The Case of Alan Copeland (1937) by Moray Dalton

Looking back over my recent blog-posts, it became very evident I have been overly indulgent of everyone's favorite detective sub-genre, locked room and impossible crime fiction, but, every now and then, you need to dismount from your comfy hobby-horse. So it seemed like a good idea to pick as my next read something that's the complete opposite of a trickily-plotted locked room mystery. 

The Case of Alan Copeland (1937) is the seventeenth mystery novel by "Moray Dalton," penname of Katherine Renoir, who wrote twenty-nine mysteries between 1929 and 1951, but despite her productivity she had been entirely forgotten for the better part of a century – until Dean Street Press started reprinting her novels in 2019. Over those few years, Dalton reemerged from obscurity as a precursor of the modern crime novel with her "criminally scintillating," character-oriented mysteries with attitudes or subject matters that were sometimes a few decades ahead of their time. This could possible have contributed to Dalton's obscurity.

Curt Evans, of The Passing Tramp, who introduced the new DSP edition is Dalton's most well-known champion today, praising her ability to "plot an interesting story and compose an intriguing sentence," but it's her strong, vivid characterization that makes her work standout. Curt commented on my review of The Strange Case of Harriet Hall (1936) is that what makes Dalton unique to him is that she actually makes him worry about her characters, which made her unusual during a period "when so many mysteries are drier academic exercises." The Case of Alan Copeland holds a similar attraction being "an emotionally gripping and credible tale of murder" with "genuine detection" and indications to the murderer's identity laid throughout the book. That's what attracted my attention to the book. 

The Case of Alan Copeland distilled the village mystery to a closed-circle situation with the cast of characters comprising of the only handful of notables populating the tiny hamlet of Teene.

Mabel is the cruel, sharp-tongued and tightfisted older wife of former artist and now struggling poultry farmer, Alan Copeland, who felt obliged to marry her after she nursed him back to health, but has become completely depended on her and made him give up painting – determined "he should not waste her money on paints and canvas." She knows how to wound her husband with mean-spirited, carelessly uttered comments. Miss Emily Gort is "one of these ultra prim and proper old maids" who's Mabel confidante and actually enjoys some of her charity. She also dotes on the vicar, Reverend Henry Perry, who's wholly consumed by his meticulous study of the Byzantine Church in the fourth century. Old Mrs. Simmons is an "ex-barmaid grown monstrously fat" who presides over the village from her a wayside garage and petrol station where she reads people's fortune with a pack of greasy cards. She runs the place with her flapper daughter, Irene, whose supposed to marry her cousin, Ern, but she's in love with Alan. Miss Getrude Platt is the local schoolmistress with an unconventional taste in art and literature, but she used to be a fellow art student of Alan before becoming "an instructress of youth."

This small community receives a delayed shock when the vicar's niece, Lydia Hale, comes to stay with her uncle to recover from the flu. After a fortnight, she leaves again without realizing she's pregnant with Alan's child. Remember this was still a controversial and touchy subject at the time, which usually meant ruin to a woman's character and reputation. But, as Curt noted in the introduction, Lydia doesn't suffer from any "recriminations against her character" except from the people who the reader is supposed to dislike. So I can understand why Dalton has a click with crime-and mystery reader's of today. Not their little moment of weakness is without some terrible consequences.

When they're unexpectedly reunited in London, Alan is wearing a mourning band on his sleeve as he recently became a widow. Mabel had passed away after a very brief, but not unexpected, sickbed and she left him all her money. Alan "arranged for the sale of his stock, shut up the house and left the neighborhood for a while" and agreed to immediately marry Lydia when he learns she's pregnant. Nine months later, they return to the village, but hardly anyone approves of Alan remarrying before the year of mourning was over. It wasn't long before tongues began to wag. The police started receiving anonymous, spitefully worded letters accusing Alan of murder.

A discreet investigation provides the police with ample justification to exhume Mabel's body and Alan is indicted for murder, which is where the story shifts from a character-driven crime story to an investigative legal drama – culminating in the trial of Alan Copeland. Strangely enough, this second-half reminded me of the style of crime novels from the late 1800s, like Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), as there are several investigative characters involved with the case. There's the official police, represented by Detective Ramsden, who unearthed all the incriminating evidence. Alan's country lawyer, John Reid, who engages Hugh Barrymore to defend his client in court and advises Lydia to not talk to the press, because Barrymore isn't cheap. She might need to sell her story later on to cover all the legal costs, which is one of those sobering realistic touches that makes Dalton's work standout. John Reid also hires a private detective, George Hayter, to go over the case again and track down the anonymous letter writer. Hayter began his investigation believing Alan was guilty as hell, but changed his mind in spite of everything.

Needless to say, the second-half is my favorite part of the story, but can't deny the buildup to the murder was not expertly handled and particularly liked Dalton showing the characters saying one thing and thinking another. I actually liked the entire story right up until the murderer's identity is revealed, which failed to impress me. I half-suspected this person, but a small, important piece of information was withheld from the reader (ROT13: gur nhag jub qvrq bs gur fnzr fhccbfrq vyyarff nf Znory) which made the dramatic court room revelation possible. However, I hold a minority opinion on the ending and The Case of Alan Copeland is not about cast-iron alibis, dying messages or impossible crimes. It's a character-driven, legal crime drama focusing on the impact of a murder on a small group of people and it does that very well. Even if the ending didn't live up to my personal standards, but I have little doubt Dalton will come to be known in future years as one of the Crime Queens of the detective story's Renaissance Age.

That being said, Dalton's The Night of Fear (1931) and Death in the Cup (1932) were more to my taste with the former being an excellent, highly recommended Christmas-themed mystery. One of the earliest examples of such holiday mystery. I'm eagerly looking forward to a reprint of her post-Apocalyptic detective novel The Black Death (1934).

The Murder of Nora Winters (2016) by Robert Trainor

Robert Trainor's The Murder of Nora Winters (2016), the subject of today's review, was recommended by "JJ," of The Invisible Event, who discussed the book back in 2018 as part of his "Adventures in Self-Publishing" blog-series – calling it "an imperfect but extremely game swing at the toughest task going." With December being just around the corner, I wanted to return to the seasonal detective story as I neglected them last year. The spirit of Christmas looked too much like the specter at the feast in 2020 which ruined the mood. So let's see what can be done about that in 2021! 

Trainor is an independent, self-published author whose "novels are very dissimilar from one another and have all sorts of different plots, themes and attitudes." Covering everything from love stories, Gothic tales and fantasy to courtroom dramas and a locked room mystery! 

