The Ghost It Was: "The House of the Shrill Whispers" (1972) by Jon L. Breen

In my previous blog-post, I reviewed "The Bizarre Case Expert" (1970) by Dennis Lynds, published as by “William Arden," which was reprinted in Ellery Queen's Master of Mysteries (1975) and the brief introduction to the story noted an increase in submissions of impossible crime stories to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine – suggesting that the "the locked-room 'tec theme" was experiencing a renaissance at the time. So this prompted me to grab another short impossible crime story from the early 1970s as a follow up.

Jon L. Breen is an acclaimed critic and reviewer, who presided over The Jury Box column in EQMM from 1977 to 2011, but his most endearing contribution to the genre is as a premier short story writer of parodies and pastiches. He penned more than a hundred of them!

Back in 2012, I compiled a short list of parodies, pastiches and homages to everyone's favorite mystery writer, John Dickson Carr, which include William Brittain's "The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr" (1965), William Krohn's "The Impossible Murder of Dr. Satanus" (1965) and Norma Schier's "Hocus-Pocus at Drumis Tree" (1966), but Breen was a notable absentee – while he arguably wrote one of the best parodies of master. Only the little gem of a spoof by Brittain is better.

"The House of the Shrill Whispers" was originally published in the August, 1972, issue of EQMM and reprinted in Ellery Queen's Champions of Mystery (1977).

The story opens in a first-class train carriage where Millard Carstairs meets Nancy Williston and they discover they're both headed to The Clifton Place in Warwick-on-Stems. A place better known under its ominous pet name, The House of the Shrill Whispers, where "the ghost of old Admiral Wilburforce Cogsby" has been seen walking "on July 12 of the last year of every decade since 1880." This ghost story is eerily similar to the impossible situation in John Russell Fearn's "Chamber of Centuries" (1940). Lamentably, nothing of note is done with this ghost story. There is, however, an impossible murder looming on the horizon.

Sir Margrove Clifton is the owner of The House of the Shrill Whispers and shortly after altering his will, cutting off three of his children, he has received death threats and as a precaution he has barricaded himself in the guest cottage – secured from the inside with triple-locks and triple-bolts. The cottage was surrounded by artificial snow and four spotlights illuminated "the premises from sunset to sunrise." There were eighteen private-security agents from the Pinkerton agency who guarded the cottage, but all to no avail, because Sir Margrove is murdered. On top of that locked room murder, it turns out that something very large has disappeared from the crime scene. The whole situation was "impossibly baffling."

By the Luck of Lavington, Millard discovered an old friend on the train, Sir Gideon Merrimac, who's the world's greatest detective and "a chuckling blend of Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale." An enormous presence with ruddy cheeks, two monocles (one in each eye) and a flowered handkerchief into which "its proprietor periodically wheezed with earth-shattering volume." This presence is packaged in a black opera cape.

Sir Gideon Merrimac is a splendid parody of Carr's often larger-than-life detective characters and Breen has given him a great line that will make everyone who's read The Hollow Man (1935) smile: "if we were characters in a novel instead of characters in a short story, I'd discourse with you at appropriate length about the foolishness and absurdity of characters in fiction pretendin' they're real." So, purely as a parody, this story is a success.

Unavoidably in a parody, the solution to the bizarre and baffling locked room murder is extremely disappointing, but this is made up by three things: the surprising amount of clueing, the identity of the culprit and the unique motive for the murder, which was delightfully meta. And to be honest, it was necessary for the solution of the locked room to be a letdown to make the rest of it work.

All in all, "The House of the Shrill Whispers" is a funny, well-written parody of Carr with a beautifully imagined, Spitting Image-like caricature of his two famous detectives melted into one character, but it's disappointing that such a wonderful parody of Carr has a disappointing locked room-trick. Even if it was necessary for the plot to work. Still a very enjoyable story.

On a final, unrelated note: I found a practically unknown Dutch mystery novel from the 1930s for my next read and it looks, if it turns out to be any good, to be something along the lines of Christopher Bush. So stay tuned!

The Laughing Cure: "The Problem of the Vanishing Town" (1979) by Jon L. Breen

A week ago, I reviewed Edward D. Hoch's Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018), which is the last collection of short stories about a retired New England medico, Dr. Sam Hawthorne, who begins every story with pouring a small libation before telling about one of the innumerable impossible crimes that plagued Northmont in the past – a small American town and locked room murder capital of the world. So with the publication of Challenge the Impossible there was nothing left to read in this series. Or is there?

