Pedigree of Crime

"Every real story is a never ending story."

- Michael Ende.

San Sebastiano is a speck of a principality, situated in the Riviera, that was dreamed up by James Powell in order to unfetter his imagination from the chains of historical accuracy and was fascinated to watch how an imaginary princedom became the most well-rounded character in A Pocketful of Noses: Stories of One Ganelon or Another (2009) – a collection of short stories culled from the pages of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by that indispensable publisher Crippen and Landru.

The principal characters of this collection are four generations of Ambrose Ganelon's, whose ancestral tree is adorned with deerstalkers, fedoras and tools of the detective's trade, scourging the criminals patronizing San Sebastiano. This includes members of Dr. Ludwig Fong's Eurasian crime dynasty, who play the Professor Moriarty to their Sherlock Holmes. Ganelon's multiple casebooks are filled with wonderfully told and imaginative tales of crime and deception, loaded with historical details of San Sebastiano, but they seldom, if ever, adhere to fair play rules. They're more in the tradition of late 19th/early 20th Century thrillers, in which master criminals attempt to overthrow a small country or blow-up the crowned heads of Europe. 

Nevertheless, this was not the let down that it should have been and it speaks volumes of Powell's ability as a writer to not make me want to care about plot – even if the locked room mystery got a similar treatment. Good fiction is good fiction, plain and simple, but how I was going to review these stories left me in a tangle. So I decided to just discuss the four detectives and their cases instead of each individual story.

AMBROSE GANELON I:

The first Ganelon to done the deerstalker and dabble into detection was Ambrose Ganelon I, who reasoned, for the most part, from an armchair and was basically the Sherlock Holmes of San Sebastiano – later known as the Founder of the Ganelon Detective Agency. "The Haunted Bookcase" is my personal favorite, in which a dream of a ghost has a direct bearing on the books he left behind and those same books are being moved around in a locked room. IIRC, this story bears some remarkable resemblances to Norizuki Rintaro's "The Green Door is Dangerous." Other stories included in this section are "The Flower Diet" (involving a mystic's claim that he can draw his nourishments from the odor of flowers, instead of food and drinks, and nobody has caught him eating), "Unquiet Graves" (a scared stiff and body snatching) and "The Priest Without a Shadow" (in which a doomed priest exorcizes a house where a man was decapitated).

AMBROSE GANELON II:

The second Ganelon to turn detective turns to the scientific methods of Dr. John Thorndyke to lead him to the end of a case. In his first big case, he confronts "The Gooseberry Fool," a hired assassin who plagues the European continent each summer and leaves Paris deserted – except for tourists and waiters. "The Verbatim Reply" asks Ganelon II to intercept a wrongly dispatched document and "A Pocketful Noses" shows flashes of Mycroft Holmes, suggesting that he is the Intelligence Services, as he investigates the murder of Serbian subject logging around a half a dozen false noses.

AMBROSE GANELON III:

The grandson of the agency's founder is from the Hardboiled School, battle hardened on the killing fields of war, which is also the stage for the first story in this section, "Harps of Gold." Ganelon III also tangled with a female member of the Fong family in "The Zoroaster Grin" and brought light in another dark plot in "At Willow-Walk-Behind," but most interesting is perhaps that these stories show the effect the three generations of Ganelon detectives had on the principality – having almost entirely eradicated crime he had to expand business and turn in a Pinkerton-like agency.

AMBROSE GANELON IV:

The last of the Ganelon detective's is perhaps the smartest, as well as the unluckiest, of the bunch. His family's success has ruined the detective business and now impoverished is dependant on the soup kitchen for his meals. I think this is an interesting, logical and almost evolutionary progress in the series. San Sebastiano is only a speck on the map and therefore crime could be contained, even eradicated, within its borders and the Ganelon's dove into that pond like a flurry of piranhas, and before long, they had reach the bottom of their food chain – and after only four generations the Grand Detective has disappeared from the Grand Stage of San Sebastiano. Well, not entirely, as Ganelon IV still picks up cases here and there, like the theft of some of the "Coins in the Frascatti Fountain" or the mystery of "The Bird-of-Paradise Man."

I can recommend A Pocketful of Noses: Stories of One Ganelon or Another to fans of Sherlock Holmes and the stories from his creators contemporaries, especially the ones who didn’t take themselves too seriously, and hope to see more of Powell's work collected in the nearby future. But most of all, I hope he compiles a tongue-in-cheek history book of San Sebastiano and the Ganelon Detective Agency. I would love to read a full-account of the Half-Day War and how Ganelon's slyboots thwarted an invading army!

It's possible that the next review posted on here will be of an impossible crime novel written, judging by the book's synopsis, in the same style and spirit as the stories I just reviewed here and the description in Adey's book is very enticing... but I also want to return to the Artemis Fowl series. Choices, choices, choices!

The Locked Room: A Little-Known John Sladek Story

"I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read."

- John Sladek.