The Murder of Nora Winters has, as to be expected from most self-published mysteries, some rough, unpolished patches that left plenty of room for improvement, but three things make the book standout with two being (minor) triumphs. First thing that stood out to me occurred in the first chapter that interestingly updated the type of characters who traditionally populate these Christmas family party mysteries.

The story opens on Christmas Eve in the large, ramshackle house of Chad and Nora Winters, in Connecticut, where the whole family has gathered for the first time in five years, but the Winters are a modern dysfunctional family – each burdened by their own and each others various problems. Nora is diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and her symptoms, "an increasing tendency to isolate oneself and an irrational anger or fear directed toward loved ones," worsened when she stopped taking her medication. She's openly hostile to her own children, but in particular to her husband. Chad is a yes-man who "always bent over backwards to please her," but nothing seemed to please her and he sought refuge in an affair. Nora found out about his "little indiscretion" and she moved out of their shared bedroom to a now fortified guest-room. Ken is the oldest son and has been borrowing money from his father to expand his travel agency, which his mother wants to put a stop to during Christmas. She calls him a sponger and "a sexual cripple." Eileen is the oldest daughter and moved to Oregon where she secretly lives with her girlfriend, but her mother figured it out, lost her mind and the ensuing row nearly fractured the family. Jimmy is a 15-year-old teenager who keeps to himself in his room playing video games, listening to grunge rock on max and secretly smoking weed by an open window. Alyssa is the youngest daughter and a good-looking, straight A student who assured her parents she knew how to fend-off boys and looked forward to college, but her younger brother calls her "a little con artist." Jim prophesies to his father that, one of these days, "she's going to slip up, and when she does, you and Mom are going to go crazy."

Unsurprisingly, the Christmas gathering begins to deteriorate with arguments, stuff getting smashed, suicide threats and Nora being told that the best present she could give her family that year is terminal cancer. Chad flees the situation to visit his parents, but things go from bad to worse back home.

A now gin soaked, "totally bombed," Nora discovers a boy in Alyssa's bedroom and actually fired two shots into the room, which brought the other children to the corridor who witnessed a naked boy bolting down the stairs as Nora tossed his clothes out of Alyssa's bedroom window – before retreating to her fortified bedroom. So they called their father who immediately returned, packed three of them off to a motel and decided to wait until morning to deal with the situation. But the next day, Nora doesn't come out of her bedroom or gives any sign of life. Chad uses a ladder to look through her bedroom window and saw her body lying in front of the dressing table with a lot of blood.

She had been shot in the right temple at very close range and everything appears to indicate suicide. The bedroom door is two-inch thick, solid oak wood secured with two sliding-bolts and a keypad operated dead-bolt, which were all securely in place. The locks on the window "were probably as old as the house," slightly rusted and difficult to turn, which were all securely locked from the inside. So, apparently, Nora has committed suicide, but "the very puzzling position of the gun" proves it was murder.

Detective Nick Slater, of the Framingham Police Department, has to figure out why a murderer would "go to the trouble of mysteriously exiting a room and yet leave a very telltale sign that he had been there," because "the placement of the gun and the locked room" didn't go together. A neatly posed impossible crime puzzle with "Chapter 7: Nick Slater's Report" reading like a dressed down locked room lecture. Slater reports to his superior how went over the crime scene with a fine tooth-comb as he experimented and eliminated every possible trick that could been used to enter, or exit, the room without leaving it unlocked. A very enjoyable chapter, if you're fond of impossible crime fiction.

A breakthrough happens when Slater has a flash of inspiration and googles "solutions to locked-room mysteries" with "practically at the top of the page" something that had never occurred to him. Something that suddenly revealed some very incriminating evidence against one of the family members and the police makes an arrest, which briefly turns the story into a full-blown courtroom drama. There's an excellent piece of courtroom wizardry (i.e. Perry Mason-style shenanigans) leading up to an unexpected twist and an original play on the false-solution gambit! Not that the game was played entirely fair with the reader, but kind of loved how the false-solution was put to use here. Yes, it's the second thing that makes this self-published mystery novel standout.

There are, however, some very rough patches and in particular the long, repetitive and sometimes confusing descriptions of Nora's bedroom. Jim is right that these descriptive passages slowed the story down to a crawl and this could have easily been fixed with a diagram. A detailed diagram would have allowed the descriptions to be whittled down to a bare minimum, creating some much needed space to reinforce the plot (like the clueing), but, more importantly, it would have handed Trainor an opportunity to make the payoff to that false-solution ever better – by propping it up with another false-solution. You have to excuse me as I play armchair plotter for a second (ROT13): Fyngre fubhyq unir tbggra gur vqrn sbe uvf snyfr-fbyhgvba sebz n pbyyrnthr, yvxr Zngg be Wnavpr, jub fubhyq unir fhttrfgrq gung gur zheqrere onaxrq ba gur snpg gung onggrevat qbja gur orqebbz qbbe jnf gbb zhpu jbex naq znavchyngrq gur cbyvpr gb qrfgebl rivqrapr ol oernxvat n gnzcrerq jvaqbj – yvxr n zntvpvna sbepvat n pneq. Guvf vf, bs pbhefr, cebira jebat, ohg tvirf Fyngre na vqrn. Guvf unf gur nqqrq orarsvg bs gur svefg snyfr-fbyhgvba fbhaqvat orggre guna frpbaq, fhccbfrqyl pbeerpg naq zhpu zber zhaqnar snyfr-fbyhgvba. Bayl gb unir vg qrzbyvfurq va gur zbfg uhzvyvngvat jnl vzntvanoyr qhevat gur gevny. I think even Jim would agree that it would elevated the book a little above a very game swing at the traditional detective story with a locked room puzzle.

So we arrive at the ending of the story and, once again, the story shifts gears a third time with the introduction of an unexpected detective, Miss Irene Knight, who strongly reminded me of Kay Cleaver Strahan's Lynn MacDonald. She appears like a deus ex machina to explain "something that an eight-year-old could solve in eight minutes." Solution to the whole locked room-puzzle is the third standout of the story. Normally, I'm not a big fan of this type of locked room-trick as it's too often used as a cop out solution to get out of a locked room and destroying it in the process. I can count the stories that used it correctly on one hand and you can count The Murder of Nora Winters among them. Not only did the solution left the locked room principle in tact, but added a twist (ROT13) ol erirnyvat gur ybpxrq ebbz ceboyrz npghnyyl pbaprearq gur cbfvgvba bs gur tha. Only things holding the book back is the shoddy clueing and the overly descriptive, sometimes even sloppy writing (e.g. Nick suddenly being called Luke). Nothing that can't be fine-tuned with a little polish and some rewriting. 

