Lion House, but "those cats would maul anybody who went out among 'em." Nameless knows this dodgy looking suicide is murder and, fortunately, he knows his way around a locked room murder.

Overall, Pronzini's "Cat's Paw" is a good and very fine P.I. short story making full use of its backdrop, especially in the lead-up to the shooting. Nameless likened walking around a zoo by night to a graveyard ("...ordinary enough during daylight hours... downright eerie after dark"). But as a detective story with a locked room mystery, it's neither spectacular nor particular fair. I still liked it as a P.I. short story and it's always fun to tag along with Nameless, but as an impossible crime story it was very little to offer. Fortunately, the next tale of the impossible by Pronzini is a different story!

Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" originally appeared in the anthology Mean Streets (1986) in which Nameless has to act as an armchair detective, while drinking beer and playing poker. Eberhardt had made a bet with the other guys around the table he could "make sense out of the Gallatin thing within twenty-four hours." Lt. Jack Logan, one of the man around the poker table, who nearly nailed Frank Gallatin for racketeering and extortion charges. What they needed was an incriminating file from an accountant, named Lamar Trent, but, when they went to Trent's office, they heard a gunshot behind his locked office door. Only two people were inside when the shot was fired: Frank Galletin and Trent slumped behind his desk with a bullet in his skull. Just a handful of problems. Firstly, the office is thoroughly searched without the murder weapon or incriminating files turning up. And no gunshot residue on his hands. There simply was no time to dispose of the gun, files and a pair of gloves ("locked doors, disappearing guns—screwball stuff"). Even worse, Galletin claims somebody came up or down the fire escape, shot Trent through the open window and disappeared the same way. They checked this story and nobody could have used the fire escape, unless they happened to be invisible. So they Galletin shot Trent, but nothing can be done unless they figure out how he made all the evidence disappear from a locked office with police standing at the door ("just your kind of case, paisan").

For the next two hours, or so, they play five-card stud and drink beer while Nameless mulls over the puzzle. And, of course, he pieces everything together and only left the poker table to get a cold beer. Nameless takes joy in drawing out his solution as payback for making him work instead of just playing poker. I liked how the simple locked room-trick and solution revealed the supposedly clever Galletin to have been prize idiot after all. Fantastically fun!

By the way, I think an anthology of hardboiled, pulp-y P.I. locked room mysteries and impossible crimes is long overdue. Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" or "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" (1980) would be perfect for such an anthology (Tough Nuts to Crack).

John Nelson's "Magwitch Returns," originally published in the April, 1986, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, is an odd one and perhaps not truly a locked room mystery – at least not in the traditional sense. The setup is conventional enough as it begins with the police being called to the scene of an unmistakable suicide. A neighbor of one Andrew Thornton heard a gunshot coming from his apartment and when the landlord unlocked the door, they found him with a bullet in his head and gun on the floor. Thornton, "a police buff and a Dickens fanatic," left behind a string of clues turning the police investigation into a scavenger hunt. I wonder if J.A. Konrath was aware of Nelson's “Magwitch Returns” when he wrote "With a Twist" (2005), because the premises are strikingly similar. Konrath got so much more out of the idea than Nelson. Still an amusing take on the detective story, but poor purely taken as a locked room mystery.

Finally, John L. French's "Open and Shut," published in the July/August, 2003, issue of AHMM, which is obviously product of its time when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation along with its spin-off shows were at the height of their popularity. French is a retired crime scene supervisor who wrote articles ("A Brief History of DNA," 2006) for Future Mystery Anthology Magazine and occasionally had a short story published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. "Open and Shut" is French's only impossible crime story featuring a crime scene technician, Grace, who's called the scene of a suicide in College Town. A student shot himself behind the locked door of his bedroom while his roommates were still in the house. So an apparently routine case of "another overachieving high school student who couldn't handle the shock of getting B's in college," but a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories gives a classical twist to the case. When it comes to the locked room problem, I don't think this story will excite the pickier of locked room fanatics, but I enjoyed the overall story and how (SPOILER/ROT13) gur cybg jrag sebz fhvpvqr gb zheqre naq onpx gb fhvpvqr ntnva, orsber frggyvat ba na nppvqragny fubbgvat. Like I said, this story is very much a product of its time.

This was another poor, unexciting and rather disappointing haul for this blog series. Not necessarily because the stories were bad, most weren't, but Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" is the only story that stands out and shines as a locked room mystery. So maybe the time has come to either retire "Locked and Loaded" or put it on hiatus for the foreseeable future. I'll try to pick something good, none-impossible crime related next. Stay tuned!

The Glass Tower Murders (2021) by Mikito Chinen

Last year, I came across the work of fan-lator Mitsuda Konno, formerly known as Mitsuda Madoy, who's translating first-rate Japanese detective fiction with "cosmmiicnana" such as Kie Houjou's superb "The Ryuuzen Clan" series and Danro Kamosaki's insane "Murder in the Golden Age of Locked Rooms" series – which have become personal favorites. I keep my fingers crossed Houjou's Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019), Katou no raihousha (Visitors to the Isolated Island, 2020) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022) get official releases one day. I consider them to be the classics of tomorrow and a glimpse of what the detective story could involve into over the course of this century. That's a story for another day.

