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 Flow of Time: Case Closed, vol. 98 by Gosho Aoyama

Later this year, Viz is going to publish the English edition of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 100, but, considering the original Japanese releases currently count 108 volumes, it will be another two, three years before the English releases have fully catch up with the Japanese – presumably around the time vol. 110 or 111 gets published. Gosho Aoyama is older now and not able to produce weekly chapters for serialization, slowing down the number of volumes in recent years. So we're good here until at least 2029. There are still more volumes to go before hitting 100.

This 98th volume traditionally begins with concluding the case that closed out the previous volume, but this time, it needed two chapters instead of the customary one to tidy everything up. But for a good reason.

Previously, Doc Agasa brought a small, antique plate to an appraiser after seeing a similar plate being valued on TV for nearly a million dollars, but the appraiser received three identical plates for appraisal. So there's some counterfeiting going on. Just when Doc Agasa, Conan and the Junior Detective League arrives, the appraiser is killed right under their nose. Only suspects are the three owners of the other plates. They provide a twofold problem: who killed the appraiser and who owns the real antique plate? Answer to both questions would have been enough to make this solid entry in the series, but there's so much more going on in the background with the larger storylines and character-arcs. Sera is also there and she not so subtly needling Conan and Anita about their secret ("I need the drug that corrects the flow of time"). Fortunately, Subaru Okiya to temper her curiosity, but this gives Conan some food for thought regarding Sera and the sister she keeps locked away from the world.

The next story sees the return of Momiji Ooka, a high school heiress, who has romantic designs on Harley Hartwell, despite him only being interested in Kazuha – who's more than aware of Momiji's scheming ("...tryin' to get her claws into Harley"). Momiji's latest scheme to win Harley is staging a code cracking competition between him and Jimmy Kudo, the other famous teenage detective, but the code was devised by a woman for her four sons who grew up separated due to financial problems. Well, the code cracking cases in this series usually don't work very well in translation and the first-half of the story was carried by the characters. A friendly rivalry between brothers in deerstalker made all the more fun that Jimmy couldn't be there in person, but "communicates" through Conan over the phone.

So cracking the code leads them to an abandoned warehouse, where they also find the four long-lost brothers reunited, but one of them has been murdered with the other three becoming instant suspects. This murder is far more solvable than code. Maybe too solvable as the crystal clear clue of the broken glasses meant one of two possibilities, there weren't any clues or even vague hints for one of those possibilities. Still a good, fun and entertaining story for long time fans of the series.

The third story is not unlike the first in story-and plot structure as it weaves plot developments of the various storylines and character-arcs with a regular case. This case begins with Yumi stalking her boyfriend and shogi champion, Shukichi Haneda, who has been acting mysteriously and evaded her questions about where he was going – which turned have an innocent enough reason. He was having practice matches with three promising future shogi players. One of those three players is found dead at his condo lying next to an upturned shogi board with two of its legs removed, which is nearly identical to the recent murder of another shogi player. That victim was found near a shogi board missing only one of its legs and the pattern holds when a third victim is found next to a one-legged shogi board. Will there be a fourth victim?

Conan, as always, works it out and demolishes a cleverly constructed alibi to reveal the killer, but Shukichi beat him to it and promptly becomes a captive. So the story gets an opportunity to fold this case together with the main storylines. My only gripe is that that pistol shot was ridiculous even by comic book standards. Not even Lucky Luke could have made that shot! Other than that, the best story from this volume.

Traditionally, the last chapter sets up the story that will be concluded in the next volume. Yumi Sekizawa, a school friend of Rachel and Serena, is throwing a joint birthday party with her older sister, Remi – whose birthdays are only days apart. When the birthday cake is brought out, the lights are switched off and someone is killed in the dark. What adds interest to the story is Sera trying to get a particular item off Conan. That will all be concluded in vol. 99.

So, all in all, Case Closed, vol. 98 is as close as you can get to classic Case Closed, but with more, urgent developments in the current and main storylines. That makes me wish I could read Case Closed like C.M.B. and Q.E.D., but hey, patience has gotten me this far. So look forward to the release of volumes 99 and 100 later this year.

By the way, on a final note, years ago I remarked how much time must have passed since the first volume, but was repeatedly told not to be autistic as only about a year had passed in-universe. I don't want to nitpick details, however, the code breaking story begins on the first day of summer break ("school's out for summer!") and the last chapter takes place in mid-February. Now, I'm no mathematician or whizkid, but I'm pretty sure that's a good for seven to eighth months of in-universe time passed.

Everyone in This Bank is a Thief (2026) by Benjamin Stevenson

Last year, I tried the first of Benjamin Stevenson's Ernest Cunningham novels after some initial skepticism, but Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone (2022) sold me on Benjamin's hilarious, classically-styled meta whodunits and quickly followed it up with Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (2023) and eventually Everyone This Christmas has a Secret (2024) – bridging the gap with the non-series Last One to Leave (2022). Benjamin dominated "Murder in Retrospect: The Best and Worst of 2025" as my find of the year. Only drawback to writers from this early, burgeoning second Golden Age is that you can't dip into their complete body of work at your leisure. We now have to wait for the next one to be written and published.

I was more than a little curious when Everyone in This Bank is a Thief (2026) was announced as the title of the fourth Ernest Cunningham novel. A bank robbery and hostage situation is not exactly synonymous with the Golden Age detective novel. Ernest himself admits only example of a bank robbery in classic crime fiction is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed-League" (1891), but, at the same time, holding up a bank has a quaint and retro vibe in 2026. So was curious to see how Stevenson was going to work a bank robbery with hostages into a grand old detective story.