The Murder of Nora Winters certainly stands out as a self-published locked room mystery, despite some of its obvious imperfections, but perhaps even more impressive is that it was likely written by an outsider. I don't think Trainor is a devout reader of impossible crime fiction and suspect he got the idea for the false-solution by actually googling "solutions for locked-room mysteries." That would be an amazing piece of genre awareness compared to some of his self-published colleagues. Just read Jim's review of Steve Levi's The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo (2019) and don't skip the comments. So, yeah, I very much enjoyed my time with this interesting and spirited piece of amateur detective fiction.

A note for the curious: I slapped together the first cover in a few minutes, because the official cover is an atrocity on the eyes.

When the Old Man Died (1991) by Roger Ormerod

Previously, I reviewed Roger Ormerod's last novel in the David Mallin and George Coe series, One Deathless Hour (1981), which ended his run as an author of British private eye novels and ushered in a more traditional period – during which he refined and polished his plots to almost perfection. More importantly, Ormerod succeeded in updating the traditional, plot-oriented detective novel and finding a balance between the classic and modern style. The Key to the Case (1992) is a great example of combining a good, old-fashioned locked room mystery with the grit of today's crime novels. 

So thought it would be a nice idea to skip a decade ahead and read one of his novels from the early nineties, which gave me about five titles to pick from. I randomly settled on When the Old Man Died (1991) and couldn't have picked a better title. John Dickson Carr would have found much to enjoy about this curious, almost out-of-time detective story! It has everything from antique clocks and quasi-impossible situations to a traveling fair. Step right up, step right up! 

When the Old Man Died is listed online as the eighth title in the Richard and Amelia Patton series, but several of Ormerod's series novels, like the previously mentioned The Key to the Case, are listed as standalone mysteries. So don't pin me down on the exact chronology of his books. 

When the Old Man Died begins with ex-Detective Inspector Richard Patton getting a visit from a former colleague, Chief Inspector Wainwright, who wants to speak with him about a ten year old murder case – which represented Patton's "first big case as an inspector." A decade ago, Patton was called to the town of Markham Prior where an old, dreary and unkempt farmhouse surrounded untended fences and outbuildings became the scene of a very peculiar murder. The owner of the home is the grouchy, anti-social Eric Prost, "suspected of writing scurrilous letters to all and sundry," but poison pen letters lost their power to "to bring about any shivers of apprehension" in modern times. Nonetheless, this didn't prevent Prost from writing abusive letters and had been writing one at the time of his death.

A milkman on his early morning rounds arrived at Winter Haven, as Prost called his house, to find no empty bottles on the steps. So he walked around the house to peek through to the windows and discovered Prost's body, head down on his desk, in his study, but the doors were locked and the windows, upstairs and downstairs, were latched. Some of the latches were "rusted solid." But was the house really locked up as tightly as it appeared? The "side door was so floppy in its frame" that Patton "could slip the latch easily" and two shots were fired through a small, but "critically important," hole in the corner of the pane of the study window – clearly done years before and never replaced. One bullet struck a small, vulnerable spot in the nape of Prost's neck. The second bullet had struck the face of an old, valuable grandfather clock, or long-case clock, standing by the side of the door. Apparently, the bullet stopped the clock at eight-ten and "the shattered glass from its face had been all over the floor" where the door opened. So "nobody could have entered or left the room" without disturbing the carpet of glass. The door had swept a wide arc in it when Patton entered the room.

Patton was hardly fooled by the smashed clock ("who's going to fall for that, these days?") and suspected a faked alibi, but the shots were precise and exact that required the practiced hand of a marksman. Enter the antique dealer and gun enthusiast, Mr. Julian Caine, who's name was on the license of the murder weapon. He had a motive of sorts and a laughable alibi. So he was arrested and received a life sentence on his day in court.

Chief Inspector Wainwright informs Patton one of his then underlings, Detective Constable Arthur Pierce, died last month following a car accident, but he made a statement before passing away. A statement that opened an old, timeworn can of worms. Arthur Pierce climbed to the rank of Chief Superintendent, but "one tiny error in his whole career" had haunted him. He had mishandled the murder weapon and, as a consequence, "the evidence, as presented to the court, wasn't safe." So the conviction was quashed and Julian Caine was released from prison. Four months later, Caine appears on the Pattons doorstep to ask the man responsible for putting him behind bars to now prove his innocence.

While the courts quashed the conviction, Caine is still guilty in the eyes of the town and he already had threats stuck through his letterbox and a brick through the window. Caine admits he was angry enough with Prost to have shot him, but not that precious, nearly 300-year-old Tompion long-case clock. And he could never have brought himself to harm it.

This is easier said than done, because ten years have passed and, every time Patton searched for a way out for him, Caine became "almost frantic to prove that nobody else but himself could have done it" – covering everything from his alibi and motive to access to his pistols. There are many more curious, almost impossible, aspects of the case revealed during this part of the story. Firstly, the pistols were kept in "a room almost as secure as a bank vault" with a cleverly hidden key, but Patton discovers the hiding place was to deceive burglars and crooks. Not friends or anyone else who came over to his home. Secondly, there was something weird and explainable that Patton didn't put into his report. Every clock in the house, "the whole collection," had stopped at eight-ten! This brings to mind old stories of "clocks stopping at the time of their owner's death," but even stranger is that the clocks were started up again after the house had been locked and sealed by the police. A particular bizarre aspect when you consider the bullet made "no more than a dent" in the brass face of the clock. Just a shame Ormerod didn't delve deeper into the lore surrounding old clocks.

Naturally, there are many more problems and side issues complicating Patton's investigation even further. Eric Prost lost his wife in a terrible car accident and the woman who caused the crash was seen fleeing the scene, but remained elusive unidentified. Arthur Pierce car crash very likely was murder and his deathbed statement resulted in an internal investigation, which is going to leave a reputation in tatters and Wainwright can only imagine what the media is going to do when the story gets out. So this means Patton has to lock horns with another ex-colleague, which is one of Ormerod's personalized tropes. Another one is his interest in cars and how they can be used by criminals and murderers in all kinds of different ways. Yes, there's a third victim of the four-wheeled menace when one of the characters is seriously wounded when he/she is rundown in the street. You can already see his interests and pet ideas being turned into personalized tropes in One Deathless Hour and An Alibi Too Soon (1987). Lastly, Eric Prost was related to the people of a traveling fair and Winter Haven was the nerve center where everything's organized and doubled as their winter quarters. When Patton returned, the fair had returned to their winter quarters to refurbish and repair their attractions and sideshows.