Jon L. Breen is an award-winning mystery critic who took over The Jury Box column in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM) from John Dickson Carr in 1977 and relinquished the column in 2011 to Steve Steinbock, but Breen is more than just a critic. Over the decades, Breen has penned over a 100 short stories and garnered a reputation as a "premier parody-pasticher" as he satirized his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries alike. Some of his parodies have been collected in Hair of the Sleuthhound (1982) and The Drowning Icecube and Other Stories (1999).

The Giant of the Short Story was not exempt from a friendly ribbing at the hands of Breen and in the November, 1979, issue of EQMM he aimed "the point of his pen at one of the favorite series characters in EQMM," Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne.

"The Problem of the Vanishing Town," subtitled "A Chapter from the Memoirs of Dr. Sid Shoehorn, New England General Practitioner," takes place in the small town of Northsouth. A quiet, peaceful place where nothing ever happens except the absolute impossible. An inebriated Dr. Shoehorn begins his tale with relating some of the unholy miracles that have taken place in Northsouth and they're gems.

One day, "the public library disappeared overnight," leaving behind a vacant lot, but the disappearance was "a publicity stunt on the part of the librarian," who are "a militant lot," to protest budget cuts – she put it back the next day. Obviously, this story takes place in the same universe as Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979). A second incident that livened up a pleasantly dull Northsouth summer when an old man, Noah Zark, who claimed he was 2000 years old "challenged the Devil to a duel in the middle of the town square." But he was run through with "a pitchfork that came out of nowhere" in "full view of more than a hundred people." Why has nobody attempted to turn this premise into an actual story?

"The Problem of the Vanishing Town" takes place on a day in late August of 1928 and Dr. Shoehorn had delivered triplets that morning, attended to "a case of the black plague" and learned Sheriff Aperture got a telephone message saying that at three o'clock that afternoon "the whole town of Northsouth will disappear from the map." So they have to figure out how someone can make a whole town disappear.

I'm not sure whether, or not, "The Problem of the Vanishing Town" qualifies as an impossible crime story, because the plot only has a promise of an impossible situation. However, the explanation as to how the town of Northsouth eventually vanished, here played for laughs, could easily be used to explain the miraculous appearance of an entire town. So I decided to tag this post as a "locked room mystery" and "impossible crime," if only for being a parody of the Dr. Hawthorne series.

Since this is purely parody, there not much else I can say about "The Problem of the Vanishing Town," in terms of plotting or characterization, except that it's a fun, tongue-in-cheek treatment of one of Hoch's most popular and beloved series-characters. Crippen & Landru should have included it as a bonus story in Challenge the Impossible. Just like William Brittain's "The Men Who Read Isaac Asimov" in the posthumously published The Return of the Black Widowers (2005). So, long story short, "The Problem of the Vanishing Town" is unreservedly recommended to fans of Hoch and Dr. Hawthorne.

A note for the curious: one of the impossible murders Dr. Shoehorn casually described at the start of the story is the death of a clown, who was "mauled by a lion on the fifth floor of the Northsouth Hotel" when "the lion was in his cage five blocks away" – which was deemed "kind of interesting" by Dr. Shoehorn. Hoch picked up the challenge and turned this idea into a short story, entitled "Circus in the Sky," which was published in Scenes of Crime (2000). So I'll see if I can track down that story for one of my next short story reviews.

Next up on this blog is a review of a very obscure mystery novels from the 1930s that was reprinted last year.

The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018) edited by Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews

Recently, Wildside Press published a long overdue anthology, The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018), edited by Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews, who collected sixteen pastiches, parodies and short stories inspired by the Dean of the American Detective Story, Ellery Queen – written by such short story luminaries as William Brittain, Edward D. Hoch and Arthur Porges. The anthology has three (short) introductions by the editors, Richard Dannay and Rand Lee.

In their introduction, Pachter and Andrews touched upon the ill-fated publication of The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944), edited by Queen, which was withdrawn when Conan Doyle's estate used "a minor permission snafu" for Sherlock Holmes material used in 101 Years' Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories, 1841-1941 (1943) as leverage "to halt all further distribution." They also reveal that the idea for this anthology dates as far back as the early 1970s. Fredric Dannay apparently liked the idea, but it would take four decades before the first version of this anthology appeared in print.

