The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2020) edited by Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews

The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018) is a tribute to the American detective story, Ellery Queen, which collected a selection of quality pastiches, parodies and a potpourri of short stories paying tribute or poking fun at all things Elleryana – written by a who's who of the traditional detective genre. A smorgasbord of laudatory tributes from such notable short story writers as Jon L. Breen, William Brittain, Edward D. Hoch and Arthur Porges and mystery novelists like Lawrence Block and Pat McGerr. The anthology was apparently successful enough for Wildside Press to commission the editors, Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews, to put together two additional volumes with The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe (2020) and The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2020).

I've not gotten around to The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe with the exception of one short story, Thomas Narcejac's "L'orchideé rouge" ("The Red Orchid," 1947), because it has a lot of excerpts from larger works. And that doesn't really appeal to me. The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen, on the other hand, has been near the top of the pile for nearly two years and the reason why I only just got around to it is my obsession with obscure, rarely collected or anthologized short (impossible crime) stories. 

The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen has a similar structure as The Misadventures of Ellery Queen with anthology being divided in five parts, "Prologue," "Pastiches," "Parodies," "Potpourri" and "Postscript," but the stories from both anthologies compliment each other – continuing and even completing a few short-lived series. For example, it contains the second of two Celery Green stories by Porges and a second case for Pachter's young E.Q. Griffen. So put on your pince-nez, pretend you went to Harvard and jump into the Duesenberg. We're going on a road trip through Ellery's Wonderland.

The collection opens with J. Randolph Cox's "The Adventure of the Logical Successor," originally published in the September 1982 publication of the Baker Street Journal, which serves as the collection's prologue. It's not really a detective story, but tells the story of a retired Sherlock Holmes who has "succeeded in replacing the pursuit of the underworld with the keeping of bees." However, the Great Detective keeps getting visitors who aspire to take on his mantle. There were two Americans, Nick Carter and Craig Kennedy. A Montenegrin of "somewhat corpulent proportions" and "a little Belgian fellow with an enormous ego," but only when a young Ellery Queen comes knocking does Holmes sees a potential and logically successor to his legacy. But only "if he can overcome his affectations" and "tendency to impress people with how correct he is in his deductions." And "if he is fortunate enough to find the right Boswell." So a fun little opening yarn playing on one of my guilty pleasures (crossovers).

The second part with pastiches begins with Maxwell E. Siegel's "Once Upon a Crime," written in 1951 when Siegel "was seventeen and besotted with Ellery Queen," but the story was not published until it appeared in Old-Time Detection #16 (2007). Siegel story's casts Ellery as a middle aged writer who's "running out of ideas for his novels" and his turned to children's books, fairy tales and nursery rhymes for inspiration. But, one evening, his study is burglarized, vandalized and the book-lined walls strewn with flowers. This sets in motion is a string of bizarre, seemingly unrelated incidents without apparent rhyme and reason. Ellery is struggling to find a logical link to tie them all together, which he eventually does. Admittedly, the story is nicely done piece of fanfiction, but, even in the world of EQ, it seems like (ROT13) n ebhaqnobhg jnl gb qryvire n zrffntr.

The next story is actually the first half of Chapter 11 from Marion Mainwaring's Murder in Pastiche (1954), but skipped it as the book is currently awaiting trial on the big pile.

Edward D. Hoch's "The Circle of Ink," originally published in the September/October, 1999, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, resettles the series in modern times and finds Ellery Queen lecturing applied criminology at a university – reflecting on how casual classroom dress had become and the presence of laptop computers. Wherever Ellery goes in the world, or time, there's usually a murder or two waiting just around the corner. And he soon learns that Professor Androvney was shot and killed in his office at the university. A murder linked to four other shootings on the Upper West Side during the past few weeks, which all have two things in common: the victims were shot with .22-caliber target pistol (likely equipped with a silencer) and "a small red circle on the back of each victim's left hand." That's where the commonalities end. So do they have a Son of Sam-type serial killer on their hands? Ellery cautions that serial killers shouldn't be confused with series killers "who kill a certain number of people with some goal in mind." While they're both insane, the series killer's insanity is "twisted into a pattern the killer can see." Find the pattern and you know whodunit. Since this is an EQ story, there's method to the murderer's madness with a decidedly classical touch to the motive. Leave it to Hoch to deliver one of the better and more entertaining detective stories of the collection!

Mă Tiān's "The Japanese Armor Mystery" (2005) was translated from Chinese by Steve Steinbock and is my favorite story from the collection as its plot is firmly rooted in the Japanese shin honkaku school of detective fiction. The story is set in a small, unassuming town, Montreux, where Joseph Marlow retreated to raise his four adopted children in quiet luxury, but, as the old patriarch got old, he also got sicker. And, as the story opens, he's dying of cancer. During a cold, winter night, the family mansion becomes the scene of a bizarre double murder. A noise rouses the household and they find the body of a local troublemaker outside in the snow, but what's weird is that the body is clad in "a suit of samurai armor made completely of wood." He had been shot at close range without any footsteps in the surrounding snow! A second shot is heard and Marlow is discovered dead in his bed. Fortunately, Inspector Richard Queen, Ellery Queen and Nikki Porter happened to be in the neighborhood to lend the local police a helping hand. What's uncovered in less than 15 pages could have easily supported a novel-length story as it has literary everything. A snowy country house. A murdered patriarch and an impossible crime that form a "two-body problem." Alibis and clues. A somewhat surprising solution that I should have seen coming, but was too busy starring myself blind on a completely wrong pet theory. But loved the story. It reminded me of what you would get if you combined a 1930s Christopher Bush novel with John Dickson Carr-style impossible crime.

The next story is "The Mad Hatter's Riddle" (2009) by Dale C. Andrews, but already read and reviewed the story back in 2020. However, it has to be said that the title of the story ended up outshining most of the plot. You have no idea how brilliant it's until you read the solution. 