Admittedly, the story sags a little in the second-half, which is why think the clock-lore was underutilized, but the story and plot picked up again during the final quarter. A sudden change of pace that begins with one of the most unusual, but original, "courtroom" scene on the books. Patton has a stubborn, unbending sense of right and wrong, which forces him to interfere in "a kangaroo court" that took place in complete secrecy. Even though the accused was guilty of what he had been accused of (not murder), but without being able to defend himself. Patton elbows his way to the stage to do an improve impression of Perry Mason, but, during his improvised defense, he finally saw the complete truth that had eluded him for so long.

I pieced together most of the pieces except for two, not wholly unimportant, key-pieces of the puzzle. I had a pretty solid idea who had a hand in the (attempted) murders, but not quite as I imagined and therefore technically incorrect. Neither did I appreciate, or understand, how craftily and ingenious Ormerod combined the strands of the locked room mystery with old-fashioned alibi-trickery, which strongly reminded me of the short stories in Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room (2020) – which also used the tricks and techniques of one trope to create the other. Ormerod created a hybrid of the locked room and alibi with the murder in that puzzle box house with clocks that stop and start on their own volition. This is another personalized trope as Ormerod doesn't appear to have been interested in conventional alibis. My impression is that Ormerod was more interested in the difficulties of fabricating alibis and the problems that can arise from them, because they had unforeseen consequences or were misinterpreted.

So, while Ormerod had some favorite tropes and hobbyhorses, he also possessed a creative and imaginative mind capable of producing some original ideas, which prevented him from repeating himself. He simply found new ways to use or look at them. When the Old Man Died is no different with only a slower, less imaginative middle part of the story preventing me from ranking it alongside The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing (1993) as one of Ormerod's best retro Golden Age detective novels. But its not all that far behind. Just remember that the strength of the book is in its first-half and an ending as solid as it's satisfying.

A note for the curious: I only noticed this while working on my review and reading back what I wrote about One Deathless Hour, which made me realize how much synergy there really is between One Deathless Hour and When the Old Man Died. While Malling and Coe were on their last recorded case, Patton was solving his first unrecorded case around the same time. Both stories involve murders with a twenty-two target pistol, smashed clocks, apparent impossibilities and a flimsy alibi involving a shooting club. Yet, they're two very different detective stories. Ormerod was criminally forgotten and deserves to be rediscovered as showed what could have been, if the Golden Age never ended.

The Forbidden House (1932) by Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl

Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl were French authors of whom little is known outside of their short-lived collaboration in the 1930s, producing three detective novels of "varying quality," but their locked room mystery novel, La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932), is considered "a minor classic" with a courtroom denouement – praised by Roland Lacourbe as "a triumph of Cartesian logic." So a long out-of-reach classic of the French detective story that was finally made available in English by John Pugmire's Locked Room International. 

On first glance, The Forbidden House appears to be a fair representative of the type of impossible crime novel that was written in France at the time. The Forbidden House takes place in a castle-like mansion surrounded by a large, "entirely walled," garden similar to the almost fortified settings in Noël Vindry's La bête hurlante (The Howling Beast, 1934) and Gaston Boca's Les invités de minuit (The Seventh Guest, 1935). A place that proved to be insufficient to protect one, or more, of the characters from being pestered and picked off by an invisible menace, which recalls Boca's The Seventh Guest and Marcel Lanteaume's La 13e ball (The Thirteenth Bullet, 1948).

There is, however, one very important difference: Herbert and Wyl's The Forbidden House is the superior detective and locked room novel, which has a plot and unusual story structure made possible only by the French judicial system – weirdly anticipates a well-known, non-French classic of the genre. No. I'm not talking about one of John Dickson Carr's famous locked room fancies, but more on that in a moment.

Marchenoire Manor is a splendid manor house, close to Compiègne, equipped with all the modern comforts, a small guardhouse and a walled park of five hectares situated right in the forest of l'Aigle. But over the years, the place has garnered an unsavory reputation.

Five years ago, the founder of the Société du Crédit Continental, Abraham Goldenberg, built Marchenoire Manor, but, one day, he absconded with twenty-five million francs. A swindle that ruined both "magnates of finance" and "a multitude of small investors," which earned him seven years of hard labor. But he died two months after starting his prison term. So his home was sold and changed hands multiple times over the years, because the owners were either murdered or frightened away by an anonymous letter writer. M. Desrousseaux ignored the warning letter and his body was found in the park "dead from a rifle shot," but succeeding owners cleared out before the second, or third, letter arrived. However, the latest owner refuses to surrender "the residence of his dreams."

Napoléon Verdinage is the founder and executive director of a grocers' association and grocery chain, which made him a multi-millionaire, whose only relatives are some distant cousins. So he moved into Marchenoire Manor with his small, tightly-knit domestic staff. Thérèse Chapon was M. Verdinage's wet nurse who calls him Napo and acts as the steward of the manor. Her husband, Charles Chapon, is the negligent butler who gives more attention to the stock of vintage Pommard in the cellar than performing his duties. Another husband-and-wife team on the domestic staff are the chauffeur and cook, Edmond and Jeanne Tasseau. Adhémar Dupont-Lesguyères is M. Verdinage aristocratic secretary and head of protocol to his nouveau-riche employer on everything from dress conventions to social behavior, which he tends to do with an ironic smirk. Lastly, there's the young, misanthropic valet, Gustave Colinet, who spends his leisure hours shut away in his room and "the vigilant watchdog of the property," Jacques Bénard, who took a cripple, Clodoche, under his wing out of charity – both came with the property. But before the contract could be signed, the first letter is delivered under mysterious circumstances.

The letter warns to not purchase "THE FORBIDDIN HOUSE" (yes, mispelled), if he wants to live. M. Verdinage reasons that "only a prankster would use a fireplace as a letter box" and buys the house with the intention to move in as soon as possible.

A month later, a second warning is delivered under somewhat impossible circumstances. The letter is discovered on the first step leading down to the cellar, but the door was locked and "a very tight fit at the bottom" that "you couldn't thread a hair under it." Let alone a letter. A warning, once again, ignored and another month passed before the third letter is delivered. This time it announced the time his executioner would arrive, but M. Verdinage is not planning to back away from a fight.