Six years ago, the chairman of the Japanese EQ fanclub, Iiki Yusan, edited and published a 400-page, Japanese-language anthology consisting of parodies, pastiches and homes to Queen – appropriately titled The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2012). So the idea for an English edition was pulled out of cold storage in 2015 and was finally published in early March of this year.

Pachter and Andrews note that the publication of this anthology was their attempt "to close a circle that opened almost 130 years ago" with the publications of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1934) and The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. I believe they succeeded.

Richard Dannay is the son of Fredric Dannay and a copyright lawyer, who briefly points out the legal perils that lay between parodies and pastiches, but ends his introduction with the remark that he welcomes both parodies and pastiches of Ellery Queen as long as they "represent affection and respect." Something I wholeheartedly agree with, because the way in which some alleged writers handles the literary legacy of actual writers borders on the criminal.

Rand Lee is the son of the other half of the EQ partnership, Manfred B. Lee, who very briefly wrote that his father liked pastiches and would have been greatly amused by this anthology.

So, now we got the background and introduction to this anthology out of the way, let's take a closer look at the stories.

Thomas Narcejac's "Le mystère des ballons rouge" ("The Mystery of the Red Balloons") was first published in Usurpation d'indentité in 1947 and has the honor of being the first Ellery Queen pastiche ever written and this is its first-ever publication in English – as well as being the only representative in this anthology of the genre's Golden Age. So we have an actual débutante opening this collection, but one with a hardboiled edge to it. The police of New York City are confronted with a series of murders, which appear to be unrelated on the surface, but a red balloon is found at each scene. One day, a policeman on the grounds of Jonathan Mallory's estate and this time they get to the victim before he can be murdered and they station themselves inside the house. Something that displeases the crusty Mallory immensely. The subsequent events nearly costs Sgt. Velie his life, who's critically wounded, before Ellery uncovers the murderer.

The murderer is rather obvious, but, as stated by the "Challenge of the Reader," detection is not "a matter of guessing" or "stumbling upon the answer by chance." You have to analyze all of the data and clarify issues that seemed unimportant. You might have spotted the murderer, but the next question is how and why these murders were committed. So this story is more of a why than a who-dun-it. Not an out-and-out classic, but I liked it. Solid, old-fashioned Ellery Queen.

I previously reviewed "Dying Message" by Leyne Requel in my 2011 review of Norma Schier's The Anagram Detective (1979).

Jon L. Breen's "The Gilbert and Sullivan Clue" was originally published in the double anniversary issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1999 and Breen tells in his introduction that Dannay and Lee always set their stories in the present-day. Ellery stayed "more or less the same age from decade to decade." So we get EQ in the nineties with references to Star Wars, Y2K and rap music. One of the suspects is even a rapper (Daddy Trash).

Ellery is invited by Gil Castberg to take a trip aboard the luxurious Sea Twin and cruise the Californian coastline. The headline entertainer is a former client of Castberg, Ozzie Foyle, who used be part of a comedy duo, but the partnership imploded and Foyle fully dedicates himself to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan – while his former partner, Jim Dugan, faded into obscurity. All of their grudges come bubbling back to the surface when they're reunited aboard the cruise ship and the result is murder.

Obviously, Breen had fun writing new lyrics for "I've Got a Little List" from The Mikado ("that superior freeloading detective novelist: I don't think he'd be missed, I'm sure he'd not be missed."), but this is not merely a comedic detective story. There's a clever, humorous dying message and an interesting alibi-trick, but I feel the short story format constrained the plot. The story ended rather abruptly and perhaps needed an extra clue or two, because the central clue (dying message) requires a more than passing familiarity with the work of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Still, this was a fun little story and only wished the editors had also included Breen's “The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery,” which I have wanted to read for ages.

Francis M. Nevins' "Open Letter to Survivors" was first published in the May, 1972 issue of EQMM and was written under the tutelage of Dannay, who ripped the original version of the story apart with "a surgical precision" that "was more than justified," and then they "began to build the story up again." Dannay always struck me as pillar of support to everyone who dared to pick up a pen, no matter who they were, and even published stories from teenagers in EQMM. And we'll get to two of those later on in this review.

Contain "Open Letter to Survivors"

"Open Letter to Survivors" is written around a line from Ten Days' Wonder (1942), "there was the case of Adelina Monquieux" and "the remarkable solution" that "cannot be revealed until before 1972," which is studded with Queenian motifs, but the detective in this story remains nameless – even though its obviously him. Ellery is in the middle of writing a book, but concludes that his plot is some vital element and decides to consult "the foremost political analyst of the generation," Adelina Monquieux (pronounced Mon-Q). Monquieux is the mother of three adopted sons, Xavier, Yves and Zachery, who are monozygotic triplets and completely identical right down to their fingerprints. A problem when their mother is murdered during Ellery's visit to their home. So who of the identical triplets committed the murder and what prevented the truth from coming out until 1972?