In 1972, the Times of London organized a short story competition for detective stories and after the jury, comprising of Lord Butler, Tom Stoppard and the Queen of Crime Agatha Christie, had ploughed through a 1000 stories – it was John Sladek's "By an Unknown Hand" who let his fellow competitors biting the dust of defeat. His award: the story was published in The Times Anthology of Detective Stories (1972) and a contract to pen one of my all-time favorite locked room novels, Black Aura (1974), and he wrote a follow up a few years later entitled Invisible Green (1977).

These stories are very well-known among locked room enthusiasts, like yours truly, but a let less familiar are the (non-impossible) short-short story "It Takes Your Breath Away," featuring Sladek's series detective Thackeray Phin, and a body of inverted mysteries with a twist, collected in Maps (2002), which I recommend without hesitation. But Sladek also wrote a parody on the impossible crime genre, aptly titled "The Locked Room," which is virtually unknown because it's inexplicably buried in a volume of science-fiction stories – Keep the Giraffe Burning (1978). It you've always wondered what would happen if you tossed Douglas Adams or Monty Python into the blender with John Dickson Carr's "The Locked Lecture," a chapter from The Hollow Man (1935), than you have to read this story.

The protagonists of this yarn are Fenton Worth, a lauded private investigator, and his valet, Bozo, but instead of taking on a case that's probably on their doorstep waiting to be let in he locks himself up in his library to read a mystery novel with The Locked Room (????) as its tantalizing title. As he reads through the pages, he begins to reflect on the miracles he has explained himself and goes over a lot of the familiar (and often trite) methods mentioned in Dr. Fell's lecture and has a good laugh at their expense. He also a few, uhm, interruptions from prospective clients.

Sladek also wrote a mini-short story into this already short, short story and has Worth reflecting back on "The Case of the Parched Adjutant," in which "a retired military gentleman of sober and regular habits" and "an ardent anti-vivisectionist" is murdered in his locked study on the day the circus was in town. It's campy and absurd, but futile to suppress a grin while reading it. 

One more thing worth mentioning, is that Worth had to cut open the pages of the book he was reading. I was aware you had to do this back in the days with (some) hard covers, but I think this is the first time I have seen it being described in a story. 

John Sladek (1937-2000): another man who did not believe in miracles

Yes! I have broken the dry spell of not reading any mysteries since posting my review of Max Murray's The Sunshine Corpse (1954)! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to tackle a monument of a locked room story. As much as Carr hated the modern era, I think/want to believe he would have liked this galore of busted doors and broken locks that is my blog.

And in case you've missed it, take a peek at my second installment of favorite locked room mysteries: short stories and novellas.

Sealed Rooms and Ghoulish Laughter: Tributes to John Dickson Carr

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

The man who explained miracles...

After perusing the article "C is for... John Dickson Carr," an unabashed piece of hero worship from fellow blogger Sergio, a germ of an idea began to fester and grow in my mind, but with it came a knock on the door and found a problem on my doorstep. The instrument I exert to trumpet his praise broke after beating a dead horse with it and more than enough people are already of the opinion that I should get a room for me and the ghost of John Dickson Carr. So I decided to adjust my focus for this post and take a look at some of the stories that he inspired others to write.

Well, I guess I have to start with the late William Brittain, a novelist and school teacher, who scattered the pages of The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine with an abundance of short stories – including "The Man Who Read" series. It's a series of stand-alone mysteries centering on readers of detective fiction that are put in a position where they have to apply the knowledge culled from the stories of their favorite mystery writer to solve a problem of their own... or to create one.

William Brittain (1930-2011)

"The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr" is a young orphan, named Edgar Gault, who discovered the undisputed master of the locked room mystery at the impressionable age of fourteen, imbuing him with the conviction that, one day, he will bring his stories to life – preferably with his unpleasant uncle as the victim. The trick of the locked door is almost as good as the final sentence of the story, which is a real kicker, and it's just overall an amusing and a very rich story. It places the inverted mystery in the convinces of the locked room and even gives you, somewhat, of a character study of the protagonist, but, above all, it's just fun story to read. I wish the entire series, all ten of them, were gathered in one easily accessible volume. Messrs Crippen and Landru, are you taking notes? Until then, you can find this story in Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective Stories (1998).

Norma Schier was another mystery writer who had her tongue firmly planted in her cheek when she began to pen a series of short stories for The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, in which she harlequinade her most famous predecessors – from Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh to Clayton Rawson and John Dickson Carr. Most of her stories perfectly captured the heart and soul of the originals and have the added bonus of being anagram puzzles. You can figure out whodunit and who's being spoofed by simply decoding the anagrams.

