The Hangman's Tree (1949) by Dorothy Cameron Disney

Dorothy Cameron Disney was an American journalist, writer and columnist whose column, "Can This Marriage Be Saved," ran for three decades in Ladies' Home Journal, but she also authored nine detective novels – published between 1936 and 1949. I remember some were amused a woman named Disney wrote suspenseful, bloodcurdling tales of murder and detection when her work briefly resurfaced in the early 2010s. Disney's Death in the Backseat (1937) and The Strawstack Murders (1939) showed her novels aren't novelties on account of the name on the cover.

Mike Grost called Disney "one of Rinehart's most gifted followers" who "deserves to be revived." I highly rated Disney's two aforementioned novels, but, despite recent reprints from Wildside Press and Stark House Press of Death in the Backseat, Crimson Friday (1943) and The 17th Letter (1945), she remains largely forgotten, mostly out-of-print today. It probably didn't help Disney was not a wildly prolific writer who only wrote standalone mysteries. I honestly forgot about Disney as well, until I recently came across my copy of The Hangman's Tree (1949). Disney's ninth and final mystery novel. So decided to give it a go as it practically guarantees something good and different.

The Hangman's Tree brings a holidaying Dr. Victoria Grant from Connecticut to Charleston, South Carolina, to stay with an old friend during the town's Azalea Festival. Victoria's old friend is Margaret "Maggie" Fairlee, a rich woman, who abandoned a successful, self-made retail career to become the second wife of an old Charlestonian widower, Tradd Fairlee – whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. She arrives when Charleston had already began its week of celebration and parades. Flags flying every where, battleships in the harbor open to the public, bomber squadrons flying above the city in formation and "contingent of pretty girls" who "were flocking in from small towns over the state to reign as Azalea Queens at the week-long festival." Pretty soon, Victoria notices something is brewing underneath the festive atmosphere.

She hasn't seen Maggie for years and finds her not only completely changed, but her physical changes appear to be a conscious copy of the looks and style of her predecessor, Rose Fairlee. Maggie has also desperately been trying to find out what, exactly, happened to Rose. And why there's a veil of mystery surrounding her passing. But a marriage haunted by her memory is not the only problem festering in the Fairlee household.

Maggie has a stepson, Stephen, whom she has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart, Valeria Trevelyn, because it was "the dearest dream of Stephen's mother to see them married." There are, however, two problems. Valeria is returning to Charleston to ride, as the Queen of Bodes Crossing, on the Azalea Parade, but the crown was handed over to her after it had been awarded to another girl – something Maggie fixed with the mayor of Bodes Crossing. So now Rena Mae Thripp, the girl in question, has come to Charleston to raise hell ("...I'll kill her and then I'll kill myself"). There's another woman, Deborah Parr, who arrived in town with designs of her own involving Stephen. So enough emotions, strained nerves, closely guarded secrets and potential motives for something bad to happen. Something bad happens when somebody is given a fatal dose of morphine and dies in Victoria's arms. A death that looks more like murder than suicide. That's when the problems really begin as nobody is willing to tell the truth, while a second dose of the stolen morphine and a loaded gun remain unaccounted for.

Victoria is determined to get to the bottom of the matter, but, in a place like Charleston, she very much is the trope of the outsider-on-the-inside ("...a visiting northerner, an outsider..."). Not merely an outsider to a close-knit group of family, friends and neighbors, but a close-knit community with its cultural heritage, history and families as a bulwark against any outsiders wanting cause trouble. Even if that trouble is someone trying to find the truth or help. Some of these people wouldn't turn a hair at the thought of covering up a murder or blackmail, but turn pale at the thought of scandal and the generational damage it would do their reputation and family's standing. She's not the only person who has to watch their step. The victim was the cousin of Lieutenant Sanford Clayton, of Homicide, but "acked the backing of the Charleston police force" on even this case ("...he didn't represent the law, but merely himself"). So this allows Victoria to eventually do some actual digging and amateur detective worked helped by a lucky break, or two, by being in the right place and time to see or overhear something she wasn't supposed to.

This case not involves a poisoning, long buried family secrets and other relatives, but also a bit of blackmail, a second murder and the dreary hangman's tree near Harmony Hall – a local hotel run by Penelope and Philo Higgs. The Hangman's Tree is tightly packed novel perhaps more reminiscent of those early, small town American mystery-thrillers like Herbert Brean's Wilders Walk Away (1949) and Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) or Theodore Roscoe's "Four Corners" series rather than the "Had-I-But-Known" writers Dorothy is associated with. Not a bad one either! I know The Hangman's Tree is not one of Disney's most celebrated novels as some have commented it's simply not as good as her earlier novels like Death in the Backseat, The Strawstack Murder or even The Balcony (1940). Suppose it helped not being able to clearly remembering those early novels, but genuinely enjoyed The Hangman's Tree. Disney even succeeded to sneak something pass my attention (because I can be shockingly dense at times) that sprang a genuinely surprising twist on me. I always appreciate a good twist. While the question of who-and why ran along more or less expected lines, it all holds together nicely.

I'm sure if I reread Disney's Death in the Backseat or The Strawstack Murder next, I would find them to be better detective novels, but by itself, The Hangman's Tree is not a bad if you can enjoy a small town mystery-thriller – served with a thick slice of Americana. Nor is it a terrible novel to go out on. This genre, of ours, has seen some truly terrible swan songs from once respected mystery writers. Disney's The Hangman's Tree is not one of them.

Locked and Loaded, Part 8: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

Back in 2020, I posted the first "Locked and Loaded" blog-post reviewing five, or six, randomly picked, usually uncollected short stories of the impossible variety and covered a 118 year period of short locked room mystery stories in the previous seven reviews – stretching from 1905 all the way up to 2023. So, as to be expected, the quality varies from story to story. However, the stories reviewed in the last two "Locked and Loaded" posts only had one really good short story, James H. Cobb's "Over the Edge" (2007). I wanted to do another one, before the end of the year, hoping to find another really good story or two. Fingers crossed!

So, before delving into the stories making up part 8, you can find my previous "Locked and Loaded" reviews here: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

The first story is James Yaffe's "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes," originally published in the March, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which he wrote when he was a 16-year-old locked room mystery enthusiast. Between 1943 and 1946, EQMM published six of Yaffe's short stories featuring the only member of the Department of Impossible Crimes ("...New York Homicide Squad's most obscure office"), Paul Dawn. This second story in the series takes place aboard the Florida Special where a holidaying Dawn is recognized by Dr. Howard Kiroshibu, of Kiroshibu Brothers Oriental Pottery, who's traveling with a black, copper urn – containing his late brother's ashes. Kiroshibu is afraid something is going to happen to the urn and asks Dawn to take urn to his compartment, but Dawn turns him down as he exclusively deals in impossible crimes. Shortly after their chat, Kiroshibu is shot behind the locked door of a railway carriage. Dawn has his locked room murder and excuse to start investigating.

Well, Yaffe was only sixteen when he wrote "Mr. Kiroshibu's Ashes" and so this story lacks the polish that comes with experience and maturity, but brash, youthful fallibility and the tact of a teenager has a charm of its own. I snickered when Dawn summarized Kiroshibu's story, "so you're traveling to Miami Beach to toss your brother's ashes into the Atlantic," or taking a peek inside the urn ("Henry Kiroshibu was of a non-descript, grayish color, and he only filled about half the urn"). Yaffe's choice of murderer and method aren't without interest, but failed to present the overall solution as something even remotely plausible or convincing. So not bad, but not great either.

