Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912) by Victor L. Whitechurch

Rev. Victor L. Whitechurch was an Anglican churchman, author and creator of Thorpe Hazell, a vegetarian railway enthusiast, who's one of the oddest "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" appearing in a short-lived series of nine short stories from 1905 to 1906 – collected in Thrilling Stories of the Railway (1912). Whitechurch started out as a turn-of-the-century mystery writer in the Doylean tradition, but also got the participate in the early Golden Age of the British detective story with novels like The Crime at Diana's Pool (1927), Murder at the Pageant (1930) and Murder at the College (1932). Not to mention being a founding member of The Detection Club and penning the first chapter ("Corpse Ahoy!") for the round-robin mystery The Floating Admiral (1931).

Whitechurch is best remembered today for the railway detective and thriller stories written during the first decade of the previous century, which extends pass the Thorpe Hazell series. That gives them some historical importance. Mike Grost pointed out Whitechurch's "stories appeared early in the Impossible Crime movement" and "very early in the Technological Detective movement" that "had already been piloted by L.T. Meade in this era, but just barely." Thrilling Stories of the Railway and Whitechurch's other railway mysteries were fairly obscure and out-of-print for decades, until they entered the public domain. They have since been bundled together and reprinted by different publishers. I wanted to finally take a look at this collection of pioneering detective stories.

The first story is "Peter Crane's Cigars," originally published in the July, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Ingenious Ruse of Mr. Crane," which briefly introduces Thorpe Hazell. A book collector, railway enthusiast and amateur detective "whose knowledge of book editions and bindings was only equaled by his grasp of railway details," but what made Thorpe Hazell an odd duck at the time was another one of his eccentricities – "a strong faddist on food and physical culture." A vegetarian to the extreme who was constantly practicing strange, outlandish physical exercises.

So this first story presents a fairly minor problem as Hazell has to deal with a tobacconist undercutting his competition by selling quality cigars at bargain prices ("...only paid fivepence each for them"). That brand can be "picked up very cheaply in Holland or Belgium," but not resold at those low prices unless they were smuggled into the country without paying the duties. Hazell dons a disguise to tail Crane on his monthly excursion abroad, but even the railway detective is baffled how Crane was smuggling the cigars. So you can categorize this story as a borderline impossible crime story and not something as banal or disappointing as the cigars being smuggled pass customs inside the books Crane was lugging around on his travels. Whitechurch came up with something more ambitious for the core solution, but its dependence on (ROT13) haxabja nppbzcyvprf detracts from the overall plot. Still a fun, enjoyable introduction to the series.

"The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern," originally published in the August, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with Hazell perusing the morning newspaper when a headline, "SHOCKING ACCIDENT ON THE RAILWAY," catches his eye and attention. An unidentified man was found leaning out of one of the windows of an express, on the London and Mid-Northern Railway, who had a wound on the back of his head and an ear torn off. So the authorities assume the man was looking out of the window and struck his head against one of several bridges over the line, but Hazell would like to know more about the incident. Between stretches and dumbbell exercises, Thorpe Hazell becomes Thorpedyke Hazell and follows a trail of physical evidence right to the murderer's doorstep. As noted before, these are early, pre-Golden Age mysteries that reads like a blueprint of what's coming, but often lacked fair play. So Hazell is as much as an oracle as an detective. Still a fun story.

Interestingly, Whitechurch's "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" appears to have been the blueprint for another impossible crime story from the same decade. This story sounded so familiar, I started looking over the "Train Mysteries" tag and came across "The Unseen Hand" by M. McDonnell Bodkin from The Quests of Paul Beck (1908) and anthologized in Ye Olde Book of Locked Room Conundrums (2016). "The Unseen Hand" was published in the December, 1907, issue of The Royal Magazine. So assume Bodkin had been aware of Whitechurch's story and tried to improve on it, because it doesn't seem like a blatant copy/paste job.

"The Affair of the Corridor Express," first published in the September, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine, is an interesting one. A distressed Mr. F.W. Wingrave, a master at Shillington School, comes to Thorpe Hazell asking him to help find a 10-year-old school boy, Horace Carr-Mathers, who's the son of a millionaire and impossibly vanished from a moving train – vanished right under the nose of the school masters! So the London express was thoroughly searched, every compartment, luggage rack and passenger, but Horace was nowhere to be found. Hazell can see "a distinct plot" in Wingrave's account and accepts the case. I think this is the first story with a plot that has aged surprisingly well. Not only does it indulge in some clueing and foreshadowing, but the visual image of how Horace vanished from the train makes for a memorable visual image. That poor kid! One of those rare detective stories that manages actually do something with a kidnap plot.

"Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," originally published in the October, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine under the title "The Car That Vanished" and anthologized in The Realm of the Impossible (2027), is another early highlight of the impossible crime story. A case that "found a prominent place in Thorpe Hazell's notebook" and for good reason. Sir Gilbert Murrell has three paintings on loan to an expedition, but they inexplicable disappear in transit, on a goods train, along with its entire waggon on a non-stop right. And to top it all off, the vanished waggon with the paintings was in the middle of the train! I don't know how feasible the disappearance-trick is or whether it can be pulled-off on a first try, but the idea is ambitious, original and light years ahead of its time when it comes to the impossible crime story. A good and entertaining impossible crime caper.

"How the Bank was Saved," published in the November, 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine as "The Frustration of Kinch," begins with admitting "Thorpe Hazell always looked upon the affair of the Birmingham Bank from a distinctly humorous point of view" – "not worth calling a railway mystery or adventure." I agree. This is a mild crime comedy in which Hazell helps a bank thwart a plot to destroy their credibility over a personal grievance. A plot involving a robbery aboard a train, but Hazell has a counter plot. A fun, light, but forgettable, criminal farce.

"The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box," originally published in the December 1905, issue of The Royal Magazine and previously anthologized in Vintage Mystery and Detective Stories (2005). This time, Thorpe Hazell gets to play a cross between Arsène Lupin and James Bond. Hazell is approached by Mostyn Cotterell, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affair, who has an unusual request. How do you steal back stolen document from a German diplomat traveling from London to the Continent by the ordinary boat train? The documents in question being carried in a locked dispatch-box. So, on this case, Hazell is not solving a train heist, but organizing and carrying one out. A daring assignment on paper ("...the most daring case which he ever undertook..."), but, as the ending showed, not half as dangerous or impossible when you have the backing of the British Empire. Still an amusing yarn regardless and not half bad for the time.