"Hocus-Pocus at Drumis Tree" (published under the byline Handon C. Jorricks) was her nod to John Dickson Carr, which takes place in a reputable restaurant where it's not the custom to spike a glass of champagne with poison and then pass it around, but that's exactly what happened. Enter Sir Marvin Rhyerlee! Who's miffed that he can't enjoy a quiet lunch without someone dying under impossible circumstances. Schier admitted that her little pastiche does little justice to Carr's plotting technique and knack for coming up with impossible situations, but the attempt that was made here is definitely being appreciated. You can find this story in the collection The Anagram Detectives (1979).

Alex Atkinson wrote another parody, "Chapter the Last: Merriman Explains," which is more a spoof on Carr's detectives than his plotting technique and someone on the JDCarr forum noted that the more Carr you've read the more you'll appreciate it. I agree. It's a brief, but fun, distraction and can be read in the anthology Murder Impossible: An Extravaganza of Miraculous Murders, Fantastic Felonies and Incredible Criminals (1990). 

Another humorous excerpt, lampooning Dr. Gideon Fell, comes from the word processor of one of our very own, Barry Ergang, who was inspired to write "Dr. Gideon Fell, Hardboiled Sawbones" after a comment from Nick Fuller berating the atrocity that was The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries – a TV series that butchered a number of Gladys Mitchell's most enjoyable novels. Here is Nick's full-comment that can double as a synopsis for Barry's story: "It is like adapting Carr, and making Dr. Fell a cantankerous hard-drinking medico on the sleazy streets of London's East End who deals with professional crime of the hard-boiled variety and with an awful number of demented blondes, without an impossible crime in sight." The story can still be read by clicking here (GAD archive).

William Krohn's "The Impossible Murder of Dr. Satanus" was written in a more serious and darker vein, when the author was only 18-years-old, and almost reads like a love letter to John Dickson Carr and the locked room mystery. Krohn's introduction to the genre came a few years previously, when he read The Three Coffins (1935) and the Cult of Carr welcomed another member in their midst. The story itself dribs with Carrian influences, involving the stabbing of a magician in closed and moving elevator, with a solution that does not rely on gizmos like a certain other story I could mention – and I can only imagine that Carr himself must have beamed with pride after finishing the story (it was published during his lifetime). Krohn penned a second story for the EQMM, but it was rejected as too complex and eventually moved away from detective fiction to become a film critic and expert on Alfred Hitchcock. I wonder if a copy of that story survived. Anyway, as Darrell from The Study Lamp remarked, the story has been deservedly reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2007).

By the same token, I should also mention Paul Halter's The Fourth Door (1987), whose Dr. Alan Twist is a "thinly" disguised version of Dr. Gideon Fell, and Jean-Paul Török's The Riddle of Monte Verita (2007), but I already discussed them in depth on this blog. However, Peter Lovesey's Bloodhounds (1997) should be mentioned, even if it's more of a general wink at the genre than one specifically meant for Carr. The bloodhounds of the title are a group of fanatical mystery fans, ranging from locked room enthusiasts to hardboiled fanatics, who meet once a week to discuss detective stories – until one of them is murdered aboard a locked houseboat. A very clever, fun and eerily recognizable book that should belong on the shelves of everyone who's permanently under the weather with the sleuth flu. It's about us!

I probably missed a few and could probably find more, but I think this was more than enough hero worship for this Sunday. My next sermon will be on how Carr has fed our hungry brains and banished mediocrity from our bookshelves. Thank you Carr for unlocking doors and forgiving our sins, like you did with the murderers in so many of your books, past, present and future. In name of the Father (Edgar Allan Poe), the Son (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and the Holy Spirit (G.K. Chesterton). Amen.  

Partners in Stitches

"I am an old-fashioned villain."

"Old-fashioned villains are always killed in the end."
- Casino for Sale (1938)

Death is no laughing matter, especially when it manifests itself in the guise of a callous murderer, but the mystery genre has a long and storied history of making a laughing stock out of the homicidal tendencies of the scythe wielding death-dealer – goaded by the ghouls who relish these abdominal stories. And yes, we're all guilty of this one. After all, who can honestly say they read Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) with a straight face or were not reduced to soft chuckles after strangling a laugh while flipping through the pages of Kelley Roos' The Frightened Stiff (1942)?  

Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon, co-conspirators in a series of comical mysteries and historical farces, were two of the malefactors responsible for turning the cloaked embodiment of death into a figure of fun. These literary equivalents of Bonnie and Clyde openly confessed that they intended to keep Londoners laughing during the Blitz and schemed their risible narratives while cremating cigarettes, draining cups of tea and emitting frequent shrieks of laughter – which is why I always refer to them as partners in stitches. Well, if Bill Pronzini is ever going to compile a Gun-in-Cheek sequel, dedicated to awful puns and cringing witticism from hack reviewers like myself, I have secured a spot in it with that one!

