Seven Dead (1939) by J. Jefferson Farjeon

Last year, Martin Edward reported on his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name, that there were some exciting reprints forthcoming in the Crime Classics imprint of the British Library in 2020, which will include a pair of once obscure, long out-of-print locked room mysteries – namely John Bude's Death Knows No Calendar (1942) and Peter Shaffer's The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951). So, in anticipation of these impending reissues, I picked a British Library title from the highlands of my to-be-read pile.

I've read less than a handful of J. Jefferson Farjeon's novels, but the superbly realized child narrator from Holiday Express (1935) and the gentle, snowy magic of Mystery in White (1937) indicated he was a less than conventional mystery novelist. Even the more traditionally presentable The Third Victim (1941) ended on an unconventional note with a solution hearkening back to the days of 19th century sensationalist fiction. And the only truly conservative aspect of Seven Dead (1939) is its continuation of that tradition.

Seven Dead has a strong, memorable opening with a hungry thief, named Ted Lyte, who's nervously graduating from "petty pilfering and pickpocketing" to housebreaking.

Lyte comes across a lonely place, Haven House, with an open gate, shuttered windows and half-dressed in dilapidated vines. So he grabs his courage together and finds a way into the house, where he helps himself to the silverware and food in the pantry, but, when he entered the shuttered room, he vacated the premise "as if he had been fired out of it from a cannon" – only to be apprehended outside. But the shocked man is unable to utter a word. When the police decides to inspect the burgled house, they make a horrifying discovery.

The shuttered drawing-room resembled a Chamber of Horrors with seven bodies strewn across the room, six men and one woman, who are "emaciated, filthily clothed" and "nothing on any of them to identify any one of them." As if they had gone through a Hellish ordeal. The shutters weren't merely bolted, they were nailed shut. A bullet hole disfigured a picture of a young girl hanging in the dining room and on the mantelpiece stands a slender silver vase with "an old cricket ball," green-yellow with age, on top. Most tantalizing clue is a crumpled piece of paper bearing the message "with apologies from the Suicide Club" and a cryptically penciled note scribbled on the other side of the paper.

One hell of a way to start a hard-to-define crime story! What follows is a two-pronged investigation by the protagonists, Detective Inspector Kendall and Tom Hazeldean.

Tom Hazeldean is a freelance reporter and yachtsman, who helped to apprehend Lyte, but his "romantic disposition" makes him want to meet the girl in the picture, Dora Fenner, who's the niece of the owner of Haven House, John Fenner – who has taken Dora to Boulogne. Hazeldean sets sail to France to find Dora and finds himself in the middle, what some have called, a romantic thriller with suspicious servants and silk merchant who seems to follow him around. Back in England, Detective Inspector Kendall conducts an investigation more in line with Freeman Wills Crofts as he reconstructs how, and why, the picture was fired upon, tracking down tire tracks and scrutinizing footprints. This is the only piece of genuine detective work in the story.

Just like Mystery in White, I think Seven Dead is too gentle to be a thriller (in spite of the body-count) and too light on detection to be a proper detective story, which you can only solve, if you happen to be a clairvoyant. And to a purist, like myself, that's an unpardonable sin. And then came that sublime ending! A conclusion that more than made up for any shortcomings the story has as either a detective or thriller story. If there's anything to complain about, it's that story has been told the wrong way round.

Seven Dead should have started out with that disastrous tragedy and expending those fascinating diary entries to fill the middle portion of the story, because who wouldn't want to read a detailed account of people battling an army of penguins? The last quarter should have told of the return to England, culminating in wholesale murder, ending with the discovery of the bodies and perhaps a newspaper clipping – reporting on the gruesome, inexplicable crime discovered at Haven House. I think this would have turned the story in a timeless classic and a lovely inversion of a famous detective novel published around the same time. Alas, the road not taken...

Farjeon was not your average, Golden Age mystery novelist, but a writer who spun fanciful yarns of wonder and imagination, which just so happen to take the shape and form of the detective and thriller story. Seven Dead is a fine example of how impossible it's to pigeon-hole Farjeon and his work. So he comes highly recommended to mystery readers who are looking for something a little different in their vintage crime fiction.

And if anyone from the British Library happens to stumble across this review, you should consider reprinting the splendid and highly original Holiday Express. If there's one obscure, long out-of-print novel by Farjeon deserving to be reprinted it's Holiday Express.