"How the Bishop Kept His Appointment," originally appearing in the January, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, is a mild, humorous adventure story in which Hazell helps a bishop get to his important speaking engagement after their train derailed. So not much to say about this one except that it has one or two good moments.

"The Adventure of the Pilot Engine," first published in the February, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, takes place at "a juncture when European politics were considered by diplomatists to be in a very delicate state" when Count von Neglein arrived in the country – scheduled to have "an interview with the English Prime Minister" ("...in presence of the King"). A small group of spies, headed by a man named Dubourg, plot to prevent this meeting from ever happening and the plot he has hatched makes this the most technically complicated stories in the series. A complicated and fiendish scheme involving a particular stretch of railway with quadruple tracks and switch boxes. There's even a map of that stretch of railway line. Refreshingly, Dubourg admits "there are several weak spots in the plan" and "must trust to luck." Nobody could have planned on a certain railway detective playing deus ex machine to spoil their carefully laid out and executed plot. So not too bad for a vintage spy thriller.

Note for the curious: one of the characters involved in the plot is a Russian spy, named Koravitch, who's probably the same character from Whitechurch's The Adventures of Captain Ivan Koravitch (1925). That could mean Whitechurch could have written the first, or one of the first, crossovers in the detective genre. Something deserving of being footnoted.

"The Stolen Necklace," originally published in the March, 1906, issue of The Royal Magazine, concludes this short-lived series on an underwhelming note. A short story from the late 1800s or early 1900s about stolen or misplaced diamond necklaces, strings of pearls and gold rings tend to feel like filler stories – because rarely something really is clever is done with it. This story is no exception. Hazell helps a woman retrieve a diamond necklace she lost on a train, but turn out to have been stolen. An OK story by itself (and for the time), but forgettable and very weak to end this series on. At least Hazell was satisfied with his ending ("...glad to think that the last of my little investigations of railway mysteries has cleared a good man of suspicion...").

Hold on! There are six more, non-Thorpe Hazell thrilling stories of the railway in this collection beginning with another locked room murder aboard a train.

"The Mystery of the Boat Express," published in the February, 1912, issue of The Royal Magazine, begins with a passenger of the Great Southern Boat Train paying the guard a half-crown to lock his compartment ("...I do not wish to be disturbed"). When the train arrived at its destination, the guard unlocks the compartment and discovers the passenger has been shot through the head. So it appears to be a case of suicide, but the evidence screams murder. How can a man alone inside a locked compartment, on a moving train, have been shot? The solution to that conundrum makes "The Mystery of the Boat Express" another footnote worthy title. I think the locked room aficionados has seen a variation, or two, on this trick before, but this story predates them all by more than twenty years. Other than that, very much a short story of its time.

"How the Express was Saved," originally published August, 1911, issue of The Royal Magazine, runs along similar lines as some of the previous stories. It revolves around a group of disgruntled railway strikers who were told by their employer to hit the road. So they hatch a plot to derail the train, on which their General Manager is traveling, pitching it straight into the river. In my opinion, the best written of Whitechurch's railway thrillers complimented by a beautiful map of the scene where the train is to be derailed.

 

 

I have very little to say about the last four, fairly minor short stories from The Royal Magazine. "A Case of Signalling" (1911) has a maid and her railway worker boyfriend spoil a burglary. "Winning the Race" (1911) is another affair of international intrigue and concerns trying to get one train to arrive before the other. "The Strikers" (1911) is much the same as "How the Express was Saved," but not as good. Finally, "The Ruse That Succeeded" (1911), in which the Russian spy Koravitch has to be smuggled out of Britain. I guess this story comes from The Adventures of Ivan Koravitch.

So, all in all, Whitechurch's Thrilling Stories of the Railway is an interesting, but mixed, collection of short stories. The best of these stories are "The Affair of the Corridor Express," "Sir Gilbert Murrell's Picture," "The Mystery of the Boat Express" and "How the Express was Saved" followed at some distance by "The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern" and "The Adventure of the Pilot Engine." You have to judge these stories by the standards (or lack of standards) of the pre-Golden Age period when the detective story of the 1930s and '40s slowly started to take its form. That's perhaps the biggest strength of Thrilling Stories of the Railway is showing this transition from one period to the other. Like the best from this period, they read like a blueprint or premonition of the coming Golden Age (e.g. Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air, 1917). Whitechurch's railway mysteries belong to that category with its technical, more ambitious and complicated plots, impossible crimes, diagrams and floor plans. Whitechurch was not the first to include floor plans and diagrams, but they were still far from a staple of the detective genre. So definitely enjoyed this collection and its historical window into the development of the detective story. Recommended not only to vintage crime fans, but fans of vintage fiction in general.

The Murder at World's End (2025) by Ross Montgomery

Last year, Ross Montgomery, a British author of more than twenty children's books, debuted with his first novel for adults, The Murder at World's End (2025), which is the first in a new series of historical, retro-Golden Age style detective novels – starring an unlikely detective duo. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, recommended The Murder at World's End as a locked room mystery taking place during the arrival of Halley's Comet ("you'd enjoy that, I'm sure"). Well, you know how easily I can be persuaded with the promise of a good locked room mystery or impossible crime.

Before delving into Montgomery's The Murder at World's End, I want to take a brief detour into the past of the retro-Golden Age mystery novel. A past that was until recently not as deep or rich as the original Golden Age mysteries of the pre-1960s era. Until recently, that is.

The retro-Golden Age detective novels and series of today came out of the reprint renaissance that started in the early 2010s, but the so-called clever send-ups, reinterpretation and subversive takes that came before are a different story. Rarely did they turn out to be as clever or hilarious as promised. There were exceptions like a Charles Forsyte, John Sladek or even a curious, short-lived revival during the 1980s, but, more often than not, the retro-Golden Age mysteries of the post-WWII decades lazily trotted out cliches and tropes – presented as clever, hilarious or brilliantly subversive. More than one had a killer butler escaping the scene of the crime through a secret passage or tried to reinvent the wheel by having an unreliable narrator. Catherine Aird's The Stately Home Murder (1969) is perhaps the best-known of these horrendous country house send-ups and arguably reached its nadir Gilbert Adair's indigestible smug The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (2006). A first in a trilogy that I believe was presented as something of an event at the time, but seems to have been overtaken by history and already forgotten about.

