Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) is arguably one of the most famous whodunits ever written, set aboard the Orient Express traveling from Istanbul to Calais, populated with a cast of characters as memorable as the assembly of gargoyles from Death on the Nile (1937) – topped with a rich, elaborate plot and grant solution. A truly iconic detective novel and a classic of its kind, but, during the internet era, the book seems to have been downgraded a little. Apparently, the story with its exaggerated characters, world famous setting and surprise ending is too gimmicked that does not stand-up to rereading. 

So I marked the book for rereading and revisiting Murder on the Orient Express was like rereading John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins (1934) all over again. Murder on the Orient Express is to the closed-circle whodunit what The Three Coffins is to the locked room mystery. The utterly bizarre and fantastically impossible done right! One of the characters remarked that "the whole thing is a fantasy." I agree. But it worked. There were few other mystery writers at the time, or even today, who could have pulled it off. Christie did it with flying colors! 

Murder on the Orient Express begins on a winter's morning in Aleppo, Syria, where Hercule Poirot has finished an unrecorded case that "saved the honour of the French Army" and is waiting to board the Taurus Express to Stamboul – intending to take a short holiday to see the city. A telegram is waiting for him at the hotel with an urgent plea to return to London and he books a sleeping car accommodation in the Stamboul-Calais coach of the Orient Express.

Normally, it's a slack period at that time of year and there are few people traveling with trains being almost empty, but it appears "all the world elects to travel tonight." Poirot finds an "extraordinary crowd" as his traveling companions as the Orient Express "on its three-days'' journey across Europe."

There's an unpleasant American businessman, Samuel Ratchett, who Poirot likened to a wild and savage animal in a respectable suit. Ratchett brought along his personal secretary and valet, Hector MacQueen and Edward Masterman. Mrs. Hubbard is an elderly, American lady and always complaining, raising an alarm or talking about her daughter and grandchildren. She has a presence, to put it kindly. Greta Ohlsson is a Swedish is a trained nurse and matron in a missionary school near Stamboul on holiday. Colonel Arbuthnot is the consummate soldier on leave and traveling from India to England, but he has own, secretive reason to come by overland route instead of the sea. Miss Mary Debenham is a British governess to two children in Baghdad and is returning to London on holiday. There are two American businessmen, Cyrus Hardman and Antonio Foscarelli, who are respectively a traveling salesman of typewriting ribbons and an agent for Ford motor cars. But there are also members of the old European aristocracy among the passengers. Count and Countess Andrenyi are a young diplomatic couple from Hungary. Princess Dragomiroff is remnant of a vanished world, "ugly as sin, but she makes herself felt," who's extremely rich with an iron-bound determination. She brought along her German lady's maid, Hildegarde Schmidt. Lastly there are M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits, whose "acquaintance with the former star of the Belgian Police Force dated back many years." The attendant of the Istanbul Calais coach, Pierre Michel, who has been a loyal employee of the company for over fifteen years. Finally, a little Greek physician, Dr. Constantine, who provides Poirot with an important piece of medical evidence.

For three days these people, "of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages," are brought together under one roof only to go their separate ways at the end of the three-day journey – "never, perhaps, to see each other again." But this journey was never destined to go according to schedule.

Poirot overhears an intimate conversation between two apparent strangers and Ratchett tries to hire him to help protect his life, which has been threatened by an enemy. Poirot turns him down ("I do not like your face, M. Ratchett") and what follows is tumultuous night in the Istanbul-Callais coach. Sounds of cries and groans. Mrs. Hubbard making a big cry about a man in her compartment who couldn't have been there. A woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono stalking down the corridor and banging on doors. The conductor tending to the needs of the passenger as he moved from compartment to compartment to answer all the tingling bells.

On the following morning, everyone aboard awakes to the news that the train has run into a snowdrift and they're now stuck somewhere in Yugoslavia. What makes their position a particularly precarious is discovery that Ratchett was brutally stabbed to death in his berth. Evidence tells them nobody could have left since they ran into the snowdrift and the murderer is still with them on the train.

M. Bouc implores Poirot to solve the case before the Yugoslavian police can have their way with his highly esteemed customers and reminds Poirot he has often heard him say "to solve a case a man has only to lie back in his chair and think." So he wants him to "interview the passengers on the train, view the body, examine what clues there are" and then let "the little grey cells of the mind" do their work. Murder on the Orient Express certainly presents one of Poirot's most fascinating investigations on record as they have "none of the facilities afforded to the police" and "have to rely solely on deduction."

Firstly, Poirot takes a page from R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke by using an old-fashioned hatbox, spirit lamp and a pair of curling tongs to make words reappear on a charred fragment of paper – which he found on the victim's bedside table. The words Poirot briefly made legible told him who Ratchett really was and this knowledge places an entirely different complexion on the case and passengers. So the middle section of the story comprises of a series of interviews, but this portion can hardly be described as "Dragging the Marsh." On the contrary! It's an example how to write a series of interrogations without dragging the story to a snail's pace like a weighted rope was tied to it. Poirot acts as both a detective and armchair general as he varies how he approaches each potential suspect. Poirot's methods with one passenger could be a complete contrast to his handling of another passenger. Methodically, the little Belgian detective gathers all the crumbs his fellow passengers left on the table during these interviews and subsequent investigation, but that would understate just how brashly clued Murder on the Orient Express really is.

Christie recklessly alluded to the truth almost from the start and never stopped. If you already know the solution, you almost want to tell her to stop in giving the whole game away. But that's what separates the true masters from the second-stringer who too often guard a second-rate clue from the reader. However, Christie not only was overly generous with her clues and hints, but she openly casts aspersion on the red herrings she planted herself! Poirot notes that the victim's compartment is "full of clues," but wonders whether he can "be sure that those clues are really what they seem to be." Christie even had a physical manifestation of the red herring prancing around the train. All these clues and red herrings form a delightful and contradictory picture with the "affair advances in a very strange manner."

There's also the ghosts of the locked room mystery and impossible crime stalking the compartments and corridors of the Orients Express. The door of Ratchett's compartment was chain-locked on the inside and the communicating door bolted on the other side in addition to two people who were seen on the train, but they cannot be found anywhere. However, these are quasi-impossibilities instead of a full-blown locked room mysteries, which is why I didn't tag this review as a locked room mystery. But it was a nice touch to the story. 

