Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine (2026) by P. Dieudonné

Recently, E-Pulp published the 14th title in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam Police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en tranen om Valentijn (Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine, 2026), which has a different tread on its plot than previous entries – centering on a series of disappearances instead of murder. This series oscillates between the modern police procedural/crime fiction and the more traditionally-styled detective stories. Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine squarely falls into the modern category, but the story is a bit of roller coaster with an unexpected, satisfying conclusion. I'm getting ahead of the story.

Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine begins with a panicky phone call to the police. Dorette Vroom is frightened and scared that something has happened to her boyfriend, Bart Biervliet, who went out to confront the man who has been bothering his seven-year-old daughter. The last drop was a Valentine card send to the girl. Bart Biervliet "was determined to teach that pervert a lesson," taking along a hockey stick, but never returned and doesn't answer his call. Inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver answer the call, only to find out the case is not as straightforward as it first appeared.

First of all, the man suspected of trying to contact Biervliet's daughter, Nico Pelsmaeker, appears to have nothing to do with what he has been accused of. So De Klerck wonders if the Valentine card was bait to lure Biervliet to a secluded place, but who and why? And what happened to the body? A possibility that begins to gain traction as Biervliet's complicated private and professional life begin to stir their investigation by throwing up complications, one after another, as the people involved either go on the run or disappear themselves – always under somewhat similar circumstances ("...lured away to a lonely place..."). What really adds interest to the story, considering how it started, is Biervliet's background as editor-in-chief of an opinion magazine, Vrij Onverveerd Vaderland (Free Undaunted Fatherland). More importantly, his past work and association with De Spanningsgids (Suspense Guide).

Dieudonné opened Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine with a short preface thanking "the friendly people at the publisher who recounted their experiences with the darker sides of the book trade" and "allowed to make full use of their recorded experiences" for the book. If you have read my previous reviews of Dutch detective novels, classics and modern, you probably picked up on the fact that the Netherlands is a hostile place for not only traditionally-inclined detective fiction ("those sourpusses thought that detective novels should actually be thrillers"), but independent publisher and basically everything that's not proper crime fiction. For example, Dieudonné notes in the preface that you can't find his novels in the majority of bookstores in the country, "there are even provinces where practically no bookstore participates in the sale," wanted to explain why that is through this story. Oh, boy, did he ever!

When they start digging into the shenanigans of De Spanningsgids, De Klerck and Klaver uncover everything ranging from bullying and gatekeeping to biased or malicious reviews. M.P.O. Books, better known to some of you as "Anne van Doorn," can tell you what a malicious review can do when you're an author with a small publisher. So that put a very different spin and tone on the story from where it started, but then everything began to dovetail in its final stretch and ending. Now, like I said, Inspector De Klerck and Tears for Valentine is very much from in the modern, not classical, tradition and most of you would probably sneer at the murderer's identity – which can be taken as a cheat. However, there was a hint, or two, for the observant reader to spot. Yes, I spotted it and figured out the identity of the extremely well-hidden culprit, but that's not what made the ending so satisfying. That goes to the solution revealing what ultimately happened to the men who went missing without a trace. De Klerck rightfully called it "a unique case."

My personal taste and bias, of course, favors more detective story-like titles such as Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020), Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de dode weldoener (Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist, 2025), but wouldn't want to have missed that ending for the world! Never knowing, exactly, what type of crime/detective next novel will turn out to be is part of the fun. It can be a straightforward politieroman like Rechercheur De Klerck en het duistere web (Inspector De Klerck and the Dark Web, 2022) or something much weirder like Rechercheur De Klerck en een dodelijk pact (Inspector De Klerck and a Deadly Pact, 2022). Whatever the next novel turns out to be, I'm looking forward to it.

Bad Weather: "The Rainy-Day Bandit" (1970) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "The Rainy-Day Bandit," originally published in the May, 1970, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, begins three months into the crime spree of a modern-day highwayman, the Rainy-Day Bandit – who comes and goes with the rain. A bandit with a cloth mask and a shiny, nickel-plated revolver always striking in the daytime when its raining heavily.

This crime spree started simple enough with the stickup of a parking meter collector during a January rainstorm, but the Rainy-Day Bandit developed into a John Dillinger-type robber for his next few capers. Holding up a gas station, an insurance office, a branch of a big bank and recently "cleaned out six cash registers in a supermarket while fifty people watched" ("the guy's got guts..."). When a rich gambler was robbed of his deposit en route the bank, the papers begin to "treat him like a modern Robin Hood." Captain Leopold, head of the Violent Crimes Squad, tells Sergeant Fletcher "some day an eager citizen's going to jump him, and then we'll either have a captured bandit or a dead hero."

When a body is found in an alley with a gunshot wound, it appears the Rainy-Day Bandit claimed his first victim. The body is that of James Mercer, an insurance agent, who was making collections in the neighborhood. And, of course, the money is gone. Tommy Gibson, of Robbery, believes the murder is a Rainy-Day Bandit caper gone wrong, but Captain Leopold leaves all his options open. Leopold and Fletcher go down the list of collection stops. However, the Rainy-Day Bandit himself eventually turns up in their murder investigation adding an unexpected complication to the case. A complication hitting a little too close to home for Leopold.

"The Rainy-Day Bandit" is a showpiece of Hoch's ability at constructing short story plots with two different, but linked, plot-threads neatly tied up in a brief, fairly clued short story – packaged as a police procedural. I figured out the solution to both problems, but can only lay claim to a scrap of cleverness for identifying the Rainy-Day Bandit. I dumbly stumbled across the murderer by accident. You see, the name of one of the characters rang a bell in the dusty part of my brain storing obscure, mostly useless and arcane trivia as scraps of a phrase started floating to the surface. So looked it up and what I was trying to remember is the grim, now obsolete phrase (ROT13) "gnxr n evqr gb glohea." Only vaguagly similar to the name of that character, but that character turned out to be murderer. Hoch was not trying to be funny on the sly, but it would have been a funny clue disguised as an Easter egg had (SPOILER/ROT13) gur anzr bs gur zheqrere orra glohea vafgrnq bs glqvatf.

So, all in all, "The Rainy-Day Bandit" is another solid and competent showing from Hoch as Captain Leopold's slowly starting to become a personal favorite among Hoch's gallery of series-detectives. Leopold is probably not going to surpass Dr. Hawthorne and Ben Snow, but Simon Ark and Nick Velvet should be worried. You can expect more Hoch and Captain Leopold in the future. I'm toying with the idea to single review the short stories from Leopold's Way (1985) and compile those reviews in a single post/review of Leopold's Way. But we'll see.

Murder of a Matriarch (1936) by Hugh Austin

Hugh Austin, a true enigma, was a mystery writer about whom very little, or anything, is known and what's known doesn't always appear to be correct as he was an American, but according to his GADWiki he was British – complete with an incomplete bibliography. What can be said for certain is that Austin wrote nine detective novels featuring either his New York lawyer Wm Sultan or Lieutenant Peter Quint of the Homicide Bureau of the city of Hudson. And two, or three, standalone mystery novels.

They were well enough received at the time. Curt Evans, of The Passing Tramp, mentioned in his review of Austin's Murder of a Matriarch (1936) that Anthony Boucher called for the Peter Quint series to be reprinted in the 1960s, but "sadly no one has heeded that call even today." However, Coachwhip has reprinted the Wm Sultan novels, Drink the Green Water (1948) and The Milkmaid's Millions (1948), as a twofer and the non-series Death Has Seven Faces (1949). His six detective novels and locked room mysteries from the 1930s remain out-of-print. Robert Adey highlighted Austin's quartet of impossible crime novels ("all competent") in the introduction of Locked Room Murders (1991), under "More Golden Age Contributions," which uncharacteristically spoils the solution of Austin's The Upside Down Murders (1937). But then again, the impossibility in that one concerns the murderer's fingerprints that "do not match up to any of the suspects in a guarded area." So it could only have been one of two tricks. What's left to say about Hugh Austin is a matter of opinion.