Because what a difference a decade or two and flood of classic reprints can make! A renaissance that has been slowly turning into a revival with writers like Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian, Martin Edwards, Benjamin Stevenson and even a strong independent scene driven by names such as James Scott Byrnside and A. Carver. So the retro, Golden Age mysteries of today actually read like classically-styled detective fiction (e.g. J.S. Savage's The Mystery of Treefall Manor, 2023) instead of superficial imitations of Agatha Christie's work with all the depth of a game of Cluedo. That's something to be appreciative of considering nearly everything we got today was a pipe dream just 15, 16 years ago. Montgomery continues that trend with The Murder at World's End. So let's take a closer look at Montgomery's first stab at the classically-styled detective novel. And what he can do with the locked room mystery.

The Murder at World's End takes place in May, 1910, when Halley's Comet passed by Earth on its 75-year orbit of the Sun. And, on this specific fly-by, the Earth would be passing through the comet's tail and that ended up causing some panic when a spectrograph analysis detected cyanogen gas in the tail. Nothing civilization ending or even dangerous, but that didn't stop the headlines or some people from panicking ("people also lowered themselves into wells or sealed off their homes and papered over the keyholes..."). Montgomery used the comet panic of 1910 as the basis for his locked room mystery.

Lord Stockingham-Welt, the Viscount of World's End and founder of the Cometary Cataclysm Society, believes the world is going to end when the planet passes through the comet's tail ("your government has hidden the truth from you!") – turned Tithe Hall into a doomsday bunker. Tithe Hall stands on a remote tidal island, World's End, somewhere in Cornwall. Even without being turned into a temporary fallout shelter, Tithe Hall is an odd place designed by the Viscount's late father who believed "servants and masters should be kept apart." So the house is a rabbit warren of servants' staircases and "butler's mirrors" allowing "staff to check around corners, so they don't run into Lord Stockingham-Welt unexpectedly." By the way, the book has a gorgeous cross section giving a doll's house view of Tithe Hall.

The Viscount has invited a small group of people to Tithe Hall to weather the End of Days and emerge to rebuild the world. Among those "lucky few" are Edwin Welt, MP, who has an eye on the family fortune. Jolyon Welt, Rear Admiral, who's a red faced, bleary eyed drunk. Lettice Welt is there with her 7-year-old grandson, Gilbert, who's an orphan. The Viscount also invited another founding member of the CCS, Professor Wolff Müller of the Klatsch Institute in Hamburg, who's there to record the day with his camera for posterity. That only leaves the two detectives of the new series, Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham.

Stephen Pike, innocently convicted for a crime he didn't commit, is now a free and reformed man who has been send to Tithe Hall to work as an under footman, but ends up looking after Miss Decima – who the family has locked away in the old nursery. Miss Decima is the Viscount's octogenarian great-aunt and an absolute terror who curses like sailor's parrot ("never heard language like it, not from a lady or otherwise") and burned through the entire female staff. Stephen is tasked with keeping her company and comfortable, while everyone else busy to "completely seal the house, making it impermeable to the poisonous gases" ("tomorrow, we will rise to a changed world"). However, the next morning they have to break down the door to the Viscount's study when he doesn't answer their knocking. They discovered the Viscount sitting behind his desk, between oxygen tanks, shot through the eye with a crossbow bolt! The room was not merely locked from the inside, but boarded up, keyholes sealed with candle wax and every gap plugged with cotton wadding. A murder in a practically hermetically sealed room and the person who discovered the murder is an ex-convict who only arrived the previous day.

A predicament that gets even worse for Stephen when Inspector James Jarvis, of Scotland Yard, arrives on the scene. Jarvis has to be thickest cop to appear on the printed page since Lestrade. However, that prize goof grew on me after a while with his ludicrous, ill thought out false-solutions that get shot down, one after another, by Miss Decima and eventually Stephen. Chapter 45 is a Jarvis highlight and one for the scrapbooks! Miss Decima concludes she's "the only person in the house clever enough to solve the mystery" enlists Stephen as her Watson ("...you shall push my bath chair"). She also needs Stephen to investigate her "relatives, eavesdrop on conversations, threaten suspects, lie to the police, and maybe break a few fingers," but all joking aside, they end up making a formidable detective duo. A detective pair tailored for the conventions and rules of the upstairs/downstairs domestic situation of the British upper class at the time. Stephen has one foot in the servants' quarters ruled over by the head butler, Mr. Stokes, while Miss Decima has broken free from her confinement to torture her relatives. It made for an interesting dynamic between the two lead characters and the various puzzles the plot presents, but also a good way to setup the series and establish the lead characters without the plot taking a backseat. So the characters and newly established partnership of Stephen and Miss Decima that made the story rattle along at a brisk pace.

Montgomery wrote a very readable mystery novel and guess having written books for children and younger readers in general helped in writing The Murder at World's End. A detective novel also involves putting together a plot that holds up.

The plot of The Murder at World's End holds up for the most part, however, some rough edges and patches that are to be expected from someone playing the Grandest Game in the World. Such as the red herrings (ROT13: yvxr gur qrnq svfu) outnumbering the scant, sparsely-planted clues or that even without an intricate web of clues it's possible to make a pretty good, educated guess in which direction the solution is eventually going to head. Simply because the story and plot demanded such sort of murderer with that kind of motive. Not as bad, but still should be mentioned, is the explanation to the locked room problem. The locked room-trick is, what do you call it, a bit patchy as it reworks several old locked room dodges. Admittedly, the locked room-trick added a new wrinkle on those old dodges, especially the second-half of the trick, but the whole setup of locking and sealing everyone in their rooms demanded something more ambitious or original from the method. It's still fine as long as you don't expect John Dickson Carr-like fireworks or shin honkaku levels of meta-trickery.

So even though Montgomery's The Murder at World's End is still rough around the edges, I tremendously enjoyed as an auspicious debut of both a promising mystery writer and new series. I never judge a promising looking debut too harshly for its imperfections, because all they usually need is some time and experience. After all, Carr and Christie need time and experience before they could produce classics like The Three Coffins (1935) and Murder in the Orient Express (1934). They're the whetstone of talent and good detective fiction. So very much look forward to Montgomery's second Stephen Pike and Miss Decima Stockingham mystery novel, The Shadows of Kensington Gore (2026), which should be out in October.

By the way, on a final note, I have the perfect follow-up for The Murder at World's End. So stay tuned.

Cardula and the Locked Rooms (2026) by Jack Ritchie

Back in 2024, I posted "Locked and Loaded, Part 5: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories," a series of reviews of randomly selected short stories, which included the misidentified, non-impossible crime story, "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" (1982), penned by Jack Ritchie – another long-gone giant of short stories. So even though "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" is not an impossible crime story, it's still a hilarious and clever mystery about Cardula (Dracula) who moved to the US to moonlight as a private detective. And the reason why Cardula had to flee to the US is fantastic in the literal sense of the word. To quote Mike Grost, "the throwing of his vampire detective Cardula out of East Europe after the Communists nationalized his castle is a great comic concept."

