Uncage the Black Lizard, Part VII: Closing the Book

"If you drink much from a bottle marked poison it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later."

- Alice (Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865)

A few days later than anticipated, but finally was able to turn over the final page of Otto Penzler's mammoth-like anthology, The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), which packs nearly a thousand pages worth of impossible crime fiction in one book – from Edgar Allan Poe and John Dickson Carr to Edward D. Hoch and Bill Pronzini. 

But, first of all, the reviews up till now of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries:

- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part I.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 2: A Foot in the Door.  
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 3: In a Puff of Smoke.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 4: How Keen of You.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 5: Chambers and Cartridges.

- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 6: Breaking and Entering.

- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 7: Closing the Book.

The final four stories that round out this collection are, thinly, spread over the remaining two categories, One Man's Poison, Signor, is Another's Meat and Our Final Hope is Flat Despair, which borrowed from another locked room anthology to fill them. That I found to be slightly disappointing. 

"The Poisoned Dow '08" by Dorothy L. Sayers was originally published in the February 25, 1933, issue of The Passing Show and first collected in Hangman's Holiday (1933). Sayers is primarily known today for her creation of a well-bred, aristocratic amateur sleuth, named Lord Peter Wimsey, but not as well known is her creation of Montague Egg – a traveling salesman who lives by rules and wisdoms contained within the Salesman's Handbook. There are eleven stories featuring Montague Egg, which were collected in Hangman's Holiday and In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939), and the opening of this story is (as far as I remember) fairly standard for the series: Egg arrives at the home of a customer, Lord Borrodale, only to be greeted by a uniformed policeman. Lord Borrodale was discovered in his study, door locked from the inside and windows protected with burglarproof locks, succumbed to nicotine poisoning from a doctored bottle of wine. However, the sealed bottle was opened in front of Borrodale and, except for the victim, nobody seems to have had the opportunity to administrate the poison. Egg finds an explanation that would've received the nodding approval of John Rhode, but the clues left for the reader to reconstruct a complete picture were rather sparse. It's a pity Egg and Wimsey never collaborated together on a case.

"A Traveller's Tale" by Margaret Frazer originally appeared in The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000), edited by Mike Ashley, which places an impossible situation in medieval England. A wine merchant, William Shellaston, his wife and young son are found dead inside a carriage, but none of their servants heard any outcry nor saw someone approaching the wagon – so how could someone have administrated poison to them? I think the situation in combination with its solution makes it closer related to an "How-Dun-It," such as Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927), but close enough to qualify as a locked room mystery. Fairly good, but not very memorable. I didn't remember anything from this story from my first reading, years ago.

"Death at the Excelsior" by P.G. Wodehouse, of Wooster and Jeeves fame, was first published in the December 1914 issue of Pearson's Magazine, which I reviewed early last year – alongside some other uncollected short stories. You can read the review here.

The final story is collected under Our Final Hope is Flat Despair and is accompanied by the following description, "some stories simply can't be categorized," which in this case isn't entirely true. I would file this story away under a good example of a Hoist On Their Own Petard and it came from the pen of a fellow mystery blogger, Connoisseur in Murder and successful crime novelist.

"Waiting for Godstow" by Martin Edwards was first published in The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, which gives the reader a front-row seat to the unraveling of a common, garden-variety murder case from a local news item. Claire Doherty has convinced her hunky toy boy to bump off her cheating husband, Karl, in a hit-and-run "accident," but Karl turns up alive after the job was supposed to be done. What's more: Karl accidentally killed his old mistress! So how could her husband murder someone at one end of town when there were people who swore he was somewhere else, while yet another person is convinced he just ran him over with a stolen car. The only thing Claire can eventually do is waiting for Sgt. Godstow, who's never even aware that's handling an impossible crime. I think this story would've made a great template for an episode of Columbo or Monk.

This was a good, solid round of stories to end a good, if uneven, collection of locked room mysteries, impossible crimes and miraculous thefts on.

So in summation:

The pros of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries:

- The most frequently, over anthologized-and collected stories (e.g. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") are, by and large, contained to the opening column of stories.

- The inclusion of some truly obscure, rarely reprinted stories that are hard to find (e.g. James Yaffe's "The Department of Impossible Crimes," J.E. Gurdon's "The Monkey Trick" and Nicholas Olde's "The Invisible Weapon.")

- The anthology patched-up some obvious gaps in my reading (e.g. Lord Dunsany's "The Two Bottles of Relish" and Jepson & Eustace's "The Tea Leaf.")