Murder on the Orient Express cements its status as a classic with a beautifully handled ending as Poirot gathers everyone in the dining car to propound two solutions to the murder. One of them is simple and full of holes, while the second solution is complicated, grotesquely fantastic, highly original and strangely convincing. A resolution that will have some readers check their moral compass to see if its broken. Sure, the passage of time has dulled the surprise and originality of the solution a little, but shouldn't detract from an overall first-class performance demonstrating why she rivaled the Bible and William Shakespeare. Deservedly so! 

Notes for the curious: the character of Dr. Constantine was very likely a nod to Molly Thynne's series-detective, Dr. Constantine, who's a Greek doctor and amateur detective. Why a nod or acknowledgment to that obscure detective? The second of Thynne's Dr. Constantine detective novels, Death in the Dentist's Chair (1933), shares a rather unique, language-based clue with Murder on the Orient Express. I wonder if Christie intended her Dr. Constantine to be same as Thynne's Dr. Constantine considering his role in the story. There's another possible crossover, one of the characters seems to have had a previous appearance in The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), which is never acknowledged, but it would make sense if they were one and the same person – since (ROT13) gur Oyhr Genva pnfr pbhyq unir tvira gur pbafcvengbef gur vqrn gb hfr gur Bevrag Rkcerff. Finally, I reviewed Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 78 back in August and the headline story, “Mystery Express,” is an ingenious and warm homage to Murder on the Orient Express.

The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) by Anthony Berkeley

Nearly a century ago, the Daily Mirror serialized a detective novel by Anthony Berkeley, The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) as by "A.B. Cox," which was published as a competition that challenged the reader to find an answer to the three basic questions of the detective story – namely who, why and how. The correct solution, "or the entry that is most nearly correct," could earn a first prize of £250. A nice chunk of pocket money in the 1920s! 

A year later, Berkeley revised the original text and The Wintringham Mystery was republished in novel form under the title Cicely Disappears (1927) that was credited to the obviously pseudonymous "A. Monmouth Platts." But, after its publication, the book plunged front cover first into obscurity. Only murmurs that surrounded the story for almost a century is that Archie and Agatha Christie and her husband were runners-up in the competition ("The Crime That Christie Couldn't Crack"). Now, ninety-five years later, HarperCollins has reissued the book as part of their Collins Crime Club series. This new edition restored the original title, but kept the revised text from Cicely Disappears and comes with an insightful introduction by critic, editor and genre historian, Tony Medawar. So let's see how Berkeley's most elusive detective novel measures up to his other mysteries from the period.

Stephen Munro stepped out of the trenches of the First World War decorated with a Distinguished Service Order and a Military Cross into a nice little inheritance from his late uncle. Figuring he deserved "to have half a dozen years of life and let the future go to pot," Stephen became a carefree, frolicking gentleman of leisure, but now the money has dried up and has been trying to find a job for months – noticing "a distinct slump in the market for promising young men." Fortunately, Lady Susan Carey, at Wintringham Hall, sorely needed a footman now that the old lady has decided to do a bit more entertaining. Stephen is expected to start performing his duties on the day a house party is expected to arrive.

A transition that's awkward enough without some familiar face being part of the house party to make the situation embarrassing. There's an old flame of Stephen, Pauline Mainwaring, who arrives at Wintringham Hall with her fiance, Sir Julian Hammerstein. A well-known stockbroker and one of the wealthiest man in London. Freddie Venables is Lady Susan's nephew and an acquaintance of Stephen who refuses to treat him as a mere servant, which is liable to make "the house feel awkward and the servants' hall resentful." Particularly the butler, Martin, proves to be a thorn in Stephen's side. But they're not the only people present who can make things awkward or difficult.

Lady Susan never forgave her niece, Millicent Carey, for not having being born a boy, because "the glories of Wintringham Hall must be allied to some other name" as there were no male Careys in the direct line. She has a greater affection for Cicely Vernon than "Cicely than for any member of the younger generation" and has "the girl to stay with her on every possible opportunity." The other participants of the house party includes Lady Susan's companion, Miss Rivers. A young and distant cousin of Millicent and Lady Susan, Miss Annette Agnew, who's very direct and modern. Miss Agnew doesn't care very much about another guest, Miss  "Baby" Cullompton, who cultivated a personality matching her nickname. Colonel Uffculme is a long-time friend of Lady Susan and full with stories about his time in India ("when I was in Bengal in '93... or was it '94?"). John Starcross recently garnered fame as an explorer by crossing "some of the hitherto unpenetrated hinterland of South America" and no country house party was no complete without him. Henry Kentisbeare is a gentleman of leisure who lives on the resources of his friends. So a house full with all the potential for trouble.

The trouble begins when Freddie finds a book on witchcraft in the library, describing spells to make people vanish into thin air, suggesting they have "a pop at the disappearing stunt" in preference to playing bridge. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the idea, but Freddie eventually gets his way and Cicely volunteers to be victim for his vanishing-act which they staged in the drawing room – while Cicely is surrounded with every exit closely guarded. Chapter VI: The Séance has a handy plan of the drawing room marking where everyone sat or stood during the séance. Cicely disappears without a trace from the guarded, pitch-black room amid screams, rapping sounds and the smell of chloroform. Stephen and Pauline turn amateur detective to find Cicely and figuring out how she could have vanished as if by magic.

So, while the detective story that follows is well written and amusing enough, the weight of the plot does not justify the length of the story. The Wintringham Mystery is a short story stretched out to book length. A very well done piece of stretching, but not even Berkeley could disguise that most of the story was padding. Quality padding. But padding nonetheless. Anthony Abbot played a similar game in his short story "About the Disappearance of Agatha King" (1932) to much better effect, because it wasn't padded out to a novel-length detective story. That being said, it was interesting to see Berkeley having fun with subverting the reader's expectations and playing around with tropes. Such as (ROT13) vtabevat gur cerfrapr bs n frperg cnffntr nf n fbyhgvba sbe gur ybpxrq ebbz fvghngvba naq gur furanavtnaf jvgu gur qrngu-genc. You can already see the mind at work that would produce The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Jumping Jenny (1933) and his brilliant contribution to The Floating Admiral (1931) a few years later.

But, as it stands, The Wintringham Mystery stands as a fairly entertaining, but thinly-plotted and padded out, curiosity with occasional glimmers, or should that be premonitions, of things to come. However, while not a classic of its kind, I'm still glad I got to read this nearly forgotten, early detective novel by one of the Golden Age greats. I think admirers of Berkeley will be the ones who will appreciate this book the most.

