This Time Forever (1957) by John Glasby

In 2021, I reviewed A Time for Murder (2002/13) by John Glasby, a prolific fictioneer of the 1950s and '60s, who produced science-fiction, westerns, hospital romances, war stories and crime fiction – nearly 300 novels, novellas and short stories. Glasby made a comeback in the 2000s on the insistence of his literary agent and pulp historian, Philip Harbottle. A Time for Murder was the first new entry in Glasby's series about Johnny Merak, "an ex-con turned private eye," which appeared alongside reprints of the first and third novel from the series' original run. The second novel remained out-of-print due to copies being ultra rare, extremely elusive and practically impossible to come by. That is, until recently!

Some months ago, Wildside Press reprinted This Time Forever (1957) with a short, insightful introduction from Harbottle explaining how it slipped through the cracks and accidentally became a unicorn to collectors. When attempting to track down a copy to reprint, Harbottle contacted known collectors from across the world, but learned "that they too were searching for this elusive title" ever since Robert Adey listed it in Locked Room Murders (1991). How a copy eventually turned up and lead to this reprint is something you have to read for yourself or listen to Harbottle tell about it by clicking here.

This Time Forever begins with Johnny Merak and his assistant, Dawn Grahame, being summoned to the offices of a federal investigator, Harry Grenville, who would like to draw on the expertise of an ex-crook. A case dropped on his desk involving Charles Dempster, "a top-line financier and diamond dealer," whose record is spotless making him untouchable to the authorities – lately received some alarming and threatening letters. There was an attempt to kidnap his daughter. What's behind the plot suggests something outside the ordinary criminal business of settling scores, shake downs and protection rackets. But before they can finish their talk, Grenville is called and informed Dempster was found dead twenty minutes ago.

Charles Dempster died from hydrocyanic acid poisoning in his private, windowless study with the door locked from the inside and the only key tucked away in his pocket. So the police at the scene call it a suicide, but the discovery a crumpled playing card in Dempster's hand suggests murder to Merak. A similar playing card had turned up years earlier on the body of a slain gangster and the cards are linked to an underworld figure known only as The Joker. Merak decides to take on this case involving mobsters, hired guns, dangerous dames and trail of dead informants and witnesses, but just as dangerous is his past as an ex-criminal. An ex-criminal turned private investigator asking pesky, nosy questions in a world where asking questions is frowned upon. Even more so when those questions comes from a traitor.

So more than enough happens between the opening and closing stages of this short, fast-paced gangster mystery, but not much (plotwise) can be said about it. It's pretty much Merak trying not to get killed, trying to talk to people before they get killed and keeping an eye out for Dawn. Harbottle wrote in the introduction Glasby's publisher employed some dishonest, unsavory tactics to keep the printing presses running like underpaying authors and guaranteeing their best talent to publish everything they wrote, tempting them "to churn out first-draft material" without "any need for polishing or revision" – ready to be sold and published. There's a definitely a first-draft feeling to This Time Forever and often reads like it was originally published in a 1940s pulp magazine. Which has a charm of its own. Fortunately, there's something to be said (plotwise) about the opening and closing stages which is where This Time Forever has something to offer to detective fans like us.

First of all, the solution to the locked room poisoning is almost too good and too clever for such a straightforward, pulp-style thriller populated with gangsters, hit men and the occasional drive-by shooting. A locked room-trick that could have been plucked from the impossible crime fiction by Arthur Porges. So locked room fanatics and collectors mainly interested in the impossible crime element can be assured the solution doesn't turn on something disappointing or lame like a hidden contraption with a poisoned needle or a swallowed capsule delaying the effects of the poison. Secondly, the choice of murderer here was interesting as well, especially since I considered another character based on a sentence I took as a hint/challenge to the who/why. I was seeing more than was really behind it.

That's where the first-draft, pulpy feel and problem comes into play. A fully fleshed-out, revised and polished version of This Time Forever would likely have given more consideration to the murderer's identity and problem of the locked room poisoning. It would have made for a far more successful fusion of, as Adey described it, "the classic detection novel with the American gangster thriller." As it stands, This Time Forever should not disappoint fans of the (Americanized) pulp-style mysteries by John Russell Fearn, Gerald Verner and James Ronald with pleasantly inventive solution to the locked room poisoning. Something that's always a gamble with these type of pulpy mysteries that play the Grandest Game faster and looser than their counterparts from the detective story proper, but the best of them bring a great deal of imagination and ingenuity to the table. Glasby brought some of that to the table when it comes to the impossible crime. I think most people who pick This Time Forever up today mostly pick it up for the locked room angle.

You haven't seen the last of Glasby on this blog. I have become interested in the Johnny Merak novel The Wheel Spins Thirteen (2009). It's probably not an impossible crime novel, but just like the idea of a man beating a crooked roulette wheel three times on the same night and walks out with a million dollars.