Stranger at the Inlet (1946) by Martin Colt

A year ago, I reviewed The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953) and The Mystery of the Invisible Enemy (1959) by "Bruce Campbell," a penname of Sam and Beryl Epstein, who cemented their legacy as the pioneers of the present-days Young Adult genre with the acclaimed Ken Holt series – which tended to be darker and more intricately plotted than most juvenile mystery series of the period. What's not as well known is that Ken Holt has a predecessor, Roger Baxter, who appeared in a couple of novels during the late 1940s.

The series comprises of three novels, Stranger at the Inlet (1946), The Secret of Baldhead Mountain (1946) and The Riddle of the Hidden Pesos (1948), which were published under two different names, "Charles Strong" and "Martin Colt." A very short-lived series, but as highly regarded by fans as the more well-known Holt series. And not without reason!

Roger Baxter is the 14-year-old protagonist of the series who lives with his 12-year-old brother, Bill, in the small, coastal town of Seaview and they were obviously the prototypes for Ken Holt and Sandy Allen.

Roger is, very much like Ken, the meticulous, rationally-minded thinker of the two. However, the difference between Ken and Sandy, who are the same age, is due to intelligence, while the difference between Roger and Bill is clearly age, because Roger has already began to mature and Bill is still in the phase between childhood and adolescence – which can make him a little bit naive at times. Roger and Bill are two very well-drawn, believable child characters on par with the children and teenagers found in the work of Gladys Mitchell.

The story opens during the summer holiday and the boys are planning to make a windmill on top of the empty cottage, owned by their parents, which they have come to regard "more or less as their private property." Unfortunately, their mother informs them the cottage has been rented for two months to a man, Robert "Slim" Warner, who wants a quiet place to recuperate from an operation. Luckily, Slim has no problem with Roger and Bill mounting a windmill on the roof of the cottage to generate electricity for the cottage. However, they soon begin to pick up hints and clues that Slim is not who he says he is.

Slim says he came to Seaview to convalesce, but carried around heavy bag, two at a time, without any trouble or pain. He drives "an old wreck of a car," but the motor in it "sounds almost brand-new." A power generator was delivered to the cottage, but Roger knows he never send the telegram to ask for it. And then there's the mysterious, late-night visitor to the cottage and they boys overheard them talking about Smugglers' Island.

An answer to all of these questions come, roughly, a quarter into the story, which plunges Roger and Bill head first into an exciting adventure that involves an elaborate smuggling operation – who use the peaceful, out-of-the-way seaside town as a clearing point. But this is all I can say about the plot without giving away too much.

What I can say about the story is that plot has a lot of nuts and bolts, which makes it a younger relative of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode. The early chapter detailing how Roger, Bill and Slim build the windmill on top of the cottage reads like a partial instruction manual and they learn how to operate "a six-volt radio." As well as getting a crash course in Morse code. A combination of the two is put to ingenious use when they find themselves in a tight corner towards the end of their adventure. Obviously, a book that was written for young boys and teenagers.

The sole weakness of this excellently written novel is that the chase was more exciting, and fun, than the eventual capture of the culprits, which hardly came as a surprise. Something that enervates most juvenile mysteries for older readers.

Nonetheless, Stranger at the Inlet is a beautifully written, characterized and adventurous mystery novel with an equally beautiful, well-imagined backdrop. The writers evidently knew and respected their young audience, which they would come to perfect in the Ken Holt series when their plots became really trick and far more serious – fraught with very real, dangerous situations and consequences. So these two series are without question a cut above other juvenile series and can be enjoyed by young and old alike. Just for that, they deserve to be rediscovered.

In a Vanishing Room (1961) by Robert Colby

Robert Colby was a writer of tough, fast-paced paperback originals and his short stories were regularly printed in two popular publications, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Michael Shayne's Mystery Magazine, but only readers and collectors of hardboiled paperback originals appear to remember his work – some of whom believe Colby "never got the fame and recognition that he deserved." Honestly, I likely never would have given Colby a second glance had it not been for an alluringly titled novel, In a Vanishing Room (1961), which sounded full of promise.

So, I looked into the book and found a short, but helpful, review on MysteryFile. The review accurately described it as a minor story with "no frills in the telling" and "action packed content" that "zooms right along." But what caught my eye was the description of the titular gimmick: a basement room that vanishes alongside with the entire basement! I found an impossible crime novel Robert Adey missed in Locked Room Murders (1991). Well, you know me, the promise of an impossible crime is enough to rope me in.