A Time for Murder (2002/13) by John Glasby

John S. Glasby was a British chemist, mathematician and a prolific fiction writer who wrote everything from science-fiction, supernatural stories and westerns to Foreign Legion sagas, hospital romances and hardboiled private eye novels on commission – producing over 300 novels and short stories under countless pennames. Glasby continued "to write with undimmed power" right up until his death, aged 82, in 2011. Over the past twenty years, a number of Glasby's novels have been reprinted in addition to several posthumous short story collections. One novel, in particular, attracted my attention for obvious reasons. 

A Time for Murder (2002/13) is advertised as an impossible murder of a kingpin of organized crime that's dropped in the lap of Glasby's most well-known series-character, Johnny Merak. A private detective from Los Angeles and one-time crook who spent three years in prison on a frameup and turned on his own organization, which (I think) lead him into becoming a private detective. Not sure how that exactly worked out.

So not exactly top-rate pulp and the Johnny Merak page, on The New Thrilling Detective Website, warns the reader to expect "a lot of breathlessly purple prose" set "in a mythical America populated by mostly over-sexed babes and gangsters" driving big, shiny cars. The page also airs the suspicion "that many, if not all, of the later Johnny Merak novels published since 2007 were actually regurgitated and possibly retitled novels dating back to the fifties." There are some hints in A Time for Murder that stuff has been added to an older story, but I'll get to that in a minute. First let's get to the story.

Johnny Merak is hired by Carlos Galecci, "one of the top man in the Organization," who believes somebody is out to kill him and wants Merak, as an ex-criminal, to dig around a little, but "a man like him makes a lot of enemies on the way to the top" – which makes his job a timely process of elimination. Three days later, Merak is summoned by Galecci's righthand man, Sam Rizzio, to the private, well guarded residence of his client. Rizzio wants to know why Galecci hired Merak, because he's currently trying to find out if anything has happened to him.

Galecci has a private, room-sized vault where he keeps his cash money and a collection of antique clocks worth no less than a hundred grand a piece. Every night, at precisely eleven-fifty, he goes in and comes out again a couple of hours later, but this time he hasn't. Only he knows the combination to open the vault door. When Merak arrives, a man is busy cutting the six-inch thick steel around the lock with an oxy-acetylene torch and eventually the door is opened to reveal the crime boss sitting at a table in the middle of the vault. There was a large metal box on the table stuffed with money ("obviously... robbery wasn't the motive") and the walls were hung with clocks of all sizes and shapes, "ticking away the minutes and seconds," but not a trace of the person who plunged a knife in Galecci's back!

Merak is baffled how a murderer could have entered the solid, steel-lined locked vault with only the dead man knowing the combination and a guards stationed outside the door and around the premise, but feels obligated to find his client's murderer. And that's where his real problems begins.

Sam Rizzio tells Merak he has no further need for his services and is rehired on the spot by the freshly-minted widow, Gloria Galecci, who believes she's next in line to be murdered. Galecci left a will that makes Gloria the sole heir of his criminal fiefdom and she intends on running it, but Merak knows Rizzio isn't going to take it lying down. So he begins to go through the motions of a run-of-the-mill gangster thriller with kidnappings at gunpoint, dangerous driving and speeding bullets, but there was actually a good scene when Merak was spirited away to a remote mansion to meet "a man who basked in the shadows," Enrico "The Boss" Manzelli – head of the entire Los Angeles Organization. Other than that, the only thing that makes the story standout is its locked room mystery full with potentially good ideas and the ghosts of clues.

Merak briefly discusses and rejects a surprisingly simplistic, but elegant, solution to the whole locked room setup. Suggesting the murdered had "knifed Galecci just as he'd opened the vault, carried him inside and set him up in that chair, before letting themselves out" and "closing the door behind them." Regrettably, the circumstances and the plot didn't allow the false and real solution to be switched around, because the simple, no-nonsense false-solution would have fitted the hardboiled style better than the more pulpier one. There were also hints that could have become good clues (ROT13): anzryl Tnyrppv'f ivfvgf gb gur inhyg univat n ebhgvar nf ur qvq “rirelguvat cerpvfryl ba gur qbg” in combination with gur qbpgbe fgngvat ur qvrq nebhaq zvqavtug naq gur pbagrag bs gur inhyg, which stood out in an otherwise very thinly plotted story. So it didn't take me very long to piece together the solution to the locked room puzzle. Glasby also picked an interesting murderer and a somewhat fresh motive, but neither were very well clued or given serious attention until near the end. However, the character is present throughout the story.

So, purely as a hardboiled private eye novel, Glasby's A Time for Murder has nothing particularly noteworthy to offer, but, as locked room mystery, it's an interesting curiosity. One that earnestly tried to introduce a cerebral locked room problem into a fast-moving world populated with tough guys, dangerous dames and menacing crime lords who operate from the shadows. A combination that has been attempted before and since with much more success, but a well intended attempt from Glasby that makes the story an interesting curiosity for everyone who's neck deep into impossible crime fiction. 

Notes for the curious: I mentioned there were clues and hints, here and there in the story, suggesting A Time for Murder is an older story that was touched up a little to be published as a modern P.I. Firstly, you have the historical clues. There are several references to the 1920s. One of the gangster makes a reference to a possible "return to the bad old days of the twenties" and the need to maintain order, which is something a gangster from the (more or less) immediate post-prohibition era would say than towards the end of the century. Another reference comes when a block just behind Central Avenue is described as "one of those places that had been up since the beginning of the century" and "had seen everything from before the roaring twenties to prohibition and the gangster era" before settling down as a collection of "dingy bars, night clubs and strip shows" – which is a brief history placing the story in the 1950s or early '60s. So the story definitely had a pre-2002/2013 publication, or version, but there are also some technological clues suggestion stuff had been added later. Cars, guns and landline telephones are the most sophisticated pieces of technology in the story, which also pushes the dating of the book closer to the fifties or sixties. But it made two things particular stick out. When Merak is brought to the mansion of the big crime boss, he "scanned the corners of the wall for any cameras" that might be studying his reaction. I know CCTV is an inheritance from World War II and the possibility was there as early as 1949 to have a live (unrecorded) monitoring television system, but it was pretty obscure until recording the footage was possible. That didn't happen until 1960s and '70s. A second thing that stood out is when Merak burglarized a shop, he cuts a hidden wire that would trigger an alarm at police headquarters, if he tried to force the window. This kind of (wired) burglar alarm seems too modern for the 1950s and too antiquated for the 2000s and 2010s. So here have a story clearly set somewhere around the middle of the previous century, but with two different publication dates from the next century and stylistic touches suggesting the text was slightly modernized. Long story short, Thrilling Detectives is probably right about the 2000s titles being retitled novels.