Next up is "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys," published in the January, 1982, issue of EQMM, written by the author of the Lyon and Bea Wentworth series, Richard Forrest. Several novels from this series are locked rooms and impossible crimes, but Forrest proved to be an extremely frustrating novelist. Forrest had some good impossible crime ideas, such as the false-solution from A Child's Garden of Death (1975) or the whole locked room setup and trick in Death at King's Arthur Court (2005), but always mired in bad or mediocre novels. So was curious to see what Forrest could do with the impossible crime in short story format.

Forrest's "The Headmaster Helps One of His Boys" reads like the introduction of a new series, but, apparently, this is the only appearance of the unnamed headmaster-detective of Greenfield Academy, New England – who helps out a student named Braxton. Braxton has serious problems back home as his mother is indicted for murdering her second husband, because she was the only other person inside their securely locked bedroom. So the headmaster decides to help his troubled pupil and begins to call in favors from ex-students to get his hands on information in order to solve the murder. It's funny how this short story is the exact opposite of Forrest's novel-length mysteries. This is a good, well-written short story with a fun detective who could have headed his own series, but the impossible crime and locked room-trick is rubbish. Forrest remains the most frustrating writer of locked room mysteries.

Bill Pronzini netted his first Shamus Award for best P.I. short story with "Cat's Paw." A short story originally published in 1983 as a hardcover booklet.

"Cat's Paw" finds the Nameless Detective patrolling the grounds of San Francisco's Fleishacker Zoological Gardens during a cold, foggy night when the fog "makes everything look like capering phantoms or two-dimensional cutouts." Nameless has been hired as an extra guard following the theft of several rare birds and some other endangered animals that go for premium prizes on the black market, but the zoo covers roughly seventy acres and difficult to police with only a few guards. This was still a few years before security cameras became more widely adopted. While patrolling the grounds, a gunshot rings out from the Lion House where Nameless and a colleague discovers the body of another night guard lying in an empty, locked feeding case – shot through the chest and clutching a gun. So it appears to be suicide as the building was locked up and they arrived less than 30 seconds after hearing the shot. That makes the only possible exit through one of the open cat-grottos at the rear of the Lion House, but "those cats would maul anybody who went out among 'em." Nameless knows this dodgy looking suicide is murder and, fortunately, he knows his way around a locked room murder.

Overall, Pronzini's "Cat's Paw" is a good and very fine P.I. short story making full use of its backdrop, especially in the lead-up to the shooting. Nameless likened walking around a zoo by night to a graveyard ("...ordinary enough during daylight hours... downright eerie after dark"). But as a detective story with a locked room mystery, it's neither spectacular nor particular fair. I still liked it as a P.I. short story and it's always fun to tag along with Nameless, but as an impossible crime story it was very little to offer. Fortunately, the next tale of the impossible by Pronzini is a different story!

Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" originally appeared in the anthology Mean Streets (1986) in which Nameless has to act as an armchair detective, while drinking beer and playing poker. Eberhardt had made a bet with the other guys around the table he could "make sense out of the Gallatin thing within twenty-four hours." Lt. Jack Logan, one of the man around the poker table, who nearly nailed Frank Gallatin for racketeering and extortion charges. What they needed was an incriminating file from an accountant, named Lamar Trent, but, when they went to Trent's office, they heard a gunshot behind his locked office door. Only two people were inside when the shot was fired: Frank Galletin and Trent slumped behind his desk with a bullet in his skull. Just a handful of problems. Firstly, the office is thoroughly searched without the murder weapon or incriminating files turning up. And no gunshot residue on his hands. There simply was no time to dispose of the gun, files and a pair of gloves ("locked doors, disappearing guns—screwball stuff"). Even worse, Galletin claims somebody came up or down the fire escape, shot Trent through the open window and disappeared the same way. They checked this story and nobody could have used the fire escape, unless they happened to be invisible. So they Galletin shot Trent, but nothing can be done unless they figure out how he made all the evidence disappear from a locked office with police standing at the door ("just your kind of case, paisan").

For the next two hours, or so, they play five-card stud and drink beer while Nameless mulls over the puzzle. And, of course, he pieces everything together and only left the poker table to get a cold beer. Nameless takes joy in drawing out his solution as payback for making him work instead of just playing poker. I liked how the simple locked room-trick and solution revealed the supposedly clever Galletin to have been prize idiot after all. Fantastically fun!

By the way, I think an anthology of hardboiled, pulp-y P.I. locked room mysteries and impossible crimes is long overdue. Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" or "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" (1980) would be perfect for such an anthology (Tough Nuts to Crack).

John Nelson's "Magwitch Returns," originally published in the April, 1986, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, is an odd one and perhaps not truly a locked room mystery – at least not in the traditional sense. The setup is conventional enough as it begins with the police being called to the scene of an unmistakable suicide. A neighbor of one Andrew Thornton heard a gunshot coming from his apartment and when the landlord unlocked the door, they found him with a bullet in his head and gun on the floor. Thornton, "a police buff and a Dickens fanatic," left behind a string of clues turning the police investigation into a scavenger hunt. I wonder if J.A. Konrath was aware of Nelson's “Magwitch Returns” when he wrote "With a Twist" (2005), because the premises are strikingly similar. Konrath got so much more out of the idea than Nelson. Still an amusing take on the detective story, but poor purely taken as a locked room mystery.

Finally, John L. French's "Open and Shut," published in the July/August, 2003, issue of AHMM, which is obviously product of its time when CSI: Crime Scene Investigation along with its spin-off shows were at the height of their popularity. French is a retired crime scene supervisor who wrote articles ("A Brief History of DNA," 2006) for Future Mystery Anthology Magazine and occasionally had a short story published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. "Open and Shut" is French's only impossible crime story featuring a crime scene technician, Grace, who's called the scene of a suicide in College Town. A student shot himself behind the locked door of his bedroom while his roommates were still in the house. So an apparently routine case of "another overachieving high school student who couldn't handle the shock of getting B's in college," but a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories gives a classical twist to the case. When it comes to the locked room problem, I don't think this story will excite the pickier of locked room fanatics, but I enjoyed the overall story and how (SPOILER/ROT13) gur cybg jrag sebz fhvpvqr gb zheqre naq onpx gb fhvpvqr ntnva, orsber frggyvat ba na nppvqragny fubbgvat. Like I said, this story is very much a product of its time.

This was another poor, unexciting and rather disappointing haul for this blog series. Not necessarily because the stories were bad, most weren't, but Pronzini's "Ace in the Hole" is the only story that stands out and shines as a locked room mystery. So maybe the time has come to either retire "Locked and Loaded" or put it on hiatus for the foreseeable future. I'll try to pick something good, none-impossible crime related next. Stay tuned!

Half-Mast Murder (1930) by Milward Kennedy

Milward Kennedy was an English civil servant, journalist, literary critic, reviewer and mystery writer, who was a founding member of the Detection Club, but the bulk of his novels and short stories have been out-of-print and largely forgotten about for decades – even during the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. So my only exposure to Kennedy's work has been through his small, modest contributions to the Detection Club's round-robin novels The Floating Admiral (1931) and Ask a Policeman (1933).

I have been aware of Kennedy and two of his mystery novels, The Corpse on the Mat (1929) and Death to the Rescue (1931), have been longtime residents of my locked room mystery wishlist. Kennedy's detective fiction is still waiting to be swept up by that reprint wave. Only two novels, Half-Mast Murder (1930) and Murder in Black and White (1931), returned to print over the years. I decided to just give Half-Mast Murder a shot to see what this forgotten Detection Club member could do on his own with a novel-length mystery novel.