"A Change of Scene" by Jane Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is original to this anthology and has Ellery Queen, Nikki Porter and Inspector Queen going to Chicago during the holiday season to do some sight seeing, Christmas shopping and watching the Christmas parade with floats – celebrating both the season and the city's storied history. During the parade, William Nagel was in the crowd with his wife and relatives. One minute he was right there beside his wife and the next moment he was gone. Did he disappear voluntarily or did his union job get him into trouble with the mob? Either way, Nikki has "a desire to beat Ellery to a case's solution" and begins to investigate on her own. A pleasant, lightweight detective story with a quasi-impossible problem that made good use of its historical setting.

Arthur Porges' "The Indian Diamond Mystery" first appeared in the June, 1965, issue of EQMM and is reprinted here for the first time to open the volume's parody section. So who better to do the honors than Celery Green. This is almost a direct sequel to the previous Celery Green tale, "The English Village Mystery," in which Inspector Dewe East "scored a minor triumph" in titular village with assistance of the well-known American detective, Celery Green. Not before "almost the entire population had been exterminated." Inspector East has an opportunity to redeem himself when a tip puts him on the trail of a well-known, international jewel thief, Fanfaron Mironton, who "stole the hundred-thousand-guinea Indian diamond." Mironton is trapped inside a hotel, tries to shoot himself out of a tight corner and is eventually arrested, but "there was no trace of the Indian Diamond." Luckily, Celery Green is still in England and usually needs no more than a few hours to solve a crime. And he quickly figures out how the diamond could have vanished from a closely guarded hotel. The solution is in principle not impossible, but Porges made it extremely silly.

The second parody is Jon L. Breen's "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" (1969), but also reviewed that story back in 2019. So moving on to the next EQ spoof. 

"The Little Sister in Crime" by Theodore B. Hertel, Jr. originally appeared in a chapbook that was put together for the 1997 Bouchercon with Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister (1949) as a kind of unifying theme. All of the stories had to be titled "The Little Sister in Crime" and had to be set a fictional Bouchercon between 1920 and 1941 with a number of obligatory references and scenes that had to be included. So the story gave Ellery a little sister, Hillary Queen, who accompanied her father and brother to Bouchercon where they meet all the famous detectives like Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe and Perry Mason – most of whom either employ ghost writers to get their names out or trying to find one. Ellery Queen hires two cousins in New York to put together stories based on his cases and pays them "a pittance to do so." One of the attendees is a depressed Barnaby Ross who hasn't much work since Drury Lane's Last Case (1933) was published. But was it the reason why he committed suicide in his hotel room? And was the message scrawled in blood a dying message or a suicide note? There's a "Challenge to the Reader," but the solution couldn't have been more telegraphed if the story had been stuck in an anthology entitled The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen. Still a fun little story.

Jon L. Breen and Josh Pachter's "The German Cologne Mystery" had a long road to publication and began sometime during the 1970s as solo-effort by Pachter to write an EQ parody, which was originally titled "The Cologne Cologne Mystery." But the story was turned down by EQMM. Years later, Breen got to tighten up the story and was published in the September/October, 2005, issue of EQMM thirty years after it was originally conceived. The celebrated mystery writer and amateur detective, Celery Breen, is playing cards in a room of the Hotel Madrid when someone gets himself killed down the hall. Carlos Nacionale is lying in a pool of blood and clutching a pair of ordinary dice between his right thumb and forefinger, but Celery ensures his father, Inspector Wretched Breen, the victim had been poisoned and the slit throat was simply a shaving accident as all the classic symptoms of poisoning are there – no heartbeat, no pulse, no nothing ("Q.E.D."). Celery believes the dying message will reveal the source of the poison, but Inspector Breen draws a different conclusion. A very fun take on both the fallible detective and the exasperating sleuth who can't get to the point.

Rand B. Lee is the son of one half of the EQ writing team, Manfred B. Lee, whose "The Polish Chicken Mystery' is published here for the first time and has three famous detectives answering that age-old question. Why did the chicken cross the road? I didn't care much for Miss Marple's solution, but liked the one Sherlock Holmes came up with and Ellery Queen had the best answer. Although he had more to work with it. A fun short-short.

One of the highlights of the previous anthology was Josh Pachter's "E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name" (1968), which he wrote when he was sixteen and concerns the eleven children of a policeman all named after famous detective characters. “E.Q. Griffen's Second Case” is the sequel and first appeared in the May, 1970, issue of EQMM and has E.Q. assisting his father with the murder of a hippie, poet and children's author. Garrett Conway was stabbed while walking down the street, but Conway, "long familiar with the doings of children," scrawled a dying message on the concrete. A simple "1 2 3." The answer to the problem is not bad and a child would likely catch on to the meaning of the dying message faster than an adult, but the Author's Note explained that readers at the time complained about the dying clue. There's a technical flaw in it and a few simple changes would have improved the story, but Pachter decided to leave it as he originally wrote it. I agree and respect that. This story and premise of the whole series is nothing to be ashamed off considering how old he was when he wrote it. I still want that Gideon Fell Griffen locked room story!

Arthur Vidro's "The Mistake on the Cover of EQMM #1" (2018) was first published on the EQMM website and is more of a snacksized puzzle than a story with the story title summing up the puzzle. However, this short-short puzzle is loaded with Easter eggs and there's a lengthy Editor's Note ("Easter in the Autumn") pointing them all out. 

"The Pink Pig Mystery" by Jeffrey Marks is original to this anthology and visits an often overlooked patch of the Elleryverse, the Ellery Queen Jr. series. Between 1942 and 1966, eleven juvenile mystery novels were published with nine starring a young Djuna and his Scottish terrier, Champ. Marks returned took a stiff dose of childhood nostalgia and returned to the series with a story set during the Second World War. There were talks in Manhattan "about bomber strikes like the ones in London" or "the kamikaze attacks on Pearl Harbor." Ellery packed up Djuna and Champ to the country side, but there they become involved (together with two other kids) in the mystery of a pristine pink pig in a muddy pigsty. Very much a children's mystery with a simple, straightforward plot, but perfectly replicated those vintage juvenile mysteries and the EQJR series.