Everyone in This Bank is a Thief opens with Ernest Cunningham, mystery fiction expert and amateur detective, trapped inside a bank vault with about fifteen hours of oxygen left to go and decides to write down everything that happened up until his imprisonment – basically a record scratch, freeze frame with the text "you're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation." So how did he end up trapped inside a sealed vault? Ernest wanted to put his experience and successes as an amateur detective into practical use by starting his own detective agency, but he and his fiancee, Juliette, have been unable to secure a business loan to get started. From Sydney to Perth, they have been turned down by every bank and even a shady, diamond-toothed loans shark called their business plan high risk. So it was an unexpected break when they received an invitation from Winston Huxley, owner of Huxley's Bank, "one of the oldest family-owned banks in the country."

So they travel to the old gold mining town of Huxley, but it turns out Winston Huxley wants Ernest to do a job. Huxley's brother, Edward, is co-director and head of security who changed the code of the bank vault in the basement before disappearing. Now they can't get to the cash or safety deposit boxes to serve their rural, old-fashioned customers and could seriously damage their reputation if it gets out. Ernest needs a bank loan and Huxley needs a detective ("open my vault, and I'll open your agency"). A good deal, however, when they leave his office to get to work, they find someone in a black hoodie, fencing mask and gun holding up the teller. One push of the panic button, the alarms started wailing and shutters came down trapping everyone inside the bank. Ernest and Juliette become two of the bank robber's instant hostages as the police and media begin to gather outside.

This group of hostages consist of the security guard, Felix, the new receptionist, Michelle, a movie producer, Remy Allard, a teenage gaming streamer, Eric, a priest who doesn't speak, Father Gabriel, and a young, dying girl and her caring grandmother, Cordelia and Laverna. And, of course, the director himself. Ernest calls himself a reliable narrator who writes the complete, accurate truth and that goes for the book title. Everyone present is planning to steal something, one thing or another, but "not everyone is conducting a full-on heist" ("that would be ridiculous"). This gives way to a pleasing, increasingly entangled plot, developments and complications. For example, the masked bank robber demands a single dollar from the inaccessible bank vault and cracking the new code is one of Ernest many headaches. And, if things aren't complicated enough, someone gets murdered under seemingly impossible circumstances. A case of apparent case of spontaneous human combustion in front of Ernest that turns his fellow hostages in potential suspects. What he decides to do next also makes him a bit an amateur idiot. And that's a plus for the overall story!

Like I said in previous reviews of this series, Stevenson understands how to lie through his teeth without writing a single untrue word coupled with the comedians touch to exaggerate in order to clarify, which I consider to be invaluable tools for writing and plotting mysteries – especially when handling a dozen different plot-threads. It also allows to stretch things just a little without doing any actual damage to the plot or characters. I mean, I loved the bit with the parrot ("I am not a clue").

So the plot never became muddled and the story remained crystal clear as the various, sometimes intertwined, plot-threads slowly get picked apart. I particularly liked Ernest solution for "the world’s slowest bank robbery," one of the individual problems, but Stevenson practically delivers on all of them with the overall solution tying everything to the central plot taking the whole cake. Only time I thought Stevenson was stretching things a bit too far was (ROT13) gung gur cybg unf gjb pbzcyrgryl vaqrcraqrag pnfrf bs fcbagnarbhf uhzna pbzohfgvba, but other than that, Everyone in This Bank is a Thief is another superbly done, retro-GAD novel. A retro-GAD novel with an atypical framing and backdrop for a classically-styled detective novel, but one that feels "deliciously old-fashioned" in this day and age. Ernest, our always reliable, resourceful narrator and one of the Great Detectives of this Golden Age revival, is really starting to resemble a battered, scarred warhorse. I fear Stevenson is going to turn him into a nine-lives cat and the series by killing him off in the tenth book.

Fortunately, the fifth Ernest Cunningham novel won't be out for at least another year and a tenth novel not before 2032 or 2033. See how handily I turned that pesky luxury problem into neat coping mechanism?

Anyway, it's amazing a series like this was a mere pipe dream only 10, 15 years ago and now they keep rolling off the press. So you can expect Everyone in This Bank is a Thief to make an appearance on my 2026 best-of list and I'll bridge the gap to the next Ernest Cummingham novel with Stevenson's Either Side of Midnight (2020) and Find Us (2021). Stay tuned!

Panic Party: Case Closed, vol. 97 by Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama's 96th volume of Case Closed starts out, as is tradition, with the conclusion to the story that closed out the previous volume when Conan, Rachel, Sera, Serena and Makoto wandered onto the set of 48 Detectives – confusing a hostage scene for the real thing. Makoto, a karate champion, disabled the stuntman playing the hostage taker and obliged to take his place to finish the shoot.

However, the shoot ends with two murders. The first murder is when one the actors falls to his death from a top floor window of an abandoned building and a member of the crew is mysteriously poisoned with cyanide. There is, of course, a trick that allowed the murderer to pull off both murders with an alibi in the pocket, but this time the tricks aren't the stitched together Frankenstein-tricks bugging some of the stories from these later volumes. They're simple, somewhat elegant and satisfying, especially the first one. Even more fun is what's happening in the background of the story. Sera is convinced Conan and Jimmy are one and the same person. She has been poking and prying for information, which doesn't make it easier for Conan to solve the murders and has to use Serena ("...deduction queen Serena in action") to pull his "Sleeping Moore" act with Sera watching ("he uses Serena when Moore isn't handy"). I also liked how Makoto and Rachel prevented the murderer from committing suicide with Rachel echoing Conan's sentiment ("no matter whose life it is, it's too precious to take"). Conan has always disapproved of detectives turning a blind eye to murderers intending to take the easy way out. A fun and, plot-wise, decent story.