- The anthology contained a few great new discoveries (e.g. Manly Wade Wellman's "A Knife Between Brothers," Fredric Brown's "The Laughing Butcher," Stephan Barr's "The Locked Room to End Locked Rooms," Meade & Eustace's "The Mystery of the Strong Room" and Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Bird in the Hand.")

- Good introductions by the editor, Otto Penzler.

The cons of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries:

- There were too many stories that repeated the same kind of tricks (e.g. icicle weapons, suicides disguised as murders and the same variations with time-and space manipulation), which can give new readers the impression the locked room is a one-trick pony.

- Reprinted a number of stories originally written for The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, which is an anthology fans more than likely have already read.

- There were, altogether, too many stories I had already read in this anthology.

- Allowing John Sladek's "By An Unknown Hand," at the moment only available in Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2003), to escape, to be anthologized, yet again. I know there are a lot of mystery fans who'd love to read it, but don't want to buy a SF-collection for one detective story.

 

Results may vary from reader-to-reader. I'll be back soon with a regular review.

Uncage the Black Lizard, Part VI: Breaking and Entering

"A thief is a creative artist, devising brilliant ways to steal his prize, and a detective following in his footsteps, hunting for faults, is no better than a mere critic."

- Kaito Kid (Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a.k.a. Detective Conan, vol. 16) 

I should begin this sixth post in my ongoing reviews of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), edited by Otto Penzler, with listing the links to the previous reviews, which I forgot the last few times.

The reviews up till now of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries:

- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part I.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 2: A Foot in the Door.  
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 3: In a Puff of Smoke.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 4: How Keen of You.
- Uncage the Black Lizard, Part 5: Chambers and Cartridges.

Stolen Sweets Are Best is the seventh category of stories posing more than one answer to a simple question: "How does a thief remove valuables from a closely guarded room?"

"The Bird in the Hand" by Erle Stanley Gardner was first published in the April 9, 1932 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly and first collected in The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith (1980), which might end up as one of my favorite stories from this anthology. An international jewel thief is found murdered in his hotel room, bound to a chair with a knife driven through his heart, but the trunk of the victim seems to have "evaporated into thin air" – as it could not have been smuggled out of the hotel without it being noticed. The case is brought to the attention of Gardner's anti-hero, a crook named Lester Leith, who doesn't only figure out how the trunk disappeared, but also were the stones were hidden. It's a cubbyhole I have seen used before in these kinds of stories, but the plan Leith's devises to pilfer some of the diamonds for himself is what gave the story its punch and a second impossible situation.

"The Gulverbury Diamonds" by David Durham was first published in The Exploits of Fidelity Dove (1924), which Penzler notes is "one of the rarest mystery books published in the twentieth century" and stars an angelic-looking woman, Fidelity Dove, running a crooked gang of lawyers, scientists and businessmen. In this story, Dove is attempting to pry the titular stones from a stage actress, Lola Marron, in order to give them back to an old, but kind, nineteenth-century style aristocrat – which his late son gave to her before committing suicide. The theft of the diamonds is partly inverted and partly a genuine locked room mystery, because the reader is aware where Dove put them. However, when Detective-Inspector Rason, from The Department of Dead Ends (1947; written as if by Roy Vickers), bursts in on her scheme, they vanish again from under their noses. A good and fun story, but it doesn't break any new ground in the plotting department.

"The Fifth Tube" by Frederick Irving Anderson was collected for the first time in The Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (1914), which is a character that I always perceived as the nefarious counterpart to Jacques Futrelle's The Thinking Machine. Penzler even describes Godahl in the introduction as having a "computer-like mind" that "assesses every possibility in terms of logic and probabilities," but now I think Anderson and Godahl are closer to Vincent Cornier and Dr. Barnabas Hildreth – e.g. The Duel of Shadows: The Extraordinary Cases of Barnabas Hildreth (2011). The problem here is that of the disappearance of forty gallons of gold from a high-tech and secured company, but, somehow, this story just didn't do it for me.

"The Mystery of the Strong Room" by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace was first published in The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899) and I begin to admire this writing tandem for their contribution to the locked room genre, which I seem to have really under appreciated. They produced the first collection of impossible crime stories, A Master of Mysteries (1899), "The Tea Leaf," from a 1925 issue of The Strand Magazine, cemented a now clichéd explanation and "The Mystery of the Strong Room" plays around with the kind of ideas that were more common during the Golden Age. A valuable diamond is swiped for a replica, while it was safely put away in a custom-made strong room. The room is even outfitted with an electric alarm system that'll go off the moment the key is inserted into the keyhole. But, on the eve of the nineteenth century, Meade and Eustace gave two delightfully simplistic examples of how a twentieth century-style security system can by-passed with a little misdirection. Good stuff!