"Cardula and the Locked Rooms" not only has a genuinely funny and fresh premise for a private eye series, but it's also a pretty good, solid detective story in its own right. Cardula is hired by an art collector to retrieve a stolen Vincent van Gogh that got stolen a second time and compared it to Edward D. Hoch's Nick Velvet series. So jotted down the Cardula stories as a series of interest and even mentioned in the comments I would welcome a Crippen & Landru collection. Guess what?

In February, Crippen & Landru released Cardula and the Locked Rooms (2026), edited and introduced by Brian Skupin, gathering all nine short stories about the vampire detective and a whopper of a bonus – all six of Ritchie's impossible crime stories! What a clever excuse way to turn that misleading short story title into a descriptively accurate title for this collection by bundling the Cardula stories with Ritchie's impossible crime fiction. I admire how Skupin tackles and solves editorial problems. Like to see more, but let's take a look at this collection first.

Fittingly enough, this unusual detective series begins with a non-detective story, "Kid Cardula," which first appeared in the June, 1976, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Cardula, on the verge of running completely out of money, turns to a boxing trainer/promoter, because he has read in the papers "there's a fortune to be made in prize fights." Something that should be easy money for an undead vampire possessing the strength of ten men, but Cardula eventually figures out someone in his position probably can't afford to become a boxing champion or legend. No matter how big the prize purses get. So this story is hard to rate as there's no mystery to be solved, but it sure is a fun story and introduction to the character. I particularly enjoyed Manny having to arrange Cardula's fights like pro-wrestling matches, otherwise every fight would have ended in an instant knock-out. You have to send the crowd home happy.

These light, humorous touches and furtive references to Cardula being a vampire ("You got blue blood in your veins?" "Occasionally") would fortunately be carried over when the series went into private eye mode with the second story.

"The Cardula Detective Agency," originally published in the March, 1977, issue of AHMM, brings Olivia Hampton to Cardula's nighttime detective agency. Someone took a shot at her uncle, Hector, who had gathered his family to tell them he was going to cut them all out of his will and Olivia wants Cardula to ensure he's still alive when he sees his lawyer the next morning – after which the motive to kill him is removed. Cardula enters the somewhat eccentric household as a bodyguard to ensure Uncle Hector lives to see the sunrise. Hilariously, Cardula reads a book on hematology while sitting guard. During the night, Cardula finds out the case is not as clear cut as presented and gets to showcase his abilities as a detective and vampire-detective. But the ending demonstrates Cardula's not like other detectives. Not just on account of his fangs or ability to fly. This story also gives a bit of background on what happened Cardula's wealth ("what wasn't confiscated or nationalized was destroyed") and castle ("...east gallery has been converted to public restrooms"). So good reboot of the character and series.

"The Canvas Caper," originally published in the August, 1977, issue of AHMM, brings an unusual, anonymous client to Cardula with something more akin to a confession than a case. This man and his associates cut cards to see who had to kill their shared blackmailer and the man drew the low card. However, he couldn't go through with it and turned to Cardula figuring "any private detective whose office hours are from eight P.M. to four A.M. must be closer to the night world of crime than anybody else." So he offers Cardula ten thousand dollars to kill the blackmailer or find someone willing to do the job, but, once again, the assignment is not as simple and clear cut as it was presented to him. Simply as a detective story, "The Canvas Caper" is blatantly unfair, but, as a story about a vampire detective, it's as entertaining as all the others.

"Cardula to the Rescue," originally published in the December, 1977, issue of AHMM, casts Cardula not as a boxer, bodyguard or fangs-for-hire, but as a Good Samaritan coming to the rescue of a woman. A purse snatcher tried to take her handbag, but Cardula made short work of him. No good deed goes unpunished. The woman tells him to mind his own damn business, promptly disappears and the police want to arrest him for assaulting the purse snatcher! Cardula pulls a Batman to escape from the policemen, only for exactly the scene to repeat itself the following evening ("had I somehow inadvertently passed through a time warp?"). Not surprisingly, Cardula finds there's more behind the attempted robberies than just the daily routine of a purse snatcher and his victim.

"Cardula and the Kleptomaniac," first published in the April, 1978, issue of AHMM, is the longest story in the series and brings an unusual problem to Cardula's desk. Diana Weatherly is dying with curiosity to find out whom of her old friends is the kleptomaniac who has been stealing their trinkets since their schooldays. She has whittled down the list of suspects down to four friends and even prepared a baited trap, but, while trying to catch the thief in the act, she fell asleep – which is why she turned to Cardula. She wants Cardula to come to her house party, undercover, to identify the thief. You guessed it, Cardula pretty quickly notices there's more beneath the surface than a human magpie. So, plot-wise, this is one of the better stories, but the conclusion also show its hardboiled side.

"Cardula's Revenge," originally published in the November, 1978, issue of AHMM, is similar to the first story, "Kid Cardula," technically not a detective story. Cardula's old nemesis, "that beast Van Jelsing," is dead, but his grandson, Professor Van Jelsing the Third, carries on the torch. This new vampire hunter has become a real pain in the neck to the vampire community, but they can't get near him as he wears a magical collar around his neck. What's worse, Van Jelsing is currently in the US on a lecture tour to present his nephew and successor, Henrik van Jelsing. So what's a vampire detective to do? Not a detective story or mystery at all, but an entertaining comedy in which a vampire outwits two vampire hunters like a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd skit.

"The Return of Cardula," originally published in the February, 1982, issue of AHMM, brings a petty thief and burglar, Walter, to Cardula. Walter had a partner in crime, Albert, who had been in-and out jail together nearly their entire life, but something went terribly wrong when they hit the ball park to go through the locker rooms while the players out on the field. Walter stood guard at the entrance, of the corridor leading to the locker rooms, while Albert went inside to loot the lockers. Two minutes later, a dying Albert came stumbling back and uttered the cryptic words, "no snow." Yes, an actual dying message! Walter asks Albert to find the killer of his long-time friend and we get to see Cardula (getting caught) sneaking into the stadium, but solves the murder and dying message while watching the ball game. Skupin wrote in the introduction that this story "could have been an Ellery Queen tale" with "its baseball milieu and wordplay solution" (c.f. Ellery Queen's "Man Bites Dog," 1939). I agree!

The next story is "Cardula and the Locked Room," but already reviewed it as part of "Locked and Loaded, Part 5." However, it should be noted it's arguably the best and strongest story of the series. Perhaps it would have been best if the series had ended here.