Mitsuda Konno has a few more pieces of forbidden fruit fanlations on his website and one title especially has been beckoning me for months.

Mikito Chinen's Garasu no tou no satsujin (The Glass Tower Murders, 2021) is described by Konno as "a mystery fan's mystery novel" that's "extremely tropey, and extremely self-aware about how tropey it is," which incidentally also makes it "good as an introduction to modern J-mystery" – dedicating "a lot of page time to explaining the appeal of its own genre." Ho-Ling Wong praised The Glass Tower Murders in his 2022 review for the meaningful way it used the genre's familiar tropes and concepts to create "a very entertaining puzzles that presented a surprising deep look at the genre" ("...basically a love letter to the shin honkaku subgenre"). Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders sounded like a trickier, more complicated and deeper shin honkaku version of Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936). Well, I'm game!

The glass tower of the title is the setting of the story and home to Kozushima Tarou, a retired professor of biotechnology, who invented TRIDENT that "completely altered the course of gene therapy." This invention also made him a very rich man and allowed him to built the tower. A towering, cone-shaped building erected on the slope of Mt. Chogatake with glass walls and a spiral staircase at the center linking together the floor and rooms. The point of this cone-shaped building is called the Display Room where the "Kozushima Collection" is kept. Kozushima is not only a biotech genius, but "a devotee of mystery fiction" and has accumulated a huge collection of detective memorabilia from across the world ("is this Columbo's coat?"). Fittingly, the normally reclusive Kozushima has invited a small group of people to the Glass Tower to make an important announcement.

First of all, there's Kozushima's doctor, Ichijou Yuma, who pulls double duty as a Dr. Watson narrating the story. Sakaizumi Taiki, a chef, who's always called upon to cook lavish meals for Kozushima's events. Aoi Tsukiyo, a self-proclaimed Great Detective, styles herself after Sherlock Holmes, but another guest, Kagami Tsuyoshi of the Nagano Prefectural Police, says she always turns down cases that look too difficult to solve. Kuruma Koushin is a celebrated mystery novelist who made his name during the early days of the shin honkaku movement and "particularly known for his skill at creating locked room mysteries." Yumeyomi Suishou, a TV psychic, is the star of the Psychic Detective Case Files. Sakyo Kousuke is the editor-in-chief of Super Mystery Monthly Magazine known for its "scattershot approach" by "placing proper honkaku stories of logic and reasoning next to unbelievable tales of the paranormal." Lastly, the loyal butler and maid.

So there you have a fairly basic and typical setup for a conventional shin honkaku mystery novel. Conventional to the point you almost get déjà vu, however, that's the point as the story slowly, and playfully, begins to take a different track with these classic, time-honored tropes. Yuma not only narrates the story, playing the witless Watson to Tsukiyo's Sherlock Holmes, but this Watson is also a murderer who has an urgent reason to slip his employer a poisoned pill loaded with tetrodotoxin – which is the poison in pufferfish. Yuma figured if he declared Kozushima's death the result of a heart attack, "it won't be considered a crime," but his plan is completely derailed when Kozushima cries out for help over the telephone. That gives Yuma precious little time to get out of the room and create a very basic locked room setup, which he hopes will do the trick. When the door is opened with the master key, Yuma discovers Kozushima left a clue before dying. The letter "Y" written on the floor ("it must be a dying message"). Tsukiyo, of course, rejects any notion Kozushima died from natural causes or committed suicide. She gets to play detective as an avalanche blocked the road and the police won't be able to get to them for another day or two.

Roughly, the first quarter of The Glass Tower Murders plays out like a darkly humorous inverted mystery in which the murderer finds himself assisting the self-appointed Great Detective investigating his own crime. Something that could have come straight from an Anthony Berkeley or Leo Bruce novel! Yuma is not the only murderer roaming the Glass Tower. A second locked room murder soon follows the second one as Oita Shinzo, the butler, is brutally stabbed to death in the dining room with the door securely latched from the inside. The door being latched from the inside is not even the strangest aspect of the case. Somehow, the dining table was on fire with a message, "SPIRITED AWAY FROM CHOGATAKE," written on the tablecloth ("...a reference to a series of murders that happened in this region over a decade ago").