Half-Mast Murder is Kennedy's fourth mystery novel taking place at Cliff's End, "a house of some social standing," situated on the coast and property of "one of the Big Noises of the world," Professor Paley, who's an authority on international politics, economics and war – playing "a big part in the creation of the Succession States to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire." Professor Paley's books and strong opinions make him "very unpopular with some people." Currently, the professor is working on his next book supposedly to contain some remarkable revelations about the Great War ("moral dynamite") and has come down from London to Cliff's End to write the book. Professor Paley has brought along a nice, close-knit group of future suspects.

There's his widowed sister, Mrs. Arkwright, and his niece, Cynthia, who has a brother, Julian, who works for an armaments manufacturer and is not on speaking terms with his anti-war uncle. Julian is in the neighborhood. A longtime friend of the professor, Bertie Trent, who was nevertheless overheard saying Paley's "only fit for heaven." And the sooner the better. George Shipman, a man of leisure, is only there for Cynthia. Finally, a visitor from America, a Mr. Quick, who came to see the professor as a representative of the Association for World Harmony (Inc.). This first chapter ends with the party rushing down to the octagonal-shaped summerhouse, where the professor has been working, after the butler failed the get an answer. So they break down the door to discover the professor slumped in a chair with a knife-handle sticking out of his chest.

Superintendent Guest and his men arrive at Cliff's End to take charge, but the problem facing them is a multifaceted, messy tangle of clued, red herrings and uncooperative suspects. For one, there's the problem of the locked summerhouse and why the murderer created a locked room puzzle, because, even without the locked door, it looked too dodgy to be suicide. And there are other puzzling peculiarities to the case. Why was the flag on the roof of the summerhouse flying half-mast? Why was there a bloodstained bathing suite stuffed into the safe? What's the stain of the sliver wood Guest too from railing? What's the significance of the camera and a spool of fishing-line found at the crime scene? However, the plot and Guest's investigation primarily revolves around picking apart everyone's movements around the time of the murder and making time tables.

So, yes, Half-Mast Murder is firmly rooted in the much maligned, so-called “humdrum” school of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode, but two chapters standout – Chapter XV ("EXAMINES EVIDENCE") and Chapter XXI ("AUGURS AN ARREST"). In Chapter XV, Guest tackles the problem of "how came the summer-house to be locked and the key inside?" Admittedly, the possibilities Guest considers and the actual locked room-trick could hardly be called original even in 1930, but have seen put to worse used than here. Chapter XXI ends with Guest giving the Chief Constable, what he then thinks is, the correct solution. Only for it to be reduced to a false-solution. I'm afraid Kennedy's Half-Mast Murder is a very bad case of the false-solution outshining the correct solution. More on that in a moment.

I should first mention Half-Mast Murder has a strange peculiarity that should have been a drawback, but ended up saving the book from becoming a total loss. Half-Mast Murder is still very much an early, 1920s drawing room mystery at heart as the crime scene resembled a busy thoroughfare with practically everyone popping in-and out at the time the professor was being murdered. So more than one person had a hand in creating the confusing crime scene, which is always a bit hard to swallow and takes some talent to pull-off convincingly. But here it safeguarded the story's best parts from the insultingly bad ending. Such as what happened to the missing material for the professor's next book and why the flag was half-mast. And I still enjoyed the (basic) locked room puzzle.

So I would have been perfectly happy with Guest's false-solution from Chapter XXI as it bundled those best ideas and plot-points in the best possible solution to the murder as it was presented – while using those last few chapters plugging the gaps. Sure, it would not have been a blistering original, rug-puller of a whodunit, but would have happily recommended it to fans of Crofts and Rhode. Kennedy thought the ending needed something more than mere competence and opted for pulling a "surprise twist" out of his ass. It stunk! I don't know what's the worse offense here: the flagrant lack of fair play (you can't even guess the who or why) or the solution to who and why. Something so cringe, you want to hide it from outsiders (SPOILER/ROT13: gur ohgyre qvq vg). I hope the Detection Club put Kennedy on trial for this faux pas and had to pay Rhode's bar tab as punishment.

Milward Kennedy has always been one of those notable gaps in my Golden Age detective reading and hoped more for Half-Mast Murder, but it ended up dampening my interest in Kennedy just a little bit. On the other hand, even the best of Kennedy's contemporaries had some terrible mystery novels to their name. Martin Edwards praised Kennedy in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), "a leading exponent of the village mystery," highlighting The Murderer of Sleep (1932), Poison in the Parish (1935) and the previously mentioned Death to the Rescue. A mystery novel based on a real-life case that was withdrawn from circulation after a libel lawsuit. So I won't write Kennedy off completely, but the next one better be good.

The Death of a Worldly Woman (1948) by A.B. Cunningham

A.B. Cunningham was an American teacher, professor of English and the author of over twenty detective novels featuring the backwoods Sherlock, Jess Roden, who's the sheriff of Deerlick, Kentucky – a county with a shockingly high bodycount. Cunningham's Sheriff Jess Roden series belong to the American school of regional mysteries with writers like Todd Downing and Eunice Mays Boyd. So each book in the series is basically a slice of locally flavored, small-town Americana and country noir.

Cunningham's appeared to have enjoyed some popularity and success with his Sheriff Roden mysteries during the 1940s. Anthony Boucher was a fan ("Cunningham's studies in Americana are unique in the mystery field") who praised "the solid reality of Cunningham's backwoods setting" and "Roden's uniquely effective sleuthing." However, the series has been out-of-print since the end of the 1950s and has regrettably remained out-of-print through out the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. I liked Cunningham's The Strange Death of Manny Square (1941) and Death Haunts the Dark Lane (1948), but it was not until recently I came across another one of Cummingham's mystery novels. In fact, I got my hands on one, of two, Sheriff Roden novels listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). More on that in a moment.

The Death of a Worldly Woman (1948) is the 15th title in the series placing Sheriff Roden, the best detective in the Kentucky Mountains, in a fish-out-water situation.

The backdrop of The Death of a Worldly Woman is the young, bustling city of Norton, situated along the bank of the Green River, which normally doesn't take notice of a short newspaper report about "a woman dying from an overdose of sleeping powders" – until the primarily police investigation made them "sit up and take notice." Miss Dimple Guest, two-time divorcee and leading figure of the Norton smart set, died in her bedroom at Riverside Apartments of an apparent overdose. A bottle of sleeping powders was found on the bedside table. So all the policeman in charge, Myron Tyner, has to do is find out whether she took the overdose by accident or on purpose. Only for evidence to quickly point towards murder.

First of all, the cause of death was not an overdose of sleeping powders, but a classic case of cyanide poisoning. And, considering, how peaceful the scene appeared it obviously had to have been staged. So murder and Chief Polk decides to call in their specialist from the mountainous backwoods across the river, Sheriff Jess Roden, who's clearly out of his element on the streets of Norton and the carpeted hallways of the Riverside Apartments. Fortunately, the small pool of potential suspects were contained to the Riverside Apartments (“she was poisoned in her apartment after the house was locked for the night”). So the sheriff and chief have about nine people to consider. Kirk Leach, a young bachelor, Mrs. Blaze, a widow, the Haneys, Garry Wade and his mother occupying the first and second floor. The basement is occupied by the caretaker and her daughter, Stellie and Fay Mankin. They share their basement room with Stellie's brother-in-law/uncle, Vic Mankin, who even in today's fiction would standout as a Hall of Fame creep.