"Cardula and the Briefcase" appeared in the June, 1983, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (not AHMM) and has a premise similar to “The Return of Cardula.” Alvin Atkins, a burglar, turns to Cardula after burglary job has presumably gone wrong. He and his partner, Charley Whittle, burgled a posh apartment, but, when he returned from bringing a typewriter to their car, discovered the front door chained shut. Charly tells him through the locked door the home owner has a gun and is going to call the police, which is followed by a thud and groan. Alvin makes himself scarce, but the next day no news about what happened. So asks Cardula to find out what really happened and the case of the missing burglar becomes entangled with a briefcase full of money. I suppose this is not necessarily a bad story, but I found it instantly forgettable and struggled to remember what it was about. For some reason, this last story left no impression whatsoever on me.

So that concludes the first part of Cardula and the Locked Rooms. Obviously, the Cardula series does not entirely adhere to the traditional, fair play mystery format. There are three or four really good, solidly-plotted stories in this series, but their main draw is unquestionably the character of Cardula, the premise of the series and the vein of humor running through all the stories. I suggest reading this as a short series of stories about an unusual detective instead of a series of unusual detective stories and take the better plotted stories as an extra.

Now let's see what Cardula could do with the stronger, plot-driven locked room mystery and impossible crime story.

"Upside-Down World," originally published in the May, 1962, issue of AHMM, technically is a how-was-it-done, not an impossible crime or locked room, but a good one. Regan, an insurance investigator, is tasked with investigation the sudden death of a client, Robert Cramer, who died from a heart attack when visiting a friend. Nothing suspicious as the autopsy showed Cramer had died from heart disease, but the two-hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy obliges the company to investigate. Even more so when the beneficiary is not the widow, but a woman named Miss Helen Morland. Only clue or detail hinting at something resembling foul play is that fingers of Cramer's right hand had been "seared slightly" with fragments of glass embedded in them, but he obviously wasn't electrocuted. So what happened and how do you give a man a heart attack? Like I said, this is not an impossible crime story, but it definitely has some impossible crime features like the key-element of the solution. So a good and solid opening to this section, even though it's technically a howdunit.

"Swing High," originally published in the May, 1965, issue of AHMM, arguably is the best overall short story from this collection. The policeman narrator is investigating the death of man, Thurmond Fraser, whose body was found beside the Medical Arts Building beneath three windows – third, fourth and fifth floors. If he didn't fall from one of those three windows, he must have fallen from the roof. However, the roof is covered in a thick, undisturbed coat of coal dust and each of the three windows is the waiting room of a doctor or specialist, which were either empty and locked or occupied. Nobody has seen anyone jumping or being pushed from one of those (locked) windows. So a neatly posed impossible crime with a credible motive on the murderer's part to create a confounding locked room situation. What makes "Swing High" more than just a very well done locked room mystery is the secondary plot-thread concerning the detective's marriage. Normally, I'm not exactly a fan of the post-Golden Age troubled cop trope, but here it complimented the traditionally-styled impossible crime plot and provided a superb conclusion. A conclusion that would not have been possible without the detective's private problems intruding on his work. So definitely a future inclusion for "The Locked Library."

"Pearls Before Wine," originally published in the August, 1968, issue of MSMM, is a three-page, short-short about an attempt of insurance fraud by making a string of duplicate pearl disappear from a locked and guarded room. Nothing much to say about this one other than the method is not bad and couldn't help but think how this short-short could have been the premise of a novel-length murder mystery. Just imagine (ROT13) fbzrbar fcbggvat gur inavfuvat-gevpx naq tenoorq gur bccbeghavgl gb trg evq bs fbzrbar ol fbzrubj znavchyngvat be thvqvat gung tynff bs npvq gbjneqf gur ivpgvz. But a fun and amusing short-short nonetheless.

I'm not entirely sure if "Play a Game of Cyanide," first published in the May, 1961, issue of AHMM, counts as a full-blown or borderline impossible crime story, but either way, it stands as one of the most original and entertaining stories of its kind. An exasperated policeman has to deal with a pair of clever and mischievous children, Ronnie and Gertrude, who got their hands on a dozen cyanide pellets – which they have hidden all over the house. A house that has been searched top to bottom by the police, but not with too much success. So they try everything from threatening to bribing the children, but they're determined to let police work their brains in order to find the pellets ("I always regarded the Children's Crusade as a great tragedy... not quite so certain now"). Some flashes of inspirations reveal a few of the cunning hiding places, however, what happened to last cyanide pellet is what makes this short story a little more than a monstrous Easter Egg hunt that could have been organized by Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. I begin to see why Ritchie counted so many short story writers among his biggest fans.

The next and penultimate short story is "Box in a Box" (1977), but already discussed it on this blog in my review of the Edward D. Hoch edited All But Impossible: An Anthology of Locked Room and Impossible Crime Stories (1981). Since it's the least interesting and successful of Ritchie's impossible crime output, I'm skipping it here.

Finally, "The Crime Machine," originally published in the January, 1961, issue of AHMM and anthologized in Alfred Hitchcock's Crime-Watch (1984), ditches the customary supernatural trappings when a locked room mystery evokes the other worldly to go for a science-fiction angle. Mr. Reeves is an outwardly normal man with a wife and an apparently good paying job, but Reeves source of income primarily comes from being a murderer for hire. So imagine his shock and surprise when, one day, a man named Henry visits him and tells him in intricate detail about his most recent murders. Henry claims to have invented a time machine allowing him to observe the past anywhere at anytime ("I cannot participate in any manner in the past... only observe"). So why not look at some recent, unsolved murders for a bit of extra pocket money. Reeves laughs at the whole idea and tells Henry to hop in his time machine to find out Jack the Ripper's true identity ("I'll do that tonight"), but how did he know about the murders down the smallest detail? Slowly, but surely, Reeves becomes convinced the time machine might be real after all. And wants to buy it. But not without a convincing demonstration. Henry gives a demonstration worth his money as he hops into his time machine and briefly vanishes from a sealed room.

"The Crime Machine" is, of course, not a hybrid science-fiction mystery, like Anthony Boucher's "Elsewhen" (1946) or Isaac Asimov's "Obituary" (1959), but a good, old-fashioned locked room mystery with a solid explanation for the disappearing time machine. The source of Henry's impossible knowledge is linked to the who and why, which is not overlooked in this excellent impossible crime story. I have mentioned this before, but never understood why the post-WWII detective story, especially the impossible crime story, rarely ventured outside the Victorian setups of haunted houses, cursed rooms and murder around a séance table. Just the still largely untapped potential for impossible crime stories and locked room mysteries involving possible time travel, apparent interlopers from parallel universes and outer space. As this story shows, it gives a new impulse to the classic locked room setup. Great story to end this collection on!