So now Yuma has a potential scapegoat and more than ever determined to help Tsukiyo find the murderer by being her Watson. However, the murderer is not done yet with creating locked room murders and other impossible situations. The Glass Tower Murders is not about its locked room murders and tricks. It's a detective novel about detective fiction with a cast of genre-savvy mystery readers who discuss various authors, novels, styles and history of the genre – particularly the development of the shin honkaku mystery. Not to mention the plot-thread about an mysterious, unpublished manuscript Kozushima's claims to have discovered that "completely overturn the history of the genre." And, of course, occasionally winking at the fourth wall ("maybe we are characters in a honkaku mystery set in a creepy mansion and just don't realize it"). Don't mistake The Glass Tower Murders for lightweight fluff or an excuse for Mikito Chinen to fanboy all over his favorite mystery writers, novels and series. The Glass Tower Murders is an incredibly dense, layered detective novel pulling off something truly amazing.

The Glass Tower Murders basically gives you three different, deeply intertwined mystery novels for the price of one. Firstly, there's the Berkeley-style inverted mystery involving Yuma poisoning Kozushima. Secondly, the conventional, classically-styled shin honkaku mystery ticking every box needed for such a novel. And that includes two challenges to the reader! This conventional portion of the novel concludes with Tsukiyo's equally conventional solution to exactly such a mystery, but the story is not over yet. So the last part offers an alternative take turning everything that happened before upside down. And brilliantly so! I can't say much more without risking serious spoilers, except how it reminded me just how popular and influential Ellery Queen is in certain non-English speaking parts of the world. Something that's not always appreciated or even noticed in the West.

Mikito Chinen's The Glass Tower Murders stands as a truly exceptional, self-aware meta-mystery novel that demonstrated you can have your cake and eat it too. You have, on the one hand, a typical shin honkaku mystery with a eccentric mansion, locked room murders, a dying message, cracking codes and a closed circle of suspects – completely shut off from the outside world. The solutions to the various mysteries of this conventional shin honkaku novel aren't half bad. Like the locked room-tricks behind the second and third murders, which give you everything you hope to get from a series of impossible crimes in a bizarre mansion. At the same time, the story goes much deeper than merely references to Hercule Poirot or the “Bizarre House Mysteries” series by Yukito Ayatsuji. Only to escape its own confines to prepare the firework show that would end the story. Simply fantastic!

I'm just not sure I would recommend The Glass Tower Murders as an introduction to the shin honkaku mystery, or the genre in general, because the plot demands some level of familiarity with the detective story. Not just for knowing who's who, or who wrote what and when, but in following the plot along as it twists and turns towards its inevitable conclusion. Today, it's easier than ever to read up on the Japanese shin honkaku mystery novel. Enough to fully appreciate The Glass Tower Murders.

So, in closing, all that's left to say is Chinen really took the meta-mystery to another level of consciousness with The Glass Tower Murders. Highly recommended.

The Hit List: Top 5 Favorite Mystery Short-Shorts

When patching together one of these lists, I always try to avoid the usual topic and opt for something slightly less obvious and original, "Top 10 Works of Detective Fiction Lost to History," "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" and "Top 10 None-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated," unless there's a good reason – like the 10th anniversary of the Rue Morgue Press shutting down. This time, I wanted to do a short story list, but not a basic list of favorite short stories or make it thinly-disguised locked room list.

So was considering starting working on a Halloween-themed list or do a part 2 of "Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries," when I got an idea. Why not do a short list of short-shorts?

The short-short detective story has admittedly not produced many classic or memorable examples, because it's tricky to setup and execute a good, satisfying detective story in 3-6 pages. So the short-short detective story is not the perfect vehicle to write a stunning and memorable detective story, but, going over them in my head and digging around on this blog, I quickly compiled a surprisingly solid top 5 – even having to cut a few candidates. I could have expanded the list into a top 10, but wanted the list to be short as well. I also changed the title of the list, "Top 5 Most Memorable Mystery Short-Shorts," because when it comes to short-shorts, everyone probably has a different reason why they remember a certain short-short – likely why everyone's top 5 picks would look very differently. That means there's something to disagree or nitpick about my top 5. Let me know in the comments.

"Leaving No Evidence" by Dudley Hoys (published in a 1938 issue of The Passing Show and collected in The Realm of the Impossible, 2017)

A short-short barely counting 6 pages bringing a traveler, named Cortland, to a remote, Lebanese mountain village where there's a legend of The Thing. Something that takes people. So he has pay good money to get some of the locals to guide him to snow-capped mountaintop, but during their climb two men disappear as by magic. I was surprised how clearly I remembered this story and it's original solution to the impossible disappearances. That makes it inclusion a no brainer.

Note for the curious: the barely 2-page excerpt from Aleksis Kivi's Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, 1870), also collected in The Realm of the Impossible, was considered, but "Leaving No Evidence" had more to offer.

"Who Killed Baker?" by Edmund Crispin and Geoffrey Bush (published in the October 30, 1950, edition of The Evening Standard and collected in Fen Country, 1979)

This is perhaps not the most original or surprising pick, but it's the most well-known short-short and a minor classic of its kind. Gervase Fen tells an acquaintance how Detective Inspector Casby solved a murder and answered the titular question. You can call this story gimmicky, a riddle in short story form, but it's a great gimmick and solution.