The collection ends with a postscript from the real "Ellery Queen," Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, which is an anecdote illustrating "the authors' recognition (and humility) that their deductive powers do not match those of their fictional detective." The piece is fittingly titles "The Misadventures of Ellery Queen" and made perfect ending to the collection. 

So, on a whole, my opinion of The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen is pretty much the same as The Misadventures of Ellery Queen. Not every story is a winner or will stick in your mind, but not a single truly bad story or even one I just disliked. An impressive accomplishment for any short story collection, but especially impressive when it's an anthology of pastiches, parodies and homages written by a bunch of unapologetic fanboys and fangirls – which makes it even more impressive I liked both anthologies. As some of you regulars know, I'm not very big fan of pastiches in general and stand with Rex Stout that authors should “roll their own,” but never had much of problem with EQ pastiches. Probably because the series (sort of) allows for all these alternative universes to exist. Hopefully, a third anthology is somewhere in the future as their should be more than enough material left. There's Donald A. Yates' "The Wounded Tyrolean" (c. 1955), Rintaro Norizuki's "Midori no tobira wa kiken" ("The Lure of the Green Door," 1991), Dale C. Andrews' "Four Words" (2020) and the uncollected radio scripts. Highly recommended to every EQ fan!

A note for the curious: I don't know if there anymore Misadventure anthologies in the work, but there's American detective character with the name recognition and more than enough material associated with him to cobble together The Misadventures of Philo Vance.

Music Tells All (1948) by E.R. Punshon

I promised in my previous review to return to the detective story's shining era and initially it was going to be a toss-up between two options, Christopher Bush or Brian Flynn, but there's another name from Dean Street Press' stable of resurrected writers who has been criminally neglected on this blog – namely "kindly Mr. Punshon." There's one of his detective stories that I had set aside for a very specific reason. 

E.R. Punshon's Music Tells All (1948) is the twenty-fourth Bobby Owen mystery and a very rare instance of two series-characters crossing paths. Crossovers always have been one of a guilty pleasure of mine. 

Curt Evans wrote in his introduction that Dorothy L. Sayers "affectionately dubbed" Punshon's first series-detectives, Inspector Carter and Sergeant Bell, "that blest pair of sirens." Carter and Bell debuted in The Unexpected Legacy (1929) and appeared together in five novels, published between 1929 and 1932, in which Sergeant Bell did all "the hard work of actually collecting facts and deducing solutions" – while the publicity-seeking Inspector Carter "received all credit and promotions." As if Punshon had reconceptualized the Sherlock Holmes series with "Holmes as a preening fraud and Watson as a wise drudge." I expected DSP would complete their Punshon run with his "earlier, critically-lauded" Carter and Bell series, but the last Bobby Owen novel (Six Were Present, 1956) was reprinted in 2017. But, as of this writing, the Carter and Bell series is still out-of-print.

So I really should have gone with either Suspects – Nine (1939) or So Many Doors (1949), but the lure of a genuine and extremely rare crossover was too great a pull. Even without having encountered Sergeant (now Superintendent) Bell while he was still working alongside Inspector Carter. A decision that I'll no doubt come to regret when my review is followed by the surprise announcement that the Carter and Bell series will be reissued in 2022. Anyway... 

Music Tells All opened a new chapter in the series as Bobby and Olive Owen returned from Wychshire, a rural county where Bobby acted in various capacities and eventually became the Acting Chief Constable (It Might Lead Anywhere, 1946), which provided a sometimes dreamy and magical backdrop for nine novels. Such as Ten Star Clues (1941), Diabolic Candelabra (1942) and There's a Reason for Everything (1945). Now they're back in London and the post-war malaise is putting its stamp on British society.

These were the dark days of food-and petrol rationing, clothes coupons, societal upheavals, poaching and crime waves – not to mention a severe housing shortage. So, upon their return to London, the Owens find themselves living in a hotel room without hot water, because "the hotel's stock of coal had run out." Everything was in short supply. Olive couldn't believe her eyes when she notices an ad in the newspaper that a charming cottage to be let near the village of Much Middles. Only twenty miles from London. Bobby is very skeptical and believes the place is either unaffordable, haunted or merely a practical joke, but they receive an invitation to view the cottage. And they end up getting "the cottage on a three-year lease at a rent of a hundred a year." More of a heist than a bargain during those days, but the Owens find they have a strange lot as neighbors.

Mr. Fielding is their landlord and a semi-retired city speculator who's a chubby, good-tempered with an almost childlike trustfulness beaming from his candid eyes and exuding general air of a happy, which is "strangely unlike those supposed to mark the professional speculator he was describing himself to be." Bobby briefly glimpsed another personality underneath his friendly exterior. A brief, unguarded moment when Fielding went from "beaming like a happy child upon a friendly world" to "an Ishmael whose hand was against every man as every man's hand was against him." Fielding has a curious, double-edged attraction with the Owens next door neighbor, Miss Bellamy, who has an otherworldly aura about and plays "passionate, possessive strains" on her grand piano. The music "flowing passionately" from Miss Bellamy's cottage has a strange, appealing effect on everyone who hears it and the vicar, Mr. Gayton, believes there's a pagan element to her music. There are also a brother-and-sister, George and Rhoda Rogers, who share a cottage and they're as curious a pair as everyone else in the neighborhood. George Rogers is a self-professed scholar, "engaged on a most interesting inquiry" to prove that the Old School Tie "an unconscious symbolism of the infantile desire to return to the safety and comfort of the maternal womb," as well as being an outspoken pacifistic and conscientious objector during the war, but reportedly got his ass handed to him in a scrap with Fred Biggs – who's Mr. Fielding's battle-scarred chauffeur. Rhoda served in the Middle East as part of the A.T.S. and received a recommendation when opened fire with a tommy gun on two Egyptian spies in the pay of the Nazis, which prevented important secret documents falling into the wrong hands. Well, you can't pick your neighbors.