"No Way Out" by Dennis Lyds, better known as Micheal Collins, originally appeared in the February 1964 issue of the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, which combines the hardboiled voice of the American private eye with some great Carter Dickson-effects. "Slot-Machine" Kelly is one of two one-armed private detectives created by Collins, but I believe Dan Fortune eventually became the character that stuck around. However, it's the former who handles this case as Kelly is hired to beef up the security around five, highly priced rubies, but the end result is a dead guard, stolen gems and a murderous thief who, for all intents and purposes, doesn't seem to have existed. I figured out pretty fast how the murderer remained unseen, but should've caught on quicker how the rubies were made to disappear. This is the kind of story that makes me want to pick up a Bill Pronzini novel again.

By the way, the story opens with Kelly discussing impossible crimes and gives an example from a rather well known mystery writer, which provoked to the following response: "the guy who wrote that one drinks cheaper booze than you do." You know, if this wasn't Renaissance Era of our genre, I would've acted like an indignant fanboy and mentioned Raymond "Drinking is My Hobby" Chandler.

A good round of fun, clever stories about scheming crooks, gentleman thieves and conmen in what are essentially "How'll They Get Away With Its," which are overlooked at times by mystery fans, but they're immensely fun to be burn through – especially when they're of the impossible variety. These stories were, mostly, no exception.

The stories I skipped in this category: "The Strange Case of Streinkelwintz" by MacKinlay Kantor, which is great, but I already reviewed it as part of the short story collection It's About Crime (1960). Maurice Leblanc's "Arsène Lupin in Prison," from The Exploits of Arsène Lupin (1907), and C. Daly King's "The Episode of the Codex' Curse" from The Curious Mr. Tarrent (1935).  

Two categories, four stories and one more post left to go.

Uncage the Black Lizard, Part V: Chambers and Cartridges

"Nothing is impossible... the word itself says I'm possible!"

- Aubrey Hepburn 

Shoot If You Must is the sixth column of stories from The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), edited by Otto Penzler, which gathered roughly two hundred pages worth of fiction under the motto, "it may not be terribly original, but shooting someone tends to be pretty effective."

Traditionally, I have skipped a handful of stories, because they had been read before and even reviewed: "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?," collected in Casefile (1983), by Bill Pronzini, "In a Telephone Cabinet," collected in Superintendent Wilson's Holiday (1928), by G.D.H. and M. Cole and Georges Simenon's "The Little House at Croix-Rousse," which I read in the anthology All But Impossible! (1981) – edited by the Edward D. Hoch. I also passed over Clayton Rawson's "Nothing is Impossible," read in The Locked Room Reader: Stories of Impossible Crimes and Escapes (1968), but I don't have an old, archived review for that one handy.

Stuart Towne's "Death Out of Thin Air" was first published in the August 1940 issue of Red Star Mystery Magazine and has a plot jam-packed with impossible material, magic and illusions, which brought to mind Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938). Not surprisingly, seeing as "Stuart Towne" was the pseudonym Rawson adopted for a short-lived series of novelettes in a magazine that only spawned four issues. The protagonist in these stories is Don Diavolo, "The Scarlet Wizard," who (IIRC) made a brief cameo appearance in The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) when he performed a daring escape trick on stage – while The Great Merlini was intently watching him from the wings.

Sgt. Lester Healy was investigating a disappearance case when he's confronted with a man who fade away into thin air. In front of his eyes! However, the next impossibility is even more baffling. Healy is murdered in an office at Centre Street, headquarters of the New York Police Department, but when Inspector Church tries to enter the office the door is slammed in his face and the bolt was drawn. Naturally, nobody, except the body, was in the office when the door was shot open, however, it's again slammed shut behind Church – who hears a disembodied voice saying, "see you later, Inspector." None of the policeman in the hallway saw anyone leave the room. The solution for these (and more) impossible situations can be classified as "carny" and I tend to dislike them, but Rawson got a lot of mileage out of it. And I liked the friendly antagonism between Diavolo and Church ("I'm going to get the goods on him sooner or later! He can't fool me!"). So, a fun, pulpy story, but nothing more.

