The Theft and the Prophecy: Two Fictional Impossible Crimes

In my previous blog-post, "The Ghost and the Canary," I covered two real-life examples of the impossible crime story and decided it would be a nice touch to follow it up with a look at two fictional locked room problems. There happened to be two, relatively short, works lingering on my big pile. So let's dig in!

Barry Ergang is the former editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and received a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society for the best flash story of 2006, titled "Vigilante," but on the web Ergang is perhaps better known as a reviewer and member of various mystery-themed groups – such as the now sadly erstwhile JDCarr messageboard. You can find his reviews all over the web, like the GADWiki, which also hosts his parody of "Dr. Gideon Fell, Hardboiled Sawbones" (2003).

I think Ergang's hardboiled take on one of detective fiction's foremost experts on the locked room puzzle foreshadowed a short story he would come to write only a year later.

"The Play of Light and Shadows" was originally published in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, vol. VII, Issue 35: Autumn 2004 and Patrick Ohl accurately described this short story as "a traditionally-told hardboiled story" in his 2011 review. The story is narrated by Dr. Alan Driscoll, a university professor, who's on a sabbatical to escape from department politics and "the hermetic insularity of academia" at the City University of Philadelphia. So to re-familiarize himself with the real world he takes job as a bartender and there he strikes up an acquaintance with a private-eye.

Darnell is a stern man who has no time for small talk, but "discussions about books pierced his reserve" and "evoked a veiled passion." When the story opens, Darnell is sitting at the bar reading The Sound and the Fury. This reminded me of Bill Pronzini's popular private-eye, "Nameless," whose undying love for pulp magazines has even driven the plots of some of his most well-known, highly praised cases – like Hoodwinked (1981) and Bones (1985). Interestingly, they're are perhaps two of the best known examples of the hardboiled locked room story.

However, this story is only indirectly influenced by Darnell's veiled passion for literature and comes about when Driscoll asks how business is going. Darnell simply taps his book and says that he has "lots of time to read."

Well, Driscoll got a phone-call from a colleague, Dr. Barton Gaines, who's the Chairman of the Art History Department and he could really use a detective.

Dr. Gaines is hosting a party the following Saturday afternoon to celebrate the acquisition of a painting by Charles Riveau, entitled Nomad, but the painting came with a back-story and concerns the criminal past of its creator – who once acted as a master forger to an Arséne Lupin-like thief, Paul Marchand. Riveau forged masterpieces, but, instead of selling the forgeries, Marchand "stole the originals from private collections or museums" and "substituted the fakes." However, the police eventually caught up with Riveau and did a spell in prison. After his release, Riveau continued to paint and his original work started to gain a reputation. So he turned down Marchand when he wanted to revive their old partnership, but this disagreement ended with Marchand promising he would destroy all of his original work "to prevent him from attaining the fame he desperately wanted."

Ever since, paintings have disappeared from galleries, museums and the homes of collectors. And this is exactly what happens during the party.

The gallery is a long, wide, white-walled and marble-floored room without windows and the door offered its only way in or out of the gallery, which can only be opened with a set of specially-made keys that can't be duplicated. After the gallery is searched, the door is locked from the outside and Darnell takes his place guarding the door, but when the gallery is unlocked and guests stream in they make a startling discovery – someone, somehow, spirited Nomad from a hermetically sealed and guarded room! But this is not their only problem.

A photographer who was present at the unveiling of the painting, Derek Trevor, is found with a camera-strap looped tightly around his throat and the murderer has taken a 3.5" disk from his photo camera. On a side-note, these diskettes were the predecessor of memory cards.

The writing and characterization clearly shows the influence the private-eye genre had on Ergang, who holds Raymond Chandler's The Long Good-bye (1953) in very high regard, but the plotting also betrays a weakness for cleverly clued, puzzle-oriented locked room mysteries. Ergang planted clues and hints throughout the story subtly nodding in the direction of the solution, which is always a pleasant discovery in a modern detective story, and the excellent writing and dialogue makes "The Play of Light and Shadow" anthology material.

There is, however, one (minor) problem I have with the premise and explanation for the impossible theft, which seems to be indebted to the Jonathan Creek episode The Scented Room (1998). An episode that had lifted its plot directly from Edgar Wallace's "The Stolen Romney," collected in Four-Square Jane (1929), which had been spoofed before by Robert Arthur in The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (1966) – all four deal with a very similar impossible theft and the explanations play around with the same ideas. Only difference between the Jonathan Creek episode and the novel and short story by Arthur and Ergang is that they put their own spin on the ending of "The Stolen Romney."

So I was glad to discover Ergang took a different direction with his solution, but the close resemblance of the plot to those other impossible crime stories took some of the shine off the story. Regardless, "The Play of Light and Shadow" is a well-written, tightly plotted detective story and a welcome addition to that lamentably short list of hardboiled locked room mysteries.

The second story, or rather a novella, comes from the hands of an incredibly prolific British writer of detective and thriller novels, named Gerald Verner, who was frequently compared to the previously mentioned Edgar Wallace and was noted for his "exiting, fast-action plots" – some of them "recognized as classics of the locked room and impossible crime genres." I don't remember anyone ever hailing Verner as a long-overlooked locked room artisan, but any mention of an impossible crime arouses my curiosity. And one of his impossible crime stories just happened to be in print!