Their first collaborative achievement as a criminal enterprise came with the publication of A Bullet in the Ballet (1937), in which Inspector Adam Quill and the members of Vladimir Stroganoff's absurd and uproarious ballet company made their first on-stage appearance – as they tangoed with an assassin who insists on killing performers dancing the role of Petrouchka during shows with hundreds in attendance as potential eye-witnesses. The jocular story telling gelled perfectly with a well-constructed plot, but it was the impresario Stroganoff who usurped the spotlights. A genuinely droll character who gave actes de présence in numerous of their satirical mysteries as well as non-criminal comedies.

Casino for Sale (1938) opens with the beleaguered Stroganoff being bamboozled into purchasing a small, dilapidated casino within the vicinity of a recently erected, modish casino and on top of that his newly acquired gambling den turns out to be cesspool of crime. Blackmailers and confidence tricksters have a run of the place, but the indefatigably impresario takes on the competition by inveigling the discerning public into the run-down gaming house with his world famous and celebrated ballet company. But nothing runs smoothly and when Pavlo Citrolo, an eminent ballet critic who moonlights as a blackmailer, refused to give a good notice the promoter recognizes that the situation calls for swift and immediate action by doing what everyone in his position would've done – spiking the critics drink with a sleeping draught and rushing-off to write a laudatory review in his name after safely locking the snoring blackguard up in his own office.

So problem solved? Casino Stroganoff receives a commendatory notice from a highly regarded patron of the stage and the decrepit casino becomes a success after all. Well, not quite.

When he returned to unlock his office, a speech prepared to logically account for his groggy state and the locked environment, in which Pavlo Citrolo found himself when he woke up from the drug-induced stupor, he finds the strangled remains of the man in what can only be described as a sleuth's nightmare. There was a noose dangling from the ceiling and a gun near the body; there was a bullet hole in the wall and an untouched glass of milk next to a bottle labeled poison; a half-smoked cigar on the mantel piece and the safe door was swung wide open – and guess who the local Inspector Clouseau incarcerated for the murder after his first inspection of the crime-scene? Exactly! Luckily, for Stroganoff, he had the blind foresight to dispatch an invitation to Adam Quill, now retired from the force and making a living as a private enquiry agent, to waste his vacation at the casino – which now has turned into a busman's holiday.

Casino for Sale is a rollicking cavalcade of crime, in which the bantering characters and effervescent dialogue decide on who has the brightest sparkle by holding a repartee duel – making this is a fast-paced and breezy story. Unfortunately, as a detective story, the plot missed a beat or two by trivializing the circumstances in which the murder was discovered. The clue filled murder room was fairly quickly accounted for as one of Stroganoff's artistic fits (hoping to obscure the murder as a suicide and abscond any personal responsibility for drugging him) and the banality of the locked room trick was unsatisfactory to say the least. Admittedly, the latter advanced the plot and provided a few chuckles, but I think littering the place with a dozen spare keys would've worked just as well and been less of a disappointment.  

Nevertheless, these cosmetic anomalies take very little away from the overall quality of the book as it remains a very amusing romp and Adam Quill is a pleasantly assiduous detective – diligently picking up clues, interrogating witnesses and pursuing suspects. It's just that I feel that this could've been a minor classic if Quill also had to explain away the murderous instruments and intriguing clues, one after another, before uncovering the culprit's identity – akin to Carter Dickson's Death in Five Boxes (1938).

If you'd compare this book to a casino slot machine, it only missed one of the symbols needed to complete the winning combination that would've hit the jackpot. Oh well, at least playing the game was plenty of fun.

Bibliography of the Adam Quill and Vladimir Stroganoff series: 

A Bullet in the Ballet (1937)

Casino for Sale a.k.a. Murder a la Stroganoff (1938)

Envoy on Excursion (1940)

Six Curtains for Stroganova a.k.a. Six Curtains for Natasha (1945; non-mystery)

Stroganov and Company (1980; a short story collection)

Killed in All Kinds of Ways

"Maybe the truth is that Bill was a man who believed that fairy tales came true, and that we can live happily ever after – but his fairy tales were more like fractured ones from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show than anything that might have been written by brothers named Grimm. These stories are fairy tales in their way, and at the same time homage to the genre he spent his life immersed in."

- Jane Haddam

Yes, another review of a book that has William DeAndrea's name plastered across the front cover, but this one is special – a posthumous compendium that's an exhibit in miniature scale of his considerable talents as a storyteller and plotter. The first fistful of stories feature Matt Cobb, a specialized trouble shooter for a television network, handling everything that's too ticklish for security and too nasty for public relations, who's job often drags him into high-profile and baffling murder cases connected to the world behind the small screen. The book also includes two Holmesian pastiches, one of them narrated with the voice of the hardboiled detective, and the remaining tales are standalones – one of them the standout story of this collection. Lamentably, he never wrote any short stories that chronicled one of the many cases that were handled by Niccolo Benedetti and Ronald Gentry, and which were alluded to in The Werewolf Murders (1992). 