The second story is a good, old-fashioned closed circle whodunit. Richard Moore receives a letter from a client, named Taisei Nichihara, who included a code, a 500,000 yen retainer and four train tickets – destination an abandoned, mountaintop church in Nagano Prefecture. A friend of the client hanged himself in the old church and wants it investigated. But why did Moore need to bring three other people along for the case? The three others include, naturally, Conan, Toru Amura and the sushi chef the mystery loving sushi chef from vol. 92, Kanenorih Wakita. When they arrive at the church, they find a group of five people ("we went to high school together") and discover Moore's client is the man who hanged himself. So they have been all lured to the church under false pretenses and, as to be expected, a blizzard traps them inside church for a day. All they can do trying to figure why they were brought to the church, decipher the coded message and hunt around for clues. Only for one of them to walk straight into a booby trap and another is found poisoned.

Similar to the previous story, the tricks used to build up this story aren't the Frankenstein stitch jobs from recent volumes and wonder if the original Japanese volumes received similar criticism for it. The tricks here are simple, but not too simple and possess a kernel of elegance. Such as how the murderer picked the victims and a good booby trap every now and then is to be appreciated, but it has to be admitted that it also makes for another fairly minor chapter in the series. Very enjoyable nevertheless, if only because it has been a while since this series featured such a classically-styled mystery story.

The third story is short, two chapter inverted mystery in which the killer rigged up a daring, seemingly unbreakable alibi. Maika Zenda, a school teacher, discovers that her fiance, Toji Fukikoshi, is a marriage swindler who has another girlfriend stashed away in luxurious summer house – which throws her in a murderous rage. She stabs him and then have the body appear during a school trip to the woods to forage for wild vegetables. Zenda worked it in such a way proving she could not have dragged the body and propped it up against a tree backed by photographic evidence. Only problem is that the children on the trip are Conan and the other members of the Junior Detective League. This story actually felt more like one of those earlier cases than the previous story nicely balancing the central trick with the characters and story. Not to mention the clueing is surprisingly sharp as Conan reasons the truth from a missing four-leaf clover and mud stains. So a very well done, completely solvable alibi cracker.

The last, incomplete, story being setup here will be concluded, as is tradition, in the next volume and begins with a callback to a case from vol. 12! In that case, Doc Agasa brought the Junior Detective League to the house of his late uncle, "the guy with the sun, star and moon code built into his house," where he found a wooden box containing a small antique plate. A black lacquer tray, to be precise, recently featured on an antique TV show where its value was an estimated 100 yen ("about $1 million"). Doc Agasa was not the only person who had the idea to have his tray appraised, but the appraiser had received three other trays and, to his surprise, "all three trays turned out to have the same carving" ("...at least two are counterfeit"). Doc Agasa is invited, along with the other owners, to the home of the appraiser, but there the appraiser is attacked with a spear. When Doc Agasa goes to get help, the attacker returns to finish the job. So a who-of-the-three whodunit that will be concluded and resolved in vol. 98.

So, all in all, the cases making up vol. 97 aren't the most spectacular this series has produced during its long run, but they had pleasing consistency, purely as detective stories, while the red threads and character-arcs of the main storyline continue to move and develop in the background. A great volume in a small, modest way on way to vol. 100. Just two more to go!

Time Wants a Skeleton: C.M.B. vol. 9-10 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 9 opens with a two-part, two chapter story, "The Sun and a Folklore," which brings Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to Machu Picchu, Peru, accompanied by their mutual frenemy, Mau Sugal – a black market broker and professional nuisance. Sugal explains to a skeptical Shinra a piece of Inca gold has turned up ("most of the Inca gold was melted down by the Spanish into gold ingots"). It happened during a curious incident two weeks ago.

Professor Polaiyu discovered in the university archives an uncatalogued quipu ("a necklace that conveys a message using the number of knots") with knots and markings he had never seen before. After studying the quipu, Professor Polaiyu became convinced it conveyed a coded map of the underground tunnels leading "from the Temple of Sunlight to the Golden City." So he organized a small expedition into the tunnel system with a local guide, Hulio, but only the young guide came back out clutching a piece of Inca gold. Hulio's story is that he lost the professor when the batteries of his flashlight died, but refuses to tell where he found the gold. Not long after getting involved in the case, the body of the professor is found near the exit along with his digital camera with blurry pictures on it. And the first part ends with an unambiguous murder.

I wouldn't call "The Sun and a Folklore" a typical, traditional whodunit, more an adventures mystery of myth and folklore, but thought the problem of batteries presented an inspired piece of clueing – strengthened by its conclusion. A slightly unexpected and unusual conclusion with the last two panels adding a touch of sad tragedy to the whole case. So, in many ways, a typical Katou story and a good one at that!