While not widely read today, some fanatics managed to dip into Austin's work from the thirties and appeared to have needed the first two books to find his footing in the genre. Nick Fuller abandoned It Couldn't Be Murder (1935) halfway through, because the style was "horribly clumsy, with short, jerky sentences alternating with bathetic purple prose" and Jason Half thought Murder in Triplicate (1935) delivered "a good plot and poor writing." Austin improved considerably on his third try judging from the general positive feedback on it. Curt Evans praised Murder of a Matriarch in the above mentioned review for its "lively characterization, pointed satire, a clever puzzle and credible police procedure." The book has also been mentioned on this blog a few times over the years, but more on that in a moment.

So the work of Austin, particularly his locked room mysteries, have been creeping up my wishlist for a while now and thought it would be a nice idea to ring in the New Year with a potentially long-lost, Golden Age classic from the 1930s – because it has been a while since I discussed a 1930s Golden Age locked room mystery. You have to go back exactly a year to last January.

Hugh Austin's Murder of a Matriarch takes place at the home of the titular matriarch, Mrs. Hortense Farcourt, who's a nasty, sanctimonious widow with "the confidence of seventy-one years of undenounced deceit." When her henpecked husband kicked the bucket, the family began to understand who had been pulling the purse strings tight behind the curtain. Her daughter, Clara Irving, now wants the money, clothes and social status that had been denied by having to live on the salary her father's company paid her husband, Dwight – who left a position at another company to come work for Farcourt Chemicals. Dwight never got his promised nor his wife all the things her mother had promised her ("...if it was in your power to give them"). They're not only one's who suffering under Mrs. Farcourt's stinginess and sadistic tendencies veiled with a nauseous air of feigned virtue. She has taken in her 20-year-old, orphaned grandniece, Nan Rogers, together with her ten years younger brother Jeddle "Jed" Rogers. Nan, of course, is put to work as a cheap, extra pair of hands around the house and Jed is just a 9-year-old boy who wants a puppy, but plays an important part in all that happens at the house.

So all of this still sounds fairly conventional, for a 1930s family whodunit, but the first-half is wholly dedicated to showing Mrs. Farcourt is not merely your typical family matriarch/patriarch who enjoy making their relatives dance like puppets on a purse-string. She's more than a genuinely despicable person. She's cruel in a way only a dumb, thoroughly selfish and self absorb person can be at the cost of everyone around them. Mrs. Farcourt is the reason why Murder of a Matriarch has been mentioned a couple of times on this blog over the years.

Last year, I cobbled together "The Hit List: Top 7 Most Murderable “Victims” in Detective Fiction" based on a discussion with Scott, a regular in the comments, about who would make the cut for a rogue's gallery of the most reprehensible, murderable villains-turned-victim. Scott regularly mentioned Mrs. Farcourt who's not unlike Mary Gregory (Anthony Wynne's The Silver Scale Mystery, 1931) and Miss Octavia Osborne (James Ronald's Murder in the Family, 1936). If I had read Murder of a Matriarch before making that list, Miss Octavia would have surrendered her spot to Mrs. Farcourt. However, what made Mrs. Farcourt a memorable character rather than another dime-a-dozen domestic tyrants is the character of her nine year old grandnephew, Jed. Just a lonely child without friends to play with and only his uncle, Hal Farcourt, as an ally who generally does what bored, nine year old kids did when they had no phones to play around with. That causes a lot of problems leading up to the murder, but what really made my blood boil were the scenes in which the old harridan tries to manipulate and mold Jed's behavior, even personality, by subjugating to the sugary, nauseating stories of Rose Girl and Billy Boy – writing to tell children how to be good boys and girls. Fortunately, these intolerable stories complete with personalized addition have no effect on Jed. Only one he enjoyed was Billy Boy and His Enemy, because Billy Boy got a teeth knocked clean out of his head.

You have to read for yourself to get an idea how malicious and damaging a person Mrs. Harcourt really is, but, to give a clear example, the first cracks in the sibling bond between Nan and Jed already appear under the stress. That sibling bond, of two orphans, is the one thing bridging that ten year gap between them. So damaging or even destroying it is just evil. And then two incidents happened that bring the police into the house.

Mrs. Farcourt nearly trips down a flight of stairs over one of her canes and her poor, long-suffering cat, mockingly named My Comfort, is poisoned. She believes these were attempts to murder her and calls the police, demanding the "head of the murder department," throwing such a row they eventually dispatch Lieutenant Peter Quint to see who's getting murdered. And even to Mrs. Farcourt surprise, Quint appears to take the case seriously. I think the readers who have taken a great dislike to Mrs. Farcourt will enjoy the scene in which Quint effortlessly gets her to reveal her true face without realizing it ("...she considered herself as inscrutable as the night, as deep as the sea"). Quint and his colleague have to return the house that same night when Mrs. Farcourt is shot dead while sitting in her chair at the window.

Murder of a Matriarch comes with an Ellery Queen-style "Challenge to the Reader," but the story following the long, eagerly anticipated shooting Gr'aunty Hortence is in the mold of an early police procedural. Quint naturally has a whole police department and laboratory at his back, but they take care of the routine police work in the background or off-page. So the investigation is mostly of Quint and Sergeant Hendricks questioning everyone at the house, while noting there were more motives than alibis going around. One character I forgot to mention is Mrs. Farcourt older, doddering brother, Willie Jeddle, who let's everyone (including the police) know he hated his sister ("she wasn't any more human than a leech") and "were act of human kindness to wish her dead." Plenty of motives and not enough alibis to pick apart is not the only complication. A problem arises from the murder weapon and ballistics. There's still that impossible crime that landed it a place in Adey's Locked Room Murders.

It's always a tricky thing to pull off a satisfying locked room murder or other impossible crime when the book is nearing its conclusion, because a good one generally needs time and consideration. So when an impossible crime is introduced late into a story, they tend to be minor and routine affairs. The locked room situations from James Ronald's Sealed Room Murder (1934) and Jonathan Latimer's Murder at the Madhouse (1935), but Murder of a Matriarch proved to be an exception to the rule. Austin deserves credit for how the locked room came as a result from everything preceded: a poisoning with prussic acid inside a watched kitchen and no trace of the poison to be found inside. I really liked Quint's false-solution preceding the correct one. This time, the false-solution didn't outshine the correct one. Although I had been playing with a similar idea for the locked room-trick, I preferred the much more practical correct solution. The false-solution was fun and clever in parts, but a bit pulpy and barely credible. So perfectly suited to throw out as a false-solution!

So, yes, I enjoyed my introduction to this obscure, unjustly forgotten Golden Age mystery writer. Murder of a Matriarch is perhaps not quite as crisply plotted as the best known mysteries from his better remembered contemporaries, but Austin played the Grandest Game with a lot of heart and respect. Most impressively, the story and plot largely concerned the actions of a convincingly, well-drawn nine year old boy who could have been written by Gladys Mitchell – only mystery writer who knew how to portray normal children. Jed Rogers would not have been out-of-place in a Mitchell novel and is the MVP of Murder of a Matriarch. A reprint is deserved and long overdue!

Well, that's the first of the year. Happy (belated) 2026 everyone!

Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist (2025) by P. Dieudonné

Earlier this month, E-Pulp released P. Dieudonné's thirteenth novel in the Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de dode weldoener (Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist, 2025), set during those cold, dark days between Sinterklaas and Christmas – when the strangest cases happen in the Netherlands. At least, that's what A.C. Baantjer tried to make happen in De Cock en een dodelijke dreiging (DeKok and the Deadly Threat, 1988), but it never got anywhere. So good to see Dieudonné giving it another try with Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist.