Murder – All Kinds (2003) opens with a short introduction from his wife, Jane Haddam, who's an accomplished mystery author herself, telling briefly of one of those domestic tragedies that most of us, unfortunately, are all too familiar with from personal experience. But optimistically noted that he produced a lot of work in the final year of his life, and that "it's impossible to tell which were written when he was sick and which when he was well." I found myself agreeing with her, more and more, with each passing story!

Matt Cobb, Special Projects:

Snowy Reception

In this opening story, Matt Cobb is escorted to an airport by two federal government agents to identify a notorious terrorist – who procured a spot on the most wanted list by taking the anchorman of the Evening News hostage and murdering several security guards. The consequences of this on-air killing spree made the fame-seeking terrorist a bit camera shy and upon his escape abroad, he drastically altered his appearance. Cobb identifies him by pointing out the one thing even the best plastic surgeons in the world couldn't alter. This is a fun, but slight, story that reminded me of some of the tales from Detective Conan, in which a single suspect has to be deduced from a suspicious lot of characters.

Killed Top to Bottom

With the sole exception of a sobbing clown, everyone started hugging the concrete floor when an unobserved assailant took aim at the host of a local cable show – a noted professor of linguistics. The smoking gun proves to be as elusive as the shooter and the solution as to how it was obscured is exemplar of DeAndrea's creativity. There's also a hilarious scene, in which Matt Cobb wrestles the half hysterical clown to the ground and is stunned by a security guard, who was under the impression that he had stopped an attempted rape, and this skirmish turns out to contain an important clue!

Killed in Midstream

Justice Quest is a true-crime show that asks its viewers to help them shed some light on unsolved mysteries, but the ratings have been lagging behind that of its competitors and it's given one more shot at reeling in viewers with a high-profile, mind blowing case – and dispatches Matt Cobb and one of the shows executives to the island of an ex-diamond merchant. The merchant and his cat were the only ones who survived a massacre at his store, in which the lives of twenty-seven people were extinguished to safely obtain a pile of precious stones, and whomever was responsible got away with it. But when Matt Cobb and his TV station starts probing the case again, it becomes evident that the police were looking for the mass murderer too far away from home. And the method for hiding diamonds is one of the cleverest I have ever come across in a detective story!

Killed in Good Company

Matt Cobb receives an invitation to partake in a round-table discussion with other famous investigators for a documentary, but the discussions are interrupted by the noisy rattling emanating from the cupboards of skeletons demanding to be let out – with deadly results. Cobb nearly lost his life when he attempted to save a retired private eye from the poisonous fumes that filled his room and the method employed here is both brilliant and original. The story also very much reminded me of Rex Stout's novella "Too Many Detective" (collected in Three for the Chair, 1957) and the gathering of detectives in volume 30 of Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Other Stories:

Hero's Welcome

A short-short Cold War spy story, in which a Soviet agent returns home and there's an expected twist ending. Not a very interesting story, I'm afraid.

Sabotage

This is the standout story I referred to earlier, and I can't tell too much about it without divulging any of its surprises. But it's a story that keeps you guessing until the end which direction the plot is going to take and involves a dedicated psychiatrist, questing for the reason behind the suicide of one of his patients, a promising teenage genius, and its connection with a radical figurehead of the pro-environmental movement – and ties it neatly together with one of the most dreadful tragedies of the modern era. Why can't more modern crime stories be like this?

Friend of Mine

Even in the broadest interpretation used these days, it's impossible to pigeonhole this story as one of crime or detection, however, there is a sense of genuine mystery – but one that's more at home between the crumbling pages of classic tales of horror and adventure. In this modern fable, a soldier, stationed in the artic region, has a brush with Victor Frankenstein's monstrous creation – who has been elevated to Godhood by the locals. It's completely out-of-place in this collection, but nonetheless a very engaging read and a first-rate pastiche of Mary Shelley's immortal horror yarn.

The Adventure of the Cripple Parade (ascribed to Mickey Spillane)

Depending on where you stand, this is either one of the most successful or one of the most disastrous attempts at bonding the European and the American detective story. Here we have the personification of the conventional detective story, who's voice suddenly vibrates with the violent poetry of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane – and vows revenge to whoever beat Watson to a bloody pulp. I guess this is a nod to The Maltese Falcon (1930). Although Sam Spade's motive for finding his partner's assailant wasn't driven by the kind of friendship that Holmes feels for Watson. Anyway, it's a surprisingly amusing story, but not that everyone is going to like.

The Adventure of the Christmas Tree

This is a bona fide attempt at recreating Conan Doyle's magic, in which the forester of a Scottish lord brings Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson a most singular problem: the Christmas tree he hand picked and marked for his master was spirited away from his private woods, but nevertheless turned up in the ancestral home of his employer! Coincidently, the Lord is entertaining an important German diplomat, while they negotiate the terms of important business deals between their nations, and the tree has an important bearing on these talks. In the end, Holmes and Watson foil a devious conspiracy that might have kicked started WWI prematurely. However, it's not one of the most ingenious Sherlock Holmes stories I have ever read, original or replica, but it's amusing enough and would've made a fun episode with Jeremy Brett.