Like I said, Sheriff Roden is somewhat out of his element even though his (core) methods, or principles, don't differ all that much from most fictitious detectives. Sheriff Roden at one point explains to Chief Polk that "unless the murderer is a madman, he has planned his crime with the same sort of mind you and I have." So what he does is "examine the little group of out of which the victim was taken," because within that closed circle, someone had motive and opportunity – only difference is how the sheriff tackles these problems. Sheriff Roden is not your regular amateur sleuth or city cop and can understand how his character alone garnered Cunningham a fanbase during the 1940s. Even in an atypical novel like this one.

The Death of a Worldly Woman is essentially a Van Dinean-style detective novel, not a Kentucky flavored regional mystery, which is why the backwoods Sherlock's usual approach initially fail. Bumping into proverbial brick walls, getting thrown down the steps of the Riverside Apartments and finding himself in some uncomfortably tight corners. I found one scene rather emasculating when Sheriff Roden, hat in hand, had to ask Chief Polk to tell one of the characters at the Riverside Apartments to stop bullying him, but eventually pulls himself and the case together. So, on a whole, The Death of a Worldly Woman should have been a true vintage elevated by its decidedly non-Van Dinean detective and Cunningham's unvarnished depiction of post-WWII America. For example, on the very first page, Mrs. Blaze hysterically announced she was leaving Riverside Apartments and only for the various agencies to laugh at her ("...there were dozens of families living in tents and trailers and other dozens crowding in together..."). On the surface, it has enough to warrant a reprint. There are, however, a few imperfections and shortcomings keeping it from a place in the first-rank and why this series is never getting reprinted. Not until the copyright expires.

Firstly, the problem of the locked room that's not a locked room at all. This is not a problem, or shortcoming, because neither Cunningham nor Sheriff Roden treated the murder as an impossible crime. If anything, The Death of a Worldly Woman is a blunt example of the closed circle situation and never would have assumed otherwise had it not been for its inclusion in Adey's Locked Room Murders. I think Adey was a little unfair when he called it "the poorest solution of all," because it's not a locked room mystery. What's definitely a shortcoming is the rushed ending crammed into the last, 10-page chapter. I don't know if Cunningham was pleasantly writing along when he realized he had to conclude it and raced towards it, which made for a weak and unsatisfying ending. There were a few details that needed to be elaborated on and explained a little bit further. Cunningham just called it a day and ended the book on this short note, "I guess that's it."

The Death of a Worldly Woman has some points of interest, but the last chapter is too much of a rush job to recommend it. I know who reads this blog and what they want. They would be sore about how this ended. Unfortunately, that's not all.

I mentioned in the review of The Strange Death of Manny Square a recurring character in the series by the name of Big Nig. He accompanies the sheriff across the river to Norton and plays a peripheral role in the case. Let's say that the character has not aged gracefully and likely the reason why publishers have shied away from reprinting the series. So I wish I had something better to report back on, especially as The Death of a Worldly Woman had been on my locked room wishlist for ages. I remember Cunningham had a firmer grasp on the plot in The Strange Death of Manny Square and Death Haunts the Dark Lane. So I still keep an eye out for Who Killed Pretty Becky Low? (1951), the other title listed in Locked Room Murders, and any stray copies of titles like Murder at Deer Lick (1939), Murder at the Schoolhouse (1940) and Death Visits the Apple Hole (1945). Well, I'll try and pick something good next.

Murder in the Gilded Cage (1929) by Samuel Spewack

Samuel Spewack was a Ukrainian-born American journalist, Hollywood screenwriter and novelist who penned two detective novels, The Skyscraper Murder (1928) and Murder in the Gilded Cage (1929), before abandoning the genre – leaving behind two obscure, long out-of-print mystery novels. Obscure, out-of-print but not completely forgotten going by two somewhat modern and very mixed reviews. A 1990 review from William F. Deeck, posted on MysteryFile, dismissed The Skyscraper Murder as hackwork ("show biz has obviously taken its toll on our author"). Mike Grost, on the other hand, praised Murder in the Gilded Cage ("...an entertainingly written mystery story") and called Spewack "an absorbing storyteller." Even drawing an interesting comparison to Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. So on the wishlist it went.

Last year, Spewack's Murder in the Gilded Cage entered the public domain in the US and quickly became available again through sources like Project Gutenberg (free) or the Wildside Press reprint. So on the pile it went.

The story of Murder in the Gilded Case is recounted and told by a Mr. Abbott, an ex-newspaper reporter, who reported on the public and sensational "divorce case that startled the country." Mrs. Dora Breese made a spectacle of "the tortuous trials and appeals" that completely destroyed her ex-husband, Henry, who lost more than just the divorce case and a hefty settlements. Henry was publicly humiliated, abandoned by his children, lost longtime friends and was thrown out of several social clubs. Mrs. Breese loved every minute of it and became upset when interest newspapers, tabloids and the public stopped paying attention to her. So she organized a trip aboard her private yacht (part of the settlement) to her Havana "winter palace" (also part of the settlement).

Mrs. Breese sets sail to Havana, Cuba, accompanied by her two children, Henry Jr. and Countess Giering-Trelovitch, who had a short-lived marriage with a Russian nobleman, family friend Gordon Rice and Abbott – who was hired as Mrs. Breese's personal press agent. Controversially, she also brought along her boytoy, Guy Thomas, who also figured in the divorce trial. So the trouble begins during the voyage as Mrs. Breese announces her intention to marry Guy, Abbott resigns after refusing to play her attention craving, headline grabbing scheme and someone has to be rescued after falling overboard. Only gets worse when they reach their destination. For one, Henry Sr. and Count Giering-Trelovitch turn out to be Havana as well to complete the party. One of these people shot and killed Mrs. Breese.

Fortunately, there's also a Great Detective staying in Havana, Boris Sergeivitch Perutkin, who was "a big gun with the Czarist police" until the Bolsheviks threw him out. Perutkin has a reason to be there. Before the revolution, Perutkin was in Riga to investigate the murder Count Giering-Trelovitch's neighbor, Baron Peter Setovski, who was shot in his bedroom. Count Giering-Trelovitch was the number one suspect, but before Perutkin could draw his conclusions, the revolution forced both the Perutkin and the Count out of Russia. Now all the suspects have reunited in Havana. Perutkin believes the murders of Baron Peter Setovski and Mrs. Breese were done by one and the same hand.

Perutkin is certainly an interesting and striking detective character to introduce in 1929. Mike Grost noted Perutkin has some features that reminds one of Christie's Hercule Poirot, "a flamboyant, good natured, slightly comical sleuth" who admires his own genius ("have I not done an extraordinary piece of detective work?"), but they couldn't handle their cases more differently. Perutkin's logic and reasoning has a blunt, bludgeoning and prefers theatrics and taking shortcuts. Perutkin not only tries to take a shortcut, but charges the chance at a shortcut like a mad elephant. This also makes it funny Perutkin sometimes foreshadows Miss Marple penchant for drawing comparisons to apparently unrelated incidents, but Perutkin's observations aren't about missing umbrellas or the butcher's son courting the maid working up at the big mansion ("I am reminded of the famous Sebastopol tragedy, where someone with a homicidal humor played just such tricks..."). Far from it.