This curious case begins innocently enough with an elderly, obviously lonely woman, Neeltje van Kwawegen, calling the police to report that her beloved Tom has gone missing. She can't bear the thought of spending Christmas without him and even accuses her neighbor of murder. Albert Cornelis de Waal, a young cop, takes pity and answers the call. When he arrives at her apartment, De Waal indeed finds a lonely, elderly woman living a dozen, or so, cats. Neeltje's beloved Tom is indeed a tomcat who has gone missing. I was only half joking when ending the review of the previous De Klerck novel hoping the thirteenth would be titled Rechercheur De Klerck en de dertien katten (Inspector De Klerck and the Thirteen Cats), because it would be too tempting not to do for a Baantjer fan. Dieudonné is the Baantjer fan. Not that I expected this book to actually feature a dozen, plus one, cats. Let's return to the story.

Neeltje is a deeply superstitious woman, referring to the number thirteen as "a dozen plus one," who believes Tom's disappearance is a bad omen as the tomcat was her fourteenth feline and she's now left with a dozen, plus one – bound to bring misfortune ("...expect death and destruction"). What else can the kindly De Waal do, except to promise to look around for Tom? Next day, Inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver are called to the same apartment complex where a prominent, dying citizen of Rotterdam is found brutally murdered in his own home.

Waldemar van Henegouwen was a well-known, beloved city philanthropist whose charity, Weldaad aan de Maas, dedicated to help the poorer people of the city and terminally ill children. It earned him a knighthood and numerous other prestigious awards. Van Henegouwen was dying himself with only a month, or two, left to live, but why kill a terminal ill, dying man? Why use a harpoon to run him through to leave him pinned to the chair? Someone is laboring very hard this December on their ponderous chain! And the strangeness doesn't end there. When reviewing the security footage, De Klerck and Klaver not only spot their colleague De Waal, but someone dressed up as the Grinch in Santa Claus custom. Klaver is shocked by the costumed figure, because only the night before he had attended a benefit show organized by Van Henegouwen's charity. A comedy-magic act by Felix Froentjes and his sons, Floris en Frans-Jan, who performed a magic portal-trick with them dresses as the Grinch's Santa Claus. Felix Frientjes was Van Henegouwen's best friend and Frans-Jan was a former tenant who got kicked out for being a nuisance, but is there connection with the murder? There's also two handymen with a criminal records, Neeltje's cat hating neighbor, the missing cat and a Commissioner De Froideville who's being more difficult than usual.

Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist is as packed as a Christmas stocking filled with more than one surprise and definitely marks a return to form after the uncharacteristic messily plotted Rechercheur De Klerck en de stille hoop (Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope, 2025). Dieudonné is definitely back to his old tricks here with the exterior of the story belying the intricate scheme and plot cleverly hidden underneath. When it comes to the conclusion, the temptation is there to draw comparison to some of the Golden Age names, but here it would constitute a spoiler. That solution can be worked out, roughly speaking, by the time De Klerck pieces the whole thing together. And it turns out the missing cat had a not unimportant role to play in this Christmas drama. So perhaps the book really should have been titled Rechercheur De Klerck and de dertiende kat (Inspector De Klerck and the Thirteenth Cat), but in every other way it can stand with the best in the series like Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020) and Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021). You can definitely expect Inspector De Klerck and the Dead Philanthropist to get a spot on a future followup to "The Naughty List: Top 12 Favorite Christmas Mystery Novels & Short Stories."

Top Storey Murder (1931) by Anthony Berkeley

Last year, I ranked Anthony Berkeley among the "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" on account for going from practically being forgotten at the turn of the century to having his former prestige as an innovative, sometimes subversive mystery writer restored – which in Berkeley's case took a little longer than some of his contemporaries. A restoration process that started inauspiciously with The Roger Sheringham Stories (1993) and The Anthony Berkeley Cox Files: Notes Towards a Bibliography (1993), but the first real headway was made in the early 2000s.

House of Stratus reprinted a big chunk of Berkeley's then obscure, long out-of-print work like the then ultra rare The Layton Court Mystery (1925) and his celebrated masterpiece The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929). They also reprinted the superb Jumping Jenny (1933) and fan favorite to many, The Piccadilly Murder (1929). Funnily enough, the House of Stratus editions become overpriced collector item's not long after they went out-of-print. A small, independent publisher, Langtail Press, tried to revive those reprint, but it was the British Library Crime Classics and Collins Crime Club reissues that marked a more permanent return to print. In 2021, Collins Crime Club even reprinted The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) that had not seen a reprint since its original serialization/publication nearly a century ago. Not to mention the unearthed short stories that have been turning up in several anthologies and Crippen & Landru's published collection The Avenging Chance and Other Mysteries from Roger Sheringham's Casebook (2004), which had two "enlarged editions" published in 2015 and 2023.

So bringing Berkeley's work back to print and restoring his reputation ("the cleverest of us all") can be called one of the success stories of the reprint renaissance. Somehow, someway, what should have been a regular Roger Sheringham novel decided to shroud itself in obscurity by defying getting reprinted.

Top Storey Murder (1931), alternatively published as Top Story Murder, was among the first to be reprinted by House of Stratus, in 2001, but no new editions since it slipped out-of-print again with used copies being unreasonably priced – dissuaded me from picking it up sooner. That and kind of expected Top Storey Murder to have been part of the British Library Crime Classics series by now. I'm sure Top Storey Murder is going to get a long overdue reprint before the decade is out, but recently lucked across a copy. So let's dig into this often overlooked, seventh title in the Roger Sheringham series.

Berkeley's Top Storey Murder begins with Sheringham meeting Chief Inspector Moresby for a lunch appointment as a way to keep in touch with Scotland Yard ("Scotland Yard called it ‘Mr. Sheringham working the pump-handle'"). However, the telephone cuts short their lunch appointment as Moresby is summoned to the scene of a crime at the top floor flat of Monmouth Mansions in Platt Street. A reclusive spinsters, Miss Adelaide Barnett, who had been found strangled with a rosery in her trashed, ransacked flat. The kitchen window was standing open and a rope, tied to the gas stove, was dangling out of it. Miss Barnett was a peculiar, somewhat hostile woman who garnered "a local reputation as a miser, with a bag of sovereigns sewn up in her mattress." Moresby warns Sheringham this going to be an ordinary case without much of interest to the amateur detective, "no fancy fandangos, like you get in the story-books," but Sheringham decides to come along regardless. And, despite being warned this is going to be a routine case, Sheringham immediately begins to theorize when observing the various clues/red herrings at the scene of the crime.

I think the first five chapters constitutes the best parts of Top Storey Murder pitting the imaginative, theorizing amateur detective against the practical, experienced and well-oiled police apparatus of Scotland Yard – briefly created a proto-police procedural. Moresby has a small army of experts going over the crime scene, which, of course, include the fingerprint man and police photographer. More interestingly is the presence of Inspector Beach, "specialised in this type of crime, burglary in flats," who makes a profile of the scene and checks the points ("there are twenty-two points I've got noted down") against the methods and habits of the career criminals in their filing cabinets. A single name rolls out of this process of elimination. Yes, like the board game Guess Who? Having observed all the clues and red herrings, Sheringham is convinced the murderer is one of the other residents of Monmouth Mansions.

Unfortunately, the police investigations begins to recede into the background as the police begins to search for the burglar-turned-murderer and Sheringham begins to pursue his own line of investigation.Top Storey Murder nearly reverts back to being an ordinary, 1930s whodunit in which a snooty amateur detective tries to best Scotland Yard. I liked Sheringham retreating to the Reading Room of the British Library to order his notes and think over the possibilities. Sheringham interacting with the suspects, sometimes under a false flag, is always fun, but it's the introduction of the victim's estranged niece, Miss Stella Barnett, who adds interest to the middle part and ending. Sheringham becomes more than just a little bit intrigued by the young, defiant woman who refuses to touch a penny of her misery aunt and even takes her on as his new private secretary. Stella takes to job, but simply refuses to play the Dr. Watson to Sheringham's Sherlock Holmes. If anything, Stella sandbags him and his "absurd theories" with predictable results on someone with Sheringham's personality ("the girl's becoming a positive obsession with me").