In a Vanishing Room is a pacey, thrill-filled chase story and the trouble begins when the unlikely protagonist, Paul Norris, boards a plane in Miami, Florida to go to New York.

Norris has been on a downward spiral ever since his wife divorced him and savagely began to drink, escape in cheap thrills and throwing away a hundred seventy-five bucks every five work days in Miami – where he worked as an account executive for a major company. His self-destructive behavior puts him on notice with the company and without work, Norris would be broke in three-weeks time. So he asked to be transferred to the New York branch, but there he has to reapply for a position and, with nothing to lose, he boards a plane to New York. And there the trouble begins.

At the terminal of the International in Miami, Norris witnesses an "odd, tense little scene." Norris was waiting in line to collect his ticket when a man brushed his arm, who then broke out in a sprint towards the exit, dropping his bag along the way, shortly followed by two raw-boned, crew-cut blond men in dark suits in pursuit – who returned less than a minute later to retrieve the fallen bag. When he arrived in New York, Norris is approached by a red-headed woman, Eileen Taggert, asking if he was the last person who came off the plane. Taggert had been waiting on her lawyer, Harry Wheeler, who apparently was the man being chased in Miami by the two men in black.

This is the point where the plot becomes a bit tricky to describe, because this is a chase story, fraught with danger and double-crosses, which rapidly moves from one scene to another. However, I can tell you that the plot is propelled forward by a signed receipt from Morgan van Lines, Inc. for a packed crate. Or, as one of the characters referred to it, "the awful box." The crate supposedly holds "something worth millions" and everyone wants to get their hands on the crate or receipt, which was slipped in Norris' coat-pocket when Wheeler brushed up against him at the airport and drags him into a dangerous adventure that even brings him to San Diego – where an entire basement miraculously vanishes.

Norris is hired by the owner of the crate, Everett T. Kavanagh, to have it picked up in San Diego and sends his personal secretary, Marian Collison, along with him. Shortly after they arrived, Norris and Collison find themselves face-to-face with a hired gunman in a basement room. They come out alive, but, when they returned the next day with the police, an elderly woman lived at the address and the door to the basement now opened into a broom closet – nothing to indicate any trickery. It was a normal broom closet with a broom, dust pan and a mop. Unfortunately, the solution for the vanishing basement is very basic where disappearing houses, rooms and streets are concerned.

I fear experienced mystery readers will immediately catch on to how the trick works when they try to find their way back to the house. Regardless, I found it interesting that a miraculous, Carr-like impossible problem has been used in a story that also featured a brutal rape-murder. That's quite a contrast.

On a side note, I may have found an original, if unlikely, way to make a basement vanish as if by magic. You (uhm) simply fill the entire basement with concrete, until it reaches the top of the steps, after which its floored and carpeted over. The nook behind the former basement door can be converted into a broom closet. Even if the broom closet is taken apart, because the carpeting looked suspiciously recent, all they'll find is (what looks like) the concrete foundation of the house. And that's how you make a basement disappear. Don't try this at home, kids.

There's not much more that can be said about the book. In a Vanishing Room is a fast-paced, thrill-filled chase story crammed with deceitful characters, double-crosses, murder and a multi-million dollar stake, but the bloody gunfight that settled the plot was a reminder why I prefer the traditional, plot-driven and clue-filled detective story. Obviously, Colby was not writing a traditionally-structured detective story and can understand why people like these fast-moving, hardboiled crime stories, but my preferences in crime-fiction simply lie elsewhere. In a locked room.

Still, it was a quick, interesting read and made for a nice little excursion outside of my usual boundaries, but my next post will be a return to my beloved Golden Age. I found something that has potential. Something that is giving off Carrian vibes.

The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle (1974) by William Arden

The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle (1974) is the twenty-second book in The Three Investigator series and the sixth title penned by "William Arden," a penname of Dennis Lynds, who has become my favorite contributor to this series and this fast-paced, cleverly concocted story demonstrates why. A near classic example of the code-breaker.

Traditionally, the book begins with an introduction by the reluctant mentor of the three boys, Alfred Hitchcock, who denies any involvement in the shenanigans of the late Marcus "Dingo" Towne. Hitchcock tells the reader that "the old scoundrel" had no right to involve him "in his scheme from beyond the grave," but humbly points out that without his cunning the problem would have remained unsolved, because he handed over the case Jupiter "Jupe" Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews – known locally as "the junior detective team" of The Three Investigators. And they tackle the problem with a great deal of energy, enthusiasm and determination.