M. Verdinage instructs Clodoche to wait at the gates and bring the visitor to him. After which he has to stay on the front steps, "like a good guard dog," whacking everyone with his crutch who leaves without his masters consent. Clodoche is seen escorting a figure to the house with his hat jammed down on his head and his coat collar up around his ears, which made it impossible to see his face as Clodoche's lantern provided only a moving circle of light – casting the figure's upper-body in semi-darkness. Shortly after crossing the threshold, the sound of a gunshot and an agonized cry shakes up the house. M. Verdinage had been shot and killed in the library!

Due to a fault in the construction, the manor "only has one door leading to the outside" and Clodoche was banging on it from the outside and yelling to be let in. So the murderer had nowhere to escape, or hiding place, with every exit either locked or guarded and several witnesses around. Some way, somehow, the murderer had vanished from the house in a puff of cordite smoke! This locked room problem is a lot more trickier and original than the premise suggests.

However, the murderer's vanishing act is not the main attraction of the story, but provides the main act with all the material to make it a main event. This is where the story becomes a treat to every mystery readers with special place in their heart for the multiple false-solution gambit, because The Forbidden House has them in spades!

There are several detectives, official and unofficial, who enter the case with their own ideas and theories, but, as one of them points out, "even the best of their hypothesis explains absolutely nothing" as they can make a case who and why it was done – except explaining "how the murderer left the scene of the crime." So they spend the lion's share of the story building up and tearing down each others theories. Some of the proposed solutions were quite clever while others were a little flimsy ("...he became agitated... that's indisputable proof of his guilt"), but always stamped with the personal motives or personality of the detectives. Lieutenant Taupinois wanted to show the inspector of the flying squad "the gendarmerie was every bit as capable as they were of carrying out an important investigation" and comes to a hasty conclusion (see quote). Paul Malicorne (Substitut du Procureur) and André Pruvost (commissaire divisionnaire de la brigade mobile) come up with more practical answers, but they, too, are unable to explain how the murderer disappeared. Claude Launay, juge d'instruction, is a headline chaser interested only in "celebrity, glory and rapid promotion," but he eventually has to accept the solution of a British private detective, Tom Morrow. And he has a financial stake in the matter as he represents the victim's estranged and disinherited cousins.

Now if any of this sounds vaguely familiar, you're right, because it's pretty much the same approach Leo Bruce took in his comedic masterpiece, Case for Three Detectives (1936). Something that can be boiled down to a group of troublesome, competing detectives who make things unnecessary complicated and difficult. Surprisingly, The Forbidden House has a line echoing a Sgt. Beef quote from Case for Three Detectives that I've never been able to forget.

Halfway through Case for Three Detectives, a tired Sgt. Beef exclaims "because these 'ere private detectives can't mind their own business... with their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-scream-come from. Why, they try to make it complicated." I always hear those words running through my head when a fictional detective is acting too much like a fictional detective. But before those lines had time to haunt me again, M. Launay gave his opinion on the gendarmes "who serve no other purpose than to send investigations on the wrong track, so as to complicate the simplest situations." Not that he was in any position to criticize any detective or policeman. I think it shows how close both novels are in spirit with one of the two only differences being that one was typically British and the other unmistakably French.

The other difference can be found at the end of the story as both end with the real detective revealing a much simpler, more elegant solution that beautifully contrast with all the fanciful theories that preceded it, but The Forbidden House is not only a who, why-and howdunit – also a who'll-be-the-detective. With the final line promising more adventures from this newly-minted "amateur detective."

There is, perhaps, a third, not unimportant difference between the endings of The Forbidden House and Case for Three Detectives. The latter has sometimes been criticized over its fourth and final solution, which some deemed as routine, unimaginative or disappointing (that's the joke). Herbert and Wyl avoided that pitfall and came up with a locked room-trick that's both better and simpler than all the proposed theories, but also didn't completely destroy the mystic and intrigue of the setup. A kind of locked room scenario and resolution that the master himself could have dreamed up.

So, needless to say, The Forbidden House is a tremendously enjoyable detective novel with a first-class locked room conundrum, which stands head and shoulders above the other French '30s and '40s mysteries published by LRI. Pugmire's tireless to ferry all these non-English impossible crime stories across the language-barrier has given me a better appreciation and understanding what the French were up to at the time. Some of those French mystery writers were a few years ahead of their British counterparts. I hope that statement won't lead to a fifth Anglo-Dutch War. Sorry, my British friends, but facts are facts.

On a final, related note: The Forbidden House has two appendixes on the French judicial system and the French GAD, which Pugmire ended with the comment that "several of the foregoing novels may well be candidates for future LRI publication." So why not tack my personal wishlist of French-language locked room mysteries to this review. The following titles/writers are criminally absent from my bookshelves: Stanislas-André Steeman's Six homes morts (Six Dead Men, 1931) and La nuit du 12 au 13 (The Night of the 12th and 13th, 1931). Pierre Boileau's Six crimes cans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Killer, 1935), which I want more than a lost manuscript by Joseph Commings or Hake Talbot. René Réouven's English-titled Tobie or not Tobie (1980) and Jean Alessandrini's La malédiction de Chéops (The Curse of Cheops, 1989). Any of Vindry's remaining locked room titles.

Homicide with Homework: Leonard Thompson's "Squeeze Play" (1946) and "Close Shave" (1946)

Leonard Thompson was a 16-year-old teenager when he wrote "Squeeze Play," a homage to John Dickson Carr, which he submitted to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine without disclosing his age, but the editor deduced his age from the corrections in "a decidedly youthful handwriting" – ensuing correspondence confirmed their suspicion. And came with an offer to buy the story. 

Thompson's "Squeeze Play" was eventually published in the January, 1946, issue of EQMM and introduced as "an absolutely remarkable piece of work" by a 16-year-old with a wholly original locked room-trick "completely worthy of comparison with John Dickson Carr's." But even without the introduction, it's not difficult to see on whose work the story was patterned. Thompson's short-lived series-character is William S. Gray, a drunk, rude and washed-up lawyer, who was obviously modeled on Carr's one-shot detective from The Bowstring Murders (1933), John Gaunt. The central premise and locked room situation were taken from The Judas Window (1938), but Thompson discovered a new angle to that eerie, phantom-like Judas window that only murderers can see through.

William S. Gray unexpectedly gets an opportunity to get back in the game and the prospect of a large fee when Louise Marlowe asks him to defend her husband, Nigel Marlowe, who's a mystery novelist accused of murdering a psychiatrist, Dr. Lane – who treated Louise for a neurotic condition. A jealous Marlowe suspected an affair and made an appointment to confront him, but it ended with Marlowe standing over Lane's corpse with a revolver in his hand. There are enough witnesses and evidence to prove Marlowe was alone with Dr. Lane in his office and the open window was blocked by a door standing ajar. So, if someone did shoot from the window into the office, "the bullet would have to pass through the door," but "there were no holes in the door."