However, Perutkin trying to rush and tackle that early shortcut provides Murder in the Gilded Cage with its most memorable scene and a stage for the second murder. They can't prevent a third murder briefly presented as an impossible crime, "nobody's invented an invisible gun or an invisible man," but that didn't last long as it was quickly revealed to have been ordinary shooting.

So the plot keeps Perutkin and the reader busy enough, but is it any good? I think it can be considered better than what can generally be expected from an obscure, 1920s mystery novel. The plot holds and hangs together well enough, however, it's über conventional, flirts with the odd cliche and barely poses a challenge to the seasoned, suspicious-minded reader – even with the spotty clueing and red herrings. Now, I don't want to sell Spewack short here. While I spotted the killer, there were enough red herrings to keep other options open and the story moving along. There's also a pleasingly clever, underlying logic to the series of murders.

When (SPOILER/ROT13) gur zheqre bs Zef. Oerrfr jnf qvfpbirerq, gur svefg guvat V gubhtug jnf, fubg jnf, fur? Bqq! Tbvat ol gur punenpgre bs Zef. Oerrfr, ure npgvbaf naq gur zbfg ivnoyr fhfcrpgf, lbh rkcrpg fur jbhyq unir orra fgenatyrq be oyhqtrbarq. Znlor fgnoorq, vs n sehvg xavsr be cnve bs fpvffbef jrer unaql. N pbby, qryvorengr naq rssvpvrag bar-fubg xvyy frrzrq bss va guvf fvghngvba. That hunch was correct and (ROT13) jul V jnf nyzbfg qrnq fher nobhg gur zheqrere nf gur zrgubq va guvf pnfg bs punenpgref ernyyl svggrq bayl bar crefba (“...bar-gvzr fbyqvre bs sbeghar”). Again, I don't want to sell Spewack short as he penned a very lively, entertaining and straightforward mystery novel that somehow doesn't read like the über conventional, slightly cliched mystery novel it really is underneath. I was never bored, enjoyed Perutkin's unorthodox detective work and have come across much worst mysteries from this decade. Just disappointing Spewack was unable to do something more with the plot and perhaps some of the characters.

But going by what has been written about The Skyscraper Murder, Spewack improved considerably with Murder in the Gilded Cage. At least it appears to have more consistency than his first stab at the detective story, which is not an unimportant piece of good detective fiction. So maybe it's to be regretted Spewack quietly bowed out of the genre after Murder in the Gilded Cage. I would have liked two, three more Perutkin mysteries to see if Spewack continued to improve or if Murder in the Gilded Cage was his ceiling. The potential was there.

So, all in all, Spewack's Murder in the Gilded Cage is an amusing mystery full with humor, social satire and a detective who believes he's the hype, but too lightly plotted to satisfy the more demanding fan who read detective stories for their plots. But if the light touch to the plot is no objection, it's well worth getting the cheap ebook edition or downloading it.

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Detective Novels from the 1950s

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction is generally narrowed to the interwar period, roughly covering the 1920s and '30s, because the World Wars make convenient bookends for the detective story's post-WWI boom period and post-WWII decline – not everyone agrees. Some have argued it started with E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) or even earlier with G.K. Chesterton's short story collection The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). It also ignores the 1920s was a decade of growing pains as the genre was still putting itself together. And, worse, it dismisses the 1940s. A time when established writers produced some of their best, most mature work and new names appeared on the scene.

I have changed my opinions on the start and end of the Golden Age several times over the years. Placing it first somewhere around the early '20s and coming to an abrupt end in 1949, but later included the 1950s. More recently, I have come to see the Golden Age as a life cycle rather than a clearly, or vaguely, defined period.  

1910-1919: I officially consider this period pre-GAD, but it can be seen as the GADs infancy/nursery

1920-1929: GADs childhood years of discovery, trial and error

1930-1939: GADs adolescence years full of dreams and wild ideas

1940-1941: GAD matured into adulthood

1950-1959: GADs twilight years

The 1960s is the decade when the traditional, fair play detective novel of the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s died with only a few holdouts persisting through the '60s and 1970s – until Gladys Mitchell and Michael Innes turned out the lights in the 1980s. This view is, of course, somewhat of generalization in itself as there were plenty of so-called Golden Age writers who never developed pass the nursery or childhood stage. It works for me and doesn't blot out two decades of which one is rather important and the other too often overlooked. I, too, was skeptical about the fifties, but that decade keeps surprising me. The '30s and '40s were definitely in the rear view mirror, but there was still life in the old thing at this point. So wanted to spotlight that too often ignored twilight decade.

A few years ago, it was all the rage to post top 10 lists of favorite mysteries from the 1920s, '30s and '40s, but doing a list of the twenties would comprise almost entirely of titles from the last three, four years of that decade and would need a top 25 for the other two. So decided to do "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Detective Novels from the 1950s," but my first version bumped into a problem as most of them appeared on previous Hit Lists. It looked more like a thematic copy/paste clipshow post than a top 10 post. I compiled a new list excluding every novel that has appeared on a previous Hit Lists.

So no S.H. Courtier's The Glass Spear (1950), Douglas Ashe's The Longstreet Legacy (1951), Stuart Palmer's Nipped in the Bud (1951), Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54) and Derek Smith's Whistle Up the Devil (1954). Worst of all, I had to scrap one of my all-time favorites, The Danger Within (1952) by Michael Gilbert, because it's already on both "Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels" and "Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Rue Morgue Press." This second iteration of the list was a little trickier to put together, but the result is far more interesting list and representation of what the 1950s had to offer (albeit in diminished quantity) than the original list. There were still titles that didn't make the final cut like Christianna Brand's London Particular (1952), Bruce Campbell's The Clue of the Phantom Car (1953), Christopher Bush's The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) and Asimov's The Naked Sun (1956/57). So you're probably wondering what the hell actually did make the list? Let's find out!

Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) by Herbert Brean

Until fairly recently, Herbert Brean was primarily remembered for Wilders Walks Away (1948), nearly netting him an Edgar for best first novel, but fans today consider Hardly a Man is Now Alive to have been Brean's best mystery novel – a minor classic of the American detective story. The pattern of the story and plot are as intricate as they're simple. Reynold Frame and Constance Wilders plan to get married in the historical town of Concord, Massachussetts, by the 104-year-old Dr. Annandale, but a strange disappearance, a ghost lamp, a phantom army, a historical mystery and a body in a disused well threaten to upset their plans. Jim Noy, of The Invisible Event, called the book "majestic and exhausting and wonderful" offering "a great picture of the genre at a time of huge change." I couldn't agree more and the fact it's has remained out-of-print to this day is baffling.

Night of the Jabberwock (1950) by Fredric Brown

I never understood the popularity of Joel Townsley Rogers' The Red Right Hand (1945), a phantasmagorial crime novel, which somehow bagged the 2020 Reprint of the Year Award. Fredric Brown may not have been the first to try his hands at a criminal flight of fancy, but his Night of the Jabberwock is so much better and imaginative than The Red Right Hand. Doc Stoeger, editor of Carmel City Clarion, is putting the paper to bed as he wishes something newsworthy would happen for him to write about. He then steps out into the night and into, what appears to be, the Twilight Zone. Or, as the title suggests, tumbled down a rabbit hole into a different reality where rationality doesn't exist. A fantastic mystery novels!