I re-read Agatha Christie's "The Dream," first published in The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (1939), because it's one of my favorite Hercule Poirot mysteries, period, which has a lot to do with it being one of her rare, full-blown locked room mysteries – and actually treading in John Dickson Carr territory. An eccentric millionaire, Benedict Farley, consults Hercule Poirot about a recurring dream, in which he shoots himself at exactly twenty-eight minutes past three. The dream becomes predictive when Farley kills himself in his office. At approximately the same time as in the dream! There were witnesses who swore nobody entered or left the office, which throws the option of murder out of the window. However, based on physical and psychological clues, Poirot constructs an alternative explanation that reveals a cold, premeditated murder. I’m surprised this story wasn't included in any of the previous locked room anthologies.

"The Border-Line Case" by Margery Allingham was first published in Mr. Campion: Criminologist (1937) and is a short-short story, in which Albert Campion assumes the role of armchair detective as he helps D.I. Oates to solve "The Coal Court Shooting Case." A man is being seen stumbling and falling to the pavement by a policeman walking his beat, but it wasn't the heat that got to the man, but a slug lodged between the shoulder blades. Death was almost instantaneously. However, the street was bare of any blind spots and the gunman appears to have been invisible. I gave up on Allingham, years ago, but this was a pretty good story with a simple, elegant and original explanation. I was pleasantly surprised by this story.

"The Bradmoor Murder" by Melville Davisson Post was originally published as a three-part serial in The Pictorial Review in 1922 and I think Post is another writer I can't seem to enjoy. The story is a textbook example of padding and, while the padding was well written, it made the dénouement a resounding disappointment. It revolves around the death of a former explorer found dead in his locked room with a hole in his chest and a fishing rod in his hands, but the only points of interests were the back story of the exploration in the Libyan Desert for traces of a forgotten, ancient civilization – roaming the borders between the mystery and Lost World genres. The solution, interestingly, was identical, if slightly elaborated on, to that of a Conan Doyle story from an early 1922 issue of The Strand Magazine and collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927).

"The Man Who Liked Toys" by Leslie Charteris was first published in the September 1933 issue of American Magazine and was rewritten for its first book publication, Boodle (1934), to include Simon Templar and Inspector Teal. My only exposure to The Saint was the 1997 Val Kilmer movie, but this was an agreeable introduction to the original. A financial speculator, Mr. Enstone, committed suicide by shooting himself in the eye in his bedroom. The only windows were both shut and fastened and the door was closed, but Templar figures out a clever and sneaky way to by pass them – even if it's impossible to figure out the exact trick before its explained. Otherwise, a good introduction to the series.

"The Ashcomb Poor Case" by Hulbert Footner was first published in Madame Storey (1926) and has a plot that ran for too long. The problem revolves around a clumsily disguised suicide: a man is shot in the back and the gun is deposited underneath the clenched, cold-dead hand of the victim. However, how could a murderer from the outside have by passed a (then) modern burglar alarm, which is a pretty crude system by today's standards, but it was interesting to see how easily mystery writers adapted to new technologies and scientific advances. In this case, an old, crude trick revamped to bypass early 20th century technology that was suppose to secure a home better than old-fashioned locks and bolts. There was also a nice scene, in which lovers are clawing and tearing away at each other's false confessions. So not bad, but not terrific either. Some good ideas though!

All in all, a good round of stories, except that I begin to get really annoyed at the number of stories treating (or ripping-off) ideas and tropes in such a similar fashion that this anthology makes the locked room genre look like a one-trick pony to new readers. Or as we call them here, the uninitiated ones. The number of suicides disguised as murder, icicle weapons and similar displacement in time-and space tricks are ridiculous!

Well, there are three sections and about two hundreds pages left to go in this anthology. I should be able to finish it before the end of the month. 

Uncage the Black Lizard, Part IV: How Keen Of You!

"It's hard to believe now that I ever thought a locked room could be a place of safety, what with the snakes, the daggers made of ice, the invisible ethers, or unseen electrical currents. A sealed room with four walls, a ceiling and a floor could be the place you meet your end..."

- Miles Jupp

I've passed the halfway mark in the Herculean task of reading The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), edited by Otto Penzler, which is partially due to ignoring the stories I had read before and there were quite a few of those!

Thankfully, the fifth column of stories, How Easily is Murder Discovered, in which "there are so many ways for the creative killer to accomplish the act," were really good. I've even re-read two of the stories to see if they held up and they did.