"Diamonds in Paradise" by Ellery Queen (published in the September, 1954, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and collected in Queens Full, 1965)

Queen's "Diamonds in Paradise" is not only one of my favorite short-shorts, but one of my favorite dying message stories. A surprisingly simple, straightforward short-short concerning a thief helping himself to some diamonds at The Paradise Garden, but ends up falling to his death while trying to escape – no diamonds are found on him. When the police asked the dying thief where he had hid the diamonds, he answered with his last breath "diamonds in paradise." Not only a clever take on the dying message story, but a surprisingly realistic one as well. Exactly the kind of story Isaac Asimov always tried to write for his Black Widower series.

"The Case of the Blue Bowl" by E.X. Ferrars (published in a December, 1958, edition of the London Evening Standard and collected in The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries, 2012)

I came across this short-short fairly recently in the Crippen & Landru collection The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas. A collection that begins with six short-shorts featuring Jonas P. Jonas, a retired private investigation, which appeared in the London Evening Standard during the second week of December 1958. "The Case of the Blue Bowl" is the standout of this short-lived series as Jonas solves the murder of a village miser based on the blue bowl left on the victim's doorstep. A 1930s village mystery in miniature!

"You Have a Friend at Fengrove National" by John Sladek (published in a 1968 issue of Tit-Bits and collected in Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, 2002)

John Sladek gave me three short-shorts to chose from. A short-short genre parody ("The Locked Room," 1972) and a Thackeray Phin story ("It Takes Your Breath Away," 1974), but I picked the criminally overlooked and amusing "You Have a Friend at Fengrove National." A humorous tale about a criminal who worked out a clever cheque deposit scheme, but every thing goes wrong when the uncouth criminal classes decided to make a bank withdrawal. And ruin everything! Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek has a section, "Sladek Incognito," gathering eight of his still practically unknown crime short-shorts in which criminals fall prey to their own cleverness or simply bad luck. This one is, in my opinion, the best of Sladek's short crime pieces.

Half-Mast Murder (1930) by Milward Kennedy

Milward Kennedy was an English civil servant, journalist, literary critic, reviewer and mystery writer, who was a founding member of the Detection Club, but the bulk of his novels and short stories have been out-of-print and largely forgotten about for decades – even during the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. So my only exposure to Kennedy's work has been through his small, modest contributions to the Detection Club's round-robin novels The Floating Admiral (1931) and Ask a Policeman (1933).

I have been aware of Kennedy and two of his mystery novels, The Corpse on the Mat (1929) and Death to the Rescue (1931), have been longtime residents of my locked room mystery wishlist. Kennedy's detective fiction is still waiting to be swept up by that reprint wave. Only two novels, Half-Mast Murder (1930) and Murder in Black and White (1931), returned to print over the years. I decided to just give Half-Mast Murder a shot to see what this forgotten Detection Club member could do on his own with a novel-length mystery novel.

Half-Mast Murder is Kennedy's fourth mystery novel taking place at Cliff's End, "a house of some social standing," situated on the coast and property of "one of the Big Noises of the world," Professor Paley, who's an authority on international politics, economics and war – playing "a big part in the creation of the Succession States to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire." Professor Paley's books and strong opinions make him "very unpopular with some people." Currently, the professor is working on his next book supposedly to contain some remarkable revelations about the Great War ("moral dynamite") and has come down from London to Cliff's End to write the book. Professor Paley has brought along a nice, close-knit group of future suspects.

There's his widowed sister, Mrs. Arkwright, and his niece, Cynthia, who has a brother, Julian, who works for an armaments manufacturer and is not on speaking terms with his anti-war uncle. Julian is in the neighborhood. A longtime friend of the professor, Bertie Trent, who was nevertheless overheard saying Paley's "only fit for heaven." And the sooner the better. George Shipman, a man of leisure, is only there for Cynthia. Finally, a visitor from America, a Mr. Quick, who came to see the professor as a representative of the Association for World Harmony (Inc.). This first chapter ends with the party rushing down to the octagonal-shaped summerhouse, where the professor has been working, after the butler failed the get an answer. So they break down the door to discover the professor slumped in a chair with a knife-handle sticking out of his chest.

Superintendent Guest and his men arrive at Cliff's End to take charge, but the problem facing them is a multifaceted, messy tangle of clued, red herrings and uncooperative suspects. For one, there's the problem of the locked summerhouse and why the murderer created a locked room puzzle, because, even without the locked door, it looked too dodgy to be suicide. And there are other puzzling peculiarities to the case. Why was the flag on the roof of the summerhouse flying half-mast? Why was there a bloodstained bathing suite stuffed into the safe? What's the stain of the sliver wood Guest too from railing? What's the significance of the camera and a spool of fishing-line found at the crime scene? However, the plot and Guest's investigation primarily revolves around picking apart everyone's movements around the time of the murder and making time tables.

