Death at the Château Noir (1960) by E. and M.A. Radford

Over the past two years, Dean Street Press expanded their catalog with reissues of six obscure, hard-to-get forensic detective novels written by a spousal writing team, Edwin and Mona A. Radford, who were strongly influenced by Freeman Wills Crofts, R. Austin Freeman and Ellery Queen – resulting in an amalgamation of the American and British detective story. For example, Murder Isn't Cricket (1946) is a thoroughly British sporting mystery grounded in scientific detective work and littered with challenges to the reader.

I've read all six of them and likely had to wait until DSP reprinted the next three novels in early 2021, but then changed upon a hardback copy (no dust jacket) of one of the scarcer titles in the Dr. Harry Manson series.

You can't find much online about Death at the Château Noir (1960), the twelfth Dr. Manson novel, except for a small, blurry cover image of the Ulvercroft edition and a brief plot description, "evil kills a succession of owners of the chateau," in a 1990 large print bibliography (PDF). A more detailed synopsis in my copy suggested a detective story reminiscent of John Dickson Carr's "The Devil's Saint," complete with rooms-that-kill, but turned out to be much closer to John Rhode and Douglas Clark. An ingenious little story that produced "a death method unique in the annals of detective fiction."

Dr. Harry Manson is on holiday in Menton, on the French Riviera, where he obverses from a balcony an elaborate funeral procession, "a picture from the medieval ages come to life," passing by which had started at the Château Castellare – "a square, ugly erection of grey stone" with two towers. An ill, foreboding place where death is delivered in "nasty ways" and locals have come to call it Château Noir. So the black château changed owners numerous times over the centuries, but, more often than not, it ended in tragedy. And the present owners were not spared a similar fate.

Angus Mackinnon, "a self-made Yorkshireman," bought the château, but, one day, he was taken ill, developed jaundice and passed away. When his children returned from the funeral, in Yorkshire, their plane crashed. Philip Mackinnon broke his ribs and his sister, Mrs. Lilleth Egon, had her face badly burned, which required months of plastic surgery and recovery.

So another one of those local legends people continue to elaborate on with each passing, but Dr. Manson gets to witness several incidents directly linked to the Mackinnons. Philip Mackinnon unexpected pass away from heart failure and the frightened servants left en bloc, but, even more curious, is Dr. Manson's chance meeting with an old acquaintance, Frederick Burleigh – a legal adviser to an insurance company. Burgleigh was on his way to ask Philip about an inexplicable mistake in his signatures on a £15,000 life insurance policy. You can imagine Burleigh's surprise when Dr. Manson tells him Philip died shortly before his arrival.

However, it takes several months these curious stories and incidents into a case of "death and superstitious beliefs" that "brought again drama to the black château." A case pitting Dr. Manson against a murderer who wiped out a whole family!

Scotland Yard is consulted by two insurance companies who, in a little over four years, paid out the sum of £34,000 on three members of the Mackinnon family who died well before their time. The insurances required a medical examination that in each case "disclosed no evidence of any heart infection" and were all classed "as perfectly free from disease of any kind." So, if they were killed, how was it done. More importantly, why? Because the insurance money is a pittance compared to the money Angus left them.

Dr. Manson returns to Menton to assist the local police in clearing up the matter, but the black château now resembles the deserted Mary Celeste and, instead of working as a scientific detective, he now has to act more as a woolgathering, intuitionist sleuth and historian – picking clues from what was left behind and talking with people who knew the family. Biological and chemical science, as well as the exhumations and autopsies, yield the most important pieces of the puzzle, but the interpretation of some good, old-fashioned and bizarre clues were one of the two highlights of the plot. Such as the marzipan cake, a sun lounge and the key importance of Lilleth's borderline impossible murder. Second highlight of the plot was an impressive juggling act with identities that would have made Brian Flynn jealous.