"The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke," by Lawrence Block and Lynne Wood Block, was first published in the Summer/Fall 1997 issue of Mary Higgins Clark's Mystery Magazine and stars Lawrence Block's series-character, Bernie Rhodenbarr – a secondhand bookshop owner and part-time burglar. Rhodenbarr is dropping in on an avaricious collector of mysteries to unload a rare edition of Rex Stout's first Nero Wolfe novel, Fer-de-Lance (1934), which has been inscribed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but the collector is found dead before the transaction can be completed. Of course, it happened in a library designed as an impenetrable, fireproof strong room with steel-lined walls and bullet resistant windows to keep the valuable collection as safe as if they were stored in a nuclear bunker. The solution opposing this problem is delightfully simple and more than stood up to re-reading. I think this was the story that put Rex Stout on my radar.

I can also heartily recommend Block's The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994), in which Rhodenbarr stumbles across a body in a locked bathroom during a burglary, but the entire story was a joy to read. It's another one of those series I should return to.

"The Kestar Diamond Case" by Augustus Muir was first published in Raphael, M.D. (1935) and I assume this is the first recorded case of Dr. Louis Raphael, who can be described as a peculiar cross between Dr. John Thorndyke and Hercule Poirot. I assume from the character introductions this is the first (recorded) case in the series and the first problem for the doctor arose during the robbery of a diamond merchant. A precious stone was lifted from a locked office room, guarded by a plainclothesman, while the only occupant of the office was the loyal, but dead, clerk of the firm. The robbery is set against the backdrop of an underworld rivalry between the Lucian gang and a clever jewel thief, known only as "The Baron," but the doctor's approach is that of calm, reasonable scientist – taking a blood-film of the victim and laying a trap in his laboratory. Not from the top drawer, but still a fun, old-fashioned crime story and glad to have had an opportunity to sample something from an obscure mystery writer like Muir.

"The Odour of Sanctity" by Kate Ellis was originally written for The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) and one of the two stories I re-read, in which a man is seen falling from a window of a locked tower room – to which the only key was in his possession. It becomes even more complicated when it's discovered that the man was stabbed and had been dead long before the fall. The trick to the locked tower room was more involved than I remembered, but it was nonetheless nice to see a modern crime writer successfully taking a swing at the sealed room.

"The Invisible Weapon" by Nicholas Olde was first published in The Incredible Adventures of Rowland Hern (1928) and it's a short-short story with Chestertonian tendencies, but that's an observation that has been made before. The gimmick Olde employed for the murder in the locked and watched ballroom of a castle has passed from a cliché into a joke, but that didn't diminished the quaint charm of the overall story.

Ray Cummings' "The Confession of Rosa Vitelli" was first published in the August 19, 1925 issue of The Sketch and features the Scientific Crime Club, whom came across to me as the precursors of Isaac Asimov's The Black Widowers – except where these guys far more involved. The problem they're dissecting is the inexplicable confession by Rosa Vitalli to the murder of her roommate, Angelina, but refuses to tell how she managed to turn the gas on-and off in their flat – while all the windows, the door and transom were closed from the inside. However, the main draw of the story is not the locked room, but the miracle the Scientific Crime Club perform to make Rosa tell the truth. The playful ideas about time and space. How it can be captured. And that great question: "Where does light go when it goes out?" It showed Cummings was a SciFi-writer and it may have diluted the detective-elements of the story, but I couldn't help but like the story.

"The Locked Room to End Locked Rooms" by Stephen Barr was first published in the August 1965 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted as "The Locked House" in Best Detective Stories of the Year (1966), but I prefer the title the story was reprinted under here – because it makes a good attempt to keep that promise. The story begins with a discussion about detective fiction and locked room mysteries at one the smallest, but most argumentative, clubs in London, The Regent's, and one point of contention is how locked room mysteries are seldom mysteries. Well, one of the members has an example of a genuine locked room murder without a discernible trace of the perpetrator left on the scene of the crime. The victim is an explorer, Petrus Dander, with ties to the British government and was brutally murdered at his home, which forced White Hall to start covering various tracks to prevent an embarrassing scandal. These include how an axe-wielding killer was able to decapitate Dander and than apparently disappear in a puff of smoke. I've seen a variation on this trick before in a detective series from decades later, but it's still a pretty clever method to escape from a completely sealed premise. Still not sure if this story can be regarded as the ultimate locked mystery, but the attempt has been duly noted.  