The second story, "The Metamorphosis," is a one-chapter short taking place at Meiyuu Private High School's library. Shinra and Tatsuki are in the library, helping out with chores, when they spot a picture hanging above the door. A strange picture depicting "a beautiful butterfly with a grotesque looking caterpillar," which turns out to be relatively valuable drawing by the 17th century entomologist and scientific illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. So, of course, they let it hang above the door and, as to be expected, it disappeared. The circumstances under which it disappeared makes it something of an impossible crime. There was only one student present in the library and the picture vanished during a 30 minute window, during which nobody could have taken the picture out of its frame without being noticed by the student ("the windows, they were all locked"). So, if the student is innocent, who stole the picture and how? Shinra's solution is as ingenious as it's impractical and liable to misfire, but Katou was obviously aware of the problem and worked the difficulty of pulling off this trick into the solution. I allow it! :)

The third and last one-chapter story from this volume is "Abortive Migration" and brings Shinra and Tatsuki to the island of Okinawa to photograph marine wildlife. They have two diving instructors to along with them, Tsuruoka Nobuaki and his wife Miki, but the two have a badly disguised argument and it later turns out to be related to his first wife, Keiko – who died in a tragic diving accident. Tsuruoka and Keiko had been diving when encountering a lot of dead fish and eventually a humpback whale. But he "lost track of her beneath the shadow of the whale." Keiko's body would not be found until a week later. Tsuruoka Nobuaki has ever since lived under a cloud of suspicion and now it's coming to a head with his second wife. I guess you can pigeonhole this story in the psychological crime slot, but personally found a dull and weak story to close out this otherwise excellent volume.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 10 has four, one-chapter stories starting with a personal favorite, "Sixty Million Years," in which a brother-and-sister team of archaeologists, Hera and Joyce Colbert, ask Shinra to come out to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Hera and Joyce unearthed, what can only be called, an impossible fossil, "human and dinosaur fossils, together in the same strata." But there they are, "together with the dinosaur fossil placed above the human fossil" ("this is clearly impossible"). Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, is called upon to authenticate and, if possible, explain what they found. It's to be regretted Katou only gave the story a single chapter instead of two, or three, chapters to explore the possibility of faking such a fossil and some of the fringe theories ("...an advanced ancient civilization existed"), which were only mentioned passing. However, Shinra's explanation places this story in the same category as Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941) and James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977) without treading into science-fiction or hybrid mystery territory. "Sixty Million Years" simply is an impressive piece of 19th century-style naturalist impossible crime fiction reimagined in the 21st century with a 65 million year old conundrum. To say I liked this story would be the understatement of the Holocene Epoch!

Unfortunately, the next two, one-chapter stories, "The Nail" and "Summer Holiday at the World End," were both very minor and disappointing stories. "The Nail" begins with a series of good, old-fashioned creepy chain mails, "if you don't make this picture into your background wallpaper, you will receive grave misfortunes," going round Shinra and Tatsuki's school. The place in the picture is easily identified and this leads to hit-and-run incident where the culprits claims the victim was pushed in front of his car. I thought this story was uncharacteristically uninspired as Katou simply retreaded the core idea from "Abortive Migration" (SPOILER/ROT13: gur fhccbfrqyl vaabprag fhfcrpg jub gheaf bhg gb or thvygl nsgre nyy) with pretty much the same results. "Summer Holiday at the World End" is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart taking place on the last day of summer break as Shinra, Tatsuki and classmates go the beach. There they hear a strange story of a student who briefly disappeared while exploring a mysterious cave with their friends. So they go explore it for themselves. Not really a bad story. Just very minor and very forgettable.

Katou pulls it together with the last story and ends C.M.B. vol 10 on a banger. "The Hydraulis" finds Shinra and Tatsuki in Milan, Italy, where Mau Sugal wants them to investigate a music chapel, located on a lonely mountain top, which has a hydraulis – a prototype of the pipe organ. That's the first of two mysteries attached to the music chapel. What's an out-of-date hydraulis doing in a 16th century music chapel? The second mystery has to do with its haunted reputation as a room that kills and harms. Everyone who tries to play the organ either dies or get seriously ill ("...there have been over 10 people who died inside that chapel"). "The Hydraulis" shares the same strengths and one weakness with "Sixty Million Years." Shinra's explanation of both how the music chapel poses a danger to people and why it was designed to do so are brilliant. But it needed another chapter to fully flesh everything out. Like the not unimportant historical background of the chapel and location. Other than that, this is a first-rate impossible crime story and original take of the room-that-kills. Highly recommended!

So, all in all, not a bad score for these two volumes. "Abortive Migration" and "The Nail" are the only two stinkers with "Summer Holiday at the World End" merely being forgettable. "The Sun and a Folklore" and "The Metamorphosis" are both good, solid efforts with "Sixty Million Years" and "The Hydraulis" being the two standouts. You expect one of them to turn up on that future "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B." Not at all disappointed with these two volumes on a whole. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I'm going with C.M.B. vol. 11 and 12 next or start on Q.E.D. iff series. You'll see eventually.

Straight to Your Heart: Case Closed, vol. 95 by Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama's 95th volume of Case Closed picks up where the previous, absolutely packed volume ended that was crammed with familiar faces, storyline developments and a cliffhanger to a tantalizing murder case featuring two imaginative impossible crimes – apparently committed the long-nosed Tengu of Japanese folklore. First a short recap. Conan has temporarily returned as Jimmy Kudo to attend a class trip to Kyoto to link up with Rachel complete with will-they-won't-they overtones, but their class trip runs into a class reunion of a university film club that quickly ended in bloody murder.

Their screenwriter is brutally murdered in his hotel room with a big pool of blood and bloody footprints staining the ceiling, which suggests the killer yanked the victim up in the air to kill him and then casually walked across the ceiling. And walked, or flew, out an open window on the 15th floor. A second murder is committed in the open street with another trail of bloody footprints walking sideways along the wall. In this closing chapter, the murderer attempts a third murder with footprints from an apparently invisible man approaching him on a bridge, but, by that time, Jimmy had already closed the net around the killer.