Cardula and the Locked Rooms can stake a claim to the title of best balanced anthology or collection of short stories. Cardula, the vampire-detective, is the star and main attraction of his own series, but with enough twists and turns to keep the demanding, slightly spoiled detective fans like myself happy. The stories with the gamey plots can be found in the Locked Rooms section. "Swing High," "Play a Game of Cyanide" and "The Crime Machine" being the standouts with "Upside-Down World" and even the short-short "Pearls Before Wine" following closely behind. So, to cut a long story short, Cardula and the Locked Room is a fantastic short story collection from Crippen & Landru and Brian Skupin that comes highly recommended.

I guess between Seishi Yokomizo's Yoru aruku (She Walks at Night, 1948), Locked Room Puzzles (1986), Carver's Death in 13 Rooms (2026) and this collection, I more than made up for the dry spell in locked room reviews last month.

She Walks at Night (1948) by Seishi Yokomizo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death in 13 Rooms (2026) by A. Carver

Last month, A. Carver published the fifth title in the Alex Corby and Cornelia Crow series, entitled Death in 13 Rooms (2026), which is a collection of previously unpublished short stories that has, sort of, been foreshadowed in previous novels – teasing comments about cases like "The Knife in the Devil's Throat." Fans of the series will be glad to see Alex Corby and her great-aunt Cornelia front and center of these thirteen short stories. Cornelia was sorely missed in The Dry Diver Drownings (2024) and Hangings at Hempel's Green (2025) was pretty much a standalone mystery that happened to feature Alex and Cornelia. They're back, front and center, picking apart and dispelling thirteen locked room mysteries and other crimes of the impossible variety.

First things, first. Death in 13 Rooms has a brief "Author's Note" noting that "the following stories are presented in the order they were written." So the stories improve as Carver gets a hang of the short story format, because that's a bit of different game than the tightly-plotted, fairly clued and novel-length locked room extravaganzas of The Author is Dead (2022) and The Christmas Miracle Crimes (2023). What's also worth mentioning as a sign of the time is that the standard legal disclaimer now includes "no generative artificial intelligence was used in the making of this book, nor any previous books by this author" beside the usual this is a work of fiction and resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Now, onto the stories!

"The Hunting Room" is one of the cases previous novels referenced, "the hunting room that opened fire on the Greenlove family," which conjured up an image of a very different kind of room-that-kills – one that opens fire on anyone who tries to enter. I even imagined a shoot out with an empty room and the whole idea amused me to no end. Carver wrote a different kind of impossible crime than the allusion suggested beginning when Alex and Cornelia are out and about when they gunshots and a scream. So when they go investigate, they arrive at a manor house with body and prosthetic leg lying on the lawn. However, the family already apprehended the murderer, old Sir Harry Greenlove, who apparently shot his own son from the window of the Hunting Room. Only old Sir Harry, only him, had access to the Hunting Room at the time of the shooting. Cornelia has her suspicions and together with Alex she sticks her nose where it doesn't belong and pieces together an entirely different solution. While not what I expected, "The Hunting Room" is a good, Arthur Porges-esque locked room mystery and liked how the solution revealed that the impossibility was of a different nature than the premise suggested. A solid opening story!

The second story, "The Knife in the Devil's Throat," was referenced in Hangings at Hempel's Green as the first time Alex and Cornelia crossed paths with Detective Inspector Peveril. Their first meeting happens when a rescue mission turns into a homicide investigation. Four school girls and their teacher found themselves trapped by rising floodwaters in the Devil's Throat cave and a team of expert divers were assembled to get them out, but, when they divers returned for the last time to get the teacher, they return to his bloodied corpse. However, none of the four girls could have cut his throat as they were all sedated as they were rescued one by one. And no weapon was found on either the girls or inside the cave and flooded passage. Alex has been following the news as one of the girls is an old school friend and, when her great-aunt smells an inexplicable crime, they're on the case. 

This story has a lot of going for itself, a disaster/survival mystery in a miniature, but hated the solution for the vanishing knife and shockingly unoriginal coming from Carver – who has been everything but unoriginal in explaining miracles. A type of vanishing-trick I simply detest as a solution for disappearing weapons and other items. No matter how it's dressed up and presented, but the who, why and circumstances in which the murder makes for a fascinatingly good and modern detective story. Just not a very good locked room mystery.

The third story, "Where the Crows Gather," returns to form as Alex and Cornelia are out and about again when they meet a police officer asking then if they're "here for the murder." The murder in question is that of Professor Pierre Surrey and appears to have been the victim of a blade-wielding fiend, "some are calling him the Night Ripper," who chased the professor up to his front door, killed him and disappeared without ever showing up on the CCTV footage. Cornelia's obsession with impossible crimes rivals my own and jumps on the opportunity to tackle this apparently invisible killer. She and Alex, of course, succeed in doing so and liked the solution tying the invisible attacker roaming the neighborhood with the apparent inexplicable murder of the professor. A short, simple and satisfying story.

By the way, nearly every story in Death in 13 Rooms either has a diagram, floor plan or even the odd family tree, but "Where the Crows Gather" has a grainy, timestamped frame from the CCTV footage – showing nothing more than an empty front garden. Maybe a small, unimportant detail, but a detail that tells there's now such a thing as a 21st century locked room mystery.

Next up is "Vote for Murder" and has Alex accompanying Cornelia to the polling station, a school building, to cast her vote in mayoral race between Andrew Stilldare and Geoffrey Uppermere. When they arrive at the polling station, Alex and Cornelia find that the two candidates are also there to cast their votes. Stilldare and Uppermere banter a bit and the former disappears behind the curtain of the small, crammed voting booth. Shortly after a thock is heard as Stilldare toppled out of the voting booth with "an arrow buried in the centre of his forehead." So with Alex and Cornelia sitting right there when the murder happened, they piece together how someone could have fired an arrow inside "a space no larger than a phonebox." The impossible murder here is very reminiscent of Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Voting Booth" (1977), but Carver had a far superior solution to this conundrum.

Only drawback of "Vote for Murder" is that the locked room is so tight, and the murder so specific, there's only one way it could have been done. Other than that, another good and solid locked room mystery.