Prince Charming

A cutesy retelling of the titular fairly tale trope in a contemporary setting with a kidnapping plot woven into the story telling. The story actually managed to utterly fool me, because I was convinced that Prince Charming staged the kidnapping of a young heiress in order to cast himself in the role of her savior and get his hands on all of her fathers money by marrying her – completely forgetting that in fairly tales lovers are supposed to live happily ever after. Oh well...

Murder at the End of the World

This previously unpublished story, set in the 1970s, is basically Orson Welles The War of the Worlds Hoax as perceived by a scribbler of detective stories, in which the military accidentally sends out an erroneous emergency notification to all radio and television stations – entailing that a nuclear strike against the country is imminent. This causes a panic at a small student radio station that leads to a vicious assault on one of them, but what possible motive still stands in the face of a nuclear fall-out? The solution, unfortunately, is uninspired, but that's more than made up by the premise of the story and the surprise of the hidden and understated identity of the detective!  

Altogether, this is a solid collection, comprising of all the short stories William DeAndrea produced during his life time, which is certainly worth acquiring if you're already a fan of his work – or just enjoy kicking back with a bunch of well written stories.

"Fighting crime in a future time"

"Mystery and science fiction have always had one oddity in common: each has devoted addicts who refuse to read any other kind of fiction. I hope there will be readers of this book who never before read any science fiction, and other readers who never before read any crime stories. And I hope, and believe, that both will find out to their pleasure how much they have been missing."

- Miriam Allen DeFord (from the introduction of Space, Time and Crime)

Over the past few years, I have heard several people suggest that the advent of revolutionary new technology and forensic science has driven the final nail in the coffin of the classic whodunit – which always struck me as a narrow-minded view of things. As if we are the first generation of humans to witness a rapidly changing world due to technological and scientific advancement. Back then, radio and telephone made the world a lot smaller, much in the same way as the internet has done for us today, and DNA shouldn't be any more of an obstacle, for a talented mystery writer anyway, as fingerprints did for the great pioneers of the genre.

But this shallow and near-sighted argument was already refuted long before it was made, and the person who shattered it to smithereens was science-fiction legend, Isaac Asimov, who published a groundbreaking detective novel, Caves of Steel (1954), that intertwined a formal detective story with a visionary image of the future – and it worked, flawlessly!

In spite of being set in the distant future, which has the advantage of super advanced technology, it managed to come up with a brilliant and perfectly fair solution and even offers several equally neat false solutions in the process.

The anthology Space, Time and Crime (1964) tries to continue that tradition, but, unfortunately, it suffers from nearly every flaw a short story collection can have: the selection of stories are very uneven in quality, ranging from quite good to absolutely bland, and some of the stories really make you scratch your head and ponder why they were included into the book. However, none of the stories are really bad, and it makes for a nice, experimental read, but overall it holds more interest for a SF than a mystery fan.

Here's a complete overview of all fourteen stories:  

Crisis, 1999 by Fredric Brown

This tale was published at the tail end of the golden era of the detective story, 1949, and is the only entry in this collection that represents that particular period in literary history. The story itself is set 50 years into the future, 1999, and describes an advanced, but troubled, civilization – whose professional criminals are literarily getting away with murder by beating the lie detector. It's fortunate for that society that great detectives haven't gone the way of the dinosaurs, and Bela Joad descents into the underworld to undrape what covers up all these seemingly undetectable lies, but instead finds a method to root-out criminal behavior once and for all. The story is not without interest, but more so as a classic science-fiction yarn than as a clever detective story – as the proposed solution would've never been accepted in a straightforward mystery.

Fredric Brown is also the author of several detective novels and short stories, including the phantasmagorial Night of the Jabberwock (1951) and the nightmarish locked room mystery, "The Spherical Ghoul" (1943). Both highly recommended.  

Redrum and Other Mirecs

In 1965, the illustrious Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine began publishing a series of standalone detective stories under some of the most astonishing bylines: Handon C. Jorricks, Leyne Requel and Rhoda Lys Storey. The puzzle solving brains among us will at once notice that this outré collection of names have a coded quality to them and will have figured out by now that they are anagrams of names of some renowned mystery writers, however, these stories weren't jotted down by John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Norma Schier was the brain behind these puzzling conundrums, in which she paid homage to her favorite mystery writers by burlesquing them in a humorous and clever manner – and most of them perfectly captured the heart of soul of the originals. They also have the added bonus of being anagram puzzles. You can solve a case in two different ways: by correctly interpreting the clues she provided or scrambling the anagrammatic names in the right order to learn which role which character plays in a story. A truly unique interpretation of the sacred rule of playing fair with your readers.

These risible pastiches easily stand up against those gathered in Agatha Christie's Partner in Crime (1929) and Leo Bruce's satirical masterpiece, Case for Three Detectives (1936), and when they were collected in a book, entitled The Anagram Detectives (1979), the result was an excellent collection of short stories that can boost that it doesn't have a single real dud among its fourteen stories – a rarity for an anthology.