So, while Olive begins working on the cottage, Bobby returns to Scotland Yard and now holds the temporary, undefined position of "temporary-acting-junior-under-deputy-assistant-commissioner." A result of the war having depleted the ranks of the C.I.D. and a meeting is planned to reorganize the department, but until then, they have to begin to stem the tide of a growing wave of crime with the primary focus on an epidemic of smash and grab raids. This assignment places Bobby smack dab in the middle of a very cheeky and daringly-staged crime.

One of the smash and grab gangs somehow managed to coincide a jewel robbery with a Scotland Yard test from a suitable place from which to send out a test alarm of a smash and grab raid. A motor cyclist put a phone booth and the wireless in Bobby's car out of action with a spanner, which leads to a high speed chase with the mysterious cyclist seemingly inviting Bobby to pursue him. A merry-go-round leading straight to Much Middles where the motor cyclist performed a "vanishing act" near the cottage of one of his new neighbors. And he thought he recognized Fred Biggs in the motor cyclist's mannerisms. But he has "a complete alibi." Why did this smash and grab raid practically lead back to Bobby's own doorstep? Was there a reason behind their incredible luck in getting the cottage during a housing crisis?

A problem that takes on a whole new complexion with the discovery of murder victim, shot to death, inside a disused, half demolished air raid shelter at the bacl of Fielding's house – a dispatch case is found underneath the body. A dispatch case crammed with jewelry, but not the smash and grab loot. All of it's "dud stuff" barely worth a fiver.

Bobby is placed in a difficult position and is more than a little relief that the murder is the official responsibility of the self-effacing, mildly cynical Superintendent Bell. And, while Bell the general routine of the murder investigation, Bobby probes the people involved to see how, or where, the smash and grab raiders overlap with his next door neighbors or that mysterious, haunting music. A task not made easier with suspects and witnesses who are either missing, lying or unwilling to cooperate with a second murder complicating the case even further. This second murder provides the story with its best idea and a great answer to that "perennial difficulty in murder," which concerns how to dispose or hide a dead body. Unfortunately, the idea is not used to its full potential here, because Music Tells All is not exactly a conventional, Golden Age detective story.

Punshon was born in 1872 and in his late twenties at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the modern world began to take shape, but remarkably, his detective novels were hardly updated relics from the past. They were very much of their time and sometimes even (far) ahead of their days, but there were also some very clear clues and hints that Punshon belonged to a previous generation. Punshon had an old-fashioned, melodramatic streak, but never the corny, over-the-top kind like can be found in Anthony Wynne's mystery novels – who truly arrived on the scene two or three decades too late. Punshon could be genuinely dark and brooding, unashamedly indulge in the macabre and the imaginative or produced something that was years or decades ahead of its time (see the very modern The Conquerors Inn, 1943). More than once, Punshon gave me the impression the classic ghost-and horror genre lost a great name when he decided to write crime-and detective fiction (see the ending of The Dark Garden, 1941) So you can never be quite sure which direction one of his mysteries is going to take or in what way it's going to end. 

Music Tells All is not a detective story in which Punshon pulls out a string of clues and red herrings from his sleeve with a murderer tied to it at the end. Music Tells All is a tragedy of characters posing as an early police procedural (of sorts) with the strains of haunting music and crossover element making everything curiously reminiscent of one of Gladys Mitchell's criminal flight of fancies. Yes, the solution is, for better or worse, somewhat Mitchell-like in nature. So you can file this one under "acquired taste." Sorry, Jim!

Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed my time with Music Tells All and a return to Punshon was long overdue, but readers who are new to him are advised to begin at an earlier point in the series. Such as Bobby Owen's debut as a fresh-faced constable in Information Received (1932), Death Comes to Cambers (1935) or the previously mentioned There's a Reason for Everything. I'll probably return to Bobby and Punshon before the end of the month.

The Herald of Hell (2015) by Paul Doherty

Paul Doherty's The Herald of Hell (2015) is the fifteenth title in the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan series, originally published as by "Paul Harding," which takes place in May, 1381, as "the day of the Great Slaughter" of the Upright Men dawned and "the flame of rebellion would burst out" – a period when conspiracies, fear and murder engulfed London. The Herald of Hell is the mysterious envoy of the Upright Men who "appears at all hours of night outside the lodgings of loyal servants to the crown" to intimidate and threaten them with doggerel verses. But the Herald is the least of Brother Athelstan's problem.

John of Gaunt, self-styled regent, protector and uncle of the boy-king, Richard II, has designs of his own with his Master of Secrets, Thibault, secretly meeting with one of the leaders of the Upright Men, Wat Tyler. What they have to say to each other is plain treason concerning the fate of Richard II and an enigmatic cipher, which was seized from one of the Upright Men's courier, Reynard. Only thing that was missing was the alphabet, or key, to decipher the message. Something even the cruel, tortuous interrogations of the time had failed to bring forth. 

Master Thibault allowed Reynard to recover in Newgate with "the opportunity to reflect and mend his ways," which could net him a full pardon from John of Gaunt. And, in the meanwhile, Master Thibault tasked Amaury Whitfield with breaking the cipher. This is where carefully laid plans slowly begin to unravel on all sides.

Amaury Whitfield is a clerk of the secret chancery and skilled in cryptic writing, but recently, he began to understand how far the web stretched and a nighttime visit from the Herald of Hell impelled him, under the cover boon days, to flee to the Golden Oliphant – Southwark's most notorious brothel. There he attended with his minion, Oliver Lebarge, the Festival of Cokayne. But, on the morning following the festivities, Whitfield failed to emerge from his room and the door had to broken down with a battering ram. Inside they find Whitefield dangling from a rope which had been lashed to a lantern hook on the ceiling beam! The key was still on the inside of the lock, eyelet covered, while the windows shutters were closed and barred. The room is situated at the top of the house and overlooked, besides a sheer drop, a garden where guard dogs roam at night. So how could have been anything but suicide?