I think this story is far better for its long-awaited developments in the overarching storyline with all its character-arcs than the fantastically-staged series of impossible slayings, which are excellent in presentation, but poor and unconvincing in execution – especially the first murder and the last attempt are unconvincing. I suppose the trick for the first murder could have a whole lot more convincing in a smaller, more intimate setting, but not here or on this scale. I didn't think much about the other impossibilities with the inexplicable appearance/disappearance of the Tengu (SPOILER/ROT13), fbeg bs, tvivat njnl gur zheqrere, orpnhfr gur crefba jub jnf greebevmrq ol vg unq ng yrnfg gb or va ba vg. Lbh pna'g uvqr fhpu n guvat vafvqr fbzrbar'f ubgry ebbz, fhqqrayl fpner uvz jvgu naq znxr vg qvfnccrne, hayrff gung crefba vf chyyvat gur fgevatf be vf na nppbzcyvfu. A commendable attempt to weave four impossible crimes into a fairly short story, but again, far better for the storyline-and character-arc developments.

The second story deals with the direct fallout of the previous story, because Jimmy Kudo, "the top teen detective of the east," resurfacing to solve a murder case involving well-known filmmakers has started a buzz. Kudo's return ("Rumors of His Death Debunked") trended on social media, became the top news story online and attracted the attention of the news media. So now Conan is in deep trouble as reporters with camera crews besiege his home and everyone who knows Jimmy Kudo, which is bound to get noticed by the Black Organization. Meanwhile, Anita and the Junior Detective League go to the home of classmate who failed to show up at school that day. When they enter the home, they find the first of a trail of clue to an indoors treasure hunt and they fear the little girl might have gotten trapped somewhere while following the clues. So they retrace their girl's step by following the clues her grandmother left behind. Yes, a very minor story intended to break away from Conan's precarious situation and the growing interest in Jimmy Kudo's return, but by no means a bad story. Where, and how, they discovered the girl involves something I always imagined would make for a first-rate locked room-trick, but, to my knowledge, it has yet to be used. So overall a better story than the previous landmark story and Conan learns the name of the Black Organization's boss. We all know who he really is, right?

The fallout from Jimmy Kudo's headline grabbing return continues into the third story, but also has a pretty good, self-contained detective story to offer.

Richard Moore netted an aristocratic client, Gunzo Morooka, who received a threatening note to stay clear of the Black Bunny Club ("...if you value your life"). So they meet at the Black Bunny Club to discuss the case. Black Bunny Club is a "gentleman's club" where hostesses are dressed as scantily-clad bunnies raising the question how Conan and Rachel were even allowed on the premise. When food and dinner arrives, one of the bunnies is poisoned and hospitalized with only three suspects who could have poisoned her drink. So, on the surface, it's the customary whom-of-the-three-did-it staple of this series, but how the drink was poisoned is rather ingenious and makes the story standout. Case Closed is going to be interesting study material in the future for how the traditional 20th century detective story adapted itself to the 21th century. So good story that also has Toru Amuro as Moore's disciple to look over Conan's shoulder with a cliffhanger that would been a perfect conclusion to this volume.

The last two chapters begins a story that will be concluded in the next volume and deals with "a serial killer who targets female cops." More precisely, the female cops of the traffic division and colleagues of the series regulars Yumi Miyamoto and Neako Miike. At the end of the last chapter, the serial killer left three bodies behind and his second victim left a cryptic dying message: a bloody finger pointing towards a swing set on a child's playground. So we'll find out what that's all about in the next volume.

So, when it comes to the individual plots, this volume was a mixed bag, but very rewarding for long-time fans of the series as the game finally appears to be afoot. Like Ho-Ling said in his 2018 review, the stories show "Aoyama is busy moving his pieces for an event which might very well be the ending of this series." It really comes across like that, but then again, this volume was originally published in 2018 and vol. 107 was published earlier this year. So maybe not yet, but look forward to the next volume.

Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950) by Timothy Fuller

Timothy Fuller was a member of the class of 1936 at Harvard and the son of Richard Fuller, head of Boston's Old Corner Book Store, who reportedly (PDF) penned Harvard Has a Homicide (1936) as a bet with his father to get out of college – stating "he would have a book published within twelve months." Not only was Harvard Has a Homicide published, but "the first contemporary mystery story ever to be serialized" in The Atlantic Monthly. The book introduces Fuller's series detective, Edmund "Jupiter" Jones, who assists the police when his professor is murdered. Fuller returned to Jupiter Jones five years later with Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941), Reunion with Murder (1941) and This is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943). A fifth and final novel, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones (1950), appearing seven years later.

I read Harvard Has a Homicide and Three Thirds of a Ghost, but only dimly recall thinking they were decent, lightweight mysteries. Not enticing or quite good enough to immediately grab Keep Cool, Mr. Jones from the big pile where it has languished ever since. Recently, while tidying up my shelves, I came across my Dell edition of Keep Cool, Mr. Jones and the plot description caught my interest right away.

First of all, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones was published after the series apparently ended following the publication of This is Murder, Mr. Jones, seven years earlier, which reads like a soft reboot of the series – suggesting an intended continuation along modern lines. It's also why I wish I remembered more details about Harvard Has a Homicide, Three Thirds of a Ghost and Jupiter Jones. I believe Jupiter started out as a wisecracking version of 1930s Ellery Queen, but Keep Cool, Mr. Jones finds an older Jones living in the suburban Boston village of Saxon with a wife and three young children. Jupiter had hung up his deerstalker nearly six years ago, however, "much as the banker must bank or the preacher preach," Jupiter "had been grotesquely conditioned to deduce amateurishly." Something that had been suppressed for years when incident made the old urge to detect and deduce resurface.