Of course, some tales are more interesting or better constructed than others, but I wouldn't apply any such labels as poorly plotted or badly written to any of them – which really show how remarkable these stories are.    

The Gramana Aragman Anagram Detectives

The Adventure of the Solitary Bride by E. Aldon Canoy

In case the title wasn't a dead giveaway, the story was written down by Hoskell Chomers' chronicler, Sandwort, who relates a singular problem that was brought to them by a newly wed woman – whose husband abruptly fled the house on account of pressing business matters. But the curious behavior of the butler, a skulking, weak-chinned stranger dilly-dallying around the house and mysterious coded messages makes her mighty suspicious and prompts her to consult the great detective himself. 

This proved to be one of the most delightful Holmesian pastiches I have ever read, and Chomers' chain of deductive reasoning in the story's opening pages is spot-on! He also doesn't fail to deliver a satisfying solution, that's both logical and charming. A perfect start to a great collection.

The Object Lesson by W.H. Geurnon

It seems only logical that after a reading from the casebook of one of the greatest detectives who never lived, we learn of the exploits of one of the most notorious cat burglars in popular-fiction – the audacious L.A. Jeffars. The infamous gentleman burglar has set his sights on a greedy, disagreeable old hag, who drips with diamonds, and plans on cleaning out her burglar proof safe to teach her a well deserved lesson.

Unfortunately, Murphy's Law rears its ugly head and nearly upsets his carefully plotted scheme, but a twist of fate provides his suffering companion in crime, Namby, with an unexpected opportunity to upstage his lawbreaking buddy. A def caper. In fact, I found this story to be better than most of the stuff Hornung wrote himself, and more praise than that can't be given to someone who specializes in writing pastiches.

If Hangman Threads by Norma Haigs

The seasoned mystery readers will immediate recognize who are hidden behind the anagrammatic names of Carroll Dikeyne, chief inspector of police, and his artistic wife Thora Gatay – and anagrams are the key to solving the murder of on unpopular artist at an art exhibition. The mechanics of the plot are actually more interesting than the mystery itself, which, sadly, is an unexciting one, but that's a minor complaint as Schiers obviously had a lot of fun writing this story – and that rubs off on the reader. 

The Teccomeshire Fen Mystery by Cathie Haig Star

A successful pastiche of the Queen of Crime, in which the celebrated detective, Pierre Choulot, and his dense friend Stangish visit a quaint little village and unhesitatingly get themselves involved in a murder case. A local gentleman, who was fond of out door painting, was shot while playing around with his brush, and the murder may have something do with the village beauty. Choulot does a neat job of tying the psychological and physical clues together and provides a bang-up solution for this little mystery.

Hocus-Pocus at Drumis Tree by Handon C. Jorricks

Drumis Tree is a restaurant of great repute and not the kind of place where you suspect poisonous glasses of champagne to be passed around, but that's exactly what happened – and what's worst, there seems to be an impossible angle as to how the poison was slipped into the glass. Enter Sir Marvin Rhyerlee! Who's a bit miffed that he can't enjoy a peaceful lunch without someone keeling over in a manner that seems to defy the reality of natural law. Guess who's being spoofed? If you don't know already, here's a hint: he's my favorite mystery writer.

Schier freely admits in the editors' note that her little pastiche doesn't do fully justice to his plotting technique and knack for coming up with impossible situations, but the endeavor is definitely appreciated. 

Tales From a Mysterious Traveler

Robert Arthur is credited with writing over two hundred short stories, ranging from mysteries to fantasy, won two coveted Edgar statuettes for his radio show, The Mysterious Traveler, and created a popular juvenile detective series, The Three Investigators. But despite these accolades, Robert Arthur's name has all but faded from the publics' collective memory – which I think qualifies as criminal neglect.

I got my first taste of his work last year, when I read the poorly edited anthology Tantalizing Locked Room Mysteries (1982) – consisting mostly of over anthologized stories (Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Futrelle's "The Problem of Cell 13" and Hoch's "The Leopold Locked Room") and a few decent efforts (Kantor's "The Light at Three 'O Clock" (mainly for its Carrian atmosphere) and Woolrich's "Murder at the Automat"), but there was one story that stood out, and that was Robert Arthur's "The 51st Sealed Room." 

Robert Arthur (1909-1969)

"The 51st Sealed Room" concerns the upcoming book from the hands of a famous artisan of impossible crime stories, who claims to have contrived a new method for escaping from a sealed environment that would make John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen turn green with envy. But before he can put his revolutionary locked room story to paper, his decapitated body, propped up in front of his typewriter with his head gazing down from the bookcase, is found behind the locked doors of a completely sealed cottage.