So, yes, Half-Mast Murder is firmly rooted in the much maligned, so-called “humdrum” school of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode, but two chapters standout – Chapter XV ("EXAMINES EVIDENCE") and Chapter XXI ("AUGURS AN ARREST"). In Chapter XV, Guest tackles the problem of "how came the summer-house to be locked and the key inside?" Admittedly, the possibilities Guest considers and the actual locked room-trick could hardly be called original even in 1930, but have seen put to worse used than here. Chapter XXI ends with Guest giving the Chief Constable, what he then thinks is, the correct solution. Only for it to be reduced to a false-solution. I'm afraid Kennedy's Half-Mast Murder is a very bad case of the false-solution outshining the correct solution. More on that in a moment.

I should first mention Half-Mast Murder has a strange peculiarity that should have been a drawback, but ended up saving the book from becoming a total loss. Half-Mast Murder is still very much an early, 1920s drawing room mystery at heart as the crime scene resembled a busy thoroughfare with practically everyone popping in-and out at the time the professor was being murdered. So more than one person had a hand in creating the confusing crime scene, which is always a bit hard to swallow and takes some talent to pull-off convincingly. But here it safeguarded the story's best parts from the insultingly bad ending. Such as what happened to the missing material for the professor's next book and why the flag was half-mast. And I still enjoyed the (basic) locked room puzzle.

So I would have been perfectly happy with Guest's false-solution from Chapter XXI as it bundled those best ideas and plot-points in the best possible solution to the murder as it was presented – while using those last few chapters plugging the gaps. Sure, it would not have been a blistering original, rug-puller of a whodunit, but would have happily recommended it to fans of Crofts and Rhode. Kennedy thought the ending needed something more than mere competence and opted for pulling a "surprise twist" out of his ass. It stunk! I don't know what's the worse offense here: the flagrant lack of fair play (you can't even guess the who or why) or the solution to who and why. Something so cringe, you want to hide it from outsiders (SPOILER/ROT13: gur ohgyre qvq vg). I hope the Detection Club put Kennedy on trial for this faux pas and had to pay Rhode's bar tab as punishment.

Milward Kennedy has always been one of those notable gaps in my Golden Age detective reading and hoped more for Half-Mast Murder, but it ended up dampening my interest in Kennedy just a little bit. On the other hand, even the best of Kennedy's contemporaries had some terrible mystery novels to their name. Martin Edwards praised Kennedy in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), "a leading exponent of the village mystery," highlighting The Murderer of Sleep (1932), Poison in the Parish (1935) and the previously mentioned Death to the Rescue. A mystery novel based on a real-life case that was withdrawn from circulation after a libel lawsuit. So I won't write Kennedy off completely, but the next one better be good.

The Argentinean Butterfly Mystery: C.M.B. vol. 13-14 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 13 comprises of four, one-chapter stories starting with one of those human, heart-shaped puzzles, "The Grass in Summer," which begins when soaring temperatures end the school day early for the students of Meiyuu Private High School – leading to an unexpected discovery in the streets. Sakaki Shinra, Nanase Tatsuki and their friends accidentally stumbled across a small, empty plot of land that was practically hidden from sight ("...surrounded by buildings and is only connected to the main road by a small gap...").

What's really peculiar about that plot of land are the various plants and flowers growing on it. Such as arnoglossa, "a type of grass that grows on solid ground," growing in a straight line, morning glory wrapping itself around a water tap and much more. The plot is like coming across a desert oasis in the middle of a city or finding a botanical garden in your attic. When they return to the plot, they meet a woman who tells them the plot of land used to be belong to her late father. However, she had not seen or heard from him for seven years, until the hospital called to tell her he was dying. So why did her father disappear and what was behind the plot of land? Normally, the reason for the man's disappearance would be the crux of the puzzle, but this time that part is more of an after thought. The real puzzle is what that wild garden used to be. Shinra's explanation is as unusual as it's pleasingly original like a benevolent version of Uketsu without the horror. A strange plot indeed!

The second story, "Mountain Villa in Fog," has Shinra and Tatsuki lost in the foggy mountains during a study trip. Fortunately, they came across a mountain villa owned by a Kaeru Amagasa, scriptwriter of the O-Zap drama group, whose hosting a reunion of the once somewhat popular group – enjoying some low-key success only five years ago. The other three members are Chisato Hanamaku (actress), Tokuji Kirishima (actress) and their leader/lead star, Tamotsu Tsukiyama. Tsukiyama tells them O-Zap is making a comeback with an American tour, but the day ends with him being found dead on the living room couch with a rope tied around his neck. A familiar and classical setup for a closed-circle whodunit, apparently hinging on motive and opportunity, but Katou presented an uncharacteristically disappointing and uninspired ending to what could have been a fairly decent whodunit.

"Asado" is the third story and very wish-washy, non-mystery story. Shinra and Tatsuki's study group have to put together a stall for the school's cultural festival. So they decide to do a food stall and Shinra suggests to do an asado. Some fairly small problems arise during the preparations of the festival, but, like I said, it barely can be called a mystery story. Fortunately, this volume ends on a high note.

