Murder of a Negative (1963) by Dick A. van Ruler

Last month, I reviewed In de greep van de kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965) by "B.J. Kleymens," a shared penname of J. Kleijn and B. Mensen, whose only detective novel was their contribution to the "Zodiac Mysteries" – a collaborative project of twelve writers and an editor. Ab Visser gathered twelve writers each tasked with writing a detective novel in which one of the astrological signs plays a central or even decisive role. But the project was abandoned and left unfinished after eight novels. So what happened? 

I used my review of In the Grip of the Lobster to burrow deeper into the mystery of the missing "Zodiac Mysteries." I was unable to discover why the series was abandoned or canceled, but Robert van Gulik's novella "De nacht van de tijger" ("The Night of the Tiger," 1963) from The Monkey and the Tiger (1965) was originally intended to be his contribution to the series. There's a possibility, as noted in my review, Jacques Presser's Moord in de Poort (Murder in the Poort, 1965) is another lost Zodiac mystery that made it to print. Maybe. So this left only two contributors unaccounted for.

One of them, Leon Derksen, has to my knowledge never written or published a single detective story, but the subject of today's review did put one to his name. I was more than a little intrigued by his sole detective novel on record.

Dick A. van Ruler studied theology at the Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht in the 1950s and began to work as a journalist for the Utrechts Nieuwsblad in 1961, but gained national fame as the presenter of popular NCRV TV programs such as Hoe bestaat het – which translates to How It Exists or How Does It Work. A pop-science show from the 1960s and the second picture in this review comes from a newspaper teaser about that program. Yes, Van Ruler is pulling "the weight of eight train wagons" or "five and a half thousand times the weight of Dick van Ruler." You had to tune in that evening to learn the trick behind his incredible feat of strength. Regrettably, I've been unable to find even a few seconds of footage online.

More importantly, Van Ruler penned a detective novel around the same time, Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963), which the back cover tells showcases his interest in pastoral matters. Van Ruler is not so much interested in the crime solving techniques of the police as he's in those who come into contact with the police. Murder of a Negative is not about the who and/or how, but the why and the far-reaching, sometimes unforeseeable consequences of murder. So the result is a quasi-social crime novel similar to K. Abma's De hond was executeur (The Dog Was Executor, 1973) with the difference being Van Ruler tried to write something resembling a Dutch politieroman.

Before going over the story, I need to briefly return to the "Zodiac Mysteries" and Van Ruler's contribution that never materialized or remained unpublished. I didn't expect Murder of a Negative to be a lost Zodiac title, but postulated in my review of In the Grip of the Lobster it might have caught the eye of Visser and earned him a seat at the table – a guess which could be closer to the truth than I imagined. Murder of a Negative more or less, likely without intending it, low key setup a sequel in the background that could tie-in to and be part of the Zodiac series. The wife and confident of the police detective, Mary, "hung her believes and soul" on astrology (well, sort of) and knew her way around the field. She could advise her husband in a murder case involving one of the Zodiac signs. This raises a question: did Van Ruler penned a sequel that was part of the "Zodiac Mysteries" and, if he did, what happened to the unpublished manuscript? Did it survive or did it get lost or even destroyed as there was little chance of it ever getting published? Questions that will probably never get answered and this elusive, hypothetical second novel is so intangible that it can't even be entered into the Phantom Library of Lost Detective Stories. But let's get to the story. 

Murder of a Negative dogs the footsteps of Chief Inspector Leendert M. van Dop, of the judicial police in Utrecht (cheap pop!), who gets "de Kruit-affaire" dropped on his desk.

Johan Kruit was a valued, highly respected and pious financial manager of an import-and export company in Utrecht, De Giec, who was the first to clock in and the last to leave – never taking any vacations. When he finally took a holiday and boarded a ship with his wife to the United States, he discovered too late that his sleeping powders contained a cyanide. And he died on the floor of his cabin. Suicide is quickly dismissed by both the authorities aboard and the Americans, which made them decide to return the body and accompanying problem back to the Netherlands.