Marcus "Dingo" Towne was an old Australian, "who made his pile by hard work," but sees no reason to it all to his "shiftless, greedy, stupid and otherwise useless" family. So he only left his daughter-in-law, grandson, niece and nephew "the sum of $1.00 each."

What remained of Dingo's hard-earned pile was turned into gemstones. A million dollars worth of opals, sapphires, rubies and emeralds, which belongs to the person clever enough to find it – which can be done by cracking a six-part riddle. Dingo was a cunning man who laughed to taunt and laugh at people. This is reflected in his complex, multi-layered riddle that's loaded with hidden riddles, double clues and even "a shortcut clue" that can only really be spotted by readers with an encyclopedic mind with a storage capacity for arcane knowledge.

Dingo had appointed Hitchcock ("who likes mystery") as one of his executors and he's contacted by Dingo's daughter-in-law, Molly Towne, who's worried that her almost 8-year-old son, Billy, is getting cheated out of his inheritance. Her fiance and lawyer, Roger Callow, plans to challenge the will in court, but, by that time, the gemstones might already be found. And the finder has no reason to come forward. So the famous movie-director advised them to give Jupe, Pete and Bob a chance to crack the code.

However, they soon find out that this is not going to be one of those ordinary, dime-a-dozen treasure hunts of popular juvenile fiction, but an out-and-out rat race.

When they arrive at the saggy, dilapidated house of Dingo, there's a crowd "swarming the property like ants" and fighting over a collection of empty bottles in the yard that are being mistaken for clues – one of the treasure seekers is their long-time nemesis, "Skinny" Norris. Unsurprisingly, Norris acts like a proper nuisance throughout the story and is responsible for the thrilling scene depicted on the covers of practically every edition of this title. This time, his actions aren't merely motivated by his dislike for the three detectives, particularly Jupe, but by an opportunity to upstage them by finding a small fortune in precious stones. And this is one of the many aspects that makes The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle standout in the series.

There are, however, more people who try to get their hands on the gems or appear to be very interested in the movements of Jupe, Pete and Bob.

Cecil and Winifred Percival are Dingo's niece and nephew from England and they're proper pair of Disney-like villains who come within inches of getting the treasure, but the boys are also shadowed by two men in a blue car – one of them being a giant of a man. But they also have a loyal ally in Billy Towne. The 8-year-old wants to be a detective, who even appears at one point wearing a cape and deerstalker, but Billy proves to be a burden during the first half of the story. However, he's able to redeem himself by solving one of the riddles and used their Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup to help the trio out of a real jam. A great example of how to use such a young character in a mystery story.

These characters are roaming around Rocky Beach, California, which is fantastically employed here by Arden and constantly moving these characters across the map is what this such a fun, fast-paced novel. One of my favorite scenes is when they take the bus out of town to followup on a clue, based on fare zones and the travel habits of Dingo, but on their way back they see the Percivals are on their track. And a sweaty, red-faced Norris is seen digging holes around a billboard. This really gives you an idea that this is a race and not a leisure treasure hunt.

But the absolute highlight of the story is how every event and character are either directly linked or interconnected, which means that everything has a reason without a single side-distraction to pad out the plot – something I feared would be the case when the two gangsters turned up. Even they had a reason for being present that linked up with the main plot. This also goes for the people who witnessed the will and were assigned executor to the quaint tea shop Dingo used to frequent. There are puzzle-pieces all over the place!

So the plot is pretty tight and the only thing that can be said against it's not a solve-it-yourself type of detective story. I guess you can compare the plot-structure of The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle with G.K. Chesterton's "The Blue Cross" from The Innocence of Father Brown (1911).

As impressive as the tricky plot of this juvenile mystery is how Arden made the lingering presence of Dingo's forceful personality emerge as an omniscient puppeteer by the end of the story. Dingo came out on top as the undisputed winner and he did it without even taking a breath. What can I say? Beware the Eternal Aussie!

So, all in all, The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle is a well-written, fast-paced and nicely characterized entry in the series with a code-breaker plot that makes it rank alongside The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965), The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966), The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972) and The Mystery of the Headless Horse (1977).