This is interesting story for sure and how the triplets are used is kind of brilliant, as are Ellery's deductions, but I think the ending makes this somewhat of an anti-detective story. However, Nevins did a good job making hay out of a throw-away reference.

I previously reviewed "The Reindeer Clue" by Edward D. Hoch in my 2011 review of Ellery Queen's The Tragedy of Errors (1999).

Dale C. Andrews and Kurt Sercu's "The Book Case" was originally published in the May, 2007 issue of EQMM, which I have read before, but my opinion of it remains unaltered. Generally, I'm not too big a fan of pastiches, however, "The Book Case" would make my best-of list of detective pastiches, because it feels like it could be part of the actual canon. This betrays that the story was written by two of the biggest EQ fanboys in the United States and Europe.

The story has a contemporary setting and the series-characters have aged or passed away. Ellery Queen is now a venerable, 100-year-old man, who seemed "to move only through the sheerest will power," but not old or helpless enough to look into the murder of Dr. Jason Tenumbra – an oncologist and an avid collector of mystery novels. Tenumbra appears to have left a dying message by throwing all of his Ellery Queen novels on the floor, but the case becomes a personal one when it becomes clear that the children of Djuna are involved. And one of them dies!

Andrews and Sercu not only succeeded admirably in placing their story snugly within the confines of the original series, but also has a very clever and tricky plot demonstrating (once again) that the wonders of modern forensic science has not made ingenious plots in detective fiction obsolete – which made this the standout story of this anthology. Loved it!

By the way, one of the detectives in "The Book Case" is the elderly Harry Burke, who's closing in on his retirement, and he had appeared previously in Face to Face (1967). And the ending tells us what became of Nikki Porter. Just a couple of the nods to the original series.

J.N. Williamson's "Ten Month's Blunder" is a silly, good-natured parody about a character named Celery Keen, who helps his father solve the murder of a pawnshop owner, which cements his reputation as an amateur sleuth across the world. However, when Keen returns from a world-tour of snooping, his father has some unpleasant news for him.

Arthur Porges' "The English Village Mystery" was originally printed in the December, 1964 issue of EQMM and is the first of only two parodies he wrote about a character named Celery Green.

The story takes place in the tiny village of Tottering-on-the-Brink, which only has fourteen inhabitants, but twelve of those have been shot, stabbed, strangled and blown to pieces. Inspector Dew East has been given 48 hours to close the case and, out of desperation, turns to a gifted and well-known amateur detective, Celery Green – who happened to be visiting England at the time. You would expect the solution to be as ridiculous and silly as its premise, but there's a trace of reason to all of this madness. I think this shows, even with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Porges was one of the masters of the short detective story. Only overshadowed by the King of the Short Story, Edward Hoch.

Dennis M. Dubin was a high-school senior when his short story, "Elroy Quinn's Last Case," appeared in the July, 1967 issue of EQMM and took a similar route as Andrews and Sercu by casting the title-character as an old man. And his last case is precariously balanced on international politics that could set the world ablaze.

The king of Ubinorabia has arrived in the United States "to begin talks about on the huge oil deposits recently discovered in his country," but one of his royal bodyguards has been shot and later an attempt is made on the king himself – who's critically wounded. A bizarre array of clues consist of a Roman helmet, a statuette of two seemingly identical Thai cats, a wooden shoe and a small replica of a mummy case. So Inspector Thomas Valie, Jr. turns to the old maestro for help and the solution takes its cue from a famous EQ short story and one of their lesser-known mystery novels. A story that will delight every reader who loves EQ.

James Holding's "The Norwegian Apple Mystery" is the first of ten stories about King Danforth and Martin Leroy, originally published in the January, 1961 issue of EQMM, who are mystery writers and the creators of the Leroy King series. Apparently, the stories take place during a round-the-world cruise, but they encounter more murderous plots on their extended holiday than when they were writing detective novels back home. I think this first story has a really novel way of telling a detective story.