"The Second Problem of the Potting Shed," one of the collection's shortest story, makes it abundantly clear Carver had been reading Edward D. Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne series when writing this and the previous story. Hoch's "The Problem of the Potting Shed" (2000), collected in Challenge the Impossible (2018), is one of my top 10 Dr. Hawthorne stories and Carver picked up the gauntlet to provide an alternative solution to the problem of a body inside a locked garden shed. Carver's story begins with someone complaining to Alex and Cornelia about their neighbors potting shed, which has two major problems. Firstly, the potting shed is an eyesore and, secondly, that their neighbor is lying dead inside – "none of us can understand quite how it happened." The potting shed has a single, fixed window and the door "crudely locked by winding a length of string around a pair of hooks set in the door and doorframe." So how could the murderer have escaped from this locked shed? Like I said, this is one of the shortest stories here and therefore less complicated than other, but very much appreciated Carver's practical, cleverly clued approach on how to leave a body inside a locked shed. Hoch would have approved!

The sixth story, "The Suicide Selfie Curse," is both longer than the previous stories and one of my favorites from this collection. A story that can be seen a companion piece to The Dry Diver Drownings.

Alex and Cornelia have started to become known enough as amateur detectives that sometimes a problem is brought to them, instead of being drawn to them like the murder magnets they are. This time, Alex's attention is drawn to the tragic deaths of two internet personalities, Melanie "Melodramassacre" Douro and Roshni "Roshni Relates" Patil – respectively a horror streamer and true crime podcaster. Melodramassacre was the first to die when she visited a secluded tower, Hopeloss Monument, standing on a wooded hilltop inside a small clearing. She took a selfie on the tower's stone balcony and fell to her death. Roshni Relates, the second victim, had came to the tower to do a piece on Melodramassacre's death, but she suffered the same fate as she fell to her death following a selfie. What's more, there are witnesses who believe the girls were shoved to their death by something invisible.

It goes without saying Cornelia pricks up at the prospect of an intangible killer shoving people from a tower, but Alex is more reserved and reluctant "to just go hassling poor bereaved strangers from out of the blue." She's overruled by Cordelia, but not without consequences. Firstly, they get to witness the third victim plunge to her death and get to confirm the tower is empty. Secondly, Alex beats Cornelia to the correct solution and now Cornelia has to sit back trying to figure out what Alex spotted that she has missed. So, character-wise, “The Suicide Selfie Curse” is treat for everyone who missed Alex, Cornelia and their interactions, but Carver also presented an interesting new variation on the death by defenestration from a locked room conceit with the last sentence revealing the method. Not to mention a very effectively done scene revealing the murderer. "The Suicide Selfie Curse" is an impossible crime story for the 21st century and a fine, anthology worthy impossible crime story at that.

The seventh story, "Shadows of the Solitary Man," begins with Cornelia dragging Alex out of the bed to go to the home of Elias Morass, a collector of manuscripts, who has sold her manuscript of rare, unpublished detective novels in the past and now claims to have gotten hold of Hake Talbot's unpublished, long-lost third novel, The Affair of the Half-Witness – which is one of our near mythical treasures. Alex and Cornelia arrive at the strange, box-like and walled-in house, they're greeted by Detective Sergeant Jones-Smith. Not long before they arrived, a man dressed in black and wearing a motorcycle helmet forced his way into the house with a gun. There were five people present at the time, Elias Morass, his three children and a journalist. The masked man took one of them hostage, killed Elias and escaped outside where he vanished into thin air. Sounds relatively simple and straightforward for an impossible disappearance, but there's an ambitious and intricate scheme lurking underneath. However, the story is not entirely flawless as both the ambitious plot and daring murder needed more space to breath. I think the setup alone would have justified the length of the story and it's a pity Talbot's lost manuscript was only peripherally involved in the case. And no lore or mini-lectures on the detective story's lost media. So a good short story that could have been even better had it been longer, but handling a plot and idea like this in short story form is still impressive.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the next story, "A Diaphanous Wall of Jericho," which begins when Alex and Cornelia take a stroll through the graveyard of the village near their home. Alex to visit the graves of victims in their murder cases "whom she felt a responsibility to at least remember" and Cornelia "to gloat over all the people she had outlived" ("I have finally beaten you"), which is the best scene/part of this story, but then Cornelia spots a hat perched on top of a tree – asks Alex to fetch it for her. However, the hat was stained with blood and Alex saw a body through the top window. The tree is standing in the garden of the vicarage and "a strange house it was" occupied by two normally opposing clergymen, Reverends Viridian and Hurt, who previously appeared in Hangings at Hempel's Green. Recently, they found a common enemy and tore down the wall dividing their semidetached houses which was replaced by an invisible wall. They can't cross into each other's part of the house, because they both wear ankle monitors ("...can only be deactivated by both of our thumbprints at once") and deafening alarm goes off when they cross the invisible border. That complicated the problem of the body inside the locked room upstairs. Not to mention the two other potential suspects one of whom can't walk and the other has two broken arms. Or who they are and why they were there.

Carver was mentally in novel-mode here and definitely tried to cram too much into this short story, which made it more muddled as it rushed towards its conclusion. So this one didn't work for me, but that's inevitable with anthologies and short story collections.

"Where Good Intentions Go," on the other hand, is another favorite and a future addition to "The Locked Library." Alex and Cornelia have taken a holiday to the island of Snute where there's a pristine, secondhand bookshop without a digital presence, but, barely arrived, they bump into Jane Blue from "The Knife in the Devil's Throat." This time, her brother Dominic got himself involved in murder and pretty much the only suspect the police has. Dominic is doing intern work for a company manufacturing marine equipment and have been on the island to do a cross between a promotion and a competitive experiment for their underwater habitats ("they float on the surface of the ocean, with like a one-person hotel room underneath") called Isolation Submersibles pods. Lilian LeRouge, a famous documentary maker, and marine scientist Fiona Dieve have agreed to test the pods by seeing who can stay down the longest. And, since they're rivals, neither is willing to be the first to quit. Dominic's job is to bring them supplies and do daily checks, but one day, several months into the competition, he finds Lilian dead in her pod. Only they had keys and a picture is automatically taken every time someone opens the door.

So who else could have done it? But then a curious clue turns up inside the locked room establishing a link with the other locked pod "separated by miles of ocean." And this is followed by another murder under similar impossible circumstances. I love it when mystery writers get creative with their locked room settings as it opens the door to get creative and even original with the solution, which is an opportunity Carver took with both hands. Purely as a locked room mystery, it crackles with originality, especially the second murder. But on a whole, "Where Good Intentions Go" is a solid and another anthology worthy story. I love a good, rare underwater locked room mystery.