A warning to the reader: my review necessitated something that can be construed as a spoiler, because the plot warranted a comparison with a fairly well-known detective novel by a very famous mystery writer. So, if you have read that fairly well-known mystery, you can probably guess the central idea behind the impossible murder from this novella. The reader has been warned!

The Beard of the Prophet (1937) was originally printed in a November, 1937 issue of Detective Weekly No. 246, later collected in Mr. Budd Again (1939), but was curiously enough reprinted separately in 2011 by Borgo Press. I believe our friend, Philip Harbottle, had a hand in getting Verner's work back in print.

One of Verner's series-character is Robert Budd, an obsese Detective-Superintendent of Scotland Yard, who has deceptively sleepy-eyes, a plodding mind and a taste for beer. Budd is assisted by the melancholic, slow-witted Sergeant Leek and is often "the butt of Mr. Budd's biting sarcasm." These two unassuming, now long-forgotten detective-characters had a long shelf-live. Butt and Leek appeared in more than twenty novels and short stories between 1934 and 1966.

The Beard of the Prophet begins with a series of threatening letters addressed to a celebrated archaeologist, Reuben Hayles, who claimed to have discovered the tomb of Mohammed. One of the letters warned Hayles that his "sacrilege will bring violent death in its train," while another say that "every passing hour brings your doom nearer," but the last letter told the archaeologist "death will come to you on the night of the full moon" – signed The Prophet. After this very specific threat, Budd and Leek are installed in the household. A household filled the usual, and some very unusual, suspects, but their protection proved to be ineffective.

Budd stationed himself in front of the bedroom door and Lees was standing guard outside of the house, underneath the open bedroom window, but, shortly after Hayles wished Budd a good night, a scream and a thud is heard inside the room. Budd flung open the door and greeted by "a deafening crash of thunder," which is hoary, but nice, atmospheric touch. Hayles lay in the center of the room on ancient rug, a gaping wound on the front of his head, clenching a false beard in one of his hands!

Funnily enough, The Beard of the Prophet shares exactly the same strength and weaknesses as "The Play of Light and Shadow." After the opening chapters, it becomes patently obvious Verner had looked at Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia (1936) for inspiration and the locked room trick here mimics Christie's (semi) impossible alibi-trick. There's even an archaeological background in Verner's story.

So I doubt this was a mere coincidence, but Verner made the trick his own by tinkering with it and giving it a nifty twist. You can almost say this is the impossible crime version of the ingenious alibi-trick from Christopher Bush's Cut Throat (1932). And this alteration of the nature of the trick neatly tied-in with the identity of the murderer. So this definitely saved the novella from being nothing more than a shameless ripoff.

The Beard of the Prophet is perhaps not very original as a detective story, but Verner's treatment of the idea was transformative enough to make for an enjoyable read with a new variation on a trick we've seen before.

A note for the curious: the trick from Murder in Mesopotamia was also used in a 1950 short story by Charles B. Child, titled "All the Birds of the Air," which was collected in The Sleuth of Baghdad (2002). There you have a short story, a novella and a novel, which toy around with variations of the same (locked room) trick and have a Middle Eastern theme. I'm convinced Verner borrowed from Christie, but wonder how much of an influence she had on Child's short story. In any case, I find it fascinating that this particular trick turned up in stories with such similar backgrounds.

So, a short story and novella, written in two very different periods of time, but, when read back-to-back, turned out to strangely reflect one another. They both resembled more well-known impossible crime stories, which had preceded them, but the well-handled treatment of these older ideas pulled the stories away from being disappointing – especially the more original "The Play of Light of Shadow." Only thing you can hold against these two stories is that they failed to break new ground, but hey, I can easily forgive that.

The Iron Tanuki: Case Closed, vol. 65 by Gosho Aoyama

The story opening the 65th volume of Gosho Aoyama's acclaimed, long-running detective series, Case Close, begins where the previous one ended and pitches an imitation of the infamous gentleman thief, Kaito KID, against the original as they clash over the contents of the Iron Tanuki – an impenetrable safe constructed by the 19th century puzzle master, Kichiemon Samizu. Caught in between them is the owner of the burglarproof safe, Jirokichi Sebastian, who acted in previous volumes (44 and 61) as a foil to KID. So far, he has been unable to ensnare the elusive thief in one of his traps.

The vault where the Iron Tanuki is kept is fitted with weight sensors, which transforms the room into an iron cage when as much as a hair touches the floor, but in the previous volume a note was left there without triggering the alarm. A note from the real KID announcing that he's coming for "the treasure in the tanuki's belly." However, the story progressed differently than I expected.

It's suspected early on that KID might already be in the house, disguised as an employee of his long-time nemesis, which is what you'd expect, but then the story begins to focus a little more on the unusual behavior of Jirokichi – such as why he has been taking two dinner plates and a walking stick with him when inspecting the safe. Or why a man, "obsessed with catching the KID," is blocking the investigation.