Van Dop can begin his investigation quietly and unhurried, but is getting nowhere as he's confronted with a broken, disunited family. Mrs. Kruit is silent, submissive woman who "intoxicated herself with the past" and refused to acknowledge her husband's flaws "so as not to get from the others." Namely their two children. There's a 13-year-old girl, Bertje, but she barely appears. She has a much older brother, Hans, who Van Dop finds to be an "odd boy" suffering from his "learned indifference." And he was not on the best of terms with his father. There's the problem of the two-sided, negative image of the victim.

Johan Kruit had a squeaky clean, public image of an honest, hardworking man who sat on several church and school boards, but back home he acted like "an Old Testament patriarch" who was quick to judge and hated compromises. An image that is completely shattered in the wake of his death when it's discovered he stole tens of thousands of guldens from his employer. And they're not the only victims of Kruit's financial shenanigans. Van Dop even comes across a secret mistress. So there are more than enough motives to go around.

I already said the who-and how take a backseat to the reasons behind the murder and its consequences. The murderer is not difficult to spot (ur'f ba gur pbire) and there's nothing really clever hiding behind the poisoning, which is limited to going pharmacists to ask if anyone bought some cyanide. Murder of a Negative is almost entirely focused on the why and showing how easily a situation can spin out of control. Even when someone does something horrible with the best of intentions. Some detective stories can best be compared to complicated riddles or intricate, maze-like crossword puzzles while others are character studies, but Murder of a Negative is simply watching dominoes falling down – as one bad deed leads to another ending a second murder. A death as inevitable as it's dark and tragic. So not particular satisfying as a fan of the plot-driven detective story, but readers who prefer the social and realist approach will find something of interest between its pages.

Van Ruler's Murder of a Negative is another demonstration that the Dutch detective story is all over the place, which refuses to be defined by a single school of thought or time-period. This makes finding your way not unlike groping around a pitch-black labyrinth. You take what you can get hold off and what you get is not always what you like or were looking for. Sometimes you get lucky and find a Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort. Other times you get a Bob van Oyen. Van Ruler falls into the category of interesting, but not to my liking. That being said, I did enjoy following a typical Dutch police character down all those familiar streets under the watchful eye of the Dom Tower. I just wish it had been more of a proper detective novel.

Penelope's Web (2001) by Paul Halter

I remember reading Xavier Lechard's review of Paul Halter's La toile de Pénélope (Penelope's Web, 2001) back in the late 2000s, on his old blogspot, describing the story as "one of Halter's most orthodox detective novel" born from a challenge posed by a Belgian scholar, Vincent Bourgeois – challenging him to devise "a strange manner" to seal the scene of a crime. Xavier praised Penelope's Web as an "elegantly and soundly devised" locked room mystery that ended up looking "more like Christie than Carr."

That old review never stopped to intrigue me and cemented Penelope's Web on my impossible crime wishlist. But, at the time, the only English translations of Halter's work consisted of a smattering of short stories with the first novel-length translation finally being published in 2010. Over the next ten years, John Pugmire of Locked Room International would go on to publish sixteen of Halter's novels and compiled two short story collections. Penelope's Web remained untranslated and tantalizingly inaccessible until recently. So let's cut through the tangled web of this long, eagerly anticipated translation.

Professor Frederick Foster was an entomologist who went to South America, "to study some rare species of spider," three years ago, but he went missing in Brazil and his body was eventually found on the bank of a river – murdered by a band of savages. Back home, the Foster household continued and his widow, Ruth Foster, became engaged to the local physician, Dr. Paul Hughes, who has been treating her for an illness of retina that made her practically blind. Ruth and Paul receive a nasty shock when they receive news that the body in Brazil was misidentified and Professor Foster is not only alive, but on his way back home to the village of Royston.