Death in Silhouette (1950) by John Russell Fearn

Fearn is my favorite second-stringer, pulp writer and at times a surprisingly decent, sometimes underrated, mystery novelist. Fearn wrote some grossly underrated mysteries like Except for One Thing (1947), Flashpoint (1950) and the posthumously published Pattern of Murder (2006). Death in Silhouette is one such underrated novel which takes place in the house of a modest, middle class family whose members have ordinary jobs like a restaurant cashier or store clerk and no domestic servants. That creates notable change in tone and atmosphere when an engagement party ends with the discovery of the future groom hanging behind the locked door of the basement. Fearn is incredibly cheeky with his solution, but just as interesting as the locked room trickery (simple as it is), is the part the pulp magazines that litter the house play in the story. It has been pointed out this is "one of the best sociological portraits of the popularity of US crime pulps in England." Death in Silhouette deserves more credit than I have given it.

Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) by Seishi Yokomizo

I cheated just a little bit by including The Inugami Clan, because it came as my recommendation for Seishi Yokomizo in "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance,"  but that list was more about writers and their rise from near or total obscurity – not their works. So took that as good enough excuse and how could you not include it on a list of best 1950s mystery novels? The Inugami Clan is the Japanese detective novel taking place at the lakeside villa of a family of influential silk merchants, but the death of the patriarch throws the various, warring branches in a conflict over the inheritance. What follows is a string of grotesque murders as iconic as the book itself and the detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, who eventually solves those murders. A grandiose whodunit and one the grand detective novels from the second-half of the previous century.

The Sleeping Bacchus (1951) by Hilary St. George Saunders

This excellent, often overlooked and out-of-print impossible crime caper has an interesting backstory. Hilary St. George Saunders, who shared the penname "Francis Beeding" with John Palmer, found a copy of Pierre Boileau's Le repos Bacchus (Bacchus Rests, 1938) in Parisian bookshop and asked Boileau's permission to adept the book into English. So a rewrite rather than a translation. Nevetheless, The Sleeping Bacchus is a very fun caper about a debonair, snooty gentleman thief, called "Zed," who stages a series of impossible thefts and miraculous vanishings. I would love a twofer volume with a reprint of Saunders' The Sleeping Bacchus and a translation of Boileau's original version.

Murder Points a Finger (1953) by David Alexander

The dying message is a well-established, popular trope and one that admittedly works much better in short story form than inside a novel-length mystery where they're usually only a small part of the larger plot. There are, however, a few detective novels, not written by Ellery Queen, making real work of the dying message. Alexander's Murder Points a Finger is one of those rare novels in which an ex-policeman and fingerprint expert is shot and mortally wounded, but leaves behind a cryptic message naming his killer with a set of fingerprint cards. Like others, I have always been surprised at the lack of reputation of Murder Points a Finger as it's a very good, if somewhat unusual, mystery novel that has never been exceedingly rare or hard to find. I found my old paperback copy right here in the Netherlands. And that was long before Wildside Press reprinted it. A highlight of the fifties!

Black Widow (1952) by Patrick Quentin

I know crossovers are generally regarded as cheap gimmicks or promotional material, smacking of desperation, but they're my guilty pleasure. There have been some genuinely good detective crossovers over the decades. Notably Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice pooling their detectives in a series of six short stories, starting with "Once Upon a Train" (1950), collected in People vs. Withers and Malone (1963), but arguably one of the best crossovers remains largely unacknowledged. Black Widow takes Peter Duluth from the Quentin's flagship series and frame him for the murder of a young woman. A murder investigated by Quentin's secondary detective, Lieutenant Trant from Death and the Maiden (1939), who starts out believing Duluth guilty and really goes after him. So a legitimate case of when worlds collide, but even without the crossover element, Black Widow still would have been a very well done suspense drama driven by a clever persecution plot. Deserves to be better known.

Cake in the Hat Box (1954) by Arthur W. Upfield

Upfield was not known for creating intricate, maze-like plots or realistic, razor sharp characterization, but, as a so-called regional regional mystery writer, he was nearly unmatched in casting Australia as a backdrop for murder from remote cattle ranches and dying lakes to the desolate Nullarbor Plain – crimes committed there often feel native to the setting. For me, Cake in the Hat Box is the most striking of Upfield's mysteries bringing Bony to the small, dried up desert settlement called Agar's Lagoon. A strange place surrounded by an ever-widening ring of empty bottles and a great place for star gazing or watching meteor showers. Bony strolls into this settlement not long after the local police constable is found shot dead in his jeep. This is one of those novels in which Upfield pleasingly gave more consideration to the plot and harmonized it with the evocative, colorful backdrop. I don't know if there's such a thing as an outback procedural, but if there is, Cake in the Hat Box is a superb example of it.

Captain Cut-Throat (1955) by John Dickson Carr

For some obscure, never fully explained reason, John Dickson Carr's historical fiction is often overlooked or outright ignored. I suppose they're generally considered swashbuckling adventures full with duels and romance, which is not entirely incorrect, but they also have strong detective plots and great mystery hooks. My favorite of Carr's historical mysteries is unquestionably Captain Cut-Throat. A thunderous mix of ghostly murder, spy shenanigans and adventure when the figure of Napoleon loomed large over Europe. Captain Cut-Throat takes place in the summer of 1805 when Napoleon had gathered Armée d'Angleterre to invade England, but an apparently invisible entity is sneaking around the camp and killing sentries. There's also a lot of swashbuckling action and derring-do between the murders exemplified by the midnight chase through the Field of Balloons. I rank Captain Cut-Throat with Carr's best non-historical mysteries.

The Double Turn (1956) by Carol Carnac (a.k.a. E.C.R. Lorac)

I mentioned in past reviews and "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" how Lorac's return to print has done wonders for her once tarnished reputation, because her work dropped out-of-print when she died and was mostly remembered novels which were easy to get secondhand – which didn't include her best work (e.g. Murder by Matchlight, 1945). British Library remedied that by mostly cherry picking the work to reprint that garnered Lorac praise and a reputation during her lifetime. Recently, British Library have begun reprinting the novels publisher the "Carol Carnac" pseudonym and The Double Turn is currently my favorite. Lorac had her own ideas about the detective and preferred to plot her own route through what could have been fairly typical and conventional detective novel. In this case, the apparent locked room murder of the Miss Trimmings, a major-domo of an invalid's household, who's found dead at the bottom of the staircase along with half the ceiling. The problem of the locked house is not the central focus of the plot. This is, after all, still a Lorac novel, but still a solid locked room mystery and a fine example of her home brewed detective fiction.

So, as you can probably gather from the list and cut titles, the 1950s was not without its moments and even produced the occasional classic or noteworthy mystery novel, but after 1955 it undeniable began to taper off. Still enough to consider that decade the twilight years of the Golden Age detectives, before the fire was reduced to embers when the world entered the 1960s. Even then some of those embers were still glowing bright, but that's something for a future list.

She Walks at Night (1948) by Seishi Yokomizo

Back in May, Pushkin Vertigo released their eighth Kosuke Kindaichi novel, Yoru aruku (She Walks at Night, 1948), written by the patriarch of the Japanese honkaku mystery novel, Seishi Yokomizo – translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. No doubt, the book title will make Western readers immediately think of John Dickson Carr's It Walks by Night (1930) and not wholly without reason. But, as Ho-Ling Wong noted in his review, it also smacks of Edogawa Rampo's grotesque tales with its sleepwalkers, hunchbacks and headless corpses.