An addendum: Philip Harbottle emailed an important correction as the later Merak stories are not rewrites of earlier stories. I was given permission to add his correction as an addendum to the review, because I didn't want to remove or smudge over my mistake. So here is Harbottle's email: 

Pretty fair review of my friend and client John Glasby's novel, for which I thank you, but I would be very grateful if you could remove the rather offensive garbage quoted from that website—which you appear to endorse—that all later Merak stories were rewrites of earlier works. THEY ARE NOT. There were only 2 novels published in the late 50s: Blood on My Shadow (1956) and This Time Forever (1957). A third, The Savage City, followed in 1961, when the original publisher reprinted the first of them with a new title, Racket Incorporated, and when it was reprinted in the US in 1973, it was called The Organization. I preferred Racket Incorporated when I had it reprinted. ALL the others, beginning with A Time to Die, were brand new, original novels which John Glasby wrote at my request. He was halfway through a new one when he sadly died, and the fragment remains unfinished and unpublished. These later novels were of course simply SET in the late 1950s, which is the period Merak operated. Similarly, the text was NOT edited and updated by me, or anyone else. The second novel, This Time Forever (1957) has sadly never been reprinted, only because I have never been able to find a copy! The author never possessed one, since Spencer didn’t provide comps. I suspect it may well be one of the best, judging by Adey’s description.

The Case of Alan Copeland (1937) by Moray Dalton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931) by Anthony Abbot

"Anthony Abbot" was the pseudonym of Charles Fulton Oursler, an American journalist, editor, playwright and writer, who Mike Grost rightfully called "one of the most of the "little known" mystery writers" and, like Ellery Queen, "an early follower of S.S. van Dine" – distinguishing himself by presenting the traditional Van Dine-Queen detective story as a modern police procedural. The detective in Abbo's detective novel is not an amateur dilettante with police connections, but the Police Commissioner of Greater New York, Thatcher Colt. A well tailored policeman who resorted "to no magic except applied intelligence" and "relying invariably on strict police practice" with the invaluable cooperation of "scientists and their laboratories."

So take Abbot's interest in the latest, cutting-edge police techniques and his skillful handling of  intricate, maze-like plots with a penchant for misdirection, you can understand why so many consider him as one of the more important American mystery novelists of the 1930s. Despite his credentials, Abbot's work has been out-of-print since the fifties. You really need a bit of luck to find reasonably priced copies, especially those from the early thirties.

During the past year, I was lucky enough to come across two novels and a short story, "About the Disappearance of Agatha King" (1932) and About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932), which were both glittering examples of the Golden Age detective story – demonstrating a deft hand at both clueing and misdirection. Recently, I got my hands on a cheap, hardcover copy of About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931) in poor condition, but still perfectly readable. A novel that came with the warning that the story showed far less of the colorful storytelling and imaginative plotting than "the best of Abbot's writing," but has "an original impossible crime" as its central puzzle and "this impossibility is the best part of this work." There's actually a second impossibility that's even better!

Firstly, I need to point out that About the Murder of the Night Club Lady strongly reminded me of the detective novels of another little-known writer of the Van Dine-Queen School, Roger Scarlett. Scarlett's Murder Among the Angells (1932) helped shape the Japanese yakata-mono (mansion story) mystery and this novel can be categorized as one with most of the action taking place in the Night Club Lady's spacious penthouse on the twenty-second floor of a New York skyscraper. More on that in a moment. 

About the Murder of the Night Club Lady opens in the Crystal Room of the Ritz, on New Year's Eve, where the District Attorney, Merle Dougherty, has summoned Thatcher Colt and Tony Abbot to discreetly discuss "a highly secret criminal investigation" he has been personally conducting. Something the Police Commissioner not wholly approves of ("the functions of police of the police were too often usurped by the District Attorneys"), but Doughtery apparently discovered a breakthrough in a string of jewel robberies. The D.A. believes the thieves are in cahoots with somebody "who hob-nobs with the swells and plans the jobs." Someone who freely moves around the upper-crust of New York City. Doughterty believes the higher-up is no less a figure than the Night Club Lady.

Lola Carewe is "the most mysterious woman in New York," a "dangerous beauty" better known as the Night Club Lady, who got her break as a cinema performer and became a widow a year after her sensational marriage to a cotton millionaire, Gaylord Gifford – who barely left enough money to pay the undertaker. Yet, she continues to live in luxury and spend money like water. Doughtery wanted to meet Colt at the Crystal Room to get a close-up look of the famous Night Club Lady, but they are in for a surprise! Lola arrives at the Ritz in the company of Vincent Rowland, a well-known, sharp-eyed railroad attorney, who "loved to play Crœsus to modern young painters." The three men observe the two having "a spirited discussion" as Lola scribbles a note, which is passed to their table. Lola wanted to talk serious police business with Colt.

A week ago, Lola's dog unexpectedly died and the day before her parrot died under similar circumstances, which is to say that the animal hospital were unable to determine the cause of death. They could "find no trace of any poison at all." Only an hour ago, she received a threatening letter promising she was going to die before three o'clock that night.

Colt dispatches several detectives to the top floor penthouse on East Fifty-Eighth Street, "an aerie perched high in the New York skyline like the nest of some predatory bird," which Lola shares with several other people. There's her elderly mother, Mrs. Carewe. A close friend of Lola, Christine Quires, who has been living with them for the past few months. They employ a Chinese butler, Chung Wong Duk, whose backstory, as an Oxford educated "civilian observer" in the service of his government, could very well have served as the model for one of C. Daly King best characters, Katoh – who's the Japanese valet/spy of King's gentleman detective, Philip Tarrant (The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant, 2003). Lastly, there's the maid, Eunice James, who has done a bit of domestic spying herself. So, when the police arrives, all the rooms are thoroughly searched and guards posted at every door and window "except the ones that open on a sheer drop to the street." The terrace and rooftop were not overlooked or left unguarded. Everything appears to be secure, but an unguarded moment of carelessness proved fatal.

Lola says she's going to get her cigarette case from the guest-room, ignoring Colt's warning not to go in alone, but, before anyone could go with her, she went inside. Almost immediately followed by piercing scream and the sound of a body falling to the floor. What they find inside is a dying Lola, "contorted almost into the form of a question mark," but without a single suspicious mark or scratch on her body. And she was all alone in the room.