The Secret of Shark Reef (1979) by William Arden

The Secret of Shark Reef (1979) is the thirtieth outing of that "intrepid trio" from Rocky Beach, California, which was written by the lauded crime novelist and pen-for-hire, Dennis Lynds – who wrote under the name of "William Arden" for this series. The book is an important one as it marked the final appearance of the famous mentor of the boys, Alfred Hitchcock, consequently ending the second chapter of the series. A chapter that began when the series-creator, Robert Arthur, passed away and passed on the torch.

Fittingly, the final case of this last great period of The Three Investigators, as the last thirteen books are generally held in lower regard, turned out to be a memorable one – which brings Jupe, Pete and Bob to an oil-platform in the ocean off Santa Barbara. Despite what the book covers suggests, the menacing-looking sharks are the least of their problems!

The father of one of the investigators, Bob Andrews, is a newspaper reporter and is asked by his paper to write a story on the troubles faced by the first oil-rig in the blue waters of the Santa Barbara Channel. A group of environmentalists are trying to prevent them from drilling, because the Channel Islands are practically untouched and are teeming with birds, plants and marine life.

So Mr. Andrews asked his son if he, alongside with his two friends, would like to accompany him on his trip, but he also a surprise for them when they arrive at the oil-rig.

The chairman of the protest committee is a well-known mystery novelist, John Crowe, who honors "the junior detective team" by requesting one of their famous calling cards for his collection of mystery mementos. And even more importantly, Crowe has a problem for them to solve that concerns the lead boat of the committee. A fast, powerful craft that consumes a great deal of fuel, but the captain of the Sea Wind always makes a careful calculation to ensure there's enough fuel in the craft to remain at sea the full twelve hours they try to keep up the protest – except that they inexplicably ran out of fuel three times in the past week. There were no leaks in the fuel tanks or lines and the engine checked out. So what happened to the lost fuel?

On a side note, I did find it funny and somewhat ironic that the protesters, who oppose the oil-rigs and have formed a "flotilla of boats" around the platforms, are bugged by a chronic fuel shortage. And all the while they're chanting "heck no, oil must go" and "hey, hey wha'd'ya say, how much oil will you spill today." Unintentionally funny. Anyway...

Jupiter "Jupe" Jones is the brains of the team and he carefully studies the logbook of the Sea Wind, Crowe's notebook and charts of the islands, which tells him exactly how the fuel was lost. However, this answer immediately poses the problem of who, or what, is responsible for the lost.

As the boys grapple with this problem, the athletic Pete Crenshaw gets an opportunity to slip into a wet-suit and search for a potential solution under water. Bob Andrews, on the other hand, has to tackle a problem that Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer never had to wreck their brains about: how do you follow a suspect into a bar where no minors are allowed? So this keeps them busy until a hurricane rocks the regions and temporarily brings an obscure passage from the Second World War to the surface, which is revealed to be the true driving force behind everything that happened around the oil-rigs.

At this point in the story, it really becomes a matter how they'll resolve the case, because the (main) villain is very obvious after this revelation. And this will naturally lead to some tight spots as the boys have to tangle with the perpetrators and they get help from an unexpected ally.

So there's not much else I can say about the plot, or story, except that the World War II plot-thread was better handled than the environmental background, which gave me 'Nam-like flashbacks to Captain Planet. A cartoon show that was supposed to teach children to recycle and take care of the environment, but was so preachy that all it made me want to do was litter and fill the oceans with non-degradable plastics.

Luckily, the plot of The Secret of Shark Reef only showed, without preaching, before (largely) moving on to the obscure, long-lost secret that was hidden beneath the waters of the Santa Barbara Channel. I think this secret, along with the answer to who and what was responsible for the fuel lost, constitutes the best parts of the book. Combined with some splendid scenes, like when the hurricane hit, makes this a splendid read of the wild sea, sharks, sabotage and "monstrous shapes that rise from the ocean." And a fond farewell to the long-time mentor of the boys, Alfred Hitchcock.

On that note, I want to remark that Hitchcock's successor in the series makes no sense now that I have read this book. I have not read the next book in the series, M.V. Carey's The Mystery of the Scar-Faced Beggar (1981), but I know it introduces a fictional replacement for the famous movie-director, Hector Sebastian – who acted as a mentor to Jupe, Pete and Bob until their last case (The Mystery of the Cranky Collector, 1987). However, that role should have gone to the character of John Crowe, because "John Crowe" is one of Dennis Lynds' pseudonyms. Lynds was picked by Arthur to continue the series and perhaps therefore he came up with the name "William Arden," because he was going to act as a warden to the boys. And, therefore, his fictional counterpart would have been perfect to fill the gap that Hitchcock left behind when he passed away in 1980. It makes sense, right?