This incident takes place at Jack Maney's second annual, old-fashioned barn dance to raise funds for the local library. In the barn's basement, Maney has installed a large, state of the art walk-in deep freezer stocked with food ("...the handiest symbol of the Dream..."). During the party, Maney goes down to the freezer to show Mrs. Parker Madison, Harry Dexter and Dr. Wren some birds, but never return. When they go out to investigate, they find the closed freezer door securely padlocked from outside and the four inside. Not dead or even seriously injured, but badly shaken and Jupiter believes the padlock proves intent to murder. However, if it was attempted murder, the murderer had a motive "powerful enough to account for the cold-blooded disposal of three extra, presumably uninvolved, victims." So identifying the primary target is key, but "the unharmed victims unanimously denied having enemies."

Following night, the investigation turns into a full-fledged homicide case when Howie Howland, Chief of Police, is found shotgunned to death in the cabin of the local character, Arnold "The Indian" Baxter – who's nowhere to be found. Jupiter takes Howland's place as acting police chief as the manhunt for Arnold begins, but the case is not as clear cut as it appears on the surface. And is there a link to freezer incident? So not your typical, Golden Age village murders or college slayings from previous decades peppered with social commentary and observations on America bracing itself as it's about to enter the second-half of the twentieth century. In this modernized, updated whodunit a decidedly classical trope is introduced concerning the local legend of old Hiram Potter and his fortune in buried gold. Something his family and treasure hunters have been digging for in the Potter woods the better part of a century. Only clue old Hiram left behind are six couplets found scattered through his diary. I instinctively knew where the gold was secreted away, however, it's solution is perhaps a bit tropey (SPOILER/ROT13: gur tbyq jnf ohevrq va gur przrgrel naq cebcbfr gb anzr guvf gebcr va juvpu n cybg cbvag unf gb or qht hc va n tenirlneq "ohevny cybgf"). Between acting as police chief and amateur treasure hunter, there are a few other minor plot-threads involving the various inhabitants of Saxon that need to be tidied up. Jupiter's basically plays a cross between a fairy godmother and a diplomat on a peacekeeping assignment.

All of this is packed tightly in a svelte 155 pages making for a compact, breezy story, but, needless to say, the plotting is not terribly complex and layered. Nevertheless, the way in which Fuller tied together the freezer incident, the shooting, the disappearance and the buried treasure made for a pleasant tangle with a light sprinkling of those good, old-fashioned fair play principles. Unsurprisingly, Jupiter finds himself trapped inside the freezer towards the end and how he keeps warm, and gets out, is genuinely clever (ROT13: abg gur fahttyvat hc naq xvffvat jvgu Fyvz Znarl, juvyr uvf jvsr naq xvqf ner ng ubzr, ohg gur znxrfuvsg vtybb cneg naq hfvat n pbva gb xrrc oybjvat gur shfrf gb nggenpg nggragvba gb gur serrmre). And had it been whittled down, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones would have made for an excellent, first-rate mystery novella. But it's fine as it stands. More substantial than most of these 1950s traditionally-rooted, but light-on-plot, mysteries (e.g. E.G. Cousins' Death by Marriage, 1959). More importantly, I enjoyed it.

In fact, I enjoyed sufficiently to go hunt for copies of Reunion with Murder and This is Murder, Mr. Jones. After all, the latter is a locked room mystery and they have been a little neglected lately. So... very likely to be continued.

Notes for the curious: Firstly, yes, I hadn't forgotten or overlooked Jupiter Jones also happens to be one of the protagonists from Robert Arthur's The Three Investigator series, but don't believe it has ever been confirmed whether it was a nod to Fuller's detective or just a coincidence. It's not unlikely Arthur had read the books and perhaps was a fan. I can see him appreciating how Fuller handled the buried treasure and its clue, because it's Jupiter's daughter who makes an astute observation about the couplets. So, yeah, possibly. Secondly, it was never suggested in the story, but another possibility to the freezer incident is that one of the four people pulled "The Loubet Sacrifice" to take out the other three. That would have made for an interesting take on the classic locked room situation: how can someone inside a walk-in freezer leave the door padlocked on the outside with three other people present? Now there's a challenge for today's locked room experts.

Wilders Walk Away (1948) by Herbert Brean

Herbert Brean's debuted as a mystery writer with Wilders Walk Away (1948) and, according to Curt Evans, the praise it received from Anthony Boucher, critic and mystery writer, Brean "almost walked away with an Edgar" for best first novel – alongside with a cult status that lasted for decades. Wilders Walk Away was considered to be one of the great impossible crime novels not penned by John Dickson Carr. A reputation that wasn't tested too severely during the post-WWII decades as the traditional, Golden Age-style detective novels entered its dark age. That changed during the 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away remains out-of-print today, but used copies are neither ridiculously rare nor eye-watering expensive. When the internet began to offer a new, open market place copies of Wilders Walk Away began to circulate again and it's cult status began to unravel. Barry Ergang summed it up perfectly in his 2003 review posted on the GADWiki, "for a little while I thought I'd found in Wilders Walk Away a companion to The Three Coffins and Rim of the Pit for ultimate greatness." Somewhat of a shared experience as most of us were promised something like a Wrightsville mystery by Ellery Queen as perceived by Carr, centered on a series of miraculous vanishings across several centuries, but the explanations are disappointingly prosaic and mundane. Nor did the rediscovery of Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950), Brean's true masterpiece, do its reputation any favors.