A highly agitated Master Thibault officially commissions Sir John Cranston, Lord High Coroner of London, and his secretarius, Brother Athelstan, to investigate the mysteries at the Golden Oliphant. And to unlock the cipher.

The brothel proves to be a hotbed of murder, treachery and intrigue with a second cipher to a long-lost treasure, the Cross of Lothar, the presence of a spy of the Upright Men and a second, quasi-impossible murder late in the story when one the characters tumbles down the steep, narrow staircase – which is still a fraction of what happens in this 200-page novel. Doherty ensures his reader is never bored with his characters constantly plotting, and counter plotting, or dragging cartloads of corpses across its pages. Something is always happening and "everything is connected" like "beads on a string."

One aspect I deeply admire about Doherty's best detective novels is how they're written as historical epics without diluting the detective story elements, such as A Murder in Thebes (1998), which is a trick he repeated in The Herald of Hell. While treason is plotted and the Earthworms, foot soldiers of the Upright Men, openly roamed the city and intervened in executions, the attention on the Golden Oliphant remained tight and focused without making it feel isolated. The solution to this portion of the story is excellent with the events at the Golden Oliphant best described as a Golden Age-style locked room mystery transplanted to 1381.

The first locked room-trick is a variation on an age-old trick and how it was done is easy enough to figure out, but the small variation successfully blinded me about another key aspect of the solution. Second, quasi-impossible murder has an equal simplistic explanation, but the aim of that trick was to create the kind of alibi you would expect to find in a Christopher Bush novel. 

Naturally, there much more to the plot with many moving parts and additional corpses, such as the treasure hunt, ciphers and the personal challenges and dangers the friar has to face before he could move towards "a logical conclusion to a most vexatious problem" – reconstructed, piece by piece, during a lengthy exposition. Something that was necessary to tie everything together, but certainly didn't detract from the overall story. The book ends on a kind of cliffhanger that will be concluded in The Great Revolt (2016), which very likely going to be my next read.

So, all things considered, Doherty has plotted better locked room mysteries, but The Herald of Hell is one of his better historical novels in which he seamlessly blended historical events with pure fiction. Highly recommended! 

A note for the curious: The Herald of Hell is a crossover novel by stealth! One of the places that plays a role in the story is a church, St. Mary Le Bowe, where a hundred years ago a Laurence Duket had fled to for sanctuary. The church was "locked and sealed for the night," but, when it was unlocked the following morning, the priest found Duket hanging from a wall bracket and "the King sent a royal clerk to investigate." I knew this sounded familiar, and yes, it turns out this is a reference to the first Hugh Corbett novel, Satan in St. Mary (1986)! Unfortunately, it spoiled the name of the murderer, but to have iron-clad proof of Athelstan and Corbett living in different timelines of the same fictitious universe is the stuff of fandoms!

Death and the Professor (1961) by E. and M.A. Radford

A year ago, Dean Street Press reissued three detective novels by a British husband-and-wife writing team, Edwin and Mona A. Radford, who together concocted close to forty complex, scrupulously plotted and richly clued forensic detective novels – strongly influenced by R. Austin Freeman and Ellery Queen. Murder Isn't Cricket (1946) and Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) were two of the titles specially selected as strong examples of their ability in constructing and tearing down intricate, unpadded plots. Radfords peppered their detective stories with challenges to the reader!

Nearly a year later, on March 3, DSP is going to release a further three novels, introduced by Nigel Moss, each "quite different in approach and style," but "retaining the traditions" of the great detective stories of yore.

The Heel of Achilles (1950) is an inverted mystery and Death of a Frightened Editor (1959) an impossible crime novel about a poisoning on a London-to-Brighton train, but the obscure Death and the Professor (1961) is of particular interest to every locked room reader. A collection of short stories structured as a detective novel with seven of the eight stories covering an entire page in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991).

The stories from Death and the Professor are centered around a small, exclusive dinner club, The Dilettantes' Club, whose distinguished members gather once a fortnight at a Soho restaurant where they dine in a private-room and debate any problem "besetting mankind" – a varied "selection of brains" browsing "the bric-à-brac of events and happenings in the world." Every member is "a doyen of his own particular profession." Sir Noël Maurice is an eminent surgeon and "one of the world's greatest authorities on the heart." Norman Charles is a psychiatrist of international repute and Alexander Purcell a Cambridge mathematician who holds a Chair in Mathematics. William James is a pathologist and Sir Edward Allen, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, whose presence places these stories in the same world as the Dr. Harry Manson series! A very rare, but genuine, Golden Age detective crossover!

The sixth and last member of the club is a former Professor of Logic, Marcus Stubbs, who's an elderly, mild-mannered man with a goblin-like head, a shock of gray hair, "gig-like spectacles" and a stammer. A quiet, unimposing figure of a man, but appearances can be deceiving. Very deceiving! Professor Stubbs is nothing less than an armchair oracle who uses strict logic and reasoning to find solutions to the most unfathomable mysteries discussed by the club.

Nigel Moss compared The Dilettantes' Club to the Crimes Circle from Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and Isaac Asimov's Black Widower series, but I think Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (1929) is actually a lot closer to Death and the Professor. I've seen Partners in Crime being described as a nostalgic farewell to the 1920s with a thread running through the stories that tied everything together. Death and the Professor was published in the early 1960s, when the Golden Age had come to an end, which gives you the idea it was written as a fond farewell to that period with an armchair detective and plots paying tribute to some of its greatest hits – like a tribute band playing all the old songs. There's a red-thread running through the stories ending in knotted twist.