So the entire New York police apparatus is put into motion and "a corps of specialists was being organized and dispatched to the scene," which range from the Medical Examiner and police photographers to the Captain of the local precinct. Detectives who arrived from Headquarters began to search the penthouse again, while others were dispatched to delve into the past histories of persons considered important or check out alibis, but this is merely background chatter compared to a few genuinely interesting pieces of early forensic detective work. Firstly, two young detectives arrive from Centre Street arrive at the penthouse with a special vacuum cleaner and meticulously go over the guest-room collecting "every particle of dust in the room where the crime had been done," which may contain, "somewhere in the multitudes of particles," the vital clue to puzzle. The vacuum cleaner bags and the victim's clothing are send to a retired scientist, Professor George Luckner, who's "at heart a great detective," but "regards detective work as degrading to a scientist" and devotes himself to criminal research only as a special favor to Colt. And he does find the key-clue. Secondly, Colt is very interested in a photograph of a young Frenchman and has it sent to the Paris police by telephoto (wirephoto). A still very new, time consuming and expensive technology that were large machines and required a untied telephone line. The reader gets a brief description of how it exactly works. I love finding these little time-capsules in my vintage detective stories!

While his men doggedly pursue every lead, Colt has to try and make sense out of such bizarre clues as a wrongly-buttoned bathrobe, a small, unpainted wooden box and a missing suspect who was seen by the elevator boy returning to the penthouse – except this person is nowhere to be found. What happened? There are also two outsiders who have to be considered. Lola's former physician, Dr. Hugh Baldwin, was called to her bedside when she was dying and told the police she had a history of heart trouble. But they apparently had a falling out. Guy Everett is a young actor who escorted Christine Quires that evening to a New Year's party, but he also might have had a motive. And his speakeasy alibi is very shaky. But the case becomes even deeper and more perplexing when a second impossibility occurs inside the closely watched and guarded penthouse. Practically under the nose of the police!

A body miraculously appeared in the boudoir, twisted and contorted like a question mark, but, this time, there are terrible welts on the throat. However, the doctor tells Colt that those monstrous marks were put on the victim's throat after death. Not to mention the problem of the body materializing out of thin air in a previously thoroughly searched, closely guarded premise.

So how well does About the Murder of the Night Club Lady stack up as an impossible crime novel? Pretty well, actually, but with some minor qualifications. I don't think many readers today will be too impressed with "the instrumentality of death" as it seems more suited to a pulp thriller instead of a traditional detective story. Abbot used it expertly and smartly didn't wait until the very with revealing how death was delivered. Apparently, it might have actually been employed in a real-life murder as Colt references "the Falk case in Vienna" and mentioned their killer might have knowledge of that case, but the wise, all-knowing internet was unable to find anything. So no idea if this trick was inspired by a real murder case. The impossible appearance of the body in the boudoir is shockingly brilliant! I sort of figured out how it must have been, but that took nothing away from it and added a delightful, creepy afterthought to everything that had previously happened at the penthouse. Very fitting for a Japanese-style mansion story! 

About the Murder of the Night Club Lady is arguably even better as a whodunit with Abbot demonstrating the skillful agility of a practiced card mechanic when dealing the reader their clues and red herrings. Abbot beautifully hid his murderer among a small cast of characters, but giving the reader enough clues, hints and tells to spot this person before arriving at the explanation. And, if there's anything to complain or nitpick about, it's Abbot wasting a brilliant and daring clue. Had he told the reader the name of the dance early on in the story, I would have stood up to applaud his guts and cunning as a mystery novelist. Nevertheless... About the Murder of the Night Club Lady is a very game, boldly executed 1930s detective novel crammed with inexplicable death, impossible situations, strange clues and treacherous red herrings in camouflage. Not every aspect of the plot has aged particularly gracefully, but the pleasingly complex plot retained enough of its radiant, Golden Age ingenuity to make it a worthwhile recommendation.

I hope About the Murder of the Clergyman's Mistress (1931) and About the Murder of a Man Afraid of Women (1937) will find their way into my hands as easily as the last two.

The Logic of Lunacy: Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) and Isaac Asimov's "The Obvious Factor" (1973)

It seems that today Father Ronald A. Knox is mostly remembered as someone who helped shape the genre, codifying "The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) and becoming "a pioneer of Sherlockian criticism," whose only well-known piece of detective fiction is a short story, "Solved by Inspection" (1931) – collected in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (1990). This does Knox a great disservice as a not untalented mystery writer in his own right. The Three Taps (1927) can testify to this. A sparkling novel full with rivaling detectives, false-solutions and clues that possibly had a bigger hand in shaping the British detective story of the 1930s than it has received credit for over the decades. 

So I wanted to return to Knox's detective fiction before too long, but, before delving into his novel-length mysteries, I wanted to tale a look at his second, practically forgotten, short story. A satirical story-within-a-story published at the height of the genre's Golden Age. 

"The Motive" first appeared in The Illustrated London News, November 17, 1937, which was subsequently reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, MacKill's Mystery Magazine and The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018). Story begins in the Senior Common Room, or the smoking-room, of Simon Magus college where a "boorishly argumentative" drama critic, Penkridge, contrived to put Sir Leonard Huntercombe on his own defense. Sir Leonard is a defense lawyer and "probably responsible for more scoundrels being at large than any other man in England," which he considers to be "a kind of artistic gift" as you need to be imaginative "to throw yourself into the business of picturing the story happening as you want it to have happened" – always figuring a completely innocent client. So he tells them the story of a former client by the name of Westmacott.

Westmacott is a middle aged, restless and unhealthy looking man who retired early with more money than he knew what to do with and surprised his friends when he decides to spend Christmas holiday at "one of those filthy great luxury hotels in Cornwall." A place that attracts a modern, cosmopolitan and rather Bohemian crowd. Such as a modern novelist with a penchant for scandal, Smith, whose work "looked as if it was meant to be seized by the police." So not exactly the kind of holiday destination you expect someone to pick who's "well known to be old-fashioned in his views and conservative in his opinions." There's certainly something out-of-character about what happens next.

During the Christmas celebration, Westmacott suggests to play blind man's buff in the hotel swimming pool, but Smith and Westmacott eventually stayed behind to settle an argument with "a practical try-out and a bet." Westmacott argued that you couldn't know what direction you were swimming in when you were blindfolded, while Smith bragged it was perfectly easy. Smith is blindfolded and has "to swim ten lengths in the bath each way, touching the ends every time, but never touching the sides." So, when Smith did his ten lengths, he tried to touch the handrail, but it wasn't there! The whole place was dark and he pretty quickly figures out a lot of water had been let out of the pool, which effectively trapped and left him to drown when he got too exhausted to swim. A very observant night watchman saved him from potentially drowning over night. This naturally landed Westmacott in some hot water, but the lack of motive, the difficulty of proving he had tampered with the water supply and a handsome compensation ensured the case was hushed up. Sir Leonard had not seen the last of his curious client.