Mau Sugal, the black market broker, returns in the fourth and final story, "The Music Box." This time, she wants Shinra to solve the mysterious, borderline impossible mystery attached to an antique music organ. It used to belong to an aristocratic British family from the 19th century, but it was the lady of the manor who was obsessed with the organ. She wrote about her obsession in her diary, which drove her husband to shoot the blasted thing with two full barrels. However, there "no gunshot marks at all" nor any repair marks and "even the glass is original" and there's no question it's a different organ – begging the question how the bullet holes have disappeared. Sugal is willing to give Shinra a valuable piece of information in exchange for a solution. I'm not sure if this counts as an impossible crime, but the solution, based on the diary entries and why the lady played only particular piece of music, is excellent. This time, Shinra had a helping hand putting the pieces together. Hihimaru, the baboon, from "An Old Woman and a Monkey" (vol. 12) is now living at Shinra's museum and provides the missing link in the case.

So C.M.B. is a mixed bag with two weak, almost negligible stories, "Mountain Villa in Fog" and "Asado," stuck between the visually striking "The Grass in Summer" and the wonderfully done "The Music Box."

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 14 opens with a classic, two-part story, "World's End," which was setup in the previous story. Sugal's important piece of information turned out to be a photograph of a legendarily rare butterfly, Colias ponteni, better known as the Colias imperialis. A butterfly discovered on Captain James Cook's journeys, but less than a dozen specimens were collected and the circumstances or locations of their collection extremely muddled. And it has not been spotted or collected since the 1850s ("...a popular legend that they live in a giant hole in the South Pole"). So what they have to do is track down the person who made the photograph and that brings them to Argentina. This is where the story splits in two as one half takes a look at the crimes committed during the Dirty War by Argentina's military dictatorship. Katou convincingly ties the two together without breaking the butterfly on the proverbial wheel. "World's End" is perhaps not a detective story proper, but a very well done crime story with a fitting ending.

Next is up is another minor character piece, "Sugoroku," in which Shinra and Tatsuki stumble across a toy shop with old, vintage toys. Haru Nijima, an elderly woman, took over the shop after her husband passed away, but she has no idea how to run or manage it properly. She would like to close the shop and go on that long dreamed of holiday with her two friends, but, for some reason, her friends have stopped talking to her. She has no idea why or what she might have done to upset them. Shinra and Tatsuki take upon themselves to clear away the pileup of misunderstandings between the shopkeeper and her two friends. Not bad but very minor stuff.

This volume also ends on a high note with "The Woman in the Flower Shop." Kizaki Kousaku, a law student, is hopelessly in love with Sone Keiko and even spies on her with binoculars from his apartment completely unaware a colleague at his part time job, Wakui Chisato, secretly likes him. A situation that becomes terribly complicated when Kousuka discovers through his binoculars Keiko has a secret lover. Kousuka is the only one who knows about this lover and that becomes a dangerous problem when this lover brutally kills Keiko. So he decides to send the murderer a letter, "hurry up and turn yourself in," but the murderer returns it in person. What's more, he knows all about Kousuka spying on Keiko ("...sunlight will reflect off the lens and give away your position"). The killer is determined to make Kousuka the scapegoat for his murder, until Shinra turns up to save the day. Not a series classic, but still a good, solid story and closer to this volume.

C.M.B. vol. 14 is not so different from the previous volume, except this one has three instead of four stories with two best stories, "World's End" and "The Woman in the Flower Shop," sandwiching "Sugoroku." Not necessarily a bad story, but very minor, forgettable stuff. Those four stories book ending the weaker, slighter stories more than make up for them, especially "The Music Box."

Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912) by Victor L. Whitechurch

Rev. Victor L. Whitechurch was an Anglican churchman, author and creator of Thorpe Hazell, a vegetarian railway enthusiast, who's one of the oddest "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" appearing in a short-lived series of nine short stories from 1905 to 1906 – collected in Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912). Whitechurch started out as a turn-of-the-century mystery writer in the Doylean tradition, but also got the participate in the early Golden Age of the British detective story with novels like The Crime at Diana's Pool (1927), Murder at the Pageant (1930) and Murder at the College (1932). Not to mention being a founding member of The Detection Club and penning the first chapter ("Corpse Ahoy!") for the round-robin mystery The Floating Admiral (1931).

Whitechurch is best remembered today for the railway detective and thriller stories written during the first decade of the previous century, which extends pass the Thorpe Hazell series. That gives them some historical importance. Mike Grost pointed out Whitechurch's "stories appeared early in the Impossible Crime movement" and "very early in the Technological Detective movement" that "had already been piloted by L.T. Meade in this era, but just barely." Thrilling Stories of the Railway and Whitechurch's other railway mysteries were fairly obscure and out-of-print for decades, until they entered the public domain. They have since been bundled together and reprinted by different publishers. I wanted to finally take a look at this collection of pioneering detective stories.