The solution, however, is not entirely original, but a variation on a ingenious method conjured up by Joseph Commings in one of his famous locked room stories, and most of the fantastical clues turn out to be nothing more than red herrings. However, my curiosity was roused and was thrilled to learn there was an anthology that collected ten of his mystery short stories. 

The tales that make up Mystery and More Mystery (1966) is the only available compendium of his detective fiction, written for a young adult audience, but that takes nothing away from the quality and inventiveness of the plots - and especially the locked rooms in this collection makes you mourn the fact that not more of his work was collected (Douglas Greene, if you're reading this *hint* *hint* *hint*).  

Ten Tales From a Mysterious Traveler:

Mr. Manning's Money Tree

The collection opens with a diverting story, in which a bank clerk, who's about to be arrested on an embezzlement charge, stashes his loot in a secure hiding place, as a comfy nest egg, to help him begin anew when he has served his sentence. Well, at least that was the plan, but, upon his release from prison, he quickly learns that his task is not quite as easy as he first suspected. A fun, moving story with a neat twist on the  "Hoist-On-Their-Own-Petards" gambit.

Larceny and Old Lace

Grace and Florance Usher are two sweet, innocent-looking old spinsters who lived a sheltered existence, tucked away in a small, sleepy upstate town, and the only excitement they ever knew came from their experience as seasoned readers of detective stories. But their humdrum lives is shaken up when they inherit a furnished house from their nephew, who came to a sticky end at the hands of an unknown assailant, inspiring them to pack up their bags and explore the Big City. The only problem is that some shady locals also have a fested interest in the house, but the two elderly maids are a lot tougher than they expected and at times more terrifying than a battalion of hard-bitten homicide cops with hoses. 

The story is best described as a precursor to Home Alone, but instead of a beguiling brat there are two seemingly harmless old ladies who act as a holy terror to the criminal elements of the neighborhood. An unapologetically funny story!

Note that the main characters and set-up of the story share some remarkable resemblances to Torrey Chanslor's Our First Murder (1940), and one has to wonder if, perhaps, one sprang from the other.

The Midnight Visitor

A slight tale, in which a spy attempts to pawn off an important document from a confrere. A fun but forgettable story.

The Blow from Heaven

The first impossible crime story of the collection, offering an intriguing challenge to the reader: how did Professor Natzof Kohn murder his benefactor, Madame Farge, who was alone in a room, under observation, when she was stabbed, while her beneficiary was delivering an animated lecture on primitive superstition and black magic? The dénouement is perhaps over ambitious and belongs to a particular type of locked room solution that tends to leave its readers with a sense of disappointment, but the trick is well handled here and all the clues are there.

The Glass Bridge

Like the preceding story, this is an inverted mystery, of sorts, with a locked room puzzle to mull over – and the solution is diabolically clever. The basic facts of the case are as follow: Marianne Montrose (a blonde blackmailer) was seen entering the house of mystery writer Mark Hillyer, leaving a single track of footprints in the two feet deep snow surrounding the house, from which she vanishes as if she never passed the thresh hold at all. It's a physical impossibility for Hillyer to have carried her body off the premises, without leaving any marks in the snow, nor would his heart condition allow him to place any strenuous strain on his body, like chopping up her corpse or digging a grave, without keeling over. However, he's all to eager to make himself suspicious and gives the police veiled hints, which provides the reader with the maddening problem of knowing who killer is but not how he managed to pull it off. Classic!

Change of Address

Another story in which the culprit proves to be a "Hoist-on-His-Petard," when a long suffering husband bashes in the skull of his nagging wife with a spade and buries her body in the cellar of his newly acquired beach house, but there are always skeletons that simply refuse to stay buried! A very, very satisfying story.

The Vanishing Passenger

This tale involves a murder committed aboard a train, solved by a man and his mystery-writing aunt, but it's not a very interesting story and failed to grab my attention. Duds like these are to be expected in every anthology.

Hard Case

Like the title suggests, this is a tougher than usual story for this collections as a father traps a rural highway man who shot his son (and several other locals) in a mug-killing – and extracts his revenge in a particular ingenious manner that involves a hidden object puzzle. This is probably what the Ellery Queen stories would've been like, if they had a hardboiled edge to them.

The Adventure of the Single Footprint

The police solicit the help of a mentally unhinged person, who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes, to help them solve the murder of his uncle – and this could've been one of the better stories of the collection, if the back cover hadn't touted the identity of the murderer.  

The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice

A brilliant homage to Ellery Queen, in which a private detective and his young son are summoned to a transplanted castle inhabited by a rich and licentious stamp collector, who suspects one or more of his in-laws of theft. But before the father-and-son detective duo can look into the case, someone takes several shots at their client and his near dying message virtually implicates all the major suspects.

As to be expected from an Ellery Queen-type of story, there's someone who proffers a false solution to the mystery and even a code that has to be cracked by solving a riddle. Now that I think of it, this is not only a nod to Ellery Queen, but also foreshadows Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed. In any case, a must read to fans of both series!