That helped the sometimes sagging middle portion from bottoming out and carry it to the conclusion, where Sheringham's unmatched talent for fabricating false-solutions got to shine in all its glory. Nothing to daunt Sheringham as he victoriously wiped the egg of his face.

So, while Top Storey Murder is not Berkeley's greatest or most original detective novel, it's still a very entertaining, top-notch Golden Age mystery playing the grandest game in the spirit of The Poisoned Chocolates Case and Leo Bruce's Case for Thee Detectives (1936). Very much worth a reprint and read!

Dead to Rights: "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" (1974) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer," originally appeared in the August, 1974, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Leopold's Way (1985), starts out with a routine case for Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher – a simple case "without a hint of ghosts or impossibilities." Captain Leopold is ready to go home when a fatal shooting is reported on the 15th floor of the Grant Tower.

Martha Aspeth, a cleaning woman working at the Grant Tower, was shot by her estranged husband, Kurt Aspeth ("he wanted younger ones"). Leopold and Fletcher has plenty of eyewitnesses, "five women who work with her," who all saw it happen. Kurt came up to the 15th floor, asked for Martha and "pulled out his gun and started shooting" the moment he laid eyes on her. He then made his exit through the fire escape. So all they basically have to do is send out an alert, wait for him to be picked up and hand the matter over to the prosecutor. A simple, clear cut and uncomplicated case that turns into an impossible crime over night.

Following morning, Fletches has a good news, bad news situation for Leopold. Good news is that they found they found their suspect. Kurt Aspeth had crashed his car into a bridge abutment, on the Expressway near the Grant Tower building, which killed him instantly. However, according to the evidence, the smashup happened about thirty minutes before the shooting where Kurt was "positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses" – who all knew him personally. I liked how Hoch immediately dismissed the obvious, hackneyed explanations. A discrepancy in the records appears out of the question as the accident report is backed up by the medical report. No error due to daylight-saving time or faulty clocks. Kurt's body was identified by his older brother, Felix, who has a passing, brotherly resemblance, but couldn't pass for his twin brother. Fingerprints back up the identification! Felix believes "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident." 

Leopold and Fletcher are far too grounded and sober minded to take any stock in Felix's claims that "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident," but then what happened during those thirty minutes?

"Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" is one of Hoch's most John Dickson Carr-like impossible crime stories, despite not being a typical impossible crime or traditional locked room mystery. A cross between ghostly phenomenon and bi-location. Hoch brings more than his usual competent craftsmanship to the table in order to explain away this apparent miracle with an inspired solution both imaginative and completely satisfying. There is, perhaps, one coincidence some readers might find a little hard to swallow, but that's that Merrivalean cussedness of all things general for you. However, what I found even more impressive is the overall structure of the story. Hoch took an unfortunate, every day case of spousal murder without a hint of planning or touch of subtlety (i.e. manufactured alibis, locked rooms, etc) and turned it into a Carr-like impossible crime story by introducing an apparent "glitch" in the timeline. It worked. Mike Grost called "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" a "landmark in such time-centered mysteries" in the Chesterton-Carr tradition and I couldn't agree more. If there's ever going to be a Hoch best-of collection, "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" deserves to be included.

The Devil's Pet Baits: "A Melee of Diamonds" (1972) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "A Melee of Diamonds," originally published in the April, 1972, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and collected in Leopold's Way (1985), begins with a crude, everyday crime – a simple smash-and-grab job. A man wielding a silver-headed cane smashes the store window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange to pocket a modest fortune in diamond rings and unset stones, but a patrolling police officer is immediately on the scene. And gets knocked down with the cane. Fortunately, a bystander chases the thief, wrestles him to the ground and hands him over to the police. So case closed, except for one small, all-important, detail: what happened to the diamonds?

The thief, Rudy Hoffman from New York, took $58,000 worth of diamonds from the broken store window before getting apprehended half a block away. From the time Hoffman smashed the store window to the moment he was tackled to the ground, "he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him." However, Hoffman didn't have a single diamond on him. The police searched him, the street and they "even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest" without finding a single diamond ring or unset stone. Hoffman isn't talking.

So when Captain Leopold hears a report the following days, he asks to have him brought down "to show you guys how it's done" with similar results. This apparently simple smash-and-grab from a store window is not one of Captain Leopold's finest hours as he's in full fallible detective mode ("this is my night for being wrong"). Even when the missing diamonds and the solution are literally gifted to him on a silver platter.

Captain Leopold pulls an impossible vanishing-act with the diamonds himself, in order to manipulate an accomplice in drawing out the main culprit, but it horribly misfires and, to use his own words, "I was trying to pull off a neat trick, and I got a guy killed" – "I bungled, that's what happened, Fletcher." Captain Leopold got it wrong one more time that night, before he can finally and successfully close the case.

So, while Captain Leopold was stuck in fallible detective mode, I played Mycroft Holmes and deduced the correct solution to the first impossibility. And, what exactly, happened the moment the store window got smashed. A not wholly unoriginal trick complimented by the smash-and-grab setup that allowed me to anticipate the identity of the main culprit. On the other hand, Leopold's trick honestly had me stumped and it's not even half as good or original as the first vanishing-trick. But it served its purpose. So, while not a perfect detective story, "A Melee of Diamonds" stands as another pretty solid, competently-plotted effort from the prolific Hoch enjoyably demonstrating the versatility of the impossible crime story outside the customary locked room and fields of virgin snow. Recommended!

Note for the curious: I also reviewed the short story collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) and the Captain Leopold short story "The Oblong Room" (1967).

Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope (2025) by P. Dieudonné

Recently, the small independent Dutch publisher E-Pulp released the twelfth novel in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de stille hoop (Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope, 2025), which begins with introducing a kaleidoscopic jumble of plot-threads – apparently unconnected. The opening chapter finds De Klerck arguing with Commissioner De Froideville over a two-year old, still unsolved and open missing persons case.

Frits Kieviet, "a habitual burglar," disappeared two years ago following the unsuccessful burglary of the home of an imminent university lecturer, Professor Rudolphi. The professor reported to the police nothing had been stolen, but rumors reached De Klerck claiming a valuable collection of antique coins was stolen from Professor Rudolphi's house in Ridderkerk. According to the rumors, two more people were involved in the burglary: a now dead call-girl named "NightQueenie" and her then boyfriend, Jules Olijhoek, who supposedly framed Kieviet. And not without consequences. Several dubious looking tough guys came looking for him at his regular bar, after which he disappeared without a trace. Worryingly, it suggests the respectable Professor Rudolphi is "a formidable criminal who wants to prevent his mask from falling at all costs." However, the case is in the hands of another district and De Klerck is not permitted to reopen the case or bother the influential Rudolphi ("...a friend of a friend").

The rumors regarding the burglary and collection of coins emanated from Kieviet's regular pub, 't Zotte Zwaantje, whose owner, Lowie, asks De Klerck's assistance when one of his regulars, Kjell van Boekel, dropped out of sight without a word – even turning his phone off. Inspectors De Klerck and Klaver don't have very long to give this problem their full attention, because next they're confronted with the central puzzle of the story.

A patrolling policeman found a young, soaking wet and dying man with pieces of duct tape still stuck to his face and clothes. The victim turns out to be a student, Casper Stokkentreeff, who recently got in trouble with the police for stalking his ex-girlfriend following a sudden breakup. Why was he held captive and tortured for days? Why didn't the doorbell cameras show him trying to get help? Why did he use his last breath to mumble something about building a bridge or bridge builders? A colleague of De Klerck's remarks that the murders he gets to investigate rarely resemble a simple crossword picture, but tend to be complicated cryptograms. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope certainly is no exception.