The tenth story, "The Man Who Read William Brittain," is obviously a homage to another master of the short detective story, William Brittain. This story follows Mr. Lionel Suss, an elderly chemistry teacher, who's a big fan of Brittain's detective fiction and particular the Mr. Strang series. Even trying to model himself after Mr. Strang. There are, however, no real mysteries or puzzles to be solved at Yew Valley Secondary School, until he's told a student was seen roaming around in the chemistry room – followed by "a bright flash in the room" ("...that boy's been playing with the gas taps..."). So they rush to the chemistry room to find it locked and empty, but someone had turned on all the gas taps except the master valve. There's an obvious suspect in Yew Valley's most notorious student, Bryson "Bud" Bruin, who appears to have more than one impossible trick up his sleeve for his teachers. Not only did he appear to have vanished from a locked classroom, but chalk writing inexplicably appeared on the blackboard after the locked classroom was entered. 

This little prank has some serious consequences for Mr. Suss as it's made clear somebody has to take responsibility, if this results in a scandal. So the only thing Mr. Suss can do is step in the shoes of his hero and explain the apparently impossible, which he does with logic and reason. So all's well that ends well, but, some time later, something unexpected turned up to put a new perspective on his clever solution. Showing him that climbing on the shoulder of giants, even fictitious giants, takes more than adapting their style and mannerism ("What would Mr. Strang think? What would William Brittain think?"). Simply an excellent mystery and homage! 

By the way, this story also has a nod and wink to The Kindaichi Case Files as the chemistry room has a ghost story said to be one of the Seven Mysteries of Yew Valley Secondary ("though what exactly the other six were, nobody was exactly clear").

The next story, "The Horrendous Occurrences of Colonel Henry Haunt," is tremendously entertaining parody of Hoch's Simon Ark series. Colonel Haunt, narrator, is now an old widow with grown-up children and grandchildren, but while his mind is going he still has clear and fond memories of an old friend, Simon Set. An apparently ageless, eternal wanderer he befriended in the Middle East during his time in the army. Colonel Haunt hasn't heard from Simon Set in ages when a mysterious invitation to come to a remote, rundown mansion to witness a special demonstration. A demonstration for only a handful of people: an American businessman named Mr. Glass, Colonel Haunt, Alex Corby and her great-aunt Cornelia. Simon Set, accompanied by his servant Long Shi, reveals to the group that he's 268-years-old and ready to finally share his secret for a price. Not without a convincing demonstration.

Simon Set has constructed a glass pyramid, containing black box, in which he will be sealed shut. Naturally, he disappears from the black box and reappears an hour later. Dead and decades younger! Cornelia, one of Simon's ardent critics, is not impressed in the slightest. Simply as a locked room mystery, this story offers what you can expect from stage magic shenanigans. No, the strength of the story is in the narrator who's not always there, the characters and getting to see a slightly villainous version of Hoch's Simon Ark. So not a blistering original impossible crime story, but tremendously entertaining homage.

That brings us to the penultimate tale, "Disappearance at Loch Dreich," in which Carver gets creative again with the setting. This time, Alex and Cornelia are holidaying at Loch Dreich somewhere in the remote Scottish Highlands and stay at one of the four old hunting towers currently "submerged past the first storey by flowing and treacherous floodwaters." They occupy the Library Tower as it houses a huge collection of rare, out-of-print mystery novels, but the other three towers are also occupied. Cal, Isa, and Tam, members of Wyrdine University's Paranormal Research Society, have the South Tower. Donald, an unpopular member of the same society, has Well Tower. Evelyn LeRouge, professional treasure hunter, is staying at the Oxbow Tower. The area is rich in history and legends of ancient treasures and stories of the Loch Dreich Monster. So how could one of them have vanished from their tower that was tightly locked from the inside and surrounded by floodwater? Followed by a gruesome slaying under nearly identical circumstances? Carver put the setting and circumstances of the flooding to great use to spin a pretty good impossible crime yarn with, what can be called, a custommade solution for the various impossibilities. So, needless to say, I liked it.

Finally, the thirteenth and last story, "The Tumbling Tower," closing out Death in 13 Rooms. Cornelia is once again dragging Alex along to the home of a collector who has the only surviving copy of an unknown Walter S. Masterman mystery novel ("...consequence when a warehouse holding an author's books is destroyed in the Blitz"). When they arrive, history finally caught up with the surviving copy of Masterman's novel as the house burned down to the ground. Cornelia refuses to give up and contacts the collector's nearest relative, Sir Francis Omar, who has a library of his own. And offers Cornelia to poke around. But while they are there, Sir Francis falls from the top of a tower and "grimly impaled on the rusted metal spikes of the gate." There was, of course, nobody else present up there when they saw him fall. Only two other people were present, Fernie and Hope, who were both so-called lost souls taken in by Sir Francis. Why is Fernie accusing Hope, a pale, undernourished girl younger than Alex, of having killed her entire family?

The problem with this last story is that it's perfectly fine by itself, not great, but fine. However, as the thirteenth and last story, it comes across as patchwork with Cornelia hunting for long-lost mystery novel and an impossible murder involving a tower, but not nearly as well-done or executed as in those previous stories. The locked room-trickery not as original or imaginative as what came before it. So not necessarily a bad story, but well below average for this collection and not the best story to close out on. Maybe it would have been better if the last two stories had been switched around.

So, there you have it, the thirteen, brand spanking new impossible crime stories making up Carver's Death in 13 Rooms. For me, "The Suicide Selfie Curse" and "Where Good Intentions Go" are the two standout stories with only "The Knife in the Devil's Throat," "A Diaphanous Wall of Jericho" and "The Tumbling Tower" falling short of the mark – one reason or another. Nailing it ten times out of thirteen is not bad and what makes Death in 13 Rooms a first-rate and noteworthy addition to the growing stack of locked room-themed anthologies and short story collections, but personally enjoyed the insight the short stories offered into Carver's mind as a writer and plotter. Carver's novels have on average four, or five, locked room murders and other types of impossible problems that get properly explored and examined. You can't write a Carver novel like The Christmas Miracle Crimes in short story form and it was interesting to watch Carver trying to contain that rich plotting style and creativity to the confines of the short story. These stories also revealed Carver's fascination with the role weapons can play in helping to make a murder look completely out of this world. Death in 13 Rooms could just as easily have been titled Wonder Weapons or An Armory of Miracles.

What more can I say? Carver's Death in 13 Rooms is a buffet for locked room addicts and impossible crime fiends. I look forward to the next meeting with Alex and Cornelia!