Anyway, my next post will probably be either a review of Case Closed or a promising looking detective novel from the 1920s. So you have that to look forward to!

The Great Escape

"We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch this basket carefully."

- Colonel Von Luger (The Great Escape, 1963)

Recently, Dan of "The Reader is Warned" compiled a two-part list, titled "5 Impossible Crime 'Thrillers' to Try” and "5 More Impossible 'Thrillers' to Try," which made a decent attempt at listing all the notable, high-paced thrillers with a locked room or impossible crime element, but both lists omitted the best specimen of this particular blend of crime-fiction – namely Michael Gilbert's outstanding Death in Captivity (1952). After littering Dan's comment-section with recommendations for the book, I decided to take down my copy from the shelves to see if it could stand re-reading. And it absolutely did!

Death in Captivity was reprinted in 2007 by the now defunct Rue Morgue Press, under its US title The Danger Within, which came with a foreword by Tom and Enid Schantz briefly going over Gilbert's personal experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Italy during World War II.

The foreword is titled "The Escapes of Michael Gilbert" and gives the modern reader an idea just how extraordinary this piece of detective-and thriller fiction truly is. Not only are the plot and setting practically unique within the genre, but many of the events in the book were inspired by Gilbert's first-hand experiences as both a POW and an escapee in enemy territory – which gave everything a chilling veneer of authenticity. Particular the depictions of everyday life at the prison camp, the secret tunneling activities in the various huts and the occasional pestering of the Italian prison guards ("a bit of sentry-baiting").

Another aspect that sets this book apart from other World War II mystery-and thriller novels is that it deals primarily with the Fascisti of Italy rather than the Nazis of Germany.

The Danger Within takes place in Campo 127, "easily the best camp" one of the prisoners had been in, but perhaps the most "comfortably lodged" group of prisoners are the six men held in Room 10 in Hut C. As a rule, the rooms were designed to hold eight men and usually overflowed with "ten or even twelve less fortunate prisoners." Captain Benucci had ordered the men, all of them notorious escapees, to occupy the same room. Reasoning that if he had "six dangerous criminals to watch, it was easier, on a whole, to have them together," but that only pooled all of their knowledge and experience in one place – resulting in "the oldest of existing undiscovered tunnels in the camp." A tunnel Colonnello Aletti, Commandant of Campo 127, claimed simply could not exist.

The entrance to this tunnel lay in the kitchen of Hut C and in the middle of this cookery, set in a six-foot slab of concrete let into the tiled floor, stood a stove. A huge cauldron, shaped like "a laundry copper," which hid a trapdoor to the tunnel and could only be revealed by the combined effort of four strong men with assistance of double pulleys – effectively evading discovery by being "too big to see." I thought this was a nice little Chestertonian touch to the all-important secret tunnel that will play a key role throughout the entirety of the story.

One day, the protagonist of the story, Captain Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles, crawls down to the tunnel to continue work, but discovers that during the night part of the roof had come down. Inexplicably, there's a body underneath the pile of fallen sand at the end of the tunnel. Something that should not be possible, because this person could not have gained access to the tunnel on his own nor could an outside group have entered the locked Hut C after nightfall. Even more troublesome is that the victim is identified as a Greek POW, Cyriakos Coutoules, who's suspected by everyone of being a stool-pigeon for the Italians or even a double-agent in the employ of the Nazis.

Two of the special detainees in Hut C, Captain Roger Byles and Captain Alex Overstrand, had previously uttered threats to lynch Coutoules. However, their immediate problem of Hut C and Colonel Baird, head of the Escape Committee, is how to tackle the problem of a dead man cluttering the best tunnel they had. So they decide to dump the body in a smaller tunnel, located in Hut A, that had been "allotted low priority by the Escape Committee" and stage a roof collapse there, but how they move the body from one hut to another, under the nose of the guards, is one of my favorite and funniest scenes of the entire story – something of a cross between 'Allo, 'Allo (war-time setting) and Fawlty Towers (the episode Kipper and the Corpse, 1979).