A tight, complicated problem and, to make things even more difficult, Gray only has a week to prepare the case. And tells his client to write a big check to pay fines, because he's "liable to be fined for contempt of court more than once." Courtroom shenanigans and wizardry inbound!

Gray puts on a good show and Judge Thompson (very cheeky, Leo) fines him several hundred dollars for his foolishness and even has to report to his chamber, but Judge Thompson returns to gravely inform everyone that the defense counsel is, mentally and physically, "a sick man" – asking the witness to apology for calling him foolish and refrain from inciting him further. However, it's not all immature tomfoolery as Gray demonstrates how someone else could have fired the fatal show while doing decent job at obscuring the murderer's identity.

You can eventually piece most of it together, but the only thing detracting from this truly inspired piece of impossible crime fiction is that it sorely needed a floorplan. In every other regard, Thompson perfectly captured the essence of a John Dickson Carr-style locked room mystery penned with all the youthful, unpolished enthusiasm of Carr's own 1920s short stories and early 1930s novels, which he wrote when he wasn't that much older than Thompson. A very impressive diamond-in-the-rough that comes highly recommended to fanatical locked room readers and rabid Carr fans.

Thompson wrote one more short story, "Close Shave," which appeared in the May, 1946, issue of EQMM and follows the same formula as the previous story. Gray is asked by Julie Sparrow to defend her father, Edward Sparrow, "the most successful criminal lawyer in the country" who has to stand trial for the murder of an artist, Anthony Wills. A difficult case as nobody else appears to have been able to commit the crime.

Edward Sparrow wanted a portrait of himself done and turned to his friend, Wills, who decided to do the painting at his country cottage and they were accompanied by a fun, lively family party – laughing and joking as they drove to the countryside. Wills had grown a shaggy, three-day growth of beard and a target for most of the jokes. So he promised to "shave the damn thing off" as soon as they arrived at the cottage, but, when they were in the washroom together, Wills was shot while saving. Nobody else was in the room beside them. The door was shut with Sparrow standing in front of it and the window "locked, rusted into place." Gray faces a Herculean task of proving the impossible did happen and defending his client on a plea of innocence, which seems like madness.

Luckily, Gray is slightly cracked and, since attack is the best defense, charges into battle with all the grace and tact of a snorting warhorse. He tells the District Attorney that he's fat and lazy, called one of the witnesses a "loose-lipped bum" in court and the bit with his surprise witness would not have been out of place in one of Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale novels. However, the whole plot and, in particular, the locked room-trick were better than anticipated.

I suspected from the jovial, lighthearted mood of the party that the locked room-trick was a variation on that old dodge of two people staging a practical joke, like a fake murder, but the accomplice turns on the "victim" and makes it real murder – right after everyone thinks the murder had already taken place. A classic locked room technique favored by writers of the Carr-Chesterton school of impossible fiction, but Thompson came up with an entirely different kind of explanation. A trick that's a little less typical of Carr, but convincingly presented and one of Carr's contemporaries would have been proud of it. There's also an interesting sidetrack on ballistics and modified bullets.

Thompson showed much potential in his freshman detective stories and the ending of "Close Shaved" included excerpts "from your Editor's letters to Master Thompson" with constructive criticism and tips. The editor at the time was, of course, Frederic Dannay, who prophesied that the reader was "witnessing the development of a young writer" who "should, some day, be one day one of our most shining lights." A third story never materialized and, to my knowledge, never returned to the detective story as a writer. I've been unable to find out what happened to him or why he stopped writing, but, going by his age in 1946, the obituaries I came across could mean he had long and hopefully good, fulfilling and healthy life. And that's one of the very few things more important detective stories.

The Resurrection Fireplace (2011) by Hiroko Minagawa

Hiroko Minagawa is a Japanese writer of fantasy, horror and mystery fiction whose Hirakasete itadaki kōei desu (I'm Honored to Open It, 2011) was the recipient of the 2012 Honkaku Mystery Award and Bento Books released an English translation in 2019 – published under a new title, The Resurrection Fireplace. The book was initially announced under the title The Case of the Curious Cadaver in the Dissectorium of Dr. Daniel Burton, but It Was An Honor to Open You Up would have been a better title than The Resurrection Fireplace. It's much closer to the original Japanese title and would have fitted the overall story better. Particularly the ending.

Either way, The Resurrection Fireplace is not your typical shin honkaku mystery and is hard to pigeonhole. For all intents and purposes, it's a historical and cultural travelogue of 1770s London when body-snatchers scavenged the cemeteries and secret autopsies were performed by candlelight, but it's predominantly a character-driven, Dickensian crime novel that still manages to have an ambitious puzzle plot. There are even scraps of the bibliophile detective story, a dramatic courtroom conclusion and more. What's even more astonishing, is that this sprightly and surprisingly consistent hodgepodge mystery was penned by an 80-year-old! So let's begin the postmortem.

The first half of The Resurrection Fireplace tells two different, but intertwined, stories in alternating chapters with the main story centering on the pioneering physician, Dr. Daniel Barton, who recognized that the science of anatomy has barely progressed in England – because "most people took a dim view of dissection" in 1770. Dr. Barton receives only six cadavers annually from the state, which is barely enough and makes his research depended on body-snatchers. For a time, Dr. Barton and his five favored pupils, Nigel Hart, Edward Turner, Clarence Spooner, Benjamin Beamis and Albert Wood, were able to work in peace at the anatomy school during summer recess. When the heat made it impossible to do perform legal dissections. However, their work eventually placed them at odds with the Bow Street Runners and the magistrate for the City and Liberty of Westminster, Sir John Fielding.

Sir John is an actual historical figure who helped his older half-brother and previous magistrate, Henry Fielding, reform the policing of London by replacing the mercenary thief-takers with "trusted officers" who were paid a fixed salary and strictly forbidden to accept bribes. Sir John expanded and strengthened the force with district stations and "working with officers there to apprehend criminals." Since he lost his sight as a young man, Sir John became known as the Blind Beak of Bow Street. I suppose that makes him the first blind detective on record.