I mentioned in previous reviews how this series built on the formula of the Dutch politieroman as imagined by A.C. Baantjer rather than being another imitation. Such as loosening up the formula to allow more freedom to play around with the plots, which received some much needed plot complexity. So the series not only featured the customary bizarre, multiple murders, but also sported locked room mysteries, dying messages and unbreakable alibis. But also what can be called what-happened mysteries like Rechercheur De Klerck en het duistere web (Inspector De Klerck and the Dark Web, 2022) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023). A non-traditional puzzle in which a jumble of confusing crimes, incidents and people need to be put in the correct order or sequence to create a complete and coherent picture of the truth. Not always easy to do, but Dieudonné pulled it off before (see Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death). Regrettably, I can't say the same for the latest entry in the series.

I know Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope isn't intended as a traditional, fair play whodunit presented as a politieroman, but, even as a what-happened, it would have been nice to have had a shot at it – prevented by some information being dropped relatively late into the story. Important enough information to reduce every attempt preceding it to blindly groping around the dark. Same goes for, what turned out to be, the undecipherable dying message. I gave away my best impression of an armchair oracle trying to come up with a logical interpretation for those last, cryptic gurgled words. Maybe the policeman misheard him, but what sounds like "brug bouwen" (building a bridge)? Je moeder verbouwen (renovating your mom)? Surely, he couldn't have used his last breath to ask the policeman to tell his killer he was going to renovate his mom. So, as you can see, I did some serious work for nothing. That would not have been half as bad had the ending been good, but the plot felt as jumbled after the explanation as before and murderer's identity plus motive was underwhelming. I honestly would have been more impressed had Frits Kieviet pulled out as the off-page, but ever present, murderer. That really bugs me.

This series isn't a collection modern, five-star masterpieces of detective fiction posing as Dutch police procedural, but the quality is admirably maintained throughout the previous novels and why I've been fanboying about it for the past five years. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope completely missed the mark, for me at least. As pleasantly written as the previous novels, but the plot is uncharacteristically messy. That's the drawback for Golden Age detective fans of following a new series, you can't cherry pick the best titles. I'm sure Dieudonné back to his old tricks for the thirteenth De Klerck novels. Fingers crossed it will be titled Rechercheur De Klerck en de dertien katten (Inspector De Klerck and the Thirteen Cats).

Note for the curious: Well, rather a question. I ended the review of Rechercheur De Klerck en de status in moord (Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder, 2024) promising to do “Hit List” ranking the first twelve titles in the series. I know the series is untranslated and not accessible to most readers of this blog, which is why they never generate much discussion. Only exception, for obvious reasons, is the third title, Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020). So... wanted to know if anyone's actually interested for top 12 of this series?

The Black Swan Mystery (1960) by Tetsuya Ayukawa

I pontificated in "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century" on how today's translation wave started when Keigo Higashino's 2011 translation of Yogisha X no kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) became an unexpected, international bestseller opening the door to invite future translation – which the late John Pugmire accepted in 2015. Locked Room International published the first-ever English edition of Yukito Ayatsuji's epochal Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) opening the floodgates to even more translations. And attracting other publishers to the joys of the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries.

Funnily enough, neither The Decagon House Murders nor The Devotion of Suspect X can be labeled as a locked room mystery or impossible crime, but the translation wave has been dominated by locked room novels and impossible crime stories. So the past ten years have been something of a locked room renaissance and the translation wave infused the form with some much needed fresh blood, which helped to revitalize it and even lead to a revival.

However, the locked room mystery is not the end-all of detective fiction, you don't always get that impression from reading this blog, but the impossible crime story is merely my favorite hobby horse – a hobby horse I enjoy riding into oblivion. I love and welcome good, craftily-plotted detective stories in any shape or form and wanted to see what the Japanese detective story can do outside a locked room or field of untrodden snow. This is one of the reasons why I've been so intrigued by their hybrid mysteries, tracked down Seimaru Amagi's Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) and jumped at the opportunity to sample Jun Kurachi's Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). So was not dismayed at all when it became apparent Pushkin Vertigo was going to diversify their output of honkaku and shin honkaku translations.

This year, they're going to publish Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-looping, hybrid mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995), Taku Ashibe's classically-styled whodunit Oomarike satsujin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021) and two strange novels by horror Youtuber "Uketsu." I'm not sure about Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947), but it appears to be a whodunit without any impossible crimes. Don't worry. I'll be getting my Japanese impossible crime fix through Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991), MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996) and the various anime-and manga detective series. This move began last November with their publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960), translated by Bryan Karetnyk, whom readers will remember from the short story collection The Red Locked Room (2020).

Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery is best summed as a police procedural in the tradition of Seicho Matsumoto's Ten to sen (Points and Lines, 1958), but with the heart, soul and plot of the traditional, fair play detective novel – particularly Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts. Yes, the story largely hinges on the question of alibis, complete with time tables and railway schedules, but it's much more than simply retracing people's movement and breaking down alibis. It's also an excellent and absorbing police procedural/whodunit.

The investigation at the heart of The Black Swan Mystery is an involved one starting with the murder of Gosuke Nishinohata, director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to railway tracks near Kuki Station with a bullet in his back. Detective Inspector Sudo and Constable Seki get to take a crack at the case first and they get a lucky break as Nishinohata's body had been thrown from an overpass and landed on a train passing under the Ryodaishi Bridge. So the blood on the bridge and roof of the train gives the police an exact time and place to check everyone's alibis ("my, my, that's awfully precise, Inspector"). There are, of course, enough complications to make this everything but a routine murder investigation. This is a detective story, after all.

Firstly, the owners of the Towa Textiles Company are at "loggerheads" with the trade union who presented them with "a four-point list of demands and called a strike." One of the four demands is freedom of religious expression, because Nishinohata was a follower of the Shaman, a new sect of Shintoism, who tried to push his religion on the workers and that didn't sit well – neither with the workers nor the the Shaman. The Shaman have stranglehold on their followers, figuratively and literally, which is why they're not happy Towa Textiles is willing to give in on that specific demand. It would mean losing thousands of members at once. They employ an ex-secret serviceman, Hanpei Chita, who's job is to dissuade people from leaving the Shaman and considered to be capable of everything ("...even of killing a man"). Secondly, Nishinohata was a known philanderer coming with the usual complications and his position as director gets entangled with the personal lives of the people at the company. His private secretary, Takeshi Haibara, wants to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the directors, Atsuko, but she's in a secret relationship with the vice-chairman of the trade union, Narumi.

So enough to keep Sudo and Seki pleasantly occupied with trying to entangle this complicated knot of relationships, potential motives and those pesky, rock solid alibis, but then more bodies begin to turn up along the way – all curiously connected to the first murder. Sudo and Seki eventually hit a dead end and the top brass decides to assign the case to Inspector Onitsura to give it a second look.

Inspector Onitsura previously appeared in several short stories from The Red Locked Room, translated by Ho-Ling Wong, who described him "Ellery Queen wearing the face of Inspector French" and his short stories/novels are generally regarded as early police procedurals. But they're crammed with original tricks and EQ-style chain of logic/deduction. Tetsuya Ayukawa certainly allowed Onitsura to live up to his reputation in The Black Swan Mystery. Onitsura is as logical and methodical as French, but neither is above making the occasional mistake or overlooking a small detail. Once they got hold of something, they follow it to its logical conclusion. Whether there's a murderer waiting at the end of that specific trail or not. There's something really comfy about following Onitsura on those leisure train rides pass the small stations along the less frequent traveled lines. Or, to quote the story itself, "writer of children's stories with a fantastical mindset might have imagined that the train were a tortoise and that he were riding on its back towards the Palace of the Dragon King" ("...the inspector himself was too much of a realist to have such fairy tales in his mind"). So the first and second-half of The Black Swan Mystery already form an excellent, slightly classically-styled, police procedural published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction. The story definitely has a strong flavoring of the social school with a strike going on in the background and addressing certain issues of post-war Japan, but the overall plot and uncluttered, clear solution possesses all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective stories of the West.