This bizarre, twisted case begins when Naoki Sengoku consulting Torata Yashiro, a childhood friend and struggling mystery writer, concerning the Furugami Family. Naoki's family has been shepherding the Furugamis, "notorious for their naivety and indecisiveness," through Japan's most turbulent times from the Meiji Restoration to the depression of the 1920s. A much needed stewardship of the Furugami estate and fortune as generations of inbreeding produced a long line of idiots and hunchbacks. Naoki's father, Tetsunoshin Sengoku, even "stepped in as a sort of stud horse" and fathered Yachiyo Furugami with the now widowed, second wife of Oribe Furugami, Lady Oryu. Yachiyo is the reason why Naoki decided to consult and invite Torata to the Furugami estate.

A strange situation has developed as tangled and twisted as their own family tree and backstory. Yachiyo Furugami is the 24-year-old daughter of Lady Oryu and the drunkard Tetsunoshin Sengoku, but her official father, Oribe Furugami, consulted a soothsayer who ensured his daughter is not going to be a hunchback – instead she's destined to marry a hunchback. So good news for Yachiyo's hunchbacked half-brother, Morie, who's fallen in love with his technically not blood related half-sister. Only for her to announce her intention to marry a modernist painter, Koichi Hachiya, who's a hunchback. What worries Naoki is Koichi Hachiya was wounded a year ago when a woman shot him at Cabaret Hana. This still unidentified woman spotted the painter, shouted "you monster" and shot him. Naoki knows the mysterious woman who shot him at the night club is Yachiyo. On top of that, Yachiyo has been receiving bizarre letters alluding to the soothsayer's prophesy or warning her "walk not at night." That's a very odd, very peculiar warning as nobody outside the Furugami household knows she's a sleepwalker.

Torata is intrigued enough to accept Naoki's invitation, but things get progressively more bizarre than Naoki's story suggested and begins the moment they arrive. First of all, the Furugami estate is one of those Ellery-in-Wonderland style buildings, "a clever blend of traditional Edo Period craftsmanship and modern Western design," which gives off "a mysterious, almost otherworldly atmosphere." The bizarre scene greeting them could have been a fever dream: a furiously drunk Tetsunoshin Sengoku, dressed like a samurai, chasing a laughing and jeering Koichi Hachiya with a very real sword ("Bizarre old place, this house. Real monsters' den").

So they take the sword away and decide to lock it away in a safe "requiring both the key and a combination to be unlocked." Torata comes up with a three-word character for the combination lock, while Naoki hangs on to the key. Neither men can open the safe on his own. This precaution provided the plot with a locked room puzzle when the body of a headless hunchback is found. Together, they open the safe and discovered the sword coated in thick, dark blood! But how could the killer have taken and returned the sword from a double locked safe ("objects don't just travel through locked doors")? And then there's the question of identity. Who, exactly, was beheaded? Morie and Koichi are both missing and certain identifying marks ended up not giving a clear cut answer. And why take the head?

There are many more mysterious, horrifying incidents following the murder and discovery of the bloodstained sword, but two months pass without a solution. Inspector Sawada permits them to escape the gossip and chatter of Tokyo to go to their old estate in a remote mountain village in Okayama Prefecture. While traveling to the village, Torata and Naoki are joined by a scruffy, shaggy-haired man with a slight stammer and shabbily dressed in a serge kimono and an exhausted-looking hakama – nobody less than Kosuke Kindaichi. Not that the two man are aware Kindaichi is a well-known private investigator who has the respect and corporation of the police. So the Great Detective doesn't turn up until halfway through the story and his role remains somewhat peripheral, even having to cede the spotlight during the denouement to the murderer's unhinged confession. In spite of that, Kindaichi's low-key entrance into the story immediately added interest and excitement to the case. It's easy to see how the figure of the tousle-haired man in an unfashionable kimono and hakana trousers became as iconic and synonymous with the detective story as the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.

However, not even Kosuke Kindaichi could prevent the murderer from collecting a second head before the case can be closed. So how does it all hold up? Better than first expected.

She Walks at Night is not exactly an immaculately clued detective story, however, I was very please when the second-half began to force me to abandoned the solution I had settled on. You see, I wrongly assumed to have spotted the almost childishly simply method to take and return the sword from the double locked safe (ROT13: Anbxv ghearq uvf onpx jura Gbengn jnf cvpxvat gur guerr-jbeq punenpgre sbe gur pbzovangvba ybpx, ohg jung vs Anbxv unq n cbpxrg zveebe va gur cnyz bs uvf unaq ranoyvat uvz gb ybbx bire uvf fubhyqre. Na byq qbqtr ahyyvslvat gur qbhoyr ybpxf naq thrffrq Anbxv jnf va pnubbgf jvgu Lnpuvlb gb trg evq bs ure byqre unys-oebgure). So, when the second-half rolled around, I had expected nothing more than absorbing, thoroughly entertaining and unchallenging mystery yarn. Fortunately, my armchair solution didn't hold up during the second-half and the locked problem turned on something far more sophisticated and satisfying than the childish magic trick I suspected. Same goes for the who and why. And, while there's definitely an old or two at play, Yokomizo played them very well indeed.

So even though it has its shortcomings, She Walks at Night nonetheless developed in something more complicated than you would expect from a bizarre, nearly pulp-like story teeming with sleepwalkers, hunchbacks, decapitated corpses, missing heads, prophesy and a cursed sword vanishing from a securely locked safe. She Walks at Night is no Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951) and Yokomizo would go on to write a better, bizarrely grotesque family murder mystery in Akuma ga kitarite fue o fuku (The Devil's Flute Murders, 1951/53), but She Walks at Night is a solid, mid-tier entry in the Kosuke Kindaichi series and the current translations. This series remains a highlight of the translation wave, because getting to read these previously inaccessible Golden Age mysteries is something not even best shin honkaku mysteries can match. So look forward to Jooubachi (The Queen Bee Mystery, 1951/52), coming next spring, which is apparently a high-profile Kosuke Kindaichi novel that "often makes the jump to both the small and the silver screen."

Locked Room Puzzles (1986) edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini

So, back in May, I added "The Locked Library," a companion page to "The Muniment Room," which is a permanent, easy to edit update of "The Updated Mammoth List of My Favorite Tales of Locked Murders & Impossible Crimes" – essentially doubles as my version of "99 Novels for a Locked Room Library." I kind of forgot to post a short blog update to draw everyone's attention to the new page and there has been a lull of impossible crime reviews this month. No opportunity to mention it in passing. That oversight has been corrected and now onto the next.

Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in This Bank is a Thief (2026) was the last impossible crime novel to be reviewed on this blog with not even short locked room mystery story between then and now. A whole month with only a single locked room mystery reviewed! I've no idea what came over me, but was determined to close out this month some impossible crimes.

I decided to take this opportunity to finally reread Locked Room Puzzles (1986), edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini, which is the third of five themed mini-anthologies in the Academy Mystery Novellas series. Locked Room Puzzles was my second ever, locked room-themed anthology after Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) that gave me a rare John Dickson Carr novella and second stories for Edward D. Hoch, Bill Pronzini and Clayton Rawson – whom I all read for the first time in Ashley's anthology. So thought it was time to give Locked Room Puzzles a second read.

The first, of four, novellas is John Dickson Carr's "The Third Bullet," originally published (as by "Carter Dickson") in 1937, but this shortened version appeared in the January, 1948, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. "The Third Bullet" features a rare, one-shot detective character, Colonel Marquis, who's the Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police and prototype character of Colonel March from The Department of Queer Complaints (1940). Note a similar one-shot detective starred in one of Carr and Val Gielgud's stage play, "Thirteen to the Gallows" (1944). Colonel Marquis and his subordinate, Inspector Page, confront a murder as confusingly impossible as any of the case brought Colonel March's Department D-3 at Scotland Yard.