Conan was, as usually, present when all of this was going down and not only deduces as who KID has been posing, but also figured out why Jirokichi was behaving out of character. And this has everything to do with what they find behind the impenetrable door of the Iron Tanuki. A heartwarming explanation that turned this rogue's tale into a humanist detective story with KID as its unexpected hero ("even I bow before the original gentleman thief, Arséne Lupin"). Undoubtedly, the best story from this volume!

The second story appears to be picking up a plot-thread that was dropped after the all important, novel-length events from volume 58 and its direct aftermath in volume 59, which begins when a shocked Jodie Sterling notices the face of Shuichi Akai in a crowd of people – who supposedly died in a fiery car wreck. However, they both become hostages when a group of armed men storm Teito Bank, but the man who resembled Akai disappeared after the situation is resolved. So this was a rather minor story, but good to see that the story-line with Akai is being picked up again.

Unfortunately, the next story is not all that interesting and only functions as a bridge to the fourth and longest story in this volume.

Doc Agasa and Anita are stranded with a broken-down car and no money, but they're offered a ride from two people, a man and a woman, who happened to be on their way to see Richard Moore. However, Doc Agasa and Anita overhear them talking about Conan, saying how being "half dead ought to be enough for a kid" or how they could have prepped for "a full massacre," had they been given more time, but all of this turns out to be a misunderstanding – hinging on the knowledge of slang common in the Nagano prefecture. Their reason for coming to Tokyo is to consult Moore on the unexplained "mystery of the bloodred wall."

There's a house in the woods, initially known as the Manor of Hope, which was built by a millionaire and gifted to a group of gifted artists to help them pursue their dreams, but ever since one of them was found dead in the cellar room the place garnered a sinister reputation – now locally referred to as "the Manor of Death." Recently, the manor became the stage of a murder as bizarre as it was gruesome.

One of the artists, who was married to the dead woman, was locked inside a room by blocking the door on the outside with crates packed with books and the victim was slowly starved to death. But he left behind a curious and elaborate dying message: a wall had been spray-painted red and two wooden chairs had been nailed together, back to back, which were painted black and white. After this the victim threw all of his tools, paints and lacquers from a small window high in the wall.

So the problem of the plot is intriguing enough by itself, but the story also introduces police-detective Takaaki Morofushi, of Nagano, whose nickname is "Kong Ming." One of the many references in this story to the 14th century epic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Unfortunately, the concluding chapter of this case, which holds the solution, is part of the next volume and that one won't be published until a month from now. Oh, woe is me!

Anyway, this was a good, nicely balanced collection of stories with the two standout cases book-ending the middle ones that flirted with the ongoing story-line that runs like a red-thread through the series. So I really look forward to the next volume. Not only to find out how the last case will be concluded, but also to see what happens next with the Akai story-line. Until then, I'll probably use April to continue my probing of the Q.E.D. series and perhaps even return to the Detective Conan movies.

Old Scars: Case Closed, vol. 64 by Gosho Aoyama

Last month, I reviewed the 63rd volume of Gosho Aoyama's long-running series, Detective Conan, published in the U.S. under the title Case Closed and the stories in that collection were jam-packed with unusual, high-quality impossible crime material – ranging from an inexplicable poisoning at a revolving sushi bar to a phantom car that was seen flying. A gem of a volume that will always stand as one of my personal favorites in the series.

So the impossible crime, two of them focusing on cars, was a recurring motif of that volume, but the 64th also had a dominant theme running like a red thread through all of its stories. All of the stories here, in some way, draw on the past of the semi-regular characters or events that have occurred in previous volumes. And scars! Scars play an important role in the two main, interlinked stories.

The opening story marks the return of, what was supposedly to be, a one-time character from volume 45, Ejiri, who was the victim of an attempted murder, but Conan and Doc Agasa saved his life – which is why he filled in for the latter when he was unable to take the Junior Detective League on a short fishing trip. On their return, they pass a secluded spot in the sea known as Horn Rock. A cursed, rocky islet, shaped like a giant horn, legendary for dooming fishermen and blessing children. So they decide to take a brief detour and explore the jagged rock, but upon their arrival they make a gruesome discovery.

It begins when they find words carved into a rock wall, "mackerel, carp, sea bream, flounder," with a swimming fin jammed between two rocks right next to the words. This leads them to the body of a woman in a wet-suit and the clean mouth piece of the oxygen masks makes it clear to Conan that this murder.

A fourth clue turns up when they discover the victim's diving watch with Akamine Angel Fish Club engraved on the back of the watch, but the word Fish had been scraped off. At this moment, three of her diving friends turns up and becomes very clear that one of them left her behind on the rocky islet to die, which she understood and left behind a trail of clues that would identify her killer – only problem being that this elaborate dying message doesn't really translate into English. And that's often a problem with dying messages, codes and word puzzles in this series. Nevertheless, the story was a fun one and the return of a relatively minor character from a previous case, once again, drives home the idea that the series takes place in a (living) universe of its own.

The second story primarily serves as an introduction to the third case and has a pretty obvious explanation, but still had some points of interest.