This was by far the best round of stories in the collection (thus far) and I'll probably be able to finish off this anthology within another four, five posts, but they'll be interspersed with the return of the regular reviews.

Uncage the Black Lizard, Part III: In a Puff of Smoke

"Things like this didn't happen in the twentieth century, except perhaps in unexplored parts of Tibet and India."

- Haila Troy (Kelley Roos' Ghost of a Chance, 1947) 

And We Missed It, Lost Forever is the fourth column in Otto Penzler's one-seventh of a ton looking anthology, The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), but only the third attempt at conquering it. I decided to give a pass to the opening salvo of familiar, over-anthologized stories in favor of the ones I hadn't read before and that's why I skipped on six of them here. This column of stories is the largest in the book and would've probably bloated this review pass the page-count of the first posts, which you can read here (I) and here (II).

Otto Penzler describes the stories collected And We Missed It, Lost Forever as thus: "It is a fantasy of many people to disappear from their present lives. Some people disappear because they want to; others disappear because someone else wants them to. And object—large objects—sometimes disappear in the same manner." 

Unfortunately, the best in this lot, "The Day the Children Vanished" by Hugh Pentecost, happened to be one of those gems I have read before, but I'll keep digging. I'll find one that I haven't gone over before. And to keep this post as short and tidy as possible... here's a rundown of the ones I hadn't already greedily consumed.    

"The Twelfth Statue" by Stanley Ellin was first published in the February 1967 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the impossibility surrounding the disappearance of an American producer of smutty B-movies, known as "quickies," is only incidental, but it's wrapped in a well-written, soundly plotted and character-driven crime story – which even throws a false solution at the observant reader. It's not the purest of impossible crime stories, but nonetheless a good example of what contemporary crime fiction could've been if "plotting" hadn't become such a dirty word.

"All At Once, No Alice" was penned by William Irish, who was better known under the penname of "Cornell Woolrich," and was published in the March 2, 1940 issue of Argosy. The plot is derived from the long-lingering legend of the vanishing hotel room: a newlywed couple have trouble finding a room on their spur-of-the-moment honeymoon and the only room they're able to find is small, narrow room with a cot in one of the more seedier establishments in the town. Mr. Cannon decides to take the room for his wife, but, when he returns the following morning, her room is being repainted and everyone at the place denies ever having seen them – even the registry seems to deny she ever signed her name in it. John Dickson Carr carried this premise to a better ending in his popular radio-play "Cabin B-13," collected in The Door to Doom and Other Detections (1980) and Heuvel & De Waal offered a classic treatment of this theme in Spelen met vuur (Playing with Fire, 2004).

William Irish wrote a fabulous impossible crime story, "The Room with Something Wrong," gathered in Death Locked In: An Anthology of Locked Room Stories (1987), in which a hotel room has apparently gained sentience and begins chugging guests out of the window in the middle of the night.

"The Locked Bathroom" by the late H.R.F. Keating was first published in the June 2, 1980 issue of EQMM and it's a short-short story about Keating's lesser-known series-character. Mrs. Craggs is a professional charwoman and had a cleaning job with Mrs. Marchpane when "one of the great mysteries of our time" occurred at her flat: John Marchpane was taking a shower, while his wife was at the basin, when he simply ceased to exist from one moment into the other. I suspected Mrs. Craggs was sweeping something under the rug, but was surprised to learn it was nothing more than one of those "Puzzles of Everyday Life." A nice and charming story.

The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) contains the best locked room story I have read from Keating, "The Legs That Walked," in which a set of severed legs were taken from a guarded tent.

Dashiell Hammett's "Mike, Alec, or Rufus" appeared in the January 25 issue of Black Mask, which has his nameless gumshoe, The Continental Op, investigating a stickup job in an apartment building and the perpetrator, somehow, escaped without being detected. It's a situation barely enough to be considered a locked room mystery. However, the writing, style and characters were what's been promised in the many glowing reviews read over the years. The plot wasn't bad either, but the explanation left me unimpressed. So good story, until the end, but that's just me judging it as a snooty locked room fanboy and should not rustle the fedora's of Hammett enthusiasts – considering it's in an anthology of locked room mysteries.

Julian Hawthorne's "Greaves' Disappearance" was published for the first time in Six Cent Sam's (1893). The titular disappearance of Greaves happens in a busy street, but the only distinguishing mark of the plot is that the solution, "thus gent became invisible, and has so remained," makes it an ancestor to G.K. Chesterton's "The Invisible Man" from The Innocence of Father Brown (1911).  