What also should be noted that, unlike in the previous novels, Dr. Manson has a minor and personal plot-thread, which nets him a fiance, but it barely intrudes on the plot. Alice even hands him an important clue that helped settle the case. I think the Radfords had begun to take notice of the changes in the genre (Death and the Professor, 1961) and decided to give a personal dimension to the otherwise purely professional character of Dr. Manson, which is likely also the reason why they gave him “a new experience” of being “told that he was wrong in an analysis.” The times were a-changing in 1960.

But in every other way, Death at the Château Noir is an undiluted, Golden Age detective novel with a solid plot, bizarre clues and an ingenious method to dispatch an entire family, but the imaginative premise, investigation and storytelling elevated a good plot to excellent. A great how-was-it-done that's no doubt one of the candidates to be reprinted by DSP.

Murder Jigsaw (1944) by E. and M.A. Radford

So this was supposed to be a review of Todd Downing's penultimate detective novel, Death Under the Moonflower (1939), but the poor, mind-numbingly boring storytelling and pacing ruined, what could have easily been, an excellent mystery novel – quickly becoming a chore to get through. A dizzying plunge in quality from Murder on the Tropic (1935) and The Last Trumpet (1937)!

So I abandoned Death Under the Moonflower and started looking around for a palate cleanser, which brought me to the recently revived Edwin and Mona A. Radford. A husband-and-wife writing team who followed in the footsteps of R. Austin Freeman with a competent, long-running series of forensic detective novels.

Murder Jigsaw (1944) is the second novel featuring their series-detective, Dr. Harry Manson, who's the head of the Scotland Yard Crime Research Laboratory, Medical Jurisprudist of the national Police Force and the author of a number of standard works on different "branches of the Pathological side of criminal investigation" – while holding the rank of Chief Detective-Inspector. A scientific detective with a remarkable diverseness of knowledge with dry-fly fishing as his only pastime. This hobby of his was nicely dovetailed with his work as a forensic investigator in Murder Jigsaw.

The Tremarden Arms is a Cornish fishing hotel where Dr. Manson had planned to spend a short leave on the water, but ended up solving "a problem that had puzzled the Cornish police for weeks" when an unpopular hotel guest got himself killed.

Colonel Donoughmore is one of those stock-in-trade characters whose only purpose in a detective story is to provide the other characters with motives to want to shoot, stab, strangle or bludgeon them to death, but the murderer in this case was a bit more subtle about it. This murderer didn't resort to the sure-fire bullets from an old service pistol or a dagger snatched from a curio cabinet, but staged an accident that certainly had the local police fooled. Apparently, the colonel had fallen down a steep, dangerous slope and had struck his head on the way down – where he was found floating, face down, below the surface of the water. Dr. Manson observes too many coincidences and he has "a very profound suspicion of coincidence." Even more so when "it is connected with police matters." And he has to go over the heads of the local authorities to continue his investigation.

A painstaking and meticulous examination of every microscopic clue, detail and fact that comes to light during the investigation.

Dr. Manson attends the autopsy that reveals tiny, green-colored objects in the victim's throat and lung-and stomach content, which is analyzed and comes back with an answer that leaves no doubt that the colonel was murdered. More interestingly, Dr. Manson has a portable laboratory, known as his "Box of Tricks," which he uses to collect and analyze various samples. He also uses the marvels of forensic science to make a well-hidden fingerprint appear on an object that previously showed "no trace of prints." The forensic detective work and scientific deductions done by Dr. Manson betrayed just how much of fan Edwin Radford was of Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke. And, if I remember correctly, the forensic detection in Murder Jigsaw is somewhat similar to Dr. Thorndyke's investigation in The D'Arblay Mystery (1926).