The first story is "Peter Crane's Cigars," originally published in the July, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Ingenious Ruse of Mr. Crane," which briefly introduces Thorpe Hazell. A book collector, railway enthusiast and amateur detective "whose knowledge of book editions and bindings was only equaled by his grasp of railway details," but what made Thorpe Hazell an odd duck at the time was another one of his eccentricities – "a strong faddist on food and physical culture." A vegetarian to the extreme who was constantly practicing strange, outlandish physical exercises.

So this first story presents a fairly minor problem as Hazell has to deal with a tobacconist undercutting his competition by selling quality cigars at bargain prices ("...only paid fivepence each for them"). That brand can be "picked up very cheaply in Holland or Belgium," but not resold at those low prices unless they were smuggled into the country without paying the duties. Hazell dons a disguise to tail Crane on his monthly excursion abroad, but even the railway detective is baffled how Crane was smuggling the cigars. So you can categorize this story as a borderline impossible crime story and not something as banal or disappointing as the cigars being smuggled pass customs inside the books Crane was lugging around on his travels. Whitechurch came up with something more ambitious for the core solution, but its dependence on (ROT13) haxabja nppbzcyvprf detracts from the overall plot. Still a fun, enjoyable introduction to the series.

"The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern," originally published in the August, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with Hazell perusing the morning newspaper when a headline, "SHOCKING ACCIDENT ON THE RAILWAY," catches his eye and attention. An unidentified man was found leaning out of one of the windows of an express, on the London and Mid-Northern Railway, who had a wound on the back of his head and an ear torn off. So the authorities assume the man was looking out of the window and struck his head against one of several bridges over the line, but Hazell would like to know more about the incident. Between stretches and dumbbell exercises, Thorpe Hazell becomes Thorpedyke Hazell and follows a trail of physical evidence right to the murderer's doorstep. As noted before, these are early, pre-Golden Age mysteries that reads like a blueprint of what's coming, but often lacked fair play. So Hazell is as much as an oracle as an detective. Still a fun story.

Interestingly, Whitechurch's "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" appears to have been the blueprint for another impossible crime story from the same decade. This story sounded so familiar, I started looking over the "Train Mysteries" tag and came across "The Unseen Hand" by M. McDonnell Bodkin from The Quests of Paul Beck (1908) and anthologized in Ye Olde Book of Locked Room Conundrums (2016). "The Unseen Hand" was published in the December, 1907, issue of The Royal Magazine. So assume Bodkin had been aware of Whitechurch's story and tried to improve on it, because it doesn't seem like a blatant copy/paste job.

"The Affair of the Corridor Express," first published in the September, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, is an interesting one. A distressed Mr. F.W. Wingrave, a master at Shillington School, comes to Thorpe Hazell asking him to help find a 10-year-old school boy, Horace Carr-Mathers, who's the son of a millionaire and impossibly vanished from a moving train – vanished right under the nose of the school masters! So the London express was thoroughly searched, every compartment, luggage rack and passenger, but Horace was nowhere to be found. Hazell can see "a distinct plot" in Wingrave's account and accepts the case. I think this is the first story with a plot that has aged surprisingly well. Not only does it indulge in some clueing and foreshadowing, but the visual image of how Horace vanished from the train makes for a memorable visual image. That poor kid! One of those rare detective stories that manages actually do something with a kidnap plot.

"Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," originally published in the October, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine under the title "The Car That Vanished" and anthologized in The Realm of the Impossible (2027), is another early highlight of the impossible crime story. A case that "found a prominent place in Thorpe Hazell's notebook" and for good reason. Sir Gilbert Murrell has three paintings on loan to an expedition, but they inexplicable disappear in transit, on a goods train, along with its entire waggon on a non-stop right. And to top it all off, the vanished waggon with the paintings was in the middle of the train! I don't know how feasible the disappearance-trick is or whether it can be pulled-off on a first try, but the idea is ambitious, original and light years ahead of its time when it comes to the impossible crime story. A good and entertaining impossible crime caper.

"How the Bank was Saved," published in the November, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Frustration of Kinch," begins with admitting "Thorpe Hazell always looked upon the affair of the Birmingham Bank from a distinctly humorous point of view" – "not worth calling a railway mystery or adventure." I agree. This is a mild crime comedy in which Hazell helps a bank thwart a plot to destroy their credibility over a personal grievance. A plot involving a robbery aboard a train, but Hazell has a counter plot. A fun, light, but forgettable, criminal farce.

"The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box," originally published in the December 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine and previously anthologized in Vintage Mystery and Detective Stories (2005). This time, Thorpe Hazell gets to play a cross between Arsène Lupin and James Bond. Hazell is approached by Mostyn Cotterell, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affair, who has an unusual request. How do you steal back stolen document from a German diplomat traveling from London to the Continent by the ordinary boat train? The documents in question being carried in a locked dispatch-box. So, on this case, Hazell is not solving a train heist, but organizing and carrying one out. A daring assignment on paper ("...the most daring case which he ever undertook..."), but, as the ending showed, not half as dangerous or impossible when you have the backing of the British Empire. Still an amusing yarn regardless and not half bad for the time.