A very wealthy, but blind, woman bought a lottery ticket on a whim and won 100 million yen (about 1 million dollars), which she wants to give away to the boy who saved her as a child. She only knows the boy's nickname and that he suffered an injury that should have left a scar across his chest or back. Only problem is that two men came forward with a long scar on their chest or back who claim to be the boy from twenty years ago. So she decided to hire the famous detective, Richard Moore, to figure out who of the two is speaking the truth. The answer becomes pretty obvious, as the story progresses, but Conan discovers that the regular cast of police-characters are staking out the place outside and the reason is that one of the scarred men could be a notorious serial killer who gave Superintendent McLaughin (originally named Kiyonaga Matsumoto) a facial scar – before disappearing over fifteen years ago.

A note for the curious: the blind client (partially) sees through Conan's secret when she finds out that he's not "a teenager whose voice hadn't broken yet," but "a little boy." Or, as she calls him, "Sherlock Holmes disguised as a child."

The third case deals with a final attempt by the police capture this serial killer, who's known to whistle "Let It Be," but ever since this killer disappeared from scene fifteen years ago the statute of limitation has been running out. So they only have one shot left to bring this sword-wielding murderer to justice, but then, inexplicably, the killer strikes again. This time the victim is a well-known criminal psychologist, who issued a challenge to the murderer on television, which ended with him being stabbed to death in his condo. However, the victim left a (solvable) dying message this time.

So as a detective story, this serial killer case is pretty good and relatively well-clued, even if some of the hints hinge on the jargon of Mahjong players, but where the plot really shines is in telling the stories of the policemen who usually play second-fiddle to Conan in the background. We get to know how the Superintendent got his face-scar and the reader is told the tragic story of a police detective who never made it into the series, because he was killed in an attempt to apprehend the murderer. And then there is, what is known as the Metropolitan Police Love Story, between Takagi and Sato that actually appears to have some real progress here. This whole story-arc strongly reminded me of the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain.

Finally, the last chapter lays the premise of a new story and sees the return of Serena Sebastian's incomparable relative, Uncle Jirokichi, who has become a foil to that famous gentleman burglar, Kaito KID – who has matched wits with the old man in volumes 44 and 61. A fake Kaito KID has promised to loot his "impenetrable safe," known as the Iron Tanuki, which had been built by "the renowned 19th-century craftsman Kichiemon Samizu just before his death." This attracts the attention of the real Kaito KID and announces that he's coming for "the treasure in the tanuki's belly." And this story will come to a head in the next volume.

On a whole, this was another pretty solid volume with good stories and interesting character-development for the police-detective characters. The next volume is already on my pile, but will probably save that one for next month.

The Casebook of Miss Victoria Lincoln

"I notice while all people are agreed as to the variety of motives that instigate crime, very few allow sufficient margin for variety of character in the criminal. We are apt to imagine that he stalks about the world with a bundle of deadly motives under his arm, and cannot picture him at his work with a twinkle in his eye and a keen sense of fun, such as honest folk have sometimes when at work at their calling."

- Loveday Brooke (C.L. Pirkis' "The Black Bag Left on the Doorstep," collected in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, 1894)

John Russell Fearn has been discussed on this blog before and noted in those previous posts how incredible prolific he was as a writer of science-fiction, westerns and detective stories, published under a small army of pen names, but surprisingly, he also penned a series of adolescent detective stories for teenage girls – using the byline of "Diana Kenyon." The stories originally appeared in a monthly magazine, titled Girls' Fun, during the late 1940s.

The protagonist is Miss Victoria Lincoln, "a lady detective," who's introduced to the reader as a perfectly precious thing. A young college graduate who excelled at almost everything in school and you could find her name "on practically every plaque in the school hall." After she graduated, her rich parents helped her pursue a career as a private investigator and opened a office for her in Regent Street, in London, which came with a big paragraph in the newspaper to announce she was open for business.

So you can say Miss Victoria Lincoln is pretty much a Mary Sue at heart. Thankfully, she's not one of those insufferable, overbearing characters and keeps to her role as investigator without displaying any pesky habits or annoying character-traits – which ensured the stories were readable and fun. Something I feared would not be the case after reading the first pages of the opening story.

There are, as far as I can tell, sixteen short stories in this series that were written by Fearn. However, the character of Miss Lincoln looks to have been the property of the magazine, because I also came across a series-listing that catalogs a clump of additional stories written mostly by Hilary Ashton and Vera Painter. But only a small selection of stories that were penned by Fearn appear to have been collected after their original magazine publication.

The Haunted Gallery: The Adventures of Miss Victoria Lincoln, Private Detective (2011) collects six of the sixteen short stories that Fearn wrote and they were written in the tradition of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and his contemporaries. Some of the stories, like the first one, definitely shows they were written with the Great Detective in mind.

I'll try to run through them as fast as possible and attempt not to bloat this blog-post to the same monstrous size as most of my reviews of short story collections. But no promises.