Danforth and Leroy become intrigued by the "perfectly natural accidental death" of one of their fellow passengers, Angela Cameron, who had choked to death on a piece of apple while reading in bed. They find it an intriguing premise for a detective story and, together with their wives, speculate how this accidental death could have been a cleverly disguised murder. Only to discover in the final sentence that their ideas were spot on. A good and original variation on the how-dun-it.

William Brittain's "The Man Who Read Ellery Queen" appeared together with "The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr" in the December, 1965 issue of EQMM and is a detective with a warm, beating heart.

Arthur Mindy is an old man living at the Goodwell Home and took a complete collection of Ellery Queen novels with him. Mindy has always dreamed of solving a mystery "just the way Ellery does" and finally gets an opportunity when another resident, Gregory Wyczech, had his precious 1907 ten dollar gold piece stolen, but he caught the thief, Eugene Dennison, in act – only problem is that the coin is not found on him. Even after Dennison stripped naked. Mindy deduces where the gold piece is hidden based on a shaving cut and why Dennison preferred to take the stairs instead of the elevator. The way this theft is resolved gives the story a warm, sweet and sugary ending. And to top it all off, the solution showed this was also a (borderline) impossible crime! What more do you want?

Josh Pachter was sixteen when he wrote "E.Q. Griffin Earns His Name" and seventeen when it was published in the December, 1968 issue of EQMM.

Ellery Queen Griffin is the 16-year-old son of Inspector Ross Griffin, of the Tyson County Police Force, who had grown up on "a rich diet of detective fiction" and had named all of his eleven children after a famous detective character. A Griffen child earned his name by solving "a criminal problem in the manner of his namesake," but Ellery had yet to earn his name. There are two problems in this story that could provide that opportunity: who stole the apple pies from Leora Field's windowsill and how was a precious necklace stolen from a locked jewelry shop. This is only nominally a locked room mystery and the solution to the locked shop problem is a bit of a cheat, but the real point is that Ellery (logically) deduces the identity of the thief. And thereby earning his name.

I really liked this story and it should have been the start of a juvenile mystery series with each story concentrating on one of the Griffin children. A missed opportunity, because eleven of those stories would have made for a wonderful collection. If you're reading this, Pachter, I want a Gideon Fell Griffin story. I want it, I want it, I want it!!!

Patricia McGerr was no stranger to turning the conventions of the detective story upside down (e.g. Pick Your Victim, 1946) and "The Last Check," a short story first published in the March, 1972 issue of EQMM, can only be described as a parody-pastiche – as it lands somewhere between the two. A gray area not often frequented by mystery writers. The story is about the murder of Stephen Coleman, a collector of Ellery Queen, who was shot to death in his study, but left a dying message by scribbling his name on a blank check. A clue that appeared either meaningless or implicate every single suspect. Luckily, the policeman on the case, Captain Rogan, is also an avid reader of Ellery Queen.

So who's better fitted for the job of deciphering a dying message, left by a dying EQ reader, than a policeman who also reads EQ? Once again, I liked this story, but the murderer was a little too obvious.

Lawrence Block's "The Death of the Mallory Queen," originally published in Like a Lamb to the Slaughter (1984), is actually more of a Nero Wolfe pastiche than a take on Ellery Queen. Block wrote two novels about a Nero Wolfe wannabe named Leo Haig, Make Out With Murder (1974) and The Topless Tulip Caper (1975), who's assisted by Chip Harrison – a young lad was reinvented as a private detective after appearing in two coming-of-age novels, No Score (1970) and Chip Harrison Scores Again (1971). Reportedly, Rex Stout was not amused with the result.

This short story has Mavis Mallory of Mavis Publications consulting Haig, because she fears being murdered, which happens in the most extraordinary circumstances imaginable. During a panel discussion at Town Hall, held in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Mallory's Mystery Magazine, the lights go out. And when they turn back on, Mallory has been stabbed, shot, bludgeoned and poisoned. The explanation is about as credible as anything you'll see on Monty Python, but that didn't made the story any less fun to read. I really have to look further into this series.

Arthur Vidro's "The Ransom of EQMM #1" was first published online on the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine website and is a story that'll be especially appreciated by collectors of (pulp) magazines.

Homer Slocum is an avid collector of EQMM from Shinn Corners (The Glass Village, 1954) and owns a complete run of the magazine, up to the latest issue, which attracts the attention of the Shinn Corners Courier, but their article attracted locals to his house – who all wanted to see The Collection. But when he finally got around to putting his collection back in order, Slocum noticed that the Fall 1941 issue of EQMM was missing! The first of more than 800 issues. A $500 dollar ransom note soon follows, but Slocum notices something slightly off about the photograph that accompanied the note. A short, simple, but fun, story.