If a novel such as Who Killed Dick Whittington? demonstrated the Radford's plotting skills, Death and the Professor is an exhibit of their knowledge and love of the traditional, puzzle-driven Golden Age detective story. So let's dig into these (untitled) stories!

The first story briefly goes over how Professor Marcus Stubbs became the sixth member of the club before they settled down with port and cigars to listen and discuss "a very intriguing problem" brought to them by Sir Edward. A problem of a possible criminal nature that took place in the The Lodge Guest House, in Coronation Road, South Kensington, where one of the nine residents was an unlikable businessman, Frederick Banting, who was "cordially disliked by one and all." One day, after dinner, Banting retreated to his upstairs room, annoyingly slamming the door behind him, which was followed by "a second bang." A gunshot!

So the whole household rushed upstairs, opening the door with a spare key, where they find Banting lying on the floor with a revolver besides him, but the local police inspector, who spent twenty minutes in the room, called in the Murder Squad – because papers were missing. But how? Every possible exit, doors and windows, were either locked or under observation. There were only two minutes in which to commit the murder and the eight guests alibi each other. So how did the murderer manage to vanish into thin air without leaving a trace? Stubbs logically reasons his way to the answer, "logic, purely applied, can make no error," but the locked room-trick and left-handed clue are old hat. However, I appreciated how the clue eliminated all of the innocent suspects in one fell swoop!

The second story brought the distinguished company concerns two people, John Benton, who's a 68-year-old jeweler and his much younger, more ambitious, partner, Thomas Derja. Benton and Derja boarded a 9.18 train to London to personally deliver a £5,000 necklace to a client and, along the way, Derja bought a packet of wrapped sandwiches from a trolley. Derja cut the sandwiched in half and gave one piece to Benton, who took a bite, gave "a kind of gurgle" and slipped down half under the table as dead as a door nail. A post-mortem revealed cyanide had been mixed with his food and the necklace turns out to be a forgery! So did Benton commit suicide, because he knew the necklace would be recognized as fake? Or was he cleverly murdered? More importantly, how was it possible that only one piece of the sandwich was poisoned?

Stubbs uses irrefutable logic to demonstrate Benton had not committed suicide, but was murdered, why and how his sandwich was poisoned. Arguably, this is the best impossible crime in the collection with the blemish being that a well-known mystery writer used exactly the same solution in a 1950s short story.

The third story begins with a discussion on the difference between truly unsolved, practically perfect murders and murderers who are known to authorities, but there's no evidence to convict. Sir Edward tells his fellow dilettantes about "the most perfect murder" committed in Sam Reno, on the Italian Riviera, where four dead men were seated around a table – a pile of large, pigeon-blood rubies lay on the table. Three of the victims were British who were known to the police as receivers of stolen goods and the police had followed a suspicious trail to the doorstep of Villa Pinetta. Where they discovered the bodies. But how were they poisoned? Why did the murderer leave the £6,000 worth of rubies behind?

Sir Edwards ends his stories with a list of five questions, illustrating the impossibility of the murders, that "modern detective skill" have "failed to find the answers." Stubbs doesn't have to think very long to come up with the answers and an explanation how the rubies were smuggled pass customs. Solution to the impossible poisoning is another golden oldie.

The fourth story brings another jewel haul and one of those "dashed locked room problems" to The Dilettantes' Club. Ambrose & Company in Conduit Street, jewelers of some standing, where looted when burglars bypassed the steel grilled windows, treble locks and anti-burglar alarm by breaking into the tailor's shop next door and drilling through the wall – getting away with £18,500 in merchandise. The police recognized the modus operandi of a certain group of a men and the safe-cracker of the crew is a character known as "Lady Dan." A dandy, impeccably dressed womanizer who followed "every pair of trim ankles which came into his line of vision," but the police had no evidence and the case gets another dimension when the body of Lady Dan is found inside a bolted, first-class sleeping compartment of the Blue Train. He had died of a heart attack with an expression on his face of "complete and utter stupefaction."

Police found a half-full bottle of champagne and two tumbles, one with traces of a strong sleeping draught, in the compartment. Lady Dan had been seen with the lady from the next compartment, Liza Underwood, but she "disappeared as though she had never been" and there has never been passport issued in that name! And the communicating door between the compartments were bolted on both side. So how did she vanish? Stubbs gracefully thanks Sir Edwards for the "intellectual labyrinths" he has presented for their consideration and explains facts that do not conform, or are "alien to logical explanation," are impossible and therefore unacceptable. And demolishes the case. The problem of the locked compartments has a simplistic, routine answer, but the explanation for the stupefied expression on the body's face was a nice, perfectly done touch to the plot that clicked together with the premise like two puzzle pieces.

The next story is the only non-impossible crime story of the collection and is, as Moss described it, "a cleverly plotted 'eternal triangle' murder" a la Agatha Christie (c.f. "Triangle at Rhodes" collected in Murder in the Mews and Other Stories, 1937). Stubbs is the one who brings the problem to the attention of the Dilettantes.

Stubbs is convinced that the conviction of John Parker for the murder of Mary Bloss was a grave miscarriage of justice. Parker is a businessman and an enthusiastic lepidopterist (a moth collector) who had a motive, means (killing bottles loaded with cyanide) and opportunity to poison to dental cream of his mistress, Miss Bloss – who had also been a close friend of his wife, Eileen. A sordid, dime-a-dozen murder that ended with Parker being convicted for premeditated murder. So they go over the sordid history, examining every detail, with Sir Edwards representing the police case and Stubbs taking on the defense – "demolishing by pure logical reasoning" their case point by point. And, in the process, reveals what really happened. Undoubtedly, the most original and best story in the book!