The first story gave this collection its book-title, "The Haunted Gallery," which takes place at a "lovely and historic old pile of Bartley Towers" that had "a cloak of gloom," sorrow and mystery draped over it ever since its owner, Professor Marchant, passed away, but ever since his passing someone has been paying nightly visits to the locked gallery – which housed the late professor's collection of antiques and curios. Every night, this intruder would smash a valuable antique to smithereens on the floor. And then there's "a ghostly female form in white draperies" who's been witnessed gliding around the place.

So the niece of the professor, Caroline Gerrard, and his former secretary, Dorothy Mannall, who felt "responsible for the safety of the collection" decide to call in outside help to put a stop to the intruder. Gerrard and Mannall have both attended Shelburne College and they recall a particular talented student, Miss Victoria Lincoln, who became a private detective. She came up with an interesting, two-pronged solution to the problem: one pertained to the person who opened the gallery door at night and how that related to the ghostly figure, while the other half revealed who smashed the precious antiques and why.

This double-layered solution struck me as an amalgamation of the plots from Sax Rohmer's "The Case of the Tragedies in the Greek Room," recently reprinted in Miraculous Mysteries: Locked Room Murders and Impossible Crimes (2017), and a well-known story from Conan Doyle's The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904). No idea whether Fearn had those stories in mind when he wrote this "The Haunted Gallery," but the result is a decent enough story of this sort and a good introduction to the main-characters.

Note for the curious: Miss Lincoln recruits one of the characters, Caroline Gerrard, to become her personal assistance, once she finishes her final term at college, which she does in the third story.

The second story, "The Clue of the Blue Powder," is a mild dame-in-danger tale and begins when Lincoln meets a young woman, named Anne Seymour, standing forlornly at the little train station of Denbury. Seymour ask Lincoln where she can get a taxi, or "a pony and trap," so she can get to Riverdale Hall, but Lincoln offers her a ride and even decided to stay the night at the country house when discovering a message chalked on her suitcase – warning her to "keep away from the green room." This green room is Seymour's old nursery and the persistent threats makes Lincoln suspect there's something about the room that's very important to someone in the house.

So not a bad read at all, but the plot is nothing special and will probably prove itself to be quite a forgettable yarn.

The third story in this collection, "The Thief of Claygate Farm," is a personal favorite and marks the arrival of Caroline Gerrard to take her position as Victoria Lincoln's assistance, which had been offered to her in the opening story. Gerrard immediately has to accompany her new employer to a farm in Esher, Surrey, where Professor Lynch rented Claygate Farm as a place where he could safely store his collection of antiques and curios. Several attempts had been made to break into his London home, but the burglar is a persistent one and looks to have been more successful getting in, and out, of the farmhouse, because rings and pendants keep disappearing as if by magic – taken from "a locked room one by one."

However, what endeared this story to me was not a clever or original impossible situation. On the contrary. The problem of the locked barn house is explained with one of the oldest tricks of the trade. What made me like this story is how the false solution was used. The only opening in the locked room was "a small fanlight" set high in the far wall and this immediately made me suspicious of the pet jackdaw, Kim, that belonged to a farm boy, Tom Derry, who were both introduced at the start of the story. Only problem is that the possibility of the bird being the thief was eliminated halfway through the story and this meant they had to clear the bird's good name by finding the actual thief.

A very good and amusing short story that's actually a better introduction to the main characters than the opening story. Only drawback is the mundane explanation for the locked barn house, but that can easily be forgiven by everything that was written around it.

The fourth story of the lot, "No Shred of Evidence," can best be described as a Sherlockian tale with a classical, Golden Age-style plot and is easily the best item in this collection. I suspect this story will prove to be favorite with many of the more seasoned mystery readers.

Lincoln and Gerrard are traveling to St. Hilda's College for Girls, in Somerset, where the music teacher, Edsel B. Baxter, has gone missing and left behind a disturbing note telling that he had decided to end his own life – intending to do it in such way that his "body never will be found." But when the question his housekeeper, Lincoln and Gerrard learn that there were many suspicious anomalies in the life of the missing music teacher. One of them is that he looked remarkably slimmer when he wore his pajamas, while another concerned a pronounced limp that disappeared when he was (heard) pacing around his room.

So this makes for a typical Holmesian problem that enters Golden Age territory when the body of a man is found dangling from a tree branch in the leafiest corner of a small forest, but the victim is not the missing music teacher! As noted, this story will probably be best appreciated by seasoned armchair detectives, because the plot is a traditional one and surprisingly mature (see motive) compared to the earlier stories in this collection. Plot-wise, this is easily the best one of the lot.

The penultimate story, "The Visitors Who Vanished," can only be taken seriously when read as a spoof of the genre, because the story is borderline ridiculous with an explanation that plays on an exaggerated cliché outsiders have of classic detective stories. A cliché that never fails to make me cringe whenever it actually turns up in a detective story.

Lincoln and Gerrard are engaged by Mr. Graham West, a well-known art dealer, who had a silver statuette of a horseman stolen under seemingly impossible circumstances. One evening, someone who was pretending to be Professor Garston, a famous sculptor, called on West and was alone for less than a minute, but when West returned the study was deserted and one of his statuettes had vanished – only problem is that the entire house was either locked from the inside or had people mooning about the place. A stranger simply could not have left the house, in less than a minute, without being seen.