"The Monkey Trick" by J.E. Gurdon was first published in a 1936 collection of short stories of the same name and the impossible problem here shows Gurdon, and "The Monkey Trick,' belonged to the pages of aviation fiction, but still an interesting and obscure find. The story takes place in the tumultuous years preceding the Second World War and the idea is to give the enemy the idea that England possesses a wireless controlled aeroplane, which is being demonstrated in front of witnesses – as it seen landing and taking off again without a pilot. It doesn't sport a solution that will leave many seasoned mystery readers in shocked surprise, but I found it to be a surprisingly fun story.

Edward D. Hoch's "The Theft of the Bermuda Penny" was originally printed in the June 1975 issue of EQMM and has a professional thief, Nick Velvet, chasing a worthless penny at the tune of several grand. That's part of the mystery of every story in this series: why would a client pay thousands of dollars for something that's barely worth a dime, while the other part consists of how Velvet is going to get that item. A bonus has been added in this story when the owner of the coin, Alfred Cazar, vanishes from the backseat of a moving car and left the seat belt fastened – as well as flabbergasted Velvet in the front passenger seat. Hoch also threw in some semi-impossible plot material on how to manipulate a bet, a bit clueing and a twist ending within the confines of just one short story. It wasn't just the sheer size of Hoch's output that made him a staple of the detective anthologies!

"Room Number 23" by Philip Judson, better known as "Hugh Pentecost," was first published in Flynn's magazine in 1925 and has classic locked room problem pried open by two late Rivals of Sherlock Holmes – a reporter for the Republican, named Renshaw, and the idling James Bellamy. The problem begins when a scream emanates from behind the door of Twenty-Three, at the old Nathan Hotel, but when the door is battered down they are greeted by a serene, empty room. It isn't until the following day, they find the occupant of Twenty-Three: stuffed in the ash barrels of the basement where a bootlegger kept his illegal stash of booze. So how did the murderer, alongside with the victim, disappear from a room that was locked from the inside and watched from the outside? The solution is a good, early example of the technique writers like Carr and Hoch loved to fool around with.

So, all in all, a better round of stories than the previous column and the next one has some familiar, but good, faces and some promising looking unknown ones.

To be continued...

Stories skipped in this section:

"The Day the Children Vanished" by Hugh Pentecost

"Beware of the Trains" by Edmund Crispin

"The Episode of the Torment IV" by C. Daly King

"The House of Haunts" a.k.a. "The Lamp of God" by Ellery Queen

"The Ordinary Hairpins" by E.C. Bentley

"The Phantom Motor" by Jacques Futrelle

Uncage the Black Lizard, Part II: A Foot in the Door

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

- Arthur C. Clarke.

Yesterday, I posted the first of a multi-part review of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries (2014), edited by Otto Penzler, going over the stories collected under the headers "Familiar As the Rose in Spring" and "This Was the Unkindest Cut of All." It was a nice, carefully selected jumble of established and familiar mystery writers as well as stories with a far less impressive print run than "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe.

The second part of this review will cover the six stories gathered under the third portion of this anthology, Footprints in the Sands of Time, which rightfully states "is there a more baffling scenario than to find a body in smooth sand or snow with no footprints leading to or from the victim?" – 'cause the no-footprints situation seems to be as difficult to plot as they are to solve. I'm afraid the greater number of stories in this category made a case for that statement.

Follow that invisible man!

Luckily, you can always (always!) count on the late Edward D. Hoch to have a good story even in the worst of short story collections. "The Man from Nowhere" was originally printed in the June 1956 issue of Famous Detective Stories and has one of Hoch's earlies series-characters, Simon Ark, as the detective. However, Ark isn't any ordinary sleuthhound, but a 2000 year old Coptic priest who spent centuries tailing Satan to do battle with him – or so he claims.

Douglas Zadig is the man who came from nowhere, as he turned up one day without any recollection of his past life, but began to attract the attention of Simon Ark when Zadig began to preach a new philosophy. The teachings of Zadig philosophy were lifted from the works of a religious leader who lived in the 7th century BC. Of course, Zadig is knifed in front of several witnesses, including Ark, but the murderer refused to materialize before them – which is the same story with the killer's footprints in the snow. It's a good, simple story that's only marred by the fact that the solution is build around a trick that has many variations, of which I have already found two examples of in this anthology.