"How the Bishop Kept His Appointment," originally appearing in the January, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, is a mild, humorous adventure story in which Hazell helps a bishop get to his important speaking engagement after their train derailed. So not much to say about this one except that it has one or two good moments.

"The Adventure of the Pilot Engine," first published in the February, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, takes place at "a juncture when European politics were considered by diplomatists to be in a very delicate state" when Count von Neglein arrived in the country – scheduled to have "an interview with the English Prime Minister" ("...in presence of the King"). A small group of spies, headed by a man named Dubourg, plot to prevent this meeting from ever happening and the plot he has hatched makes this the most technically complicated stories in the series. A complicated and fiendish scheme involving a particular stretch of railway with quadruple tracks and switch boxes. There's even a map of that stretch of railway line. Refreshingly, Dubourg admits "there are several weak spots in the plan" and "must trust to luck." Nobody could have planned on a certain railway detective playing deus ex machine to spoil their carefully laid out and executed plot. So not too bad for a vintage spy thriller.

Note for the curious: one of the characters involved in the plot is a Russian spy, named Koravitch, who's probably the same character from Whitechurch's The Adventures of Captain Ivan Koravitch (1925). That could mean Whitechurch could have written the first, or one of the first, crossovers in the detective genre. Something deserving of being footnoted.

"The Stolen Necklace," originally published in the March, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, concludes this short-lived series on an underwhelming note. A short story from the late 1800s or early 1900s about stolen or misplaced diamond necklaces, strings of pearls and gold rings tend to feel like filler stories – because rarely something really is clever is done with it. This story is no exception. Hazell helps a woman retrieve a diamond necklace she lost on a train, but turn out to have been stolen. An OK story by itself (and for the time), but forgettable and very weak to end this series on. At least Hazell was satisfied with his ending ("...glad to think that the last of my little investigations of railway mysteries has cleared a good man of suspicion...").

Hold on! There are six more, non-Thorpe Hazell thrilling stories of the railway in this collection beginning with another locked room murder aboard a train.

"The Mystery of the Boat Express," published in the February, 1912, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with a passenger of the Great Southern Boat Train paying the guard a half-crown to lock his compartment ("...I do not wish to be disturbed"). When the train arrived at its destination, the guard unlocks the compartment and discovers the passenger has been shot through the head. So it appears to be a case of suicide, but the evidence screams murder. How can a man alone inside a locked compartment, on a moving train, have been shot? The solution to that conundrum makes "The Mystery of the Boat Express" another footnote worthy title. I think the locked room aficionados has seen a variation, or two, on this trick before, but this story predates them all by more than twenty years. Other than that, very much a short story of its time.

"How the Express was Saved," originally published August, 1911, issue of The Royal Magazine, runs along similar lines as some of the previous stories. It revolves around a group of disgruntled railway strikers who were told by their employer to hit the road. So they hatch a plot to derail the train, on which their General Manager is traveling, pitching it straight into the river. In my opinion, the best written of Whitechurch's railway thrillers complimented by a beautiful map of the scene where the train is to be derailed.

 

 

I have very little to say about the last four, fairly minor short stories from The Royal Magazine. "A Case of Signalling" (1911) has a maid and her railway worker boyfriend spoil a burglary. "Winning the Race" (1911) is another affair of international intrigue and concerns trying to get one train to arrive before the other. "The Strikers" (1911) is much the same as "How the Express was Saved," but not as good. Finally, "The Ruse That Succeeded" (1911), in which the Russian spy Koravitch has to be smuggled out of Britain. I guess this story comes from The Adventures of Ivan Koravitch.

So, all in all, Whitechurch's Thrilling Stories of the Railway is an interesting, but mixed, collection of short stories. The best of these stories are "The Affair of the Corridor Express," "Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," "The Mystery of the Boat Express" and "How the Express was Saved" followed at some distance by "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" and "The Adventure of the Pilot Engine." You have to judge these stories by the standards (or lack of standards) of the pre-Golden Age period when the detective story of the 1930s and '40s slowly started to take its form. That's perhaps the biggest strength of Thrilling Stories of the Railway is showing this transition from one period to the other. Like the best from this period, they read like a blueprint or premonition of the coming Golden Age (e.g. Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air, 1917). Whitechurch's railway mysteries belong to that category with its technical, more ambitious and complicated plots, impossible crimes, diagrams and floor plans. Whitechurch was not the first to include floor plans and diagrams, but they were still far from a staple of the detective genre. So definitely enjoyed this collection and its historical window into the development of the detective story. Recommended not only to vintage crime fans, but fans of vintage fiction in general.