A solution that naturally turn on the question of alibis and opportunity, but those alibis don't come into play until Onitsura has identified the murderer with roughly a quarter of the story left to go, only to be stonewalled by a pair of cast-iron alibis – "unassailable from every angle." But the "very perfection" of those alibis makes him only more determined to tear them down. And tearing them down, he does! The tricks behind the two alibis honestly are something you would expect from a honkaku mystery novel rather than a police procedural with obvious ties to the Seicho Matsumoto's social school of crime fiction. Bush, Crofts and Queen could have hardly done better! That fact is also depressing as hell. Even when Japan moved away from the traditional, plot-oriented detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo and Akimitsu Takagi to make way for the social school, they continued to produce first-class detective fiction. Sure, it was often disguised as historical fiction or police procedurals, but they were still there. When the West abandoned the traditional detective stories of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, the genre descended into a dark age.

So, to cut long story short, Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery comes heartily recommended as one of those rare mysteries that fans of the classic detective story and modern crime novel can enjoy, but the former have to keep in mind it's a little different from what most have come to expect from a Japanese detective novel. A little different, but just as good.

Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder (2024) by P. Dieudonné

During the summer, E-Pulp published the tenth novel in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de sluier van de dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death, 2024), which is a double-sized politieroman to mark the series' first milestone – reason why its publication was delayed several months. So didn't expect them to keep to the customary schedule of two novels a year, but the eleventh title in the series was recently published. And it's better than the previous, double-sized De Klerck mystery!

Rechercheur De Klerck en de status in moord (Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder, 2024) begins with a request to Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver, of the Rotterdam police, to assist the harbor police investigate a suspicious death. One that looks an awfully lot like murder.

In the Veerhaven, a luxurious sailing yacht has been deliberately sunk and divers found the body of a woman floating inside, but the doors where sealed shut from the outside to keep her from escaping – turning the yacht into an inescapable death trap. De Klerck and Klaver quickly find out that the victim, Ismene Duetz, gave people around her plenty of reason to be glad someone gave her a one-way trip to the bottom of the river. Ismene was recently deserted by her long-suffering, browbeaten and now ex-husband, Ivo Lambriex, which is why she was temporarily living on her yacht. That ties-in with her favorite hobby: brown-nosing the Dutch aristocracy ("she absolutely adored the nobility...").

Ismene is friends with Lady Noëlle de Beauchateau, daughter of Lord Maximiliaan de Beauchateau, who is engaged to Baron van Feyesslink tot Elzeveld. Before her engagement to the Baron, Noëlle was dating the owner of a struggling diving supply store, Peter Versantvoort. Ismene got wind of Peter's financial troubles and told the Lord about. Similarly warned Noëlle about potential future advances from her brother, IJsbrand ("blue blood marries blue blood"). So more than enough to keep to the two inspectors busy for some time, but further complications arise when a member of the aristocracy is shot and a third, very surprising death. None of these murders follows the pattern expected from a Baantjer-style politieroman, which in this case added to the fun.

That third, final death really took me by surprise as it made me second guess my deductions, because it looked like a daring attempt to present De Klerck and Klaver with an easy solution to close the case – which didn't turn out to be the case. But an interesting turn of events. And was on the right track all along!

Dieudonné returned with Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder to previous novels like Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020), Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023) by presenting an old-school detective novel as a contemporary politieroman a la Baantjer. All very fairly clued, too. There are a couple of important pieces of information given late into the story, but, if you spotted the clues and hints, they shouldn't come like bolt from the blue. So what more can I say about this early Sinterklaas present that hasn't already been said in previous reviews? This series continues to be a rare treat giving me a double shot of nostalgia and something to sooth that detective itch in my own language! In that regard, Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder is another success story and a strong, solid entry in the series. I look forward to the next one and plan to do another “Hit List” blog-post ranking the first dozen De Klerck novels when it gets published.

A note for the curious: I wonder how many readers heard these words in their head when the murderer was revealed (SPOILER/ROT13), “qebzzryf, qebzzryf ra abt rraf qebzzryf, qvr pybja ra qvr npebonng!” :)

Deathwatch: "The Oblong Room" (1967) by Edward D. Hoch

Earlier this month, I reviewed Edward D. Hoch's short story collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023), gathering fifteen stories in the Captain Leopold series from the 1981-2000 period, which comes with a detailed introduction and series retrospective – written by the celebrated French anthologist, Roland Lacourbe. The introduction directed my attention to a particular short story in the series.

"The Oblong Room," originally published in the July, 1967, issue of The Saint Magazine, is together with "The Leopold Locked Room" (1971) the "most frequently republished Hoch stories," but, somehow, always confused "The Oblong Room" with "The Problem of the Octagon Room" (1981). So was a little surprise to read Lacourbe describing "The Oblong Room" focusing "less on who killed the victim than why" and "the motive, once discovered, will be one of the strangest in detective fiction." That doesn't sound like a locked room mystery at all! Sure enough, it turns out to be the exact opposite of a locked room mystery.

Captain Leopold and Sergeant Fletcher have an apparently open-and-shut case on their hands when they're called to the scene of a murder at the men's dorm of the local university. Ralph Rollings, a sophomore, is found stabbed to death in his dorm room and the obvious suspect is his roommate, Tom McBern, who refuses to talk and demands a lawyer – while an obvious motive begins to emerge ("they probably had the same girl or something"). There are, however, some baffling details complicating, what should have been, an open-and-shut case. When the bloody scene was discovered, Ralph had been dead for the better part of a day and the only thing Tom is prepared to admit is staying with the body in the locked dorm room for the past twenty-two hours. Captain Leopold and Sergeant Fletcher also have to take the drugs found in their room into consideration and the testimonies from other students about their strange relationship and the sway Ralph held over people ("...a power you wouldn’t believe any twenty-year-old capable of").

So the murder is not about whodunit and how the murder was pulled off, but what happened in that dorm room and why. A what-and-why-dun-it. Hoch obviously used the Captain Leopold series to experiment as "The Oblong Room" would not have worked as well in the Simon Ark or Dr. Sam Hawthorne series. Hoch's experiment here was not without consequences.

"The Oblong Room" was rejected by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine before The Saint Magazine bought and published it. Apparently, the solution has certain elements that "scared off some editors" at the time, but "The Oblong Room" in the end won Hoch an Edgar Award. Deservedly so? Yes... and no.

I think "The Oblong Room" is a good crime story, certainly for the time, but not one of Hoch's best short stories for two reasons. Firstly, the story and those controversial elements feel like a product of its time and, as far as sordid crimes go, relatively tame by today's standards – both real and fictitious. Secondly, the story needed to be longer for the ending to be truly effective. Captain Leopold noted himself that the problem with this case is that didn't get to meet the two principle players until the damage was already done. Well, that can in this case just as well be applied to the story and reader. If you're going to write a what-and-why-dun-it, you need to do more character work than was done here. Other than that another competent piece of work from Hoch.

After this short story and the previous short story collection, it's time for something slightly more traditionally plotted. Stay tuned!

The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) by Edward D. Hoch

The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) is the thirteenth volume of Edward D. Hoch's fiction, published by Crippen & Landru, collecting fifteen short stories from his series of police procedurals featuring one of his most enduring creations, Captain Jules Leopold – who appeared in over a hundred short stories. A not inconsiderable chunk of Hoch's output counting nearly a thousand short stories covering more than a dozen different series and standalone stories.

Captain Leopold is the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of Monroe, a fictitious town somewhere in Connecticut, who's a normal, competent and levelheaded policeman. So he's basically a modern-day Inspector French. Being one of Hoch's rare conventional characters doesn't mean his caseload is always normal or everyday. I know Captain Leopold from the odd anthologized short story which tended to be locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories. I suppose the known of these stories "The Leopold Locked Room" (1971) in which Captain Leopold is framed for the murder of his ex-wife, but not to be overlooked is "Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder" (1976) staging a locked room slaying in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam.