Professor Foster brought back more than just stories and anecdotes about his "incredible tribulations in the Amazonian jungle." What he brought back are some very rare, even hitherto unknown species of spiders and "practically tamed" one of them, which he named after his goddaughter, Penelope Ellis. Penelope is one of those unknown species with very well-developed silk-spinning organs and can spin a web faster than her sisters. Professor Foster placed Penelope in an open window of his study where she spun an fine, intricate silk web stretched across the oak window frame. Something that becomes important later on in the story.

So the situation is an uneasy one and begins to deteriorate when questions arise about his identity. A photograph of the professor turns up, but the name scribbled on the back, Peter Thompson, is that of his traveling partner. The man whose body was found on a Brazilian riverbank. Or was it? There's no denying Thompson is, or was, the spitting image of Professor Foster, but are they dealing with an impostor? A question that's not as easily answered as it should be.

Ruth is half-blind and Dr. Hughes always tried to avoid Professor Foster, because he had eyes only for his wife. Ruth's 12-year-old orphaned nephew, James, remembered him only as the uncle who read him Thousand and One Nights and Gulliver's Travels as an 8-year-old (he recently turned 12), while the professor brother-in-law, Major Edwin Brough, confessed he can't be sure either way – only Penelope believes Professor Foster is her godfather. Even if he aged, lost a lot of weight and grew a beard. So the police has to get involved and they tracked down a set of fingerprints from registry office to settle the matter. Shades of John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938)! But, of course, the fingerprints gets stolen during a frantic search for two escaped spiders.

The situation becomes an impossible one when Professor Foster apparently shot himself in his study with "the only door bolted from the inside" and two, of the three, windows "more or less rusted in place." The third window is open, but covered entirely by Penelope's intricately-woven, unbroken silky web. The dark hole in his temple was still "oozing blood" when they broke down the door and there was "a strong smell of gunpowder in the room." However, the police quickly eliminate the possibility of suicide, but how could it have been murder? Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst happen to be on hand to help out the local policeman in charge, Inspector Mike Waddell. 

Penelope's Web is one of Halter's shortest novels to date with the murder taking place close to halfway mark, which makes it tricky to discuss further details. Suffice to say, Halter delivered on his promise of not only finding a new way to lock and seal a room, but came up with an original, tailor-made solution to fit a very novel impossible crime. Interestingly, the how doesn't immediately reveal the murderer's identity, which was almost ruined by the annoying use of unidentifiable pronouns. Even when they made no sense to use in certain sentences. However, this hardly detracted from an overall enjoyable, clever and original locked room mystery. One that strongly reminded me of Halter's Le cercle invisible (The Invisible Circle, 1996) as it shared some of its strength and weaknesses.

While both Penelope's Web and The Invisible Circle both sport original impossible crimes with equally original solutions, but they're not exactly flawless and you can pick holes in them. For example (no spoilers), Dr. Hughes points out to Dr. Twist that there are "traces of gunpowder on the temple" indicating "the shot was fired from point-blank range," but, according to the solution, the shot was fired "through a piece of cloth." There are some other details about the locked room-trick that can be a little sketchy or make you scratch your head.

Penelope's Web is not merely the sum of its locked room-trick and Xavier said in his old review the story ended up being more Christie than Carr. I sort of agree. Penelope's Web is arguably better as who-and whydunit than as an impossible crime story as Halter expertly dangled the smartly clued solution in front of the reader's eye while simultaneously planting red herrings as a distraction. Judging the story purely as a whodunit, Penelope's Web stands as one of his stronger and more solid efforts. The locked room-trick is merely the cherry on top. You can say the same about the second murder, which gave the story a dark and tragic tinge, but a good use of a second murder that's not merely there as padding. Still a pity, because the second victim would have made an interesting detective character. Even if it was just for a one-shot.

So, yeah, I personally enjoyed and recommend Penelope's Web, but mystery readers who are still struggling with Halter might find themselves in another frustrating catch-as-catch-can wrestling match with his own unique brand of plotting and mystery writing.