So read it at the time anticipating an all-time great, unjustly out-of-print impossible crime classic and soured on the book when the impossible vanishings, generations and centuries apart, were explained away with plain, unimaginative solutions – which probably was too hasty a dismissal. Jim, of The Invisible Event, suggests in his 2017 review Wilders Walk Away is better read "as a prototype for the small town thriller" because it's "much more successful as that kind of book." I wanted to revisit Wilders Walks Away for some time now to see how the story lands without the high, somewhat unreasonable expectations of finding an impossible crime novel equal to the best from Carr and Hake Talbot.

The backdrop of Wilders Walk Away is the historical town of Wilders Lane, Vermont, whose history dates back to the mid-eighteenth century and named after the lane leading to old Ethan Wilder's log cabin. By 1775, a fairly sized village had grown around it that developed into the current town with the Wilders as its richest, leading family. There is, however, something curious about the Wilder family. Some of its members, through out the generations, have to habit of simply vanishing without a trace. Or, as it's locally known, they "walked away" never to be seen again.

Jonathan Wilder was the first to walk away, in '75, when going down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine, but his wife swears he never came back up again. There was no other way out of the cellar except going back up the stairs to the kitchen. Forty years later, Langdon Wilder disappeared from his bed and Walter Wilder was on the ill-fated Mary Celeste ("...people hereabouts think that whatever happened on the Celeste happened because Walter Wilder was aboard"). Wilders continued to walk away into the twentieth century. In 1917, John Michael Wilder was seen walking down a wet beach, before inexplicably vanishing from sight leaving nothing more than a trail of footprints, "plain as paint," stopping in the middle of the beach – "no concealment for yards around." Only the previous year, Fred Wilder disappeared from the supply room of his office under impossible circumstances on Columbus Day. These never-ceasing, strange and sometimes miraculously disappearances gave rise to a catchy jingle that became part of the folk lore of Wilders Lane:

 

"Other people die of mumps
Or general decay,
Of fever, chills or other ills,
But Wilders walk away."

 

In recent years, Wilders Lane has done a lot of work to restore the town to its colonial charm to attract tourists with families owning a Colonial house opening their homes to the public between two and five each afternoon. So visiting Wilders Lane was like a trip back in time to the days of the American Revolution. That brings Reynold Frame, a freelance writer and photographer, to Wilders Lane to do several picture pieces on the town, but soon finds consumed by everything Wilder. Particularly with the daughter of Fred Wilder, Constance, who, very much to Frame's horror, has a fiance. But there are other puzzling mysteries surrounding the Wilders and Wilders Lane. Such as a minor historical mystery, a hidden code, indicating where an old diary had been secreted away.

More importantly, Constance's sister, Ellen, disappeared shortly after Frame arrived in town and its him who eventually finds her, but that discovery turns a local legend into a full-blown murder investigation – first in the career of police chief Miles Maloney. Ellen is not the last of the Wilders to walk away and turn up dead, before the story draws to a close. Frame, "a faithful reader, and disciple, of Sherlock Holmes" is prompted to start playing detective to impress Constance, because she believes "someone else could do better than the police." The mysteries of the Wilder family not only involves strange disappearances and murder, but hidden treasure, skeletons and grave digging.

So, as you probably gathered, I enjoyed Wilders Walk Away a lot more the second time around and even got more out of the miraculous vanishings, especially the historical ones, out of this second read – even though they remain largely second-rate. A good example of the strength and weaknesses of these impossible disappearances is the 1775 vanishing of Jonathan Wilder from the windowless cellar with the exit under constant observation. The trick is old hat (n frperg cnffntrjnl), but why he never returned after disappearing has a great answer. So why they all vanished and who's responsible is more important here than how they disappeared, which always has a simple, unimpressive answer. I think Wilders Walk Away would have benefited from ditching the impossible nature of some of the disappearances in favor of their strangeness and habit of repeating themselves across generations. Frame even discusses the work of Charles Fort to explain to Constance that her family don't hold the patent on anomalous phenomena.

After all, "the idea that anyone can vanish off the face of the earth without leaving a trace is uncomfortable." Like the series of very odd, non-impossible disappearances from Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933). The impossible disappearances in Wilders Walk Away were less of disappointment knowing before hand that the importance is on why they disappeared, and by whom, rather than how. So, understandably, its reputation cratered when locked room fanatics started getting their hands on it in 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away has more to offer than a string of very odd, inexplicable disappearances. Beside being a fun, old-fashioned whodunit presented as a small town thriller, something is to be said about its style and structure. Something I completely missed on my first read. In 1948, Wilders Walk Away represented a perfect blend of the genre's past and present with glimpses of the future (see Jim's prototype comment). Some all-important elements of the plot would have been very much at home in a Victorian melodrama or Conan Doyle story, but hardly a throwback considering how Brean handled the plot and the answers waiting at the end. Speaking of Doyle, Brean was a Sherlockian and every chapter is headed with a quote from the Sherlock Holmes canon and the story is littered with Van Dinean footnotes – ranging from historical information to a recipe for "easy to make" Jokers. It never tips over to being too much and is surprisingly subtle in how it balances it various plot-threads and characters. Far too subtle for what I demanded from my first read. But it earned a place among my favorite, non-impossible Golden Age detective novels.

So, yeah, Wilders Walk Away proved to be far better than I remembered from my first read and even better than I hoped it would be on rereading it. It's undeserved reputation as an impossible crime classic has done it no favors, but if you don't expect any "Carter Dickson-effects" from the vanishing-tricks, it's going to be difficult for Wilders Walk Away to disappoint. A tremendously fun and enjoyable romp that comes with a heartily recommendations. Just don't expect a fusion between Queen and Carr, but more something along the lines of Theodore Roscoe's Four Corners series and Jack Vance's two Sheriff Joe Bain novels.