But to erase any doubt that Murder Jigsaw belongs to the much maligned "Humdrum" school, the Radfords had Dr. Manson meticulously pick apart "a carefully prepared alibi" in the tradition of Freeman Wills Crofts. So some of you are probably throwing up your hands in desperation, but, if you dislike the Humdrum writers, you're very likely to hate Murder Jigsaw. Slow, meticulous gathering and examination of clues, alibis and possible scenarios is the best the story has to offer, because the nuts and bolts of the plot begin to suspiciously rattle towards the end – without being flawed or unfair. I believe the problem is that (ROT13 to decode spoilers): gbb znal crbcyr jrer vaibyirq va gur “cresrpg wvtfnj bs pbvapvqrapr” jvgu gur svefg crefba chapuvat uvz haqre gur puva, gur frpbaq crefba penpxvat uvf fxhyy naq gur guveq crefba qebjavat uvz naq zbivat gur obql. Naq guvf znqr na nccneragyl fuerjqyl cybggrq, arneyl cresrpg zheqre zber n pevzr bs bccbeghavgl gung nalguvat ryfr. Honestly, it's a cheap plot-device that can be used to turn the most simplistic situations into a tangled web. So not every reader is going to appreciate it.

I appreciated the solid detective work, logical reasoning and a plot with a sense of direction, even if it took its sweet time getting there, but the solution sadly makes Murder Jigsaw the weakest Dr. Manson title from the current Dean Street Press reprints. If you're new to the Radfords, I advise you start with Murder Isn't Cricket (1946), Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947), The Heel of Achilles (1950) or Death of a Frightened Editor (1959).

Murder Jigsaw was the last Dr. Harry Manson novel on my big pile and look forward to the next titles to be reprinted, which will hopefully include such titles as Death of a Peculiar Rabbit (1945), A Cosy Little Murder (1963), The Hungry Killer (1964), Murder Magnified (1965), Trunk Call to Murder (1968; locked room mystery) and Death of an Ancient Saxon (1969). For some reason, their 1960s novels have very alluring premises!

The Heel of Achilles (1950) by E. and M.A. Radford

I can't remember where I read this, or who said it, but someone once posited that if the dead who had been murdered and buried as tragic victims of accidents, suicides or simply natural causes would rise from their graves to hold a candle – every cemetery in the world would be brightly lit. Whoever said it, the mystery writing husband-and-wife team of Edwin and Mona Radford would have disagreed with him.

The Heel of Achilles (1950) is the eight case of Dr. Harry Manson and, unlike the previous novels in the series, the book is an inverted detective story in the mold of R. Austin Freeman. In their foreword, the Radfords wrote that they hoped the story may act as "a warning to those people who may think that they can commit a crime" and "get away with it." Because they can't. The Heel of Achilles is a demonstration why the logical, scientifically educated detective invariably gets his man.

The Heel of Achilles takes the classical approach to the inverted mystery with the first part telling the story of the murderer and his victim-to-be, showing every detail of "a cast-iron plot of murder" that "nothing could detect as being other than an accident," while the second part unmercifully lays bare all the mistakes the murderer made along the way – ending the story on a somewhat depressing note. So the book is really two novellas in one that can actually be read as two separate, standalone tales of crime and detection.

In the first part, entitled "Story of a Murder," the reader is introduced to Jack Edwins, a humble garage mechanic, who became the unwitting accomplish in a scheme hatched by a petty crook and racehorse gambler, James Sprogson. A simple burglary to quickly snatch "thousands of pounds' worth of stuff," but a police whistle interrupted them and Edwins was left standing with his pockets stuffed with jewelry! Sprogson was the only one who shot from the house into the waiting hands of the policemen and this meant Edwins had an opportunity to silently make his exit, which he did without being weigh down by the fortune spilling from his pockets. A fortune he used to change his name, marry the love of his life and a buy his own service station, but put some of his hard earned money aside to anonymously repay the owner of the stolen goods.

Sprogson, on the other hand, was sentenced to three years penal servitude and, when he was released, Edwins had vanished from the face of the earth and Jack Porter, of the Green Service Station, had taken his place. Only a fluke brought Sprogson, now James Canley, back to Porter. What he wants is his cut of the money and then some. So he decided to kill Canley in order to keep what he had built for the woman he loved so much.