Now that Penelope's Web can be crossed off my Halter/LRI wishlist, I hope Le crime de Dédale (The Crime of Daedalus, 1997), Le géant de pierre (The Stone Giant, 1998), Le douze crimes d'Hercule (The Twelve Crimes of Hercules, 2001), Le voyageur du passé (The Traveler from the Past, 2012) and Le tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger, 2004) will follow soon!

Death Among the Undead (2017) by Masahiro Imamura

Back in late 2018, Ho-Ling Wong posted an intriguing review of Masahiro Imamura's debut novel, Shijinso no satsujin (The Murders in the Villa of the Dead, 2017), which "made enormous waves in the world of Japanese mystery fiction" as it swooped the number one spots in the Kono Mystery ga Sugoi, Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best 10 and Honkaku Mystery Best 10 rankings – marking "the first time anyone had managed to grab the grand spot of these three annual mystery fiction rankings." There's a good reason why the book was a smashing success in Japan spawning "a multimedia franchise" with manga and live-action adaptations. 

Masahiro Imamura accomplished something in his debut that many have attempted, but only few have succeeded in doing. The Murders in the Villa of the Dead blurs the lines between two different genre, namely the detective and horror story, without corrupting or tainting the integrity of either. The book impressively juggles the traditional locked room mystery with an actual zombie outbreak, which isolated the characters to the titular villa and created one of the most original closed-circle situations on record!

So, naturally, I've been banging on about the book getting translated ever since and half-expected Pushkin Vertigo would eventually pick it up, but it was John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, who scooped up the publishing rights – getting out an English translation quicker than I could have asked for. Ho-Ling Wong translated The Murders in the Villa of the Dead, retitled Death Among the Undead, which has a must-read introduction by the "God of Mystery," Soji Shimada. A jealousy-inducing introduction as Shimada goes over the history of the Japanese detective story and particular how "the youngsters belonging to the university mystery clubs" rebelled against the domineering social school of crime fiction. This is now known as the beginning of the shin honkaku boom in Japan. A movement that completely rejuvenated the traditional, plot-oriented detective story and mystery fans everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to them.

However, while the West only recently have gotten a taste of the great shin honkaku school, the movement has been dominant in Japan for decades and readers "yearned for the kind of impetus" that Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) had created. Death Among the Undead gave expression to that yearning and might very well be the signal of "a revolutionary change for the mystery genre" in which authors look to fantastical elements, like "country house murder mysteries which utilize artificial elements" or zombies, to add something new and original to the core-puzzles of their novels. This is both amazing and slightly depressing. I'm poking here through the remains of the brief flareups of the Dutch detective story, while Japan is about to enter their Third Golden Age. 

Death Among the Undead forced that first step towards new grounds, like the shin honkaku movement did in the past, but the story begins as a typical, shin honkaku-style detective story with a university student as the narrator, Yuzuru Hamura – who's loves traditional detective fiction. So he tried to join the Shinkō University's Mystery Club, but its members were more interested in Young Adult fiction and used to club as an excuse to socialize. However, there's a second, unofficial and one-man mystery club on campus run by a third-year student. Kyōsuke Akechi is the president of the Mystery Society and aspires to be Great Detective, known as "The Holmes of Shinkō," who recruits Hamura as his Watson. Akechi and Hamura go around campus solving cases (like "The Case of the Leaked Theology Tests") or looking for lost cats as a part-time job for the Tanuma Detective Agency. Akechi always hoped something truly interesting and worthy would occur around him, but he was not content to wait until something turned up and had the habit to jump in on his own. This is why he has set his eyes on the Film Club's summer trip.

The Film Club has planned a trip to the Villa Violet, a private boarding house, situated near Lake Sabea in S Prefecture where they want to shoot a short, POV-style horror movie, but the trip is also "what some might call a group dating party" – which is why there not too keen on outsiders trying to horn in. A group of students gathering at a boarding house in the summer strikes Akechi as "the perfect place for some incident to occur," but he gets turned down several times. No outsiders! This changes when a note is found in club room asking "who will be the sacrifice this year?" A reference to a female club member committing suicide after their previous summer trip. Like I said, the story starts out like a fairly typical, neo-orthodox detective story. This could easily have been the premise of a story from The Kindaichi Case Files (The Legendary Vampire Murders comes to mind).