Scarlet Skeins: Case Closed, vol. 94 by Gosho Aoyama

The 94th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series represents a milestone as the chapter opening the all-important last story in this volume is chapter 1000, but, more importantly, the story itself is a milestone when it comes to the Conan/Jimmy and Rachel character-arc – which should please fans frustrated with its lack of progress over the years. Firstly, this volume traditionally opens with the conclusion to the story that closed out the previous volume. A crossover story!

Harley Hartwell is participating in a high school kendo tournament and a favorite to come out on top, but the competition is rudely interrupted when one of the referees is slashed to death near the bathroom stalls. The murderer, wearing a kendo mask and gear, was heard by a blind witness going into the bathroom. Nobody was heard coming out since then. But the three people found inside didn't have a drop of blood on them. Conan and Harley have to make quick work of the case, before Harley has to appear in the semi-finals of the tournament. There's also a crossover appearance of a character from Aoyama's pre-Case Closed adventure-comedy series Yaiba. Soshi Okita inserts himself into the investigation ("let me have a go first") with an amusingly dumb, not entirely incorrect false-solution. Interestingly, this volume also reveals Okita is a classmate of Momiji Ooka. She has romantic designs on Harley Hartwell and always refers to him as "my future husband."

The actual solution is deduced from an array of kendo-themed clues, red herrings and red herrings doubling as clues, which regrettably diminishes the fair play aspect for the average reader not intimately known with kendo – otherwise a technically sound, fair play detective story. I was really glad the ending didn't trot out another stitched together, Frankenstein-like solution or trick marring so many of the individual cases in later volumes. The next story continues this trend as well as setting everything in motion for the big story.

Conan and Richard Moore notice Rachel has been having strangely lately, acting secretive and generally being a Miss Sunshine, which is why they decide to shadow her. So they follow her around town, ending up a cafe, where Rachel meets up with Serena and Sera to plan a trip to Kyoto for spring break. They, of course, get caught and Rachel tells Conan their trip is not an ordinary one, but before she can explain, someone screams. The unpopular waiter of the place, Daiki Saraie, is found dead in the staff room. Whoever killed him demonstrated some extraordinary feats of strength.

First of all, Saraie's skull had been crushed with a huge, heavy vase, "even empty, it weighs a ton," but it was filled with water. Secondly, the murderer opened Saraie's locker by apparently tearing away the padlock ("how could a human being break a padlock open like this?") and the toolbox contained nothing that could have been "used to smash a padlock." So who killed him and how was it done as none of their suspects appears to have had the strength to lift the vase or tear off a padlock. Admittedly, the solution is not too difficult to anticipate as it also sets up the next two stories, while Conan being seriously distracted by trying to figure out what's so extraordinary about Rachel's trip to Kyoto, but appreciated this little, very well-done borderline impossible crime story. No stitches between the two tricks or between the tricks and the whodunit. Just a well-done (borderline) impossible crime/howdunit story reminiscent of certain short stories by Arthur Porges like "The Puny Giant" (1964).

The ending to this story directly sets up to the next story when Conan learns the trip to Kyoto is not a secretive, all-girls outing, but simply their high school class trip and everyone, especially Rachel, expects Jimmy to finally show his face – which is going to be tricky. Conan asks Anita to give him some of the temporary APTX 4869 antidote, but Anita refuses to hand multiple doses "so you can tour Kyoto with your girlfriend." So time to butter her up! Anita is a big fan of Big Osaka's star football/soccer player, Ryusuke Higo, but she lost her Higo plushie phone charm. Anita considers the charm unique, because Higo touched when he met her in the stands. So she's left emotionally devastated at its lost and Conan is determined to find it. But retracing it proves to be trickier than anticipated. Aoyama skillfully spun a great deal of believable complexity out of a very simple, straight forward story. Still a very minor story, plot-wise, which has its main purpose in getting Conan to the school trip as Jimmy. Nonetheless, a very well done retrieval story.

So the last story brings Conan, as Jimmy, to Kyoto to finally reunite him with Rachel and his class mates. The relationship between them appears to have gone from childhood friends to high school sweet hearts, only for Jimmy to run into an old friend of his mother, Keiko Kurachi. An award-winning actress who got her break through a university film club project ("...they're all big names now") and they have reunited to remake their first movie, but one of them received a weird, coded message with a dried leaf. She wants Jimmy to take a crack at the coded message.

Ho-Ling was not kidding when he said this story is "absolutely packed." Jimmy barely got a chance to glance at the code when their screenwriter is bizarrely murdered in his hotel room. A bloodied Taro Nishiki is found lying on the floor, but the big, ugly bloodstain with a trail of bloody footprints aren't found on the carpeted floor. But on the ceiling! So it looks as if "the killer yanked the victim into the air, stabbed him to death" and "walked across the ceiling," before flying out of 15th floor window – suggesting the handiwork of the Tengu ("...killer clearly wanted us to think it was Tengu"). A second murder is committed in the streets with a similar, bloody presentation, but the question here where the murderer found the time to create the scene. And, in between murders, a giant Tengu appeared in a hotel room witnessed by Jimmy. Jimmy also has to manage his “breaks” when reverting back to Conan with Harley secretly "helping" him out. There are other guest appearances, notably Inspector Fumimaro Ayanokoji and his pet chipmunk, originally created for the Case Closed anime movies, but they have now crossed over to the main manga series. So look forward to its conclusion in the next volume!

So, on a whole, a rock solid, thoroughly engaging volume of stories with the quality of the individual cases representing a return to form, while the quickening pace of the Jimmy/Conan/Rachel storyline rekindled the spirit of an earlier period in the series. Unabashed, quality fan service!