Mr. Justice Charles Mortlake, recently retired, was a so-called red judge presiding over "serious offenses like murder or manslaughter," but the liberal judge was well-known for his leniency on the bench. However, Justice Mortlake was surprisingly hard on a man, named Gabriel White, who got "fifteen strokes of the cat and eighteen months' hard labor for robbery with violence" – despite it being his first offense based on shaky evidence. White didn't take the sentencing, nor the flogging very well and threatened the judge, which he kept up even after being released. White apparently kept his word, entered the judge's guarded house and shot him inside his private pavilion practically in front of two policemen. Even admitting to having fired one of the shots, but a shot, he says, completely missed Mortlake. A second gun is discovered hidden inside the pavilion, but then the autopsy reveals the bullet came from a third, yet to be discovered gun. That makes the whole mess a total impossibility, because "out of four sides of a square, one was a blank wall, one was impregnable with rusted bolts, and the other two were watched." So nobody, except White, could have shot Mortlake inside that locked and guarded pavilion, but he appears to be innocent. Who did it and how?

I guess whittling down "The Third Bullet" from a novel to a novella has come at the cost of Carr's normally cavalier clueing, but nonetheless enjoyed this competently put together little locked room puzzle. While not as strongly clued as a top-tier Carr, "The Third Bullet" demonstrates his talent for misdirection and muddying the waters without muddying the story or plot. So, of course, the Merrivalean blinkin' cussedness of things has a big sway over the plot making the simple and straightforward look labyrinthine. All perfectly handled by Colonel Marquis and Inspector Page. So the only thing that can really be said against "The Third Bullet" is that Carr has written better locked room mysteries, because of course he has.

The second story is Bill Pronzini's "Booktaker," plucked from the short story collection Casefile (1983), which finds the Nameless Detective in his brand new, Dumm Street office when a client comes knocking, John Rothman – owner of San Francisco's largest secondhand bookshop. A three-story building crammed with everything from "reading copies of popular fiction and nonfiction to antiquarian books, prints and the like," but someone has been helping themselves to rare books, etchings, prints and old maps locked away in the third-floor Antiquarian Room. A room that's always kept locked with only Rothman and two employees having keys ("...out of bounds to customers..."). The room is also protected by an electronic gateway that triggers an alarm if anyone tries to leave the room with an item that wasn't scanned and cleared. Somehow, it barely slowed down the thief and Rothman suspects an inside job.

Nameless gets hired to go undercover at the bookstore under the ever so subtle alias of Jim Marlowe ("...in honor of Raymond Chandler") and root out the thief. And rooting around his does. More than enough rooting and digging to make the thief nervous enough to do something really stupid and short sighted, but too late as Nameless already figured out who and how of behind the impossible thefts. "Booktaker" is one of a dozen novels and short stories Pronzini contributed to that mysterious, short-lived locked room revival from the 1980s and one of my favorites from this series. Not only has it a great and surprising premise for a hardboiled detective story with a solution as clever as it's simple, but it has a fantastic example of a red herring doubling as a clue (SPOILER/ROT13: jul gur guvrs unq gb tb sebz fgrnyvat ener obbxf gb inyhnoyr zncf vf obgu n terng pyhr naq na rssrpgvir fzbxr fperra). So, yes, this one more than stood up to another, long overdue reread.

The third story is Clayton Rawson's "From Another World," originally published in the June, 1948, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, in which Ross Harte visits the Great Merlini hoping to learn something about ESP and PK. Harte is writing a magazine article on Extra Sensory Perception and shortly has to interview a millionaire, Andrew Drake, who wants to invest millions of dollars into psychic research – if he can be convinced. So a demonstration is planned between Drake and a well-known medium, Rosa Rhys. Merlini smells trouble when he hears her name and when they arrive at Drake's home, they're met by Dr. Garrett, who had just arrived following a distressed phone call from Drake. Rosa Rhys and Drake had locked and sealed themselves away in his private office for their ESP experiment, but they give response to their knocking. So they break down the door to find Rosa knocked unconscious and Drake dead from a stab wound. The door and windows were not only securely locked from the inside, but sealed was not only tightly locked from the inside, but the door was sealed with gummed paper tape!

"From Another World" is a fairly well-known, often anthologized story and not entirely without reason. Rawson came up with a good and original locked room-trick to explain that tricky conundrum of the so-called tape sealed room, however, it was pointed out a few years ago it has a giant, gaping plot hole I missed the first two times. Now that it has been pointed out and reading back my review of The Great Merlini: The Complete Stories of the Magician Detective (1979), "From Another World" definitely has lost some of its former prestige. I still liked the idea behind the locked room-trick.

Finally, Edward D. Hoch's "Day of the Wizard," originally published in the August, 1963, issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine, mixes exotic adventure, impossible mysteries and Cold War intrigue in Egypt. The US government desperately needs Simon Ark to help them track down the wreck of a plane, carrying a highly secret and sensitive cargo, which crashed somewhere in the desert at the end of World War II. So they ask Ark's friend and his nameless narrator to track the ancient detective down, presumably somewhere in Cairo. Our narrator has the luminous idea to ask a local magician, the Wizard, to issue an open challenge to Simon Ark to solve his most miraculous of magic tricks ("you get the publicity and I find Simon").

The Wizard agrees and asks him to buy a good, strong and reliable padlock to securely lock an empty cabinet. The door is closed, the padlock snapped into place and the keyhole plugged with a matchstick ("...broke off flush with the surface of the lock...") – sealed with drops of candle wax. The Wizard then asks what should appear inside the locked and sealed closet when they open it the next day ("the most beautiful girl in Cairo"). Simon Ark turns up before the closet is unsealed, but when it's opened, the problems really begin. A drugged, unconscious woman is found lying at the bottom of the closet followed by a murder and a track through the desert to hunt for the wrecked airplane and its mysterious cargo. Rest assured, "Day of the Wizard" is better and more consistent than my description perhaps suggests. Hoch expertly strung together the miraculous appearance of the girl in the closet and the murder with the hunt for the lost airplane and it's highly sensitive cargo, even throwing in an impossible disappearance during a brief desert sandstorm ("...vanished now as completely as if the sand had swallowed her up"). And played more than fairly with the reader. That makes for a very attractive, slightly unusual story and a highlight of the Simon Ark series. I agree with Mike Grost that this is "one of Hoch's most Carr-like stories."

Historically, "Day of the Wizard" is a fascinating and not wholly unimportant contribution to the locked room mystery simply on account of the padlock. I commented in the past you rarely ever see padlocks being used in locked room mysteries, because they're notoriously unreliable and easy to pick open. So it really difficult to pull off a convincing impossible crime scenario when the only thing keeping the door locked is a simple padlock. Hoch picked up the challenge like Carr and Rawson tackled the problem of the tape-sealed room to deliver the most definitive padlock-trick. Great stuff!

Greenberg and Pronzini's Locked Room Puzzles is perhaps not the greatest or most exciting locked room anthology you can get your hands on today, it's still a great starter anthology for those new to the wondrous world of impossible crimes and locked room murders. Locked Room Puzzles gives you an obscure John Dickson Carr novella, Rawson's famous take on the tape-sealed room and two gems from Hoch and Pronzini. So a must-have for everyone who wants to build their own locked room library.