Finally, Joseph Goodrich's "The Ten-Cent Murder," published in the August, 2016 issue of EQMM and follows the tradition of the modern historical detective story by casting two real-life persons in the role of detectives – namely Fredric Dannay and Dashiell Hammett. According to the introduction, everything in this story is true with the exception of "a slight case of murder." Hammett taught a class of mystery writing at the Jefferson Institute in Manhattan and Dannay used to be an occasional guest lecturer. So why not take this situation and throw in a good murder? It makes sense.

The school registrar, Morris Rabinowitz, was stabbed to death and a closely guarded list of students was missing. The political climate of days plays a role in this story, but, in order to solve this case, Dannay has to figure out why the victim was clutching a dime. And all of the suspects have names that can refer or sound like coins. The explanation to the dying clue a bit of a pun, but acceptable and believable enough in the circumstances of the story.

On a whole, The Misadventures of Ellery Queen is an excellent anthology without any duds. Practically every short story collection or anthology has one, two or three duds, but this anthology has a well-balanced selection of stories and this becomes a real accomplishment on the part of the editors when you realize all of the entries are parodies or pastiches – which are not always known for their high-standard or quality. There were some stories I liked more than others, but not a single one I really disliked. So, if you like Ellery Queen, The Misadventures of Ellery Queen comes highly recommended.

On a last note, I want to direct your attention to a story that was omitted from this anthology, but would have snugly fit in the potpourri section: Donald A. Yates' "The Wounded Tyrolean" (c. 1955), which was based on a Watsonian reference from The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935).

A Haunting At Maplewhite

"Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure."

- Rev. Charles Mason (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Land of Mist, 1926)

A staple of today's historical crime genre is transplanting the influential figures from our history books to the fictional realm of the detective story and plant the proverbial deerstalker on their heads. Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci have all assumed the role of detective, but the most popular historical characters for this purpose appear to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini – who appeared (together) in numerous historical mystery novels.

Conan Doyle most well-known appearance as a fictional-character was as the Dr. Watson to Dr. Joseph Bell's Sherlock Holmes in the Murder Room TV-series created by David Pirie. There were also three novels, The Patient's Eye (2001), The Night Calls (2002) and The Dark Water (2004), based on the TV series. Doyle made further appearances, as a detective, in a short-lived series by Mark Frost and teamed up with Lewis Carroll in four books written by Roberta Rogow.

Houdini looks to have been more in demand as a character than his friend and rival, Doyle, because he made countless appearances in fiction, but the most notable ones are three locked room novels, The Dime Museum Murders (1999), The Floating Lady Murder (2000) and The Houdini Specter (2001), penned by Daniel Stashower – known perhaps better for his award-winning Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999). Stashower also made Houdini appear alongside Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man (1985).

And on at least one occasion, Conan Doyle and The Great Houdini appeared alongside each other on the pages of the same detective novel.

Walter Satterthwait's Escapade (1995) is the first of three novels about his Pinkerton operative, Phil Beaumont, who comes across as an homage to the hardboiled detective and his task in on his first recorded outing is to protect the famous artist, Harry Houdini – who he always refers to as "The Great Man." Houdini is stalked and threatened by a music hall magician and master of disguise, "Chin Soo." A shadowy enemy who appears to have followed him all the way to Devon, England, where Houdini is expected to attend a seance at a historical manor house.

Maplewhite is the ancestral home of the Earl of Axminster, an elderly, bed-ridden man, who has temper tantrums and, while he screams, starts "throwing things about his room." The reason for these outbursts is that he can't flog his own son, Lord Robert Purleigh.

Lord Bob, as he liked to be known, is an aristocratic Bolshevist and plans to open Maplewhite to "the toiling masses" when he inherits the title and estate, which displeases the old Earl immensely and soured the relationship between the two – as his son vows that "the swine" will be "the first to go" when the revolution comes. Wedged between father and son is Lord Bob's wife, Lady Purleigh, "a lovely woman" with "a natural, effortless kindness and grace" and their dazzling daughter, the Honorable Cecily Fitzwilliam. And the group of people they invited to stay the weekend makes it very clear that Escapade is one of those typical, modern re-imaginations of the traditional country house mysteries of yore.