Porter is "an omnivorous reader of detective stories" and "modelled his plan on the mistakes made by the lawbreakers in the novels he had read," which gave him the idea to stage an accidental death and meticulously goes to work – presenting the local police with a decapitated corpse lying on the track of a railway line. The local authorities are willing to accept that it was nothing more than an unfortunate railway accident, but the railway doctor insisted on calling in Scotland Yard. Enter Dr. Harry Manson.

As an aside, if The Heel of Achilles had been a regular detective story, the murder would have come very close to being an impossible crime, with a single track of footprints leading from the victim's cottage to the tracks, had it not been for "the long grass verge that edged the track."

The second part of the story, "Cherchez L'Homme," brings Dr. Manson to the scene of the crime and laboriously begins to poke holes in, what seemed to be, a relatively watertight scheme. Dr. Manson patiently explains every step of his investigation and reasoning, but, to do this properly, the local police officers had to be little denser than usual ("very trustworthy, you know, but no thinker").

However, the payoff is that you get to see a painstaking destruction of a carefully laid plan with apparently nothing linking the victim with his killer. A beautiful combination logical reasoning and forensic detective work. On top of that, Dr. Manson tells the story of two locked room murders, over the course of his investigation, as a basic exercises in logic and gives the story of Maria Lee, a.k.a. Black Maria, as the origin of the police van's name – a claim that has since been disputed by the internet. Still, it was a fun little story and coming across these shreds of arcane history and knowledge is always a bonus you get from these vintage detective novels.

Slowly, but surely, Dr. Manson proves the accident was murder and treads closer to the murderer with every passing chapter, which made realize that a truly scientific mystery novel is playing the detective story in god mode. Where the more intuitive or workman-like sleuths have to interpret nebulous clues or pick apart alibis, the scientific investigator can pick up the trail of nameless, faceless killer by studying cigar ash, dust and small fibers. It's almost unfair to the hardworking, sympathetic murderer and even Dr. Manson says at the end of the story that he never "concluded a case with less satisfaction." An ending painfully showing that justice and restoration of order isn't always what it's made out to be.

The Heel of Achilles is a well written and carefully plotted inverted detective novel with the first half focusing on the personal side of the murder and the second half presenting the impersonal examination of the crime, in which Dr. Manson demonstrates that every contact leaves a trace – wringing the truth from the physical evidence the murderer so cleverly tried to alter or destroy. More importantly, the hardest thing to do with an inverted mystery is to keep the reader interested when they already know all of the answers. I believe the Radfords succeeded here by making it a challenge to the reader, of sorts, by serving their readers with a seemingly airtight murder plot and than pointing out the holes. So easily one of the most meticulously plotted inverted detective stories, right up there with John Russell Fearn's Pattern of Murder (2006), and comes highly recommended!

Death of a Frightened Editor (1959) by E. and M.A. Radford

Earlier this month, Dean Street Press revived three obscure, long out-of-print novels by a forgotten mystery writing couple, Edwin and Mona A. Radford, who collaborated on thirty-eight forensic, puzzle-driven detective novels that were originally published between 1944 and 1972 – most of them starring their series-detective, Dr. Harry Manson. A detective with the unique dual role of being "in charge of the Crime Laboratory at Scotland Yard" as "the chief of the Homicide Squad."

Back in February, in anticipation of these releases, I reviewed the Radford's nostalgic adieu to the detective story's Golden Age, Death and the Professor (1961). A standalone detective novel presented as a collection of short (locked room) stories, but the nostalgia came at the expense of the ingenuity and originality that can be found in their Dr. Manson novels (e.g. Who Killed Dick Whittington?, 1947). So my next stop was going to be, unsurprisingly, the reprint of one of the Radford's impossible crime novels, Death of a Frightened Editor (1959). I was not disappointed.

Death of a Frightened Editor is the eleventh entry in the Dr. Harry Manson series and revolves around an inexplicable poisoning aboard the first-class Pullman coach of the 5.20 Victoria to Brighton train.