So there are a few cancellations and the persistent Akechi is approached by a second-year student, Hiruko Kenzaki, who offers Akechi and Hamura to join them after all. Otherwise, the trip might be canceled all together. What makes her deal so curious, is that they learn she's a detective "who has taken on many difficult and downright inexplicable cases that even the police couldn't handle." Kenzaki solved those cases with her "matchless powers of reasoning," but she comes from an illustrious family and her involvement is covered up with "strict restraints" on the media. So could there anything behind her arranging a place for them on the trip?

Akechi and Hamura become the outsiders in a group comprising of Film and Drama Club members, university alumni's and the manager of the Villa Violet, but, despite the alumni's turning out to be unpleasant characters, there's nothing to suggest all hell is about to break loose. Well, they discover that their smartphones have no signal and can't connect to the internet. There's the sound of ambulance sirens in the distance, helicopters in formation flying over and a brilliant, glowing aura behind the mountains. But everyone assumed that the Sabea Rock Festival was getting wild. Until they ventured out to explore an abandoned hotel in couples on "a Trial of Courage dare." This is where the story becomes unapologetically awesome!

While out in the dark, they can make out several figures descending the mountainside, swaying from side to side, dragging their feet and moaning until they were close enough for the lamp posts to illuminate "about a dozen swaying figures" coming their way – exposing their dark, bloodstained faces and torn clothing. And "the pungent, rotten smell of blood, grease and more." Obviously, these torn creatures are no extras hired to scare them and no-sold a rock thrown at its face. So they left cartoon smoke as they run back to the Villa Violet, but not everyone makes it back as what remains of the group barricade themselves inside. That one line, "things don't always go right," shows why the best storytellers today can be found in Japan.

They hear on the news that there was a possible bio-terror attack at the Rock Festival and the police has sealed off the entire area, but the news is evidently censored and communication cut-off to prevent mass panic. So now they have to survive until (hopefully) rescue comes, but one of them sees "a sign from heaven" in "the appearance of the walking dead" and a change to exact revenge. And the next day, one of the survivors is found dead under gruesome, hard to explain circumstances.

President of the Film Club, Ayumu Shindō, is found dead in his locked room and his death had not been a pleasant one. There were parts of his body that had been bitten off and his face had been gnawed all over, but nobody else had been in the gory, blood-drenched room and the balcony looked down on "the hordes of zombies swarming the grounds below." But they also find a folded piece of paper with "let's eat" scrawled on it. So there you have, what the story calls, "an unprecedented locked room mystery," because only a human could have possibly entered the room, but nobody "showed signs of having bitten Shindō to death." On the other hand, a zombie could have killed him, but "the possibility of a zombie penetrating the double-layered locked room, by accident or coincidence, is zero." Possibilities are explored through a locked room lecture, discussing fictional zombies and analyzing their own homegrown zombie hoard.

Their "brain only seems capable of sending simple orders" and "the coordination of their limbs is so bad they can't even run," easily losing their balance and struggling with obstacles, but they have "unlimited stamina" and feel no pain – which reduce the barricades to temporary obstacles. More importantly, they don't attack human, or each other, to eat, but to infect the living and reproduce. Anyone who's bitten gets infected, dies and rises again as a fully fleshed out zombie. Imamura brilliantly and logically integrated what the zombies can, and can't do, with the plot and story's setting, but how and where the zombies come into play is one of the key-pieces of the puzzle. Not just with the first murder. There's a second, equally gruesome murder in the elevator, where someone has been bitten to death and got his head smashed to a pulp, which is more of a how-was-it-done than an impossible crime. But the solution is ingenious! The third, very late murder is somewhat glossed over, as the body is impossible to reach, but the presence of zombies opened the door to an original twist on an old dodge.