Sadly, this excellent story is followed by the worst story in the collection, which is called in the story "The Strange Case of the Sleepers," in which people inexplicably lose consciousness and are robbed without remembering a thing. A very pulp-like, uninspired story reminiscent of Max Rittenberg's "The Bond Street Poisoning Bureau" (The Invisible Bullet and Other Strange Cases of Magnum, Scientific Consultant, 2016) and C.N & A.M. Williamson's "The Adventure of the Jacobean House" (The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, 2000). But this is the only real dud in the series.

The seventh story centers on another locked room murder, known as "the Chelsea flat puzzle," brought to the Dilettantes by Sir Edwards. Three days ago, the body of Miss Menston had been found in her ransacked flat, strangled to death, but various witness statements and a side door to an outside passage, closed from the inside by a thumbscrew bolt, turned the case into a locked room mystery. However, the whole plot borrowed a little to liberally from S.S. van Dine's The Canary Murder Case (1927). It goes way beyond saluting a past master or a classic detective novel.

Thankfully, Death and the Professor ends strongly with a two-pronged story of a man who had been murdered at 7.30, but "was seen alive at 10 o'clock" and "again at 10.30" by two different witnesses. Once again, the solution to the impossibility is not terribly original, but there's a twist in the tail tying all of the stories together that beautifully tipped its deerstalker to two classic pieces of detective fiction. I can say no more without giving anything away.

So, on a whole, Death and the Professor was obviously written as a nostalgic tribute, or a fond farewell, to the detective story's Golden Age brimming to the rim with all the classics from locked room murders and stolen gems to mysterious poisonings and a surprise ending. A tribute tour that came at the expense of the ingenuity and originality that can be found in the Radford's novel-length detective stories, but every, long-time mystery addict will appreciate this warm homage to their drug of choice.

Department of Juvenile Justice: The Ellery Queen, Jr. Mysteries

Frederic Dannay and his cousin Manfred B. Lee, better known by their shared penname of "Ellery Queen," were two of the most important mystery writers, editors and champions of the detective story of the previous century – whose monthly Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine kept the home fire burning during darker times. It's not for nothing, Anthony Boucher proclaimed Ellery Queen to be "the American detective story" incarnate.

There is, however, another reason why Ellery Queen is typically American: the name became one of the earliest examples of a branded franchise in the publishing world.

During the 1960s, Lee's health began to falter and developed a nasty case of writer's block, which forced Dannay to assemble an all-star cast of ghostwriters to continue their work in the sixties and seventies – an assembly that included Avram Davidson, Flora Fletcher, Edward D. Hoch and Theodore Sturgeon. This came on top of the name Ellery Queen branching out in all directions. There was a popular radio-series, a TV show, movies, comic books, a magazine, board games and literal jigsaw puzzles (e.g. The Case of His Headless Highness, 1973). Only thing they missed out on was having their own burger joint in New York. Who wouldn't want to order a Velie Burger with a side of Porter Fries and a Djuna Shake at A Challenge to the Eater?

An EQ venture not as well remembered today is their excursion into the juvenile corner of the genre with the Ellery Queen Junior Mysteries, which produced eleven novels in two (short) series between 1942 and 1966. There also appears to be an unpublished, long-lost twelfth novel, The Mystery of the Golden Butterfly.

Nine of the novels star a recurring side-character from the main series, Djuna, who's the small, gypsy orphan adopted by Inspector Richard Queen when Ellery was attending college. The book-titles of this series follow The [Country] [Noun] Mystery pattern of Queen's early international series, but with colors and animals (e.g. The Black Dog Mystery, 1942). The other two novels are helmed by a specially created character, Gulliver Queen. So I wanted to take a closer look a novel from each of these series.

The Mystery of the Merry Magician (1961) is the first of only two titles in the Gulliver Queen series, but ghostwriters and unauthorized sub-ghostwriters have made determining authorship somewhat of a puzzle – which is discussed by Kurt Sercu on his Ellery Queen website (click on the covers to read more). James Holding was contracted to write the 1960s Ellery Queen Junior novels, but he farmed out the work to sub-ghosts and The Mystery of the Merry Magician was written by the author of the Dig Allen series, Joseph Greene. I understand Lee was not amused.

Gulliver "Gully" Queen is the sixteen-year-old nephew of Ellery and the grandson of Inspector Richard Queen. His father is Ellery's hitherto unknown and nameless brother, an engineer, who's in Europe working on "a long-term United Nations project," which is why Gully is staying an entire year with his uncle and grandfather in New York. The presence of the regular characters from the main series makes the book feel like a crossover and really is what makes it standout as a juvenile mystery. Ellery Queen briefly appears in the opening and closing chapters. Gully is even seen reading one of his uncle's detective novels (The Finishing Stroke, 1958). Nikki Porter is mentioned in passing, but, more importantly, Inspector Queen and my personal favorite side-character from any series, Sergeant Thomas Velie, have supporting roles to play in the story!

I've always been of the opinion it was a gross oversight to never let Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie solve a case without Ellery helping them out. So it was nice to see them here working together in giving support to Gully.

The Mystery of the Merry Magician begins with Ellery having to break his promise to take Gully on a camping trip to the mountains, because the Treasury Department has asked him to go the New Orleans waterfront to investigate some baffling reports – a "strange creature" has been haunting the docks down there. Ellery notices Gully is trying to mask his disappointment and gives him a leather notebook, which he's to use to write down the names, addresses and the story of anyone who might come to see him. And there's only one rule, Gully is not allowed to "go off trying to solve mysteries." He just has to write down the facts in the notebook.

So, as to be expected, the moment Ellery has gone someone comes knocking at the door of the Queen residence. A boy of Gully's age, named "Fisty" Jones, who has a most astonishing story to tell and Captain Foster, "an old buddy of Inspector Queen," told him to go tell it to the inspector's son, Ellery. Gully has to keep a record for his uncle and asks Fisty to tell him the story.