Obviously, the explanation hinges on a disguise and this makes it very apparent how the vanishing act was done. Something that would have been slightly more acceptable had Fearn picked a different kind of culprit. So not exactly the gemstone of this volume.

Finally, we have the story that closes this collection, titled "From Beyond the Grave," which has perhaps the most original plot of all six stories and only the second one that deals with a murder.

Lincoln and Gerrard are asked by Miss Mary Reid to prevent the murder of her beloved sister, Margaret, who's engaged to Sir Robert Carson, but Miss Reid suspects Sir Robert is only interested in Margaret's money. She's even convinced he murdered his previous wife, Lady Enid, who supposedly fell overboard from a Channel steamer and her body was never recovered. Miss Reid did some detective work of her own and believes the poor woman never set foot aboard the steamer, but was murdered "at some point en route" and the body had been hidden somewhere along the road, which makes it crystal clear how the case can be solved – namely by finding the place where the body had been stowed away.

A very well-written, good and, above all, a fun story to read. The highlight of the story is without doubt the trap that was laid for the murderer, which saw the murder victim stir from her makeshift grave and disturb her murderer's peace of mind. I might be remembering this wrong, but certain aspects of the plot appeared to be anticipating Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington (1957) by nearly two decades.

However, my memory might be playing tricks on me, because it has been eons since I read 4.50 from Paddington. In any case, "From Beyond the Grave" perfectly served its role as a memorable closing act to the overall collection.

All in all, The Haunted Gallery is an attractive collection of short stories that are either playfully innocent or deadly serious. Only the second story attempted to do a bit of both. But whether the stories are playful or serious, the plots clearly showed they were written for a younger audience, because all of them come with training wheels on. So they only pose a challenge to young neophytes, but the bright-eyed innocence of some of these stories might warm the hearts of the more jaded readers of crime-and detective fiction. Personally, I was warmed by the third one, which is a wonderful yarn in every sense of the word. I did not even care by the standard locked room trick that was used. The rest of the story was too good to disqualify it on a technicality. 

 

So my love-affair with Fearn continues! And I have, what looks to be, a first-rate village mystery novel for my next review. So stay tuned! 

It Takes a Thief

"You are right. I am not a detective, but a thief. And stealing is what thieves do best, even if it's a persons heart."

- Kaito KID (Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan a.k.a. Case Closed)

Last week, I posted a review of The Iron Angel and Other Tales of the Gypsy Sleuth (2003) by Edward D. Hoch, a giant of the short story form, but sadly, this particular collection of detective stories proved to be underwhelming as a whole and completely under-performed compared to the author's other, more well-known, detective-series – like the ones featuring Simon Ark or Dr. Sam Hawthorne. A sentiment that was shared in the comment-section.

There were, however, two nuggets of gold in the collection reflecting Hoch's monumental reputation as a craftsman of short tales of mystery and detection. Stories that showcased his expertise in twisting together clever, well-clued puzzle plots and simply wanted to read more of them.

So I decided to return early to Hoch's massive contribution to the pantheon of detective-fiction, close to a thousand short stories, which brought me to a volume about his most popular creation, Nick Velvet, who's a thief-for-hire specialized in pilfering unusual or even bizarre things – often without any apparent monetary value.

Nick Velvet was born in the once Italian dominated neighborhood of Greenwich Village, New York, as Nicholas Velvetta, but shortened it on account of his name sounding like a cheese. He lives together with his long-time girlfriend, Gloria Merchant, who has "only a vague notion of his profession" and believes he's an industrial consultant, which meant regularly trips abroad. During those days away from home, Velvet carries out some of the most singular thefts and burglaries the police forces of the world must have on record.

Velvet charges a flat fee of $20,000 for his odd thefts with "an extra $10,000 for especially hazardous tasks" (e.g. stealing a ferocious tiger from a city zoo in broad daylight). As a result, the stories tend to be multifaceted as one part of the plot deals with how Velvet is going to complete his task, while the other part concerns itself with the question why anyone would plunk down twenty grand, or more, in cash to get their hands on a toy mouse or an old circus poster. Something that provides these rogue stories with an interesting detective-angle.

The professional thief debuted on the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1966 and would go on to appear in 85 additional short stories, a crime-spree lasting over forty years, with the last one being published in 2007 – a year before Hoch passed away. Velvet was not only one of Hoch's most popular series-characters, but also proved to be the "most financially successful" one and probably the reason why some of his exploits were collected as early as the 1970s.

One of these collections is The Thefts of Nick Velvet (1978) and is a selection of stories from the first ten years of the series. Mostly, they're excellent and entertaining crime stories demonstrating why, not only, Nick Velvet is Hoch's most popular series-character, but also showing his creation was a worthy addition to the Rogue's Gallery of gentleman thieves – which includes Arsène Lupin and A.J. Raffles. So let's take a closer look at the thirteen short stories that make up The Thefts of Nick Velvet.