Less than a week later, "a seedy-looking fellow calling himself Robinson" became a regular visitor of Westmacott's home, always wearing dark spectacles, who evidently "got a hold of some kind over Westmacott" that frightened the wits out of him – arming himself with a revolver and even poison. Robinson even accompanies Westmacott on a train trip to his friends to celebrate the New Year, but Robinson mysteriously disappears from his (locked) sleeper compartment with the only entrance being the communicating door in Westmacott's compartment. Yes, this is kind of a locked room mystery. Sir Leonard has to defend Westmacott on an actual murder charge this time and he both confesses and denies to have murdered Robinson, but his motivation and behavior remain murky and incomprehensible. This is where the story becomes a minor gem!

You can easily poke through the locked room-trick in the sleeper compartment, but leaves you with an even bigger question of Chestertonian proportions! Why? Why in the hell would anyone do something like that? It makes no sense whatsoever. Sir Leonard explains "the logic of lunacy," which sounded perfectly logical, behind these two lunatic schemes. Only to pull the rug underneath the reader's feet with a very brazen, final twist. A twist that was beautifully clued and foreshadowed. I'm just left with one question: why, in God's name, did I neglect Knox for all these years?

I originally intended to only review Knox's "The Motive," but its final twist reminded me of another detective story, written more than thirty years later, which tried to do something very similar. So decided to pull my copy of Isaac Asimov's The Return of the Black Widowers (2003) from the shelf to reread that somewhat controversial impossible crime story. 

"The Obvious Factor" was originally published in the May, 1973, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and first collected in Tales of the Black Widowers (1974). Story is the sixth recorded meeting of an exclusive, men-only dinning club, the Black Widowers, who meet once a month in a private dinner room of an Italian restaurant in New York – discussing various subjects, solving puzzles and grilling the guest. Each month, one of the members brings along a guest who's always pestered with the same question, "how do you justify your existence?" However, this question always reveals that the guest has a problem or puzzle to solve, but it's always their personal waiter and honorary Black Widower, Henry, who comes up with the solution. Henry is the only armchair detective in fiction who never sits down as he works out a problem.

Thomas Trumbull is the host of "The Obvious Factor" and his guest of the evening is Dr. Voss Eldridge, Associate Professor of Abnormal Psychology, which turns the conversation from pulp magazines and Roger Halsted writing "a limerick for every book of the Iliad" to parapsychological phenomena. Dr. Eldridge tries to shine a light on telepathy, precognition and even ghosts. Not a month goes by without something crossing his desk that he can't explain, but the club of rationalists are naturally more than a little skeptical. Dr. Eldridge decides to tell them "a story that defies the principle of cause and effect" and thereby "the concept of the irreversible forward flow of time," which is "the very foundation stone on which all science is built."

Dr. Eldridge tells of young woman, Mary, who never finished school and worked behind the counter of a department store, but despite her odd, anti-social behavior, she kept her job. Mary has an uncanny knack to spot shoplifters and "losses quickly dropped to virtually nothing in that particular five-and-ten" despite being in a bad neighborhood. She eventually came to the attention of Dr. Eldridge and discovers "the background of her mind is a constant flickering of frightful images," occasionally lit up "as though by a momentary lightening flash," allowing her to see near future. During one particular session, Mary had a particular eerie premonition as she began to scream about a fire. And the details match a deadly house fire in San Francisco. Even more eerie, "the fire broke out at just about the minute Mary's fit died down" in New York.

Dr. Eldridge tells the Black Widowers that "a few minutes is as good as a century" as "cause and effect is violated and the flow of time is reversed," but the Black Widowers refuse to accept precognition as an answer. So they try to poke holes in the story, but every reasonable, logical answer is eliminated and the club members find themselves backed into a corner. If it wasn't precognition, what was it? Henry quickly comes to their rescue and explains what really happened as effortlessly as flashing a smile. The most obvious solution of all!

If I remember the comments on the old, now defunct Yahoo GAD list correctly, not everyone was particular charmed, or amused, with Asimov's solution/twist. I found it amusing enough to go along with it, however, there's an important and notable difference in quality between Asimov and Knox's stories. Knox's "The Motive" can still stand on its own, as a detective story, without that last, delicious twist, but Asimov's "The Obvious Factor" slyly used a very similar twist for somewhat of a cop out ending – which can strike some as lazy plotting or just plain unfair. But decide for yourself.

So, all in all, I very much enjoyed "The Motive," a glittering specimen of the short British detective story, which toyed with the same idea as "The Obvious Factor," but they came away being vastly different detective stories. It was a pretty good idea to read them back-to-back.

Glittering Prizes (1942) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn wrote in the Crime Book Magazine, in 1948, that he believes "the primary function of the mystery story is to entertain" and "to stimulate the imagination," but "it pleases the connoisseur most" when it presents "genuine mystery" – an "intellectual problem for the reader to consider, measure and solve." Flynn himself had an incredibly varied approach to ensure his detective fiction presented a stimulating and entertaining mysteries that took on many different shapes and designs. Covering everything from your standard whodunit and impossible crimes to courtroom dramas and pulp thrillers. And everything that can be fitted in between or stacked on top of it. Not all of his mysteries are so easily pigeonholed. 

Glittering Prizes (1942) is the twenty-eighth title in the Anthony Bathurst series and, according to the introduction by Steve Barge, the only time Flynn used the war as a backdrop. Typically, Flynn grabbed the opportunity to experiment with the wartime spy-thriller, but the reader has to figure out whether there's a private motive or a Nazi conspiracy behind "a peculiarly horrible double murder." Something you can never be quite sure of with the man wrote wildly different crime, detective and thriller novels like The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928), Invisible Death (1929), Murder en Route (1930) and The Edge of Terror (1932). 