Over a stretch of six months, a group of seven men and one woman traveled together in the same coach, occupying the same seats, five nights a week and the Pullman had slowly become "a traveling club" – where "conversation was mutual" and "drinks were stood round by round." A mixed company made up of a dreary general manager of an insurance office, Marriott Edgar. A wealthy and ponderous stockbroker, William Phillips. A charity worker and a prominent executive of the Unmarried Mothers' Association, Mrs. Freda Harrison. A manager of the share-buying department of a great bank, Alfred Starmer. A well-known crime reporter for a London morning paper, Edwin Crispin (no relation of Edmund Crispin). An eminent Harley Street surgeon, Thomas Betterton, and a jolly Cockney bookmaker, Honest Sam Mackie. The group is rounded out by the soon-to-be-dead Alexis Mortensen.

Mortensen is the editor and owner of Society, "a scurrilous rag-bag of gossip and pictures," whose extremely rigid body is found inside the locked lavatory of the coach. Fortunately, Dr. Manson was traveling in the next first-class coach and immediately takes charge of the case.

The cause of death is strychnine poisoning, but suicide is unlikely, because "there are other and less painful means," which is an assumption cemented by such clues as a stolen keyring and a small, crumpled piece of paper found on the lavatory floor – convincing Dr. Manson the editor had been poisoned. There's just one problem. Strychnine "acts within a quarter-of-an-hour" and Mortensen "had gone double that time without having taken anything in food or drink."

So murder appears to be a complete impossibility with the additional complication that it's "exceedingly hard to obtain." But the how is merely a single piece of the puzzle.

The whole police apparatus, headed by Dr. Manson, is set in motion to disentangle a procession of double and false-identities, play a game of three-card monte with private safes and bank deposits boxes and digging out a cache of long-buried secrets and potential motives – all tied to the reason why the victim had acted so frightened leading up to his death. There are more points that need consideration. Such as a free-for-all bottle of Bismuth that was passed around the coach, a string of unsolved burglaries and the mysterious woman who had been secretly living with the victim.

Slowly, but surely, piece by piece, the murder and its background are reconstructed until the full picture emerges. Only downside is that certain pieces of vital information arrived a little late to the story. Nonetheless, the step-by-step reconstruction, eliminating possibilities and testing theories makes Death of a Frightened Editor a pleasantly complex and engaging detective story with a well-done impossible poisoning.

Death of a Frightened Editor shows Edwin Radford was "an avid reader" of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke mysteries with its use of forensic science to find the murderer, but the solution to the impossible murder is pure John Dickson Carr. A clever, ultimately simplistic, twist on a poisoning-trick that I've only seen once before. And made for a great play on the Carrian blinkin' cussedness of things in general. I don't think many readers will have a problem with working out the motive or how that tied-in with the gossip columns in Society and the secreted content in the deposit boxes, but getting there made for some engaging and fun police work. And the murderer was a nice surprise. I didn't (quite) expect that person to have been the one who gave Mortensen the poison.

So, on a whole, Death of a Frightened Editor is a well-written detective novel with a tricky plot and a good impossible crime, but the clueing was a little shaky and this is probably why the Radford's didn't include a single challenge to the reader. Regardless, the murder-among-commuters plot makes Death of a Frightened Editor standout as an original take on the train-set mystery novel and that alone makes it worth a read.

By the way, Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) lists another impossible crime novel by the Radford's, Trunk Call to Murder (1968), in which safes are mysteriously looted. Just throwing that out there.

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.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) by E. and M.A. Radford

Back in March, the modern-day prospectors of Golden Age mysteries, Dean Street Press, reissued three classic, but obscure, detective novels by a forgotten husband-and-wife writing tandem, E. and M.A. Radford – who were big proponents of the fair play principle. As they demonstrated in their very early Murder Isn't Cricket (1946). A detective story littered with challenges to the reader, clues and a clue-finder.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) is the Radfords sixth mystery novel and one of three titles Dean Street Press selected for reprinting, which were picked on the strength of their "strong plots, clever detection" and "evocative settings." Nigel Moss noted in his introduction that these three titles also present an attractive portrayal of their series-detective, Dr. Harry Mason.