Purely as a traditional, plot-driven detective novel, Death Among the Undead can stand with the best of its kind, past and present, but the story makes a point not to ignore the whydunit angle. Not merely the murderer's motive, but why the murderer employed such dangerous and high-risk methods. The trickery behind the murders can eventually be explained, but here it raises the question why such methods were employed. I really liked the dark duality the solution exposed between the intellectual and emotional facets of both the murders and murderer, which I thought was nicely complemented by an interesting and grim piece of commentary on the murder-magnet trope. I could go on, and on, praising the book, but there's one small detail that bugged me and it would be unfair to ignore or gloss over it.

Masahiro Imamura's succeeded in injecting zombies in a traditional detective story without killing it, but it came with a noticeable side effect. The characters took a more proactive approach to the murders than to the more pressing situation of hundreds of zombies, breaking down the barricades, slowly taking over the villa – floor by floor. They're rather passive when it comes to the zombies with a wait and hope for the best attitude and while coming up with all kinds of false-solutions to the murders, nobody is trying to figure out a way to escape from the villa to their van. Sure, they complain about the rope-ladder or a rope made out of bed sheets, but you're in the epicenter of a small, localized zombie apocalypse. What did they expect? A rooftop slip-and-slide? The zombies standing outside the villa can, theoretically, be bypassed. Just imagine the limited number of zombies as being water and Villa Violet a giant sluice. Eventually, they'll begin flooding the house, but you have control and slowdown the flood by using everything in the house to create either obstacles or a pathway. When one side of the villa has (mostly) cleared of zombies, they can slide down from a balcony, window or even the rooftop from the rope-ladder or bed sheets. And run to the van like the devil is on their heels. I was also slightly annoyed that nobody stumbled to the idea to sharpen the blunted, decorative swords and spears. This would have spared a little muscle power fighting an undead creature whose only advantage is unlimited stamina.

Nonetheless, this minor complaint is nothing to the detriment of the threat these terrifying creatures pose to the people trapped inside the villa. I do not fear Dracula, Freddy Krueger or Godzilla, but zombies never fail to unnerve me in how they can turn friends and family "into enemies in the blink of an eye." Imamura's zombies drive that point home very effectively. This is why an actual zombie apocalypse wouldn't kill us as a society or civilization. It would be the psychological aftermath that would neck us. Particularly if a zombie virus is permanent and turns everyone who dies into a zombie. Just imagine what that would do to people! I think I prefer to deal with malevolent ghosts or demonic children.

So, to draw this overlong and rambling review to a close, Death Among the Undead is close to perfect as a hybrid-mystery novel and has a plot bubbling with exciting new ideas and the spirit of exploration, which earned it a place alongside Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1954) as a rare classic of its kind. Simply put, the blast I had with Death Among the Undead could have wiped out the dinosaurs a second time. My best and favorite read of 2021! I sincerely hope we can look forward to an English translation of the sequel, Magan no hako no satsujin (The Murders in the Box of the Devil Eye, 2019), in 2022.

On a last, somewhat related note: I didn't want to wait too long with posting my review of this modern masterpiece and crammed as early as possible in my posting schedule. This came at the expense of yesterday's review of three short stories by Joseph Commings. So, if you have missed it, give it a look.

Miracle Wave: Joseph Commings' "Assassination—Middle East" (1981), "Murder of a Mermaid" (1982) & "The Grand Guignol Caper" (1984)

Joseph Commings began writing detective stories against "the unlikely backdrop of a pup tent in Sardinia during the Second World War" simply for "the amusement of his fellow soldiers," but back home there was a booming market for magazine fiction and his short stories appeared in numerous publications over the decades – ranging from Ten Detective Aces to The Saint Mystery Magazine. During those decades, Commings carved out a niche as one of America's premier writers of short impossible crime stories that can stand comparison with the best by Edward D. Hoch and Arthur Porges. 