Glittering Prizes opens with Anne Assheton, a famous Hollywood film star, docking in England, where she's swarmed by reporters and photographers, but she tells the gathered pressmen that one of the richest woman in the world crossed with her on the Myrobella, Mrs. Warren Clinton – a Nebraskan widow whose husband left her an immense fortune ("worth x million dollars"). Mrs. Clinton is an American "who had the honour to be born in England" and returned with the purpose of placing her "entire fortune at the disposal of the British Empire" to fight the menace that's threatening their freedoms and way of life. Mrs. Clinton tells in an interview she has plenty of ideas on how to put her fortune to good use, but nothing definite and a fortnight would pass before her name was plastered across newspaper headlines. So what happened during those weeks?

Mrs. Clinton booked a particular suite of rooms at the Royal Sceptre Hotel, Remington, which the habitual patrons knew as the 'Nonpareil' far beyond the financial resources of most. There she gathered a group of handpicked nine talented men and women with outstanding public records and personal qualities.

Admittedly, the introduction of all these characters slows down the opening chapter considerably, but absolutely necessary to setup one of Flynn's most audacious plots. Something to rival the barefaced cheek of The Padded Door (1932)!

So here they are, more or less, in order of appearance: Mr. and Mrs. John and Angela Ramage who are respectively a barrister with "an absolutely outstanding reputation" and a doctor as well as an M.P. for West Markham. A famous Shakespearean actor, Wilfred Denver, who's "exceedingly well read" with "a perfectly marvelous memory." Captain Ronald Playfair is an ex-Secret Service agent whose "exploits during the War of 1914-1918" won him a Victorian Cross and "was in Berlin in the February of 1933 when the Reichstag went up in flames." Sir Edward Angus, Conservative Member of Parliament for the Rigby Division of Holme, is "the coming man in British politics" whose "fighting speeches in the House" caught the attention of Mrs. Clinton. The Very Reverend Dean Theodore Langton, of St. Sepulchre's Cathedral, is a silver tongued preacher whom modern critics ranked as one of "the greatest preachers of all time." Lord Esmond Curte is both "an isolated, aloof figure" and a strongly opinionated orator whose views usually gets him labeled a reactionary or a ruddy Fascist. Rosamund Kingsley is a well-known explorer and Mrs. Clinton regards her as "the foremost woman of our times," which is why she was selected as one of the people whom Britain sorely needed at this "most critical moment in her history." Cedric Garnett is "a superb physical specimen" who shined in rugger, rowing and cricket who reminded Mrs. Clinton of the "thousands of robust young men" marching through Germany with "unflagging energy and boundless enthusiasm."

So this group of carefully selected, outstanding individuals were royally wined and dined upon arrival, but the after dinner conversation turned serious as their host explained she was going to subject them all to a test to rank their intelligence, initiative and quick-thinking – in order to pick the best two of the litter. Firstly, they have to find the counterpart or associate word to a list of mostly obscure words: Orpheus, Edyrn, Ulema, Roup, Iphicles, Reldresal, Eagle (two headed), Mazikeen and Premonstratensian. Secondly, Mrs. Clinton privately interviewed everyone and asked them seemingly irrelevant questions like if they had any knowledge of jiu-jitsu or bred canaries. When the results were tallied, Mrs. Clinton picked two names and the others were left wondering whether they had been the victim of an elaborate practical joke or had simply wasted their time. So they slowly retired to their rooms only to awaken the next morning to a sensational horror show!

Mrs. Clinton and her two handpicked defenders of the British Empire are nowhere to be found. So the hotel manager was fetched to open the door of the suite of rooms and discovered the nude bodies of the two winners, each had been shot through the left eye, but not a trace of the American widow! The local police immediately recognized they were out of their league and a call went out to Sir Austin Kemble, the Commissioner of Police, who dispatched Chief Inspector Andrew MacMorran and Anthony Bathurst to the scene of the crime. After questioning everyone involved, the story returns to the surviving members of the party as they begin receive threatening warning letters, mockingly signed "Auf wiedersehen! Heil Hitler!," promising to give a demonstration of their far-reaching powers. Like sending ticking packages with an alarm-clock inside or tempering with cigars. I loved the universal, unmistakably British response of the characters to these threats.

There are additional problems like the discovery of a third body and the "appallingly trivial" incident of "a big red china dachshund" in a basement flat window that keeps changing color. So it takes a while before Bathurst can sit down "to marshal on paper all the facts which he had so far been able to amass." A great and fun piece of armchair detective work as he reconstructs and cracks the code of the word association test, weighs the relevance of the questions and eventually retracing Mrs. Clinton's footsteps in England. All of this is beautifully complemented by a bit of cheeky, in-your-face clueing, but misdirection is where the plot truly excelled as a detective story. Glittering Prizes perfectly muddled the waters without mucking up the whole plot or dulling the clues. I spotted the clues and correctly identified the murderer, but Flynn kept me second guessing and a particularly slippery, carefully placed red herring briefly convinced me I had been on the wrong track the entire time. 

Some readers will probably accuse Flynn of stretching things again, but my only complaint about the plot (HUGE SPOILERS, SWITCH TO ROT13!) vf gung guerr zheqref vf dhvgr na rfpnyngvba sbe jung'f ernyyl abguvat zber guna n fuvcobneq ebznapr. Other than that minor quibble, I enjoyed Glittering Prizes tremendously as Flynn kept me second guessing about the solution and what, exactly, I was reading, but delivered with a clear and perhaps a little overly ambitious solution that lived up to its fantastically bizarre premise. A pure, unapologetic and delightful flight of fancy.

Blind Man's Bluff (1943) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick was an American mystery novelist and the spiritual father of the most influential of all blind detectives, Captain Duncan Maclain, who lost his eyesight in World War I and forced him to rigorously train his remaining senses to pull double duty – unwittingly becoming a member of the ancient Pythagorean sect whose adherents "considered numbers the supreme concept of existence." The universe is "an orderly composition of geometric figures" to Captain Maclain and geometry governed his movement aided by a sharpened hearing that can make "a map of sound" in his clear, uncluttered mind. This allowed him to become one of the best private investigators in New York City as he sees things other people tend to overlook. 

Captain Duncan Maclain is also somewhat of an anomalous character within the American detective story. A character who connects the traditional detective to the heroes from the pulp magazines and comic books. Captain Maclain's office building is crammed with high-tech gadgets and the building has a subbasement, four floors below street level, which serves as a Batcave. He trains there with his assistant, Spud Savage, whose wife, Rena, acts as his secretary. Captain Maclain also has two German shepherds, Schnuke and Driest, who each played a very different role in his life. Schnuke was trained as a capable, lovable and gentle guide who clung to her master with "a loyalty deeper than death." Driest is a weapon trained to defend and "looked upon the world with a hostile, suspicious canine eye" ready to hurl himself at any adversary at command or suspicious movement. Basically a sentient, medieval spiked mace with fur and a plucky attitude.