Normally, there's nobody to complain when corpses of indigents or beggars get snatched, but the last corpse they purchased turned out to be of a baronet's unmarried daughter, Miss Elaine Roughhead, who was six months pregnant – which is only the beginning of their troubles. Dr. Barton detects traces of arsenic in the body and another body turns up in the dissection room at the same moment Sir John's assistant is their to investigate the Roughhead case. The body is of a young, naked man whose arms were amputated at the elbow and both legs below the knee. An ink stain on his chest is interpreted as a dying message. The Resurrection Fireplace can have 18th century England as its setting all it wants, but the plot is at its heart unmistakably Japanese. More on that in a moment.

I think the chapters covering the tug-of-war between Sir John and Dr. Barton and his pupils will delight fans of Christianna Brand. There's a great deal of affection among the students for their teacher and each other, which is the fuel powering the plot. So they're constantly running interference, temper with evidence, give false or incomplete statements and placing a noose around their own neck to protect someone else. This applies to the second storyline as well.

The second story is woven around a 17-year-old boy, Nathan Cullen, who had "mastered the language and script of an earlier century" and came to London to get his poetry printed, but Nathan also carries old parchment on him with an ancient poem written on it – which he found collecting dust in an attic. During his stay, Nathan befriends two of Dr. Barton's pupils and meets Miss Elaine Roughhead. Who inspires him to write an archaic poem titled Elegy. However, the story of Nathan Cullen has a Dickensian flavor to it as it shows the poor living conditions and injustices suffered by the lower social classes. This comes to a head when Nathan is swept up in an anti-government riot, arrested and imprisoned in Newgate Prison, which was not exactly known at the time as a five-star resort. A notable scene is when Nathan speaks with another prisoner, a mere child, who found a coin in the street and was immediately accused of stealing. Thieves are usually hung and without the money to pay a lawyer, the child was doomed to die, but the court took pity and exiled him to the colonies with a mark "to show he was a criminal." Nathan's troubles continue after his release when he falls into the hands of a villain with designs on his ancient poem and mastery of "the emotive language" of medieval English.

So these are two very divergent storylines about mutilated bodies and ancient poetry, linked together by the characters, but did it work when these strands were pulled together. Technically, no. Yes, the puzzle is not without ambition, but the problem is that there were more red herrings and faked clues than actual clues. This makes the plot, technically speaking, unfair with all the covering, lying and manipulating evidence without any genuine clues. Nevertheless, you can still work out a large part of the plot and anticipate the surprise twist with nothing more than a basic understanding of the tropes of the Japanese detective story. There was something done to one of the bodies that immediately gave away a big piece of the puzzle. Like I said, it's unmistakably a Japanese detective novel, but not a very typical one.

This makes it difficult to sum up, or recommend, The Resurrection Fireplace to readers familiar with the translations of Takemaru Abiko, Yukito Ayatsuji, Soji Shimada and Seishi Yokomizo. Hiroko Minagawa is a little less orthodox here and the result is described as standing somewhere between Katsuhiko Takahashi's quasi-historical Sharaka satsujin jiken (The Case of the Sharaka Murders, 1983) with its ambitious, but imperfect, plotting and the stylings of NisiOisiN's Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002). However, you can probably chalk the latter down to having seen the Japanese cover before reading the book and couldn't help seeing the characters as somewhat manga-like. A good example is the relationship between Dr. Barton and his pupils, which is not as strictly academic as it would have actually been in the 18th century. And there other aspects that bleed through the story betraying that it was written by a modern, non-English writer.

So, plotwise, The Resurrection Fireplace is not the best shin honkaku mystery currently available in English and therefore hard to recommend to the regular readers of this blog, but the rich, imaginative storytelling, the Japanese portrayal of 18th century London and characterization stray off the beaten track – making it a perfect read if you're looking for something a little different. Just don't expect to find another Shimada or Yokomizo. 

A note for the reader: Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate, is the detective in a series of historical mystery novel by Bruce Alexander and Blind Justice (1994) is listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Yes, it's on the big pile. So stay tuned!

A warning to the reader: The Resurrection Fireplace is referred to in several places as a locked room mystery, but the reported locked room and impossible situation were only teased as such. Such as the appearance of the limbless body in the dissection room or a later murder in a disreputable establishment, but there's always an unlocked door, an open window or a hiding spot. Oh, well, you have it all.

The Padded Door (1932) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's The Padded Door (1932) is the eleventh title in the Anthony Lotherington Bathurst series and has plot resembling Tread Softly (1937), in layout and structure, but The Padded Door worked its way towards a much more traditional conclusion than Tread Softly – which can be partially seen as a very early precursor of the modern crime novel. Just an example of Flynn's versatile abilities as a writer and plotter that allowed him to effortlessly shift from classic whodunits and impossible crimes to scheming serial killers and pure, undiluted pulp fiction.

Nevertheless, while The Padded Door is on the surface a typical, plot-oriented 1930s detective novel, it has one of the most audacious solutions of the period that begins with an astonishing surprise at the halfway point. So it's going to be one of those reviews where I dance around the finer plot details.

The first half of The Padded Door centers on the murder of a shady moneylender, Leonard Pearson, whose business practices "sailed exceedingly close to the wind and lay perilously near to blackmail." On the night of his murder, Captain Hilary Frant called on Pearson to fork over a thousand pounds in exchange for letters that belong to his sister, Pamela, which could ruin her engagement to the heir of tobacco empire, Richard Lanchester. Pearson's butler overheard Captain Frant telling his master he would like to cave in his skull and that "the world will be a thundering sight better place to live in," before making his exit through the french windows with the letters in his pocket. But the next day, Pearson is found beaten to death in his study and the money is nowhere to be found.

Detective-Sergeant Waterhouse and Detective Inspector Andrew MacMorran quickly pick up the scent of Pearson's last visitor, Captain Frant, when he finds his name and time of appointment written down in the victim's diary, but things go from bad to worse when he tries "to foist on Scotland Yard a counterfeit alibi" – nor was it very helpful that he lost his heavy, knobbed walking-stick. So he was arrested and charged with murder. Pamela tells their father, Sir Robert Frant, to get Sir Gervaise Acland for the defense and Anthony Bathurst to find the real murderer, but he's abroad on another case. Six weeks elapsed before he could be "called to the scent" and by then, it was "within an ace of being cold." And it was way too late to stop Captain Frant from going to trial.

You can argue that the whole buildup to the trial, culminating with the verdict, is nothing more than one long prologue to the second murder, but the first and second act were so cleverly and daringly tied together that it worked. Second act opened with a smashing surprise with the discovery of a body stuffed inside a large cabin-trunk that was left near a village road. Honestly, I didn't expect [redacted] to bite the dust! This makes everything that preceded it not look as straightforward as it was initially laid out.