Fisty was visiting Captain Foster and his granddaughter, Peggy, who live on a barge tied up at Pier A of the New York waterfront. On his way back home, Fisty passed a block of mostly abandoned, boarded-up old houses and peeked into the window of an empty story. Fisty described, what he saw, as "a monster from space." A creature with black, smooth skin, big, floppy feet and "one big, round eye," right in "the middle of his face." So they go to have a second look at the empty shop, but discover that the window has been painted black and are told by a tattooed man to mind their own business or else they might get hurt. The tattooed man has designs on the building next door, which is leased to "an old-time magician," Magnus Merlin, who now makes a living by making magic tricks and always accompanied by his happy little dog, Banjo – who proves to be a huge help to the boys throughout the story.

The central plot-thread is very basic for a juvenile mystery novel and therefore easy to figure out, but there were some nice touches that punched it up a bit.

Besides the obligatory dangers and tight corners, there's an attempt to make the role of the merry magician in the plot ambiguous (friend or foe?) and there's an honest-to-god impossible situation witnessed by Gully and Fisty! When they're swimming in the river to find origin of hammering noises heard on the barge, they see "a man walking on water." Solution is not terribly clever, but it fitted the plot. There's also very subtly done "Challenge to the Reader," when Gulliver remarks he has "a strange feeling that all the facts Uncle Ellery will need to solve the case" is in his notebook to which Peggy responds, "well, then, solve it yourself." This made the last chapter, entitled "Gully's Little Notebook," all the better. One of those nice little touches that really helped the plot.

I've to say, though, with all the magicians, magic-tricks, tattooed men and an impossible crime, the story felt more like the junior to Clayton Rawson than Ellery Queen.

All in all, The Mystery of the Merry Magician has pretty decent plot, but it's the characters who stole the show! Gully, Fisty and Peggy can stand with the best teenage detective-characters from the genre's juvenile corner and Inspector Queen and Sergeant Velie shined in their supporting roles. So I can highly recommend it to either readers of these vintage juvenile mysteries and die-hard Ellery Queen fans. Something that'll probably give JJ an existential crisis!

Now that we got the first Gulliver Queen novel out of the way, let's move on to the book that almost closed out the Djuna series.

The Blue Herring Mystery (1954) is the eighth and penultimate installment in the Dunja series, which was supposed to have been written by Samuel McCoy, but he hired a sub-ghost, Harold Montanye, to write the last six books on his contract – which were the titles from The Green Turtle Mystery (1944) to The Blue Herring Mystery. Reportedly, Montanye experienced "some difficulties getting his stake in the half share McCoy had." The Black Dog Mystery (1942), The Golden Eagle Mystery (1942) and the unpublished The Mystery of the Golden Butterfly were written by yet another sub-ghost, Frank Belknap Long. More than a decade later, Holding penned the final book, The Purple Bird Mystery (1966). Well, that's what everyone still hopes. What a goddamn mess! No wonder Lee's heart was playing up.

The Blue Herring Mystery is not as strong as The Mystery of the Merry Magician when it comes to character portrayal, or story-telling, but it found an interesting way to use EQ's signature trope, a dying message, in a detective story belonging to a usually murderless branch of the genre.

Djuna has a week-long holiday ahead of him and has a friend from Florida, Bobby Herrick, who's coming over and, in preparation of his arrival, Miss Annie Ellery takes him to Aunt Candy's house to borrow cinnamon for an apple pie. Aunt Candy is the great-granddaughter of a 19th century merchant mariner, Captain Jonas Beekman, who passed away over seventy years ago and muttered something with his last breath – telling people to "lift th' blue herrin." Some believe this was a clue to where he had hidden a fortune in pears he had brought back from the South Seas. Djuna is allowed to thumb through the captain's old logbook and reads some curious entries as well as discovering a page had been torn out.

Coincidentally, a drugstore owner, Doc Perry, is turning Captain Beekman's old house into a museum and is assisted by a mysterious, disheveled man, Professor Kloop, who has taken over the whole project. Doc Perry has become mighty suspicious of Kloop as he's always "peekin' into dark corners in the cellar" or "tappin' walls." So what is he's exactly up to?

Well, this pretty much sums up the whole plot. A paper-thin, but thickly padded, plot hinging on a single idea. The dying message. Admittedly, the solution to the 70-year-old dying message was delightfully simplistic and as believable as the one from Queen's own short-short "Diamonds in Paradise" (collected in Queen's Full, 1965), which why it drowned in this already short novel. This single idea could easily carry a short-short or a short story, but not a whole novel. And the poor characterization didn't help either.

Djuna is used in the opening chapters to explain things to its young readers and, in combination with constantly uttering "Golly" or "Jeepers," he comes across a little dull-witted. Something that strikes a false note when its time to play detective and correctly interpret the dying message of the old sea captain. Most of what happens between the opening and closing chapters is boring padding or just boring. There was such a lack of any interest in the story that it became very noticeable how much the characters were eating all the time, which ranged from apple pie, pancakes and kippers to egg salad sandwiches, baked potatoes and spaghetti – topped with chocolate nut sundaes. This only represents a small selection from their holiday menu! Just padding at its worst.

So, yeah, The Blue Herring Mystery tried to tackle an interesting concept with a good premise and solution, but it was lost in a deadly dull, overly padded story and I simply can't recommend it. I'll definitely tackle the second Gulliver Queen novel in the future, but don't expect me to return to the Djuna series anytime soon.

A note for the curious: I've already mention a missing, presumably unpublished manuscript in the EQ Jr. franchise, The Mystery of the Golden Butterfly, which reminded me of the unpublished, long-lost last novel in The Three Investigator series. Back in 2016, I put together a small selection of lost detective stories and one of them was M.V. Carey's The Mystery of the Ghost Train, which was completed when the series was canceled in 1986 and the manuscript was presumably lost. A website dedicated to the series posted an update in 2018 reporting that the manuscript is in "the possession of the Carey family," but Random House "has expressed no interest in it." Hopefully, this will change in the future.