The opening story, "The Theft of the Clouded Tiger," also kicked off this long-running series and was originally printed in the September 1966 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM), which has a plot that's still rough around the edges and can even be considered hardboiled. Velvet is hired by the representative of "a Middle Eastern prince with a private zoo" to steal a clouded tiger, a very rare specimen, that had been captured near the Sino-Indian border and donated to the Glen Park Zoo.

Velvet's plan to take the tiger from his cage is pretty much a crude smash-and-grab job, but the crux of the plot turns out to be a double-cross forcing the thief to bloody his hands in order to even the score. It is, however, noted in the introduction that, after this first story, he "rarely killed anyone."

"The Theft from the Onyx Pool" appeared in the June 1967 issue of EQMM and is easily my favorite entry in this collection. Velvet is hired by a young girl, Asher Dumont, who wants to pay him the twenty grand to steal the water from a swimming pool belonging to a writer and producer of mystery plays, Samuel Fitzpatrick. A task requiring theatrics and some grease money, but the best aspect of the plot is the reason why the pool had to be drained and Hoch does not underestimate the intelligence of his readers, because two of the three likely explanations were quickly disposed of – which leaves the reader with a possibility that doesn't really answer why the water had to be stolen. But that is explained through a marvelous bluff by the client. As Velvet said, "I'd hate to be your enemy."

Note for the curious: Velvet is introduced to Fitzpatrick under the guise of having an idea for a stage-play, which happened to be "a locked room sort of thing" and gives a brief rundown how the trick works. A gimmick used elsewhere, in a much later work, to ignite a deadly fire inside a locked apartment.

"The Theft of the Toy Mouse" was first published in the June 1968 publication of EQMM and his latest assignment brings him to a sound stage in Paris, France, where an American motion picture is being shot. Velvet is paid his flat fee to steal "a little wind-up metal mouse," with a retail value of 98 cents, from the prop department. There's an amusing, well-written scene in which Velvet burglarizes the prop room from atop the roof's skylight, but the reason why his client wanted the mechanical mouse stolen was a little obvious. Still, the story was a good and fun read.

"The Theft of the Meager Beaver" originally appeared in December 1969 in EQMM and is the first of three stories from this collection that involves a fictitious country.

Asignar is the Minister of Information for the island Republic of Jabali, "not far beyond Cuba," where the reigning president, General Tras, is an enormous baseball fan who has personally trained a national team – except that they have nobody to play against. Velvet is hired by the Jabali government to steal a major league baseball team from America and bring them to the tiny island nation. So this is really more kidnap story, and a crude one at that, than a proper theft, but a secret (political) plot is tied to the arrival of the American baseball team. Velvet has to turn against his clients in order to prevent a political assassination cleverly disguised as a legal execution. Somewhat of an unusual entry, but not a bad one and reminded me of an updated version of Arsène Lupin.

The next story, "The Theft of the Silver Lake Serpent," was published in the January 1970 publication of Argosy and is the most outlandish of all the stories gathered in this collection! Velvet is asked by the desperate owner of a lake resort, Earl Crowder, to steal "a sea serpent" from the lake of a neighboring competitor, which has been draining his place of all its guests – because people are flocking next door in hopes of seeing a real-life Loch Ness Monster. What's fascinating is that the eyewitnesses appear to have really seen a legendary sea serpent with a small head on "a fairly long neck" with "two coils or spines or lumps" breaking the water behind the head.

It's not the easiest of jobs, considering people have been hunting lake monsters for ages without any success, but Velvet persevered where others have failed and solved an unaccountable death along the way. However, the explanation for the true nature of the serpent makes you want to hug and strangle Hoch at the same time. One of those solutions that's as original as it's almost unacceptable. And, no, it's not a mini-submarine disguised as a lake monster.

"The Theft of the Seven Ravens" was published in the January 1972 issue of EQMM and is the second story about a fictitious country, which is represented here by "the newly independent nation of Gola" where the image of a raven is an important symbol. So during the first official state visit, the President of Gola is going to represent the Queen of England with seven Golaen ravens and Velvet is hired by the British government to prevent the animals from being stolen. Around the same time, Velvet is asked by an Irish nationalist to steal the ravens before they can be presented to the Queen. A situation that quickly turns into a quagmire.

There's an excellent set-piece when a room is filled with black birds, but otherwise, the (core) plot came across as somewhat repetitive read so shortly after "The Theft of the Meager Beaver." But not a bad read by itself.

"The Theft of the Mafia Cat" is lifted from the pages of the May 1971 edition of EQMM and is easily the most amusing yarn contained in this volume of stories.

Velvet is engaged by a childhood friend, named Paul Matalena, with whom he grew up in the Italian section of Greenwich Village and is reputedly "a big man in Mafia these days." Matalena wants Velvet to steal a cat, which seems an easy enough job, but the snag is that the animal is owned by "a big man in the Syndicate," Mike Pirrone, who absolutely adores the one-of-a-kind cat – which could turn this job in a suicide mission when gets caught. Or at least gets taught a lesson by Pirrone's personal security. The way in which Velvet manages to snatch the cat from under the nose of the gangster is fun enough, but the cherry on top is the very clever and original reason why Matalena needed to "borrow" the animal for a short while. Loved it!