The first of the invitees are Lady Purleigh's fat cousin, Mrs. Marjorie Allardyce, who's being accompanied by her paid companion, Jane Turner. She has two frightful encounters with the ghosts haunting the manor house and the vast grounds surrounding the estate.

Secondly, there's Dr. Erik Auerbach, the Viennese psychoanalyst, who freely lectures on Dr. Freud's Oedipus complex in the drawing room, which shocks and revolt Houdini to the point that he has to withdraw for a lie-down. Sir David Merridale, a wise-crack, took the conversation (and everything else) on a less serious note, but he was neither "so witty nor so handsome as he believes" and the "extremely charming" Mrs. Venessa Corneille finds him to be "a dreadful man." Lastly, there's Madame Sosostris, the renowned European medium, who's there to make contact with "the ghost of Maplewhite," Lord Reginald. A distant ancestor of the Earl and Lord Bob.

She's also the reason why Harry Houdini and Conan Doyle are present. Doyle is present as a believer and ally to spiritualism, while Houdini has vowed to expose every trick Madame Sosostris is bringing to the seance table – which sadly remained an under played aspect of the plot and overall story. But, as you probably gathered from this roll call, the book is more of a detective parody than a proper historical mystery novel. The story takes place in August, 1921, but the only aspect that places the book within that period of time are Lord Bob's references to the toiling masses.

There were, however, enough fascinating plot-threads that initially held my attention. On their first night, Turner has a ghostly bedside visitation and later encounters a pair of ghosts, of a woman and a small boy, at the ruins of an old mill house, which is followed by a rifle shot that was fired from the edge of the woods – narrowly missing the Great Man! So did his nemesis manage to find him? These events culminate with the death of the Earl, shot to death, behind the locked and barred door of his bedroom.

The murder occurred towards the end of the first half of the book, but had high hopes for the second half and the locked room angle when Houdini immediately provided a false solution. A solution that involved lock picking and manipulating the bar with "a strong piece of wire." Sure, the explanation was routine, as far as these locked room murders are concerned, but it was only to demonstrate that a murderer could have left a locked crime-scene behind. So I began to hope that the eventual solution would be something clever or even original, but Satterthwait pulled one of the oldest, time-worn solutions from his moth-eaten bag of tricks. And after that, my interest rapidly began to wane.

I'll grand you that the story was not an unreadable one. On the contrary, I quite liked the hardboiled character of Phil Beaumont and the portrayal of the slightly hubristic, but kind, Houdini. Doyle did not have big part to play in the story, but was glad he was included. Hey, who doesn't like Doyle? And there were moments when the author showed he possessed plot-awareness. Such as the clue of Turner's nearsightedness, when she saw the ghosts at the mill house, and how that related to the first shooting incident. A writer, like John Dickson Carr, could have spun quite a ripping yarn out of that single plot-thread.

I also have to admit that the secret behind the ghost at the manor house and how that haunting resulted in murder was not entirely without interest, but the answer obviously revealed the hand of a modern writer. However, all of these points of interest were lost on the larger canvas of the story.

I'm sure readers of contemporary crime novels will be delighted by this modern take on the classic country house mystery, but actual readers of the classic detective story will not be overly impressed with the end result of Escapade. A spirited and well-meant attempt to imitate the greats of yesteryear, but not a classic in its own right. You can almost entirely blame that on the plot not living up to its own potential.

Well, just like last year, this year of blogging ends with a badly written, piss-poor review of a disappointing read, but I'll trick to pick something good to kick-off the New Year with. So I'll end this letdown of a blog-post and wish you all the best in the coming year. I hope to see you all back in 2018!

The Eternal Triangle

"I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues."

- Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter," collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1893)

Last week, I reviewed a Dutch collection of short stories, De geliefde die in het veen verdween en andere mysteries (The Lover Who Disappeared in the Bog and Other Mysteries, 2017) by Anne van Doorn, which was published by a small, independent, press called E-Pulp Publishers – who recently put out a book that beckoned my attention. A story that's perhaps best described as an infernally cheeky, ill-mannered, parody of the private-eye novel, but with a classically-styled plot and solution. And comes with a surprising amount of fair play towards the reader.

Eugenius M. Quak is not only the name of the author, prominently splashed across the book-cover of Gruwelijk is het huwelijk (Marriage is Gruesome, 2017), but also the narrator and protagonist of the story. As the main-character, Quak is something of an egoistical anti-hero who makes Philo Vance look like a someone you could spend a year with on a desert island.