A portrayal showing a combination of powerful intellect, reasoning and "creative scientific methods of investigation," but never “losing awareness” and "sensitivity concerning the human predicaments encountered." A scientific police detective for the modern age!

You can find all these qualities within the pages of Who Killed Dick Whittington? A fine example of the theatrical mystery, plotted around the popular Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat, which here provides a stage for a bewildering murder – one that initially appeared to be utterly impossible. However, this is not an impossible crime story in any shape or form.

Henri de Benyat theater company is performing the pantomime Dick Whittington at the Pavilion Theatre, Burlington-on-Sea, with Miss Norma de Grey as the Principle Boy playing Dick, but Miss De Grey is famously unpopular backstage. De Grey "resented applause" except when "it was directed towards her own performance" and went as far as having gags or verses cut which gave other members "more applause than she herself received." So there's more than one members of the theatrical company who daydreamed about wringing her neck.

Dick Whittington and His Cat has a well-known scene, known as the Highgate Hill scene, in which Dick and the Cat take a nap on a mossy bank by the milestone on Highgate Hill. And dreams of the Bow Bells "Turn Again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London."

During the performance, Miss de Grey misses her lines and doesn't stir from the mossy bank. Someone else shouts her lines, the curtain comes down and they rushed to the bank, but Miss De Grey has passed away and the doctor has some dire news – she died from "a dose of prussic acid." The post mortem reveals the poison had been injected with a hypodermic syringe and the only person who could have done it is the man who played the Cat, Jimmy Martin.

Vintage poster

However, the Cat is found poisoned and on the brink of death in his dressing room. This gave the murder the initial appearance of an impossible crime, but this is illusion dispelled before the halfway mark. Nevertheless, the local police are getting nowhere and decide to call in the Yard.

Detective-Inspector Harry Manson, head of the Forensic Research Laboratory, is called in, but, while looking into the murder, he also investigates a secondary case. A firebug who's setting fires to dress shops, warehouses and antique stores with stock of "a peculiarly inflammable nature." Resulting in a total loss of inventory and high insurance payouts. This fire-raising case features some of the most satisfying scientific detective work since R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke solved crimes through science in Victorian-era England! Which is not all that surprising. Edwin Radford was "a keen admirer of the popular Dr Thorndyke." I wonder if he had also read the early forensic mysteries by Eric Wood (c.f. Death of an Oddfellow, 1938).

Dr. Harry Manson visits the scenes of the fires to collect samples, such as portions of charred wood, soot and ash, which are analyzed and revealed that the fires were no accidents, but the key piece of evidence are traces of "a curious metal" – which is exceedingly rare in Britain. Showing in the end how only one person in the whole country could have had a hand in the fires. Dr. Manson also engages in some good, old-fashioned detective work in the Dick Whittington murder case.

Most notably, Dr. Manson deduces that two items were taken from a dressing room and the reader is challenged to figure out what these two missing items are. Naturally, he finds a link between the murder of Miss Norma de Grey and the fires. Nearly everything, except for the motive, fitted nicely together.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? is a fascinating, highly successful merger of the sophisticated theatrical mysteries of Ngaio Marsh with the scientific detection of the Dr. Thorndyke series. The result is a satisfying detective novel that was even better than Murder Isn't Cricket. So expect a review of the third reprinted title, Murder Jigsaw (1944), sometime in the future.

I hope Dean Street Press decides to reprint more by the Radfords, because they have written some intriguingly-titled detective novels with equally intriguing premises: Death of a Frightened Editor (1959), Murder of Three Ghosts (1963), Murder Magnified (1965) and Death of an Ancient Saxon (1969).