"The Theft from the Empty Room" was originally published in the 1972 issue of EQMM and has been tagged everywhere as a locked room, or impossible crime, story, which is technically correct, but an outside-of-the-box kind of mystery would be more accurate.

Roger Surman is hospitalized with a serious liver problem and hires Velvet from his hospital bed, which he solemnly promises to be "one of the most unusual jobs" he has ever worked on. A statement that proved to be somewhat prophetic. Surman wants Velvet to burglarize the storeroom of his brother's summerhouse, currently closed down for the winter, but when he gains entrance to the place he finds a bare, empty storeroom – a layer of dust covering the floor from wall to wall. So what could have been in the room and how could it have been removed from the room without disturbing the film of dust on the floor? Velvet actually has to do some proper detective work in order to solve the mystery and complete his task. A good, pleasant and clever detective/rogue story with an original problem.

"The Theft of the Crystal Crown" was published in the January 1973 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and is the third, and last, story in this collection about fictitious country. The Kingdom of New Ionia is "a very old and very small island in the Mediterranean," situated between the southern tips of Italy and Greece, where the national symbol is a glass crown. A relic shown only once a year during a masked ball at the palace and Velvet was paid to snatch it during this yearly ball, but the smash-and-grab job is the only good set-piece in this story. Otherwise, I really didn't care about this story.

"The Theft of the Clouded Tiger," EQMM, 1966

"The Theft of the Circus Poster" originally appeared in the May 1973 issue of EQMM and a man, dressed as a clown, commissions Velvet to a steal a 1916 circus poster from the private collection of retired clown, Herbie Benson. However, the protective granddaughter of the old man, Judy, proves to be great foil to the professional house-burglar. She's a professional snake-charmer and every night she lets loose "a sackful of rattlesnakes" in house, as a precaution against burglars, but Velvet now also wants to know why his client wants to steal a poster from such a kind, old man. A good, solid and fun story unless you really hate clown and/or snakes.

"The Theft of Nick Velvet" was published in the February 1974 issue of EQMM and has a potentially interesting premise: Velvet is kidnapped in order to prevent him from being hired to do a job, but manages to convince his captors to allow him to the job for them (i.e. stealing a ship's manifest). Unfortunately, I found this story to be completely underwhelming and simply did not care about it. So moving on.

“The Theft of the General's Trash” appeared in the May 1974 issue of EQMM and Velvet takes his long-time girlfriend, Gloria, to Washington to see the cherry blossoms, but shortly after they arrived in the political nerve-center of the United States the telephone in their hotel-room rings – with an offer for a high-paying job. Sam Simon is a columnist and investigative journalist who wants Velvet to steal "a bag of garbage" belonging to the President's adviser on foreign affairs, General Norman Spengler. Simon swears the garbage bags contains nothing but refuge and their content is only of interest to him, as a reporter, which turns the illustrious thief into a glorified garbage collector. However, he receives his normal fee several times over, because he has to net more than one bag for his client. Of course, the much desired item in one of those bags is directly related to the political swamps of Washington, but the best part of this story is Velvet trying to get his hands on these bags.

On a side note, this is the story that convinced Gloria that Velvet is not an industrial consultant, but a agent, or spy, working for the United States government. Something he allowed her to believe, because it "helped cover his awkward absences." Who knew Edogawa Conan took relationship advice from Nick Velvet?

Finally, we have the last story from this collection, "The Theft of the Bermuda Penny," originally published in the June 1975 edition of EQMM and is a full-blown impossible crime story!

Velvet is hired by Jeanne Kraft to steal the titular penny from an inveterate gambler, Alfred Cazar, who is approached by Velvet in the guise of a magazine writer doing an article on the Saratoga racing season. So he accompanies the Cazar on a car-ride to the race tracks and the gambler cleans out the pockets of the thief during several impromptu bets, but during the ride Cazar miraculously vanished from the back seat of a closed car going nearly 70 miles an hour – leaving his seat-belts still fastened!

This is one of those rich, multi-layered stories Hoch was more than capable of putting together. First of all, there's the secret attached to a modern-day penny without any apparent value. The small-time cons Cazar played on Velvet during their joined car-ride and his impossible disappearance from a moving car. Lastly, there's a, sort of, whodunit-angle, which are nicely twisted together with some clues and foreshadowing thrown into the mix. Not one of his absolute masterpieces, but it's a perfect example of why Hoch will remain a staple of mystery anthologies for many, many decades to come.

So, all in all, The Thefts of Nick Velvet is an excellent collection of short stories. There were only two stories that failed to grasp my interest, but the remainder of the stories were pretty consistent in quality with some truly excellent specimens. Some even managed to surprise (one with the sea serpent!). I can perfectly understand why Nick Velvet emerged as a fan favorite and will probably return to his exploits before too long, because there's another volume of Nick Velvet stories on my pile with some potentially interesting (locked room) stories.

However, the next review is going to be of a once rare impossible crime novel with an excellent reputation and a fascinating backdrop. So keep your eyes out for that one.