There is, of course, more to the Captain Leopold series than an excellent impossible crime story or locked room mystery every now and then. Roland Lacourbe illustrated this in his excellent introduction and detailed overview of the series, "The Best of Captain Leopold," which opens The Killer Everyone Knew. A insightful, non-spoiler introduction for those not overly familiar with the series or are new to it and a refresher course for those who might not have encountered Captain Leopold for while. After all, the last Captain Leopold story, "Leopold Undercover" (2007), was published seventeen years ago and The Killer Everyone Knew is the first Captain Leopold collection since Leopold's Way (1985). So this publication was long overdue. Even longer than that second Ben Snow collection.

Lastly, before delving into this collection, the stories in The Killer Everyone Knew originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1981 to 2000. Yes, this is a shoddy attempt to prevent another unnecessary long and bloated SSC review. So with that out of the way...

The first story, "The Woman Without a Past" (1981), confronts Captain Leopold with the double murder of an unmarried couple, Judy Thomas and Carl Forrester, who were gunned down on their own doorstep when returning home from a birthday dinner. She has a past going back only ten months before it goes completely blank and he has forty-eight cans of ether in the closet. So who was the killer after, Judy or Carl? A good and intriguing setup, but, in the end, not much of a mystery as the culprit is glaringly obvious in spite of wearing the garb of the least-likely-suspect. I think the next story would have made a better opener to this otherwise excellent collection.

"Captain Leopold Beats the Machine" (1983) is a neat little impossible poisoning mystery. Tommy Rusto is a two-bit criminal implicated in the fatal car bombing of Vice-Mayor Mark Prior, but now that his trial is coming up, he's ready to talk and name names. So the D.A. asks Captain Leopold to borrow their interrogation room and for him to be present as a witness, which is when things take a turn for the worst as Rusto asks for a cup of coffee – brought to him by Captain Leopold. Rusto takes a sip of the coffee, mutters something about the taste of the coffee ("this coffee tastes...") and drops dead from cyanide poisoning. The coffee came from the vending machine of the police squad, which is taken apart and closely examined, but is proven to be clean and not tampered with. So who poisoned the stool pigeon and how? Well, those are, admittedly, not terrible difficult questions to answer and it's strange Leopold is never considered as a suspect. Nevertheless, it's a good, timely example of the detective story exploring new possibilities technology can bring to the table (beside a cyanide laced coffee) and loved the clue that identified the murderer. To quote Leopold, "this is truly the age of the machine."

The third story, "Finding Joe Finch" (1984), begins with the announcement of Captain Leopold's engagement to Molly Calendar, a defense lawyer, who appeared in the previous story as Rusto's legal representative. A strain is placed on the engagement following a deadly payroll robbery at the Greenways factory. The primary suspects is one of the factory workers, Joe Finch, who's nowhere to be found. Not to mention that he's the brother-in-law of Lieutenant Fletcher. This causes some problems at home ("...you're all the same, aren't you?"). So more of a police procedural with troubled cops than a proper detective story, but the clueing is fair and the factory setting well realized. And added something to everything from the characters and storytelling to the plot.

I already reviewed "The Murder in Room 1010" (1987) back in June alongside Hoch's "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" (1987) and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991), but it's a small gem of an impossible crime story.

"The Crime in Heaven" (1988) boosts one of Hoch's most creative and original setups when a woman comes to Captain Leopold to report a murder far, far outside of his jurisdiction. Mrs. Roberts has been communicating with the spirit of her grandfather, dead for half a century, through the medium Madame Vane and her spirit guide, Grey Elk ("they're often Indians, you know") – whom she accuses of murdering her dead grandfather! During their last séance, Mrs. Roberts heard the voice of Grey Elk screaming at her grandfather and someone saying, "put down that gun," before a gunshot rang out. Nothing was heard after the shot and Madame Vane refused any more seances. Something weird or unusual happened, but where do you even begin to investigate when "the murder victim was a man who's already been dead for fifty-five years"? Captain Leopold's colleague, Sergeant Connie Trent, plays a big role in unraveling this criminal scheme gone horribly awry. Simply a great story with an original approach to presenting and picking apart a plot.

The title story of this collection, "The Killer Everyone Knew" (1989), begins when Captain Leopold is visited by a criminal psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Frees, who works with convicted murderers. Dr. Frees regresses them through hypnosis to the moment of the murder and he's convinced one of his patients is innocent. Five years ago, Ralph Simmons was identified by several witnesses as the man "who'd taken Laurie Mae Nelson out to her car in the parking lot and strangled her." So he was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to twenty years to life ("...still protesting his innocence"), but now Dr. Frees claims his hypnotic sessions uncovered Simmons was "nowhere near the scene of the crime that night." Captain Leopold is more than a little skeptical, but promises to look over the file. And the case notes don't look too promising. But, curiously, it turns out the witnesses have begun to die. This story is a bit of downer as it obviously leans more to the serious crime story/police procedural, but how Leopold uses a chain-of-knowledge, rather than evidence, to identify the murderer is not bad. That and it was interesting how Hoch decided to tackle the shopworn premise of a man innocently convicted of murder.

If you think "The Killer Everyone Knew" is a bit depressing, you haven't read "Captain Leopold's Birthday" (1990). Captain Leopold is not looking forward to his coming birthday as the department's mandatory retirement policy is "now only twelve short months away." On top of that, Leopold learns that an ex-colleague from the Arson Squad, Marty Doyle, died from a heart attack a year into his early retirement. Something that has unexpected consequences when one of the Doyles neighbors is shot to death with a target pistol and Leopold has to investigate a murder involving people he knows personally. A dark, gloomy and somewhat depressing cop drama/police procedural, but Hoch (SPOILER/ROT13) uvatrq gur jubyr guvat ba n pyrireyl uvqqra, grpu-onfrq nyvov hfvat gur pncgnva uvzfrys nf n jvgarff. So I didn't hate it, nor loved it, but definitely liked how it reads like a miniature version of a Roger Ormerod novel with its dead ex-cop and use of a target pistol as murder weapon.

The cover image of this collection comes from the next story, "The Retired Magician" (1991), which plays out over the course of several months. Captain Leopold learns that the famous stage magician, Rex Furcula, retired to Monroe and bought a house complete with a small carriage house to store his magic collection and memorabilia – nothing much was heard of him for several years. Two years later, Furcula sister is murdered when she caught a burglar in the carriage house and killer is killed himself during his getaway. So an open and shut case. Over the course of several months, Leopold and Molly become acquainted with Furcula and his wife. Leopold begins to like the Furcula's, but suspicion begins to sneak in when he learns about a one-million dollar life insurance policy. Just like in a magic act, "nothing is ever quite what it seems." I enjoyed the deliberate vagueness, but clued, of the setup punctuated by a new wrinkle on a classic idea. A solid Hoch short story!

"Puzzle in a Smoke Filled Room" (1991) is another story with a premise as intriguing as it's original. The men of Fire Company 5 respond to a house fire and find a woman in pajamas on the doorstep begging to save her husband who went to bed early, but, when entering the burning, smoke filled bedroom, they hear the crack of an exploding cartridge. Firefighter Randy Dwyer is fatally hit in the chest by bullet. The victim of a bizarre, but not an unheard-of, accident in which "the intense heat of the fire had detonated the powder charge in several pistol cartridges stored in the homeowner's bedroom." However, the bullet that was removed from the body has lands and grooves on its sides proving "it had been fired from a gun barrel." Captain Leopold and his team go from a freak accident to a quasi-impossible murder. So it's unfortunate the solution doesn't hold up. I can overlook Leopold not immediately grasping (SPOILER/ROT13) gur fvtavsvpnapr bs na rkvg jbhaq gung fubhyqa'g or gurer, ohg jung nobhg gur cngubybtvfg? Fubhyqa'g ur, bs nyy crbcyr, abgvpr gur obql unf bayl bar ragel jbhaq naq bar rkvg jbhaq, ohg fgvyy qht n ohyyrg bhg bs gur ivpgvz'f purfg? Juvyr gur frpbaq ohyyrg jnf sverq guebhtu gur svefg ohyyrg jbhaq, vg qvqa'g sbyybj gur genpx bs gur svefg ohyyrg be gurl jbhyq unir pbyyvqrq. Naq gur cngubybtvfg jbhyq unir qht gjb fyhtf bhg bs gur obql. So loved how the story was presented, but its resolution left me unconvinced. Only just realized the method is basically a poor, simplified reworking of a rather elaborate trick from another and better Captain Leopold story.