You occasionally get these brief burst of typical British humor. Such as when some of the prisoners are preparing a stage-play and they pick one in which one of the characters, rapturously, exclaims "Italy! Oh, it's hard to take in even the bare possibility of going there. My promised land, Doctor, which I never thought to see otherwise than in dreams." Needless to say, that line brought the house down.

But, on a whole, the story-telling tends to be serious in tone, because the myriad of (potential) problems facing the POWs of Campo 127 are no laughing matter.

The events at the POW camp take place against the backdrop of the impending invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland by Allies, eventually culminating in the disposal of Benito Mussolini, but the consequences of an Allied victory in Italy is a double-edged knife for both parties at the camp. On the one hand, the POWs fully realize the Germans aren't going to set free the sixty thousand prisoners in Italy and that, one day, they could simply find themselves being put on a train "to Krautland." On the other hand, the card-carrying members of the Fascist Party, such as Captain Benucci and the sinister Mordaci of the Carabinieri Reali, know they'll be put in front of a military tribunal when the Allies arrive – which would probably end with them having to face a firing squad.

So the inexplicable death of Coutoules and the accompanying cloud of suspicions does very little to improve the slightly strained situation at the camp, but the situation becomes rather serious when Captain Byles is charged by Benucci with the murder of the Greek POW and is placed in solitary confinement – condemned to die in several days time. Captain "Cuckoo" Goyles is asked by the Escape Committee to investigate who killed Coutoules, why and where. And, most importantly, how his body ended up in the tunnel.

In my opinion, the explanation for the impossible appearance of a body in a hermetically sealed, air-tight and blocked tunnel is as simplistic and logical as it's original. A one-of-a-kind impossibility in a completely unique crime novel that performed a perfect juggling act with its detective story elements, thriller components and spy material. Gilbert never allowed one of those elements to overshadow the other, but neither were they diluted. They worked in perfect harmony with one another. For example, the clues that will help you solve the detective story elements are provided by some of the more gruesome, thriller-ish aspects of the plot. You'll know what I mean when you get to it.

The Danger Within is an impressive and perfect latticework of differing genres, which is what makes it impossible to pigeonhole the book, but the climax of the story is a fine piece of wartime fiction as the inmates of Campo 127 prepare themselves to make "The Great Crawl." A fitting end to this semi-autobiographical wartime crime story. An ending that fitted like the final piece of the puzzle that completed the whole picture of this marvelously clever and exciting story. I simply can't recommend this one enough.

I'll end this review by saying that re-reading The Danger Within has inspired me to finally airlift my other Gilbert titled from the snow-capped tops of Mt. To-Be-Read. I'm not sure which titles actually reside there, but I believe they were Close Quarters (1947), Death Has Deep Roots (1951) and The Killing of Katie Steelstock (1980). So you can look forward to a review of one of those titles in the hopefully not so distant future.

Finally, Kate at Cross Examining Crime and Mike of Only Detect also reviewed the book (here and here), while Sergio of Tipping My Fedora reviewed the 1959 movie based on the book (here).

The Return to Terror Castle

"Frankly, I would prefer to have nothing to do with these three youths, but I

rashly promised to introduce them. And I am a man of my word—even though the promise was extorted from me by nothing less than sheer skulduggery, as you will see."

- Alfred Hitchcock (Robert Arthur's The Secret of Terror Castle, 1964)

Back in November of 2015, I took a chance on a series of juvenile mysteries, called The Three Investigators, which was created by a prolific writer and editor, Robert Arthur, who wrote ten of the forty-three books about the three boy-detectives and when he passed away, in 1969, the torch was passed to a small group of writers – consisting of William Arden, M.V. Carey, Nick West and Marc Brandel. All forty-three of the books were published between 1964 and 1987.

My first encounter with that "trio of lads," Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews, came when I picked up their sixth case, The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966), which I wanted to read simply to compare to Case Closed. However, I loved the book so much that, within a year, I had burned through nearly a dozen of them.

One of those books reviewed on here was the series-opener, The Secret of Terror Castle (1964), which proved to be a relatively decent debut with a plot that was prescient of the long-running Scooby Doo series. And as the first entry in the series, the book was picked for two adaptations. A German-South African made-for-TV was made in 2009, Das verfluchte schloss (The Cursed Castle), that aired in 2010 on Disney XD under its original book-title, but the plot and characters appear to have been modernized and modified.