Nearly all of his stories featuring his "formidable extrovert Yankee congressman" detective, Senator Brooks Urban Banner, are "stuffed to the gills with locked room lore and traditional Golden Age ambience." Sadly, the magazine market had largely dried up by the 1950s and Commings went through periods of complete obscurity and rediscovery, which came on top of a massive stroke in the early seventies that took away most of the use of his right hand side. A bright light came twelve years after he passed away when Crippen & Landru published Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner (2004) collecting fourteen stories and came with an excellent introduction by the late Robert Adey. We've been waiting ever since for a second volume.

So why not treat myself to a little preview of that future second collection of Banner stories by reading three, previously uncollected, stories with one of America's greatest detectives in the lead? Actually two uncollected stories, because the third was collected in Banner Deadlines under a different title, but I sorely needed reminding how great that story is. And, as usual, special thanks to Alex, of The Detection Collection, who helped guide me to these stories. 

"Assassination—Middle East" was originally published in the May, 1981, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and presents the gargantuan, harrumphing Senator Brooks U. Banner with a two-pronged problem within the American Consulate in Turkey – a disappearance and shooting like the one "that fired off World War I." Nathan Cross works in the Foreign Service at the American Consulate and is on his way to deliver passports and visas to two West Germans immigrants, Peter and Arla Geist. There was, however, a small oversight. Peter Geist forgot to sign his application and Cross needs his signature before he can hand over his passport, but all Geist does is performing a vanishing act with Cross as a witness. During his absence, "the Consul General had been shot dead by an Arab assassin" during a dinner for ambassadors, diplomats and VIPs. Luckily, one of the guests was nobody less than Senator Brooks U. Banner.

Simply as an impossible crime story, "Assassination—Middle East" cannot be counted among Commings best and most inspired stories with two simple problems with equally simple solutions. But, to his credit, my solution to Geist's disappearance was only half correct. Just nothing to get excited over. What was interesting is the story's setting and the diplomatic background, which reminded me of the recently discussed, 1960s mysteries by Charles Forsyte. 

"Murder of a Mermaid" was originally published in the August, 1982, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and is the shortest of the three stories discussed here. Senator Banner was driving back to New York when he decided to invite himself to the estate of a champion swimmer, Aimee Waverly, but found her half submerged body in the swimming pool. Aimee Waverly's body had been in the water for nearly a week and coroner is stumped, because she "fought something in the water until she went under" that left no bruises on her body. She was a championship swimmer who could out swim anybody and "break any death grip you get on her," which begs the question how someone could have drowned her without leaving a mark on the body. Something supernatural?

So more of a how-was-it-done than an impossible crime, but with a truly diabolical and original solution that can only be described as vintage Commings. I thought the murderer had thrown a weighted net over Aimee, which would have been a simple, elegant explanation for the signs of a struggle (worn nails and torn, scraped fingers) with something that didn't leave any marks on her – a net that could later be retrieved with a pool safety hook. I thought it made sense. Commings had a better and much more ingenious kind of trick hidden up his sleeve.

The third and last story is better known today under its alternative title, "The Vampire in the Iron Mask" (collected in Banner Deadlines), but first appeared in the November, 1984, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine as "The Grand Guignol Caper." I'm afraid I didn't fully appreciated "The Grand Guignon Caper" the first time around, because it's an unapologetic imitation of John Dickson Carr that can stand with the best by Paul Halter!

Colonel Walter Seven, of the Division of Criminal Investigation of US Army, is dispatched to post-war France to track down a hero of the resistance, Guy St. Hilaire, to pin the Medal of Honor on him. Guy St. Hilaire "killed over forty Krauts in hand-to-hand combat" and made "the way a little easier for the entrance of General Leclerc's armored division into Paris on the Day of Liberation," which brings him to an old chateau converted into a school on the outskirts of Paris. He lives and works there as a reclusive schoolteacher and reluctant to accept the medal, but Colonel Seven notices the bruises on the arms of a female schoolteacher, Lucienne Gallon. And that leads to a fight. Before they can come to serious blows, a schoolboy runs in to tell that his friend was just strangled by a vampire in the cemetery!