So no wonder Captain Maclain served as a model for some other blind characters, such as the blind insurance investigator from the 1970s TV-series Longstreet, Mike Longstreet, but, more importantly, Stan Lee cited Captain Maclain as the model for Matt Murdock – a blind defense attorney better known as Daredevil. Lee stated that he wanted to create "a hero who would start out with a disability" and remembered reading Kendrick's mystery novels about his blind detective years ago, which made him reflect that "if a man without sight could be a successful detective" what "a triumph it would be to make a blind man a comicbook superhero."

I've never understood why Kendrick and Captain Maclain never fully reemerged from the shadows as the character not only has a fascinating backstory and linage, but Kendrick was a consistent writer and plotter. He never used Maclain's blindness as a gimmicked crutch for his plots to lean on, which are either solidly plotted affairs (The Whistling Hangman, 1937) or interesting, pulp-style hybrids (The Odor of Violets, 1940). Kendrick regularly applies his skills to the impossible crime and how-dun-its. The subject of today's review has a strong hint of John Dickson Carr. 

Blind Man's Bluff (1943) is the fourth entry in the Captain Duncan Maclain series and confronts the blind detective with a string of seemingly impossible crimes rooted in the fairly recent past.

Blake Hadfield had served as the President of the Miners Title and Trust Company during the most opulent years of the once successful bank and real estate mortgage company, until the company horribly crashed in 1932, but was personally cleared of any criminal negligence – a charge which the State Insurance Department tried "industriously to prove." But there was still a tragedy waiting in the wings. James Sprague, a ruined depositor, "had taken matters into his own hands and tried to settle accounts with a gun." Sprague shot Hadfield through the head in his office at the M.T. & T building before turning the gun on himself, but the bullet had failed to kill Hadfield. However, it left him completely blind and somewhat isolated. Hadfield lived separate from his wife, Julia, who tried to divorce him, but he fought it successfully in court. Because he knew she one day would want to marry her lawyer and family friend, Philip Courtney. So, for the past few years, Julia scraped and struggled to put their son, Seth, through school and college to show she didn't need her husband. Lieutenant Seth Hadfield, home on a short leave from the army, is engaged to Sprague's daughter, Elise, who worries that her father's attempted murder and suicide will cloud her future with Seth in "an unhappy pall."

So a relatively normal and functioning family by detective story standards, but it's weird that, one day, Hadfield decides to take his son back to the M.T. & T building and summoned several people to join them.

M.T. & T building is a large, gloomy and ponderous structure from the 1890s resembling a prison from that era and, while largely abandoned, is still partially in use by the company's appointed Comptroller, Carl Bentley, who tries to sell the real estate which M.T. & T took over in foreclosed mortgages. Trying to salvage all he can for the investors who lost their money with Elise Sprague acting as his secretary. So the sudden return of Blake Hadfield to his office placed his defunct company back into "unwelcome notoriety" of newspaper headlines as his body was hurled from his office floor to the lobby eight floors below. Just at the moment his wife arrived. Only person with him was his son (boozed out of his mind) and the night watchman has "an unshatterable record of his movement punched every five minutes from the time he started his rounds." So the police find it impossible to present a convincing murder case and the now supposed accident/suicide finds its way to the blind detective, Captain Duncan Maclain.

Captain Maclain is approached by Harold Lawson, of the State Insurance Department, and a friend of the victim, Miss Sybella Ford, whose company redecorated his apartment after he lost his sight. Neither of them believe his son threw him over the railing and ask Captain Maclain to look at Hadfield's strange death "through a blind man's eye," but the case becomes increasingly complicated when the apparently nonsensical clues and bodies begin to pile up.

A sleazy, ambulance chasing lawyer, named T. Allen Doxenby, attempts to subtly blackmail Courtney into "helping" him handle the Hadfield estate, but he's unceremoniously shown the door and, shortly thereafter, he jumped out of a window – or so it appeared. A man and his wife who live in the apartment opposite of Doxenby heard him scream when they arrived home and stood in front of the door until the janitor opened it, but "there was nobody in the room but an open window." So, if it was murder, the police should "get out a warrant for Superman." There is, however, a curious piece of evidence linking Doxenby to the Hadfield-Sprague shooting years earlier. An initialed, custom-made highball glass that went missing from the office at the night of the shooting and is found in Doxenby's apartment "signed with the fingerprints of two dead men." This is not the last murder or even the first two murders as there might have been a third person who shot both Sprague and Hadfield. This time, Captain Maclain is seriously hampered in his investigation as the war deprived him of Spud Savage, but, even more dangerously, he has fallen in love with Sybella Ford. A briefly appearing Spud (on leave) warns him "the brain of a man in love is never quite crystal-clear," especially to a man who loved by his brain and hadn't experienced love in ages, which might prove lethal when "playing with a killer who has stood the Police Department on its ear."

Captain Maclain not only needs a clear and uncluttered mind to tangle with a very dangerous and clever killer, but also to make sense of wild array of strange, seemingly intelligible clues. Such as a misplaced ball of twine. A bottle of good whiskey thrown down an air shaft. A missing fountain pen and small change. A lowered Venetian blind and a vanished paperweight. A hallucination of someone falling down an elevator shaft. A smashed braille wristwatch and a heavy round watchman's clock that the watchman carried on his rounds. So, yes, there's a definite touch of Carr to the plotting and clueing recalling The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) and Carr's dark obsession with timepieces.

However, Blind Man's Bluff is a Carr-style novel in the way Christopher Bush's The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935) is a Carr-like impossible crime novel. The Case of the Chinese Gong and Blind Man's Bluff both have an impossible crime as the central puzzle full of Carrian ingenuity and worthy of Dr. Gideon Fell, but Bush and Kendrick lacked the master's showmanship and magical touch when it came to the solution. Bush took the humdrum approach of John Rhode and Kendrick showed his pulp credentials by letting Maclain set a trap with himself as bait, which went about as well as you would expect. Not that the more pulp-style ending took anything away from Blind Man's Bluff as a cleverly contrived, mostly fair play and not unoriginal impossible crime novel with the spotty clueing, regarding the question of opportunity, standing as the plots only real weak spot – which is why it's only almost as good as The Whistling Hangman. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed Blind Man's Bluff as a well written and plotted specimen of the American Golden Age detective story helmed by a detective who deserves more recognition by today's mystery readers.