"The Summer of Our Discontent" (1992) is not so much a detective story as it's an important character-arc. Captain Leopold has the long-dreaded retirement talk with Chief Ringold and agrees to retire by the end of the month. Everyone assumed Lieutenant Fletcher is going to be promoted to captain and appointed commander of the Violent Crimes Squad, but Chief Ringold tells him Lieutenant George Vivian, of the Burglary Squad, is picked as his successor – which comes as a smack in their face. Things get worse when one of Vivian's men, Sergeant Patrick O'Mera, is found shot dead in his patrol car with evidence suggesting bribery and corruption. The excellent and fitting motive behind the murder should have made this story a worthy retirement case for Captain Leopold, but everything felt mired in needless cop drama. So the story becomes more about how this murder is going to ruin Vivian's promotion and hand it back to Fletcher rather than allowing Leopold to tidy up his last case, before officially handing over the reigns to Fletcher. Why not do the same thing, except (ROT13) Ivivna trgf cebzbgrq gb pncgnva naq pbzznaqre bs gur Ohetynel Fdhnq? Gung jnl, gur zbgvir fgvyy jbexf jvgubhg gur fbncl qenzn gung pbhyq bayl raq bar jnl.

"Leopold at Rest" (1993) is a minor, but pleasantly surprising, story showing Fletcher in Leopold's role as head of the Violent Crimes Squad handling everyday routine cases like an attempted murder. Charlie McGregor was shot by his wife's lover, Tod Baxter, who's released after his brother backed the half-million dollar bail. Another story that's pleasantly mysterious about the direction of the story, but the ending delivered. Not a very happy ending, but unexpectedly good after the previous two stories. This series is strong on unexpected, original motives and cleverly-hidden criminal schemes. So even the stories leaning heavily in the direction of the dark, grim police procedural and character-driven crime fiction feel more substantial, because they have a plot to stand on.

"Leopold Lends a Hand" (1995) is another good one bringing together the classically-styled detective story and the modern police procedural. Captain Fletcher is short staffed, "more cases than the Violent Crime Squad can handle at the moment," which is why he asked Leopold to help out with some routine questioning of witnesses at the scene of a murder. Construction workers discovered the body of Vladimir Petrov, a Russian businessman, when they returned to work on his million dollar, partially finished condominium – shot twice in the chest. Petrov possessed a couple of antique religious icon, dating back to sixth or seventh century, which are worth a small fortune and considered to be potential motive. Only then Fletcher is shot and seriously wounded. Suddenly, Leopold is back on the job as "acting head of the Violent Crimes division," when another complication rears it ugly head. The woman who appraised one of the icons, Rachel Dean, is shot and killed behind the locked door and barred windows of her private office. She lived long enough to leave behind a dying message! A detective story with a dying message inside a locked room comes with certain expectations, regarding the solution, but Hoch delivers the goods. More importantly, it came with that jolt of surprise I remember from my first encounters with Agatha Christie. I need to nitpick a little here and point out the central idea behind the locked room-trick had been tried before, one or two times, but Hoch arguably employed it to greater effect.

I didn't like the next story, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" (1997), which brings a true crime writer to the retired Leopold to discuss one of his old cases. Nine years ago, Alex Clemmins received the death penalty for the car bombing that killed his wife and their two young children. Now that the execution is less than a week away, the case is getting renewed attention in the media with rumors swirling around about new evidence. Leopold begins to suspect "the evidence that convicted him might be flawed." The previous stories set the precedent that even the stories leaning more towards the police procedurals and crime stories aren't without plot virtues, but that's not the case here. If "Leopold Helps a Hand" shows what the traditional, but modernized, detective story could have been in the nineties, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" rubs the tripe we got instead in your face.

"The Phantom Lover" (1999) is another fairly minor, unusually structured story beginning as a missing person's case. Stanley Falkner is fairly well-known in the city, "a local Realtor who dabbled in politics," who had a very public, headline making brawl with Lynn at a restaurant ("she'd jabbed him in the neck with a salad fork..."). So she becomes a person of interest when her husband goes missing and is found shortly thereafter dead in a gravel pit. Surprisingly, Lynn comes clean halfway through and confesses she conspired with her lover, Gavin Stark, to dispose her husband – which gets her indicted on two counts ("second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder"). However, the so-called phantom lover is nowhere to be found and when she recants her confession, the case against her threatens to collapse. Lynn has a rock solid alibi for the time Gavin killed Stanley. So, unless the D.A. can produce Lynn's lover, there's "no way the D.A. can prove a conspiracy." Captain Fletcher has his work cut out as Leopold is "following this case closely in the papers." Like I said, the structure is unusual, for a detective story, but the truth behind the phantom lover left me unimpressed.

The final story, "The Emerald Expert" (2000), ends the collection on a high note. Leopold and Molly open their home to a French gemologist, Henri Scarlotti, who has come to the United States to testify as an expert witness on behalf of the defense in the Jaspar case. Jeff Shields and Beryl Constantine, his girlfriend, stand trial for the murdering and robbing of a jewelry salesman, Alex Jaspar. Both were caught in New York when they tried to dispose of the stolen emeralds, or so the prosecution claims, but they claim to be innocent. Scarlotti can apparently prove the emerald they tried to sell in New York were mined in a different location than Jaspar's stolen emeralds ("...a small sample from the gem's surface is measured for oxygen isotopes"). This provides the story with fascinating sidelight on emeralds and emerald mining, before the home of the Leopolds becomes a crime scene. Scarlotti was shot and killed in their home! The solution is pretty solid with a surprising killer and, once again, an original motive. So a fine and fitting story to close out this overall excellent collection of Captain Leopold stories.

Lacourbe writes in the introduction that the stories have "verve and imagination" in their variation with "the weirdness of many of the situations" standing "in sharp contrast to the seeming banality of the cases themselves." Something all the stories in this collection can attest to, whether they're good or not, but it's also impressive when you hold the stories up to Hoch's other series. Lacourbe notes that Leopold is one of Hoch's most grounded series-character. Leopold is not a gunslinger from the Wild West (Ben Snow), a thief-for-hire (Nick Velvet), a locked room expert (Dr. Hawthorne) or an immortal detective (Simon Ark). Just a normal, everyday homicide cop who relies as much on his experience as he does on his intelligence and Hoch genuinely tried to create miniature versions of the then contemporary, character-driven crime drama's and police procedurals – complete with their dark, gritty tone and bleak endings. So not everyone is going to like, what Mike Grost dubbed, "The Gloomy Tales," but I admired Hoch craftily giving a classical twist to most of these bleak, gritty modern-day police procedurals. And with only four less than stellar stories, The Killer Everyone Knew ensured Leopold's Way is on its way to the top of the pile. Simply a must-read for Hoch fans!

A note for the curious: if you ever wondered what the mostly untranslated, Dutch police procedurals/detective stories by M.P.O. Books/"Anne van Doorn" are like, The Killer Everyone Knew comes pretty close to the short stories collected in De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen en andere mysteries (The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, 2018) and Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021). Just throwing that out as a reminder there's still some untranslated gold over here.