So that makes a little-known dramatization from the 1980s the most interesting of the two adaptations, because it was as loyal as a dog to the source material.

The Secret of Terror Castle and The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot (1964) were dramatized by Rainbow Communications and released on cassette tapes in 1984, but barely anything is known about these productions – except that the audio-plays were adapted by Edward Kelsey and directed by Tony Bilbow. So I can't tell you the names of the voice-actors who played Jupe, Pete and Bob, but they played their roles admirably. Only have two minor caveats about their presentation in this adaptation.

In order to differentiate between the voices of the teenage boys, the ages of the characters varied in this audio-play. Jupe was obviously made the oldest of the bunch, pushing sixteen, while Pete must be around 12 or 13 years old. Bob sounded like he was in the same age-range as Pete, but with a huskier voice and his role had been reduced to a side-character. But that's the only point where the audio-play differed from the book.

Otherwise, the 50-minute audio-play delivers a faithful, but condensed, version of The Secret of Terror Castle and even retained the all-important role of Alfred Hitchcock, "teller of tales of terror," plays in the series and particularly in this story – which established the famous movie-director as their mentor (of sorts). A second, noteworthy, aspect demonstrating just how loyal this dramatization is to the original is that the plot was not transported to the 1980s. The audio-play opens with the announcement that "the story you're about to hear happened in the 1960s" before "any of you were born." So you can argue the play is a (modern) historical mystery.

The story opens, like the book, with Jupe and Pete surreptitiously gaining access to the private office of Alfred Hitchcock (see my book review for details). And in case you're wondering, Bob has been sidelined by "the after effects of a badly broken leg" and primarily does research at the library.

Anyhow, Jupe and Pete cheekily make an offer to the famous director of thriller movies: they want to help him find "an authentic haunted house" for his next picture and in exchange he'll introduce their first recorded case. Hitchcock is initially taken aback by their impertinence and cheek, but admires their initiative and promises that if they can "come up with an interesting story" he'll introduce it – which makes them rush back to the HQ where Bob was waiting with a report on Terril's Castle.

Ancient technology from a long-lost civilization

Terril's Castle stands in a narrow gulch, known as Black Canyon, which has acquired a haunted reputation and locals started to refer to the place as Terror Castle.

The castle was build by a famous horror movie-actor, Steven Terril, who was "a big star back in the silent film days" and known all over "the world as the man with a million faces," but when talkies replaced the silent film he was unable to hide his "squeaky, high-pitched voice" and "lisped" - making him a laughing stock of the industry. One day, Terril simply vanishes from the world stage, but left behind a note saying that his castle is forever cursed to be haunted. So it's exactly the kind of place they were hoping to find.

At this point in the play, Bob is pretty much sidelined as a participating character and the story primarily follows the other two boys, Jupe and Pete, as they investigate the haunted castle. Or dig around in the past of the silent movie actor and get themselves in a couple of tight situations, but what really makes these scenes a joy to listen to is the banter between the brainy Jupe and the smart-mouthed Pete, which was reminiscent of the ribbing between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

After they were scared away from Terror Castle, Pete suggests that they call Hitchcock to tell him that "they break out in lumps of goose flesh" whenever they go near the place. And that their "legs go all wobbly" and "start running on their own accord." Jupe's reaction to this suggestion is something Wolfe could've said in response to one of Archie's little quips, "I will ignore those remarks, Pete." Or when they get trapped inside a crevice, Jupe observes that their "exit appears to be effectively barricaded" and this makes Pete ask why "even at a time like this you use long words." Why not simply say that they're stuck there?

I think this interaction between Jupe and Pete helped carry this audio-play, because the condensation of the story made the plot even thinner than in the original and this really showed how much the plot resembled an episode from Scooby Doo, Where Are You! The story is as amusing as a Scooby Doo episode, but, plot-wise, is also about as challenging as one (i.e. not very) when read, or listened to, purely as a detective story. However, it was based on, what simply was, the first story in the series and it would come to include such gems as The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965), The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972; a rich plot) and The Mystery of the Headless Horse (1977).

So I really enjoyed the fifty minutes spent with, what is essentially, "Suspense for Kids." And it was fun to hear the characters I have been enjoying since 2015 come alive in this theater of the mind. It made want to listen to the second dramatization in this short-lived audio-series, but want to track down and read the book first. Not exactly sure when I'll get around to both versions of The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, but they'll eventually be reviewed (poorly) on here.