Quak is a character described as a jack-of-all-trades with the ever-expanding ego of Zaphod Beeblebrox ("if there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now") and a career path as unusual as that of Eugène Vidocq. The opening chapter gives an overview of his life story and detailed how he became hopelessly "entangled in crime," but during one of his spells in prison he "got hooked on detective novels" and read all of the well-known classics – Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. These stories gave him a new calling in life: he wanted to become a privé detective himself.

However, I have to stop here and warn the reader that the opening chapter requires patience and a persevering attitude to get through, because the narrative style, tone and personality of the Quak takes time to get use to. I believe the author, whoever he is, also needed a chapter to find his grooves with this character and crank out some of the cringe. But there's a notable uptick towards the end of this chapter when Quak begins his own detective agency without the proper paperwork or license.

So Eugenius Quak Private Detecting (EQPD) lacked all of the legal paperwork, rubber stamps and official signatures, but this gave the one-man detective bureau an edge over its competitors. Quak did not have to observe the rules and ethics governing normal private-investigators. Only problem is that he also lacked clients and this threatened to sink his business.

Thankfully, a filthy rich client came out of nowhere to save the day. I think Quak would have urged his reader to use the words "filthy" and "rich" independently, because the man who stormed into his office was "a monstrous person" with "a fleshy face full of pimples" – whose repellent mouth-and body odor are referenced throughout the story by Quak. The name of this ugly giant is Lourens Rotting and he had been minister in "one of those acid green or deep purple cabinets." After which he had become a captain of industry and raked in a seven-figure paycheck every year. Evidently, the man who had appeared before Quak was a not looker, but that paycheck netted him an extremely beautiful wife, Pippilotta Buitelaar, who may have an extramarital affair. Rotting wants an unassuming, little-known, detective to figure out the identity of this secret lover.

This is where Marriage is Gruesome actually distinguishes itself from other detectives novels, new and old, because the plot concerns itself with the kind of problem that other fictional detectives, like Nero Wolfe, would never sully their reputation on – let alone actually touching it. But to be honest, Quak is primarily engaged with trying to figure out ways to extract as much money as possible from his rich client. He has a small army of completely imaginary field agents working for him and writes several "peppered bills" for their reported legwork. These bills are written with, what we mockingly refer to in my country as, a "double pen."

Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that the inflated personality and antics of Quak helped carry this part of the book. A simplistic case of infidelity would have had a hard time sustaining the reader's interest had the investigation been a straightforward one with a respectable, serious-minded detective-character at the helm.

A good portion of the first half of the book takes place at the remote home of Rotting, named Groot Beukenstein, where Quak passes himself off as a former study friend of his client and tests his "Miss Marple Methodiek" – making everyone believe his scatter-brained and harmless. But during his stay, Quak discovers that Rotting is extremely jealous and hellbent on revenge. So this culminates with the discovery of a body floating in the swimming pool, which occurs during the final quarter of the book, but during Quak's "Hercule Poirot Moment," my favorite part of the book, it is demonstrated that clues were planted throughout the story.

Quak mockingly challenges the reader at the start of the sixteenth chapter, titled "Hoe ik de moordenaar ontmaskerde" ("How I Unmasked the Murderer"), in which he claims that the murderer's identity can be deduced from all of the information he gave in his report. The clues he had scattered throughout his narrative, "sown thickly on the ground," that you could almost trip over them. And this solution is as fairly clues as it is classical. The only thing you can say against it is that it hardly turns over a new, unwritten leaf in the annals of crime-fiction, but it is a grand and novel play on Christie's favorite motif of the internal triangle.

I strongly suspected the game that was being played by the murderer, but there was one tiny aspect that prevented from putting all my money on this character as the murderer.

All in all, despite my initial reservations and a lead character who requires time to warm up to, I ended up liking Marriage is Gruesome more than I expected. During the opening pages, I began to fear I had picked my worst read of 2017, but the story pulled itself together in the subsequent chapters. And the fairly clued, classically-styled ending contributed hugely to definitively swinging my opinion to a positive one. I'm more than willing to forgive imperfections when plot, particularly how it sticks or comes together, is actually good or clever. I'm glad to report that happened to be case here.

A second novel has already been planned for next year and the book-title is a bit hard to translate, but this is what I was able to make of it: Hoteldebotel in een hotel (Pell-mell in a Hotel, 2018). So I have that to look forward to. And in the meantime, I'll try to dig up something good and obscure from the Golden Age for the next post. So stay tuned!