Unfortunately, this makes discussing what happens in the second half very difficult, but let's give it the good old college try.

Bathurst has more to do, as a detective, in the second act and becomes ensnared in a webbing of contradictions, dead ends and a latticework of strange clues such as blue-veined cheese, a magazine interview, uncharacteristically light thuds and a cinema fire that claimed the lives of seventy people – a tragedy that had briefly pushed Pearson's murder from the headlines. But even with all those clues and foreshadowing, I was unprepared for the ballsy solution or how the two murders linked up. Flynn came up with something fresh and original here, but it's the kind of cleverness and originality that cuts on two sides. As ingenious as the solution is, it stretches credulity to its limit and it's the kind of precarious, tight-rope stunt more commonly associated with Flynn's better-known, celebrated contemporaries. John Dickson Carr managed to do it with The Hollow Man (1935) and Agatha Christie did it with The Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Very fittingly, the plot of The Padded Door, like The Murder on the Orient Express and The Hollow Man, hinges largely on the author's specialty. I don't believe he'll ever play that game better than he did here.

A second, incredibly cheeky, move is the truth behind Pearson's murder and how it related to the second killing, but the who is something most of his contemporaries would have probably shied away from. Flynn made it work and, while stretching things considerably, did it seemingly effortlessly. I also begin to believe Flynn loved Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes more than oxygen. Flynn was a little more subtle here and the only obvious nod to Holmes was reference to making bricks out of straw, but you can see how big of an influence Doyle had on Flynn in the finer details of the solution.

So, all of that said, not everyone's going to agree with my praise and, by the time this review is posted, surely some reviews of that effect will already have appeared. After all, I was less enthusiastic about Tread Softly than Steve and Kate, but The Padded Door was the antidote I sorely needed after a string of weakly plotted, lightweight and somewhat disappointing detective novels. Sometimes it's just fun to have clues thrown in your face and the wool pulled over your eyes at the same time.

Tread Softly (1937) by Brian Flynn

On October 5, 2020, Dean Street Press is going to drop the second set of Brian Flynn reprints, comprising of books 11-20 in the Anthony Bathurst series, which includes a title with all the promise of being as much as a classic as The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928) and Murder en Route (1930) – namely Tread Softly (1937). Steve Barge, the Puzzle Doctor, wrote the introductory pieces and described Tread Softly as having "a truly unique plot" that, to his knowledge, has "never been imitated." So my inner fanboy was squealing with delight when I found a review copy in my inbox.

Tread Softly begins with Chief Inspector Andrew MacMorran, of Scotland Yard, consulting the Sherlockian gentleman detective, Anthony Bathurst, on what should have been a cut-and-dried case.

Claude Merivale is a reasonably successful stage-and screen actor, of independent means, who appeared to have been happily married, but one day, he turns up at the Yard to announce he had strangled his wife, Vera Merivale – whose body was left in their bedroom. The police immediately went out to investigate and found that the facts were exactly as he had stated, but "the defense that he's putting up is so extraordinary" that he very well may "leave the New Bailey a free man." What he claims has happened is that "he dreamt he was being attacked by a number of people" and he fought back, but in the struggle he turned to his sleeping wife, "seized her by the throat and strangled her." Supposedly, this happened in a state of semi-conscious unconsciousness.

A hardly credible story, to say the least, but with an eager counsel for the defense, a highly reputable medical expert, a hypothetical motive and a presentable suspect who obligingly confessed suddenly placed the case for the Crown in jeopardy. MacMorran wants "to hang the woman's murderer" and there only three weeks left until the trial starts.

Anthony Bathurst, astute and helpful as ever, promises MacMorran to look into the case and raises a number of points the police missed, or neglected to investigate, because the murderer had come down to the Yard and volunteered to full story to them – a story that checked out. So there was no reason to delve deeper until they realized the strength of the defense. And while some time has elapsed, Bathurst still manages to unearth a clue or two. Such as a seaside snapshot of Claude and Vera, the position of the seating of a deckchair, two hidden tickets to a dance party at a fashionable night club and nail-scratch on the body that shouldn't be there. Flynn even shows the reader a scene where Bathurst is not present and tells the reader that, had he witnessed the scene, it would have "proved invaluable to him in his initial attempts to understand thoroughly the psychology of the case." You don't often get a bonus clue, but they don't make the core problem any clearer.

You're never exactly sure what you're reading. An inverted mystery with a murderer who plays a high stakes game of bluff poker? A whodunit posing as an inverted mystery, because Claude Merivale was either framed or shielding someone? Or perhaps an early precursor of the psychological crime novel? These possibilities kept me puzzling along with my first suspicion being something along the lines of Harriette Ashbrook's The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933), which had at the time of its publication a startling original and unique solution, but it didn't hold water for long. A second, more traditional, idea formed around the facts that Merivale locked the bedroom door behind him and went straight to the Yard instead of the local police, but that one didn't hold either. Before you know it, you've arrived at the last two chapters of Part One, "The Trial" and "The Verdict," which didn't conclude in the way I expected.

There's not much that can be said about Part Two without giving anything vital away except that it involves a recently finished movie, The Painter of Ferrara, which linked to a second death with all the ingenuity of the Golden Age that was briefly teased as an impossible crime – because a towel went missing from the locked crime scene. So how does it all stack up? Is it as good as people say it is? Well... it depends on what you expect.

Steve noted in his introduction that Flynn always tried to do something different with his novels and the style, or framework, "shifts from courtroom drama to gothic darkness, from plotting serial killers to events that spiral out of control." Where Tread Softly can be called original, or unique, for its time is how the plot is presented and played out, but not how it's resolved. Part One is a modern crime novel decades ahead of its time with Part Two returning to the proper, Golden Age-style detective story with one of those devilishly murder methods. So, needless to say, I preferred the second half over the first half.

I'm a little cautious here, because I don't want to overpraise Tread Softly and give the false impression it's another The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye, The Murders Near Mapleton (1929) or Murder en Route. Tread Softly is not that kind of detective story. What it is, is another fine example of the creative versatility of Brian Flynn who continues to emerge as one of the most unjustly forgotten mystery writers of the genre's Golden Era. You can look forward to reviews of The Padded Door (1932), The Edge of Terror (1932), The Horn (1934) and The Fortescue Candle (1936) in the not so distant future.

A note for the curious: Steve and Kate were the first to review Tread Softly in 2017 and 2018 and they were less hesitant in praising it as a masterpiece.