"The Laughing Butcher" by Fredric Brown was first published in the Fall 1948 issue of Mystery Book and snatches the prize for the most original solution to the "no-footprints" premise in this selection. Well, no footprints... There were two tracks of footprints leading to the body in an open field of snow, but they both stopped there. As if the second person simply ceased to exist where they both stood. The butcher of Corbyville, Illinois, was a known rival of the victim, a former circus illusionist and practitioner of the Dark Arts, which is why the townsmen dragged him out of his shop and strung him up to the lamppost outside – in what was the first lynching in a long time for the town. The explanation for the footprints tip-toed on a fine, thin tightrope that the other stories in this category slipped on. So well done, Mr. Brown!

I previously reviewed one of Brown's locked room mysteries, Death Has Many Doors (1951). I would also recommend "Little Apple Hard to Peel," collected in Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective Stories (1998), which is a modern crime story I surprisingly enjoyed reading. Lastly, I find Brown's Sci-Fi comedy, Martians, Go Home (1954), a pleasant diversion from my mystery reading. I should make it a point to read some more of Fredric Brown in 2015.

"The Sands of Thyme" by Michael Innes originally appeared in a short story collection, Appleby Talking (1954), which begins when Appleby tells a story of how he found the remains of a supposed suicide victim on the beach of Thyme Bay – a single track of footprints showing the way to the scene like breadcrumbs. It was a nice, short-short story up to the point of the explanation. The whole design of the story is to give Appleby an opportunity to eruditely chirp, "a simple story about the footprints on the sands of Thyme." It doesn't make the way in which the murderer escaped from the crime-scene any less of a copout.

The worst offender of this is Phoebe Atwood Taylor with The Criminal C.O.D. (1940). Don't spend any time in figuring out who the killer is, but to guess what the pun at the end will be. An entire novel for a bad pun and you lot dare to cringe at my word jokes!

Samuel Hopkins Adams' "The Flying Death" was first published in the January and February 1903 issues of McClure's, which I would mark as interesting reading material for connoisseurs of the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Spiritual Father of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. Adams and Doyle wrote casebook-style mysteries, popular around the late 1800s/early 1900s, and this story has elements of The Lost World (1912) creeping into the investigation. A man has been fatally assaulted on the beach, but there aren't any footprints near the body except for claw-like track that could belong to a prehistoric bird. This makes for a charming, old-fashioned story, but the explanation was way too carny for my taste.

I think I would've preferred it, if the strange, gash-like wound in the neck of the victim was caused when it was badly grazed by a projectile fired from a spear gun, because someone actually tried to save him from a prehistoric creature and kept quiet. Who would believe him and the spear/harpoon was still in the creature, which took off into the sky. Anyway, I'll probably toss Adams' much lauded collection of short stories, Average Jones (1911), on this years pile. I'd like to see what Adams could do with straight-up locked room scenario. John Norris from Pretty Sinister Books reviewed the novel-length treatment of this story.

"The Flying Corpse" by A.E. Martin was first published in the September 1947 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and has one of those charming, mystery solving husband-and-wife teams, Mona and Rodney, tackling the problem of how a nude man could've ended up in field without any indentations in the ground – and a close-range bullet wound in the head. I've seen this solution before in a campy parody of the locked room/detective story and it worked there, because it was played for laughs and giggles. But here, well... never mind.

"The Flying Hat" was first published in the May 1929 issue of The Storyteller and deals with a murderous, but unsuccessful, attempt on a man life and as to be expected, there aren't any footprints. It's the worst story of this section and I would advice to skip it.

So, yeah, that's not a very positive, second round of reviews of The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, but the "no-footprints" or "stopped tracks" are the most difficult of all the impossible situations to pull off. John Dickson Carr himself only delivered one classic novel in this category, She Died a Lady (1943), under the Carter Dickson byline. One of the best examples (IMHO) is still Arthur Porges' "No Killer Has Wings," which can be found in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2006) and sports one of the all-time great solutions for this predicament. The Jonathan Creek TV Christmas special, The Black Canary (1998), attractively translates this problem to small screen and masterly wrangles out a completely new ending to this scenario. The Footprints of Satan (1950) by Norman Berrow deserves a mention for not just tackling the problem, but plotting an entire obstacle course with it.

I'll probably review something else for the next post and than continue slaying this giant. That final page shall be reached and (hey!) I managed to keep this post shorter than previous one! I'm on the right track again with this blog!