Achille Simplon, Pierre Cricq and Raoul Pax were in the cemetery, "horsing and pegging snowballs at one another," when a cloaked, faceless figure with iron teeth came up from behind a tombstone – seized and strangled Raoul. Achille and Raoul managed to get away and when they investigated found the footprints of the monster. These "particular tracks" lead from an old mausoleum dedicated to Duc de Gotha and back to it again, but Duc de Gotha had been beheaded during the French revolution and his resting place had not been entered in more than a century. It took two people to unlock and push open the rusted door with the cobwebs hanging undisturbed across the entrance, but upon entering, they discover someone had recently written "VAMPIR" in the dust on the coffin.

While all of this is going on, Senator Banner arrives to pin a medal on St. Hilaire and immediately has to give away his best imitation of Sir Henry Merrivale as Colonel Seven wonders whether it was "too many locked rooms" or "too many aperitifs" that "finally made Banner as crazy as a bedbug." But there's reason to his madness. Whether it's stating that knowing the answer to the locked tomb would leave them even further away from the solution to trampling on evidence in the snow. Everything worked and fitted together better than my Watson-like memory recalled. 

"The Grand Guignol Caper" succeeds not because of a single trick, twist or a grand surprise, but it's tapestry plotting with its various, independently moving parts coming together in a logical and convincing way to create a truly baffling crime. Something in the spirit of the cussedness of all things general. And to make it even more Carr-like, the story has a short, but spirited, fencing scene when Colonel Seven and St. Hilaire decide to have a duel. Because why not? Highly recommended! 

So, to make a long story short, these three stories perfectly samples Commings ability as a short story writer and plotter with and imaginative, often original bent of mind. A genuine unsung master of the short locked room mystery story. Just listen to the deafening silence emanating from The Invisible Event.

Lamb to the Slaughter (1995) by Jennifer Rowe

Jennifer Rowe is an Australian author and editor primarily known for her children's fantasy novels, published as by "Emily Rodda," which were adapted in Japan as a manga serial and 65-part anime TV series alongside a card game and a Nintendo DS video game – all appearing under the series banner title, Deltora Quest. Rowe also had a brief dalliance with the detective genre during the late 1980s and early '90s. 

Between 1987 and 1995, Rowe wrote five novels and a short story collection about an ABC-TV researcher and amateur detective, Verity "Birdie" Birdwood. The series is largely forgotten today, but, whenever the series is mentioned, it tends to come with a truckload of praise. And not without reason! If today's review is any indication of her other work, Rowe is an exception to the rule when it comes to the predicate "a modern Agatha Christie."  

Lamb to the Slaughter (1995) is the fifth, and final, entry in the Verity Birdwood series with a plot best described as a modern reinterpretation of the contemplative, murder-in-the-past style detective novels – like Christie's Five Little Pigs (1942) and Sparkling Cyanide (1945). I was particular reminded of Five Little Pigs in which the truth is locked away somewhere in the past with all the clues and hints dropped in conversations or hidden in descriptions and the psychological makeup of the characters. The result is startlingly good! A devilishly clever, classically-styled detective story camouflaged as a modern, character-driven crime novel.  

Five years ago, Rosalie Lamb found the body of her pregnant sister-in-law, Daphne, lying on the kitchen floor of her shack with her head "smashed to pulp." She stumbled to the pub to get help and found her brother, Trevor, slumped over the wheel of his wrecked car "covered in blood." Trevor Lamb was arrested, tried and convicted to life in prison. Which is where the case would have rested had it not been for a crusader of justice.  

Jude Gregorian didn't like Trevor Lamb "any more than the cops, or the judge and jury had done," but "he didn't think dislike was a good enough reason to gaol a man for life." Gregorian threw himself at the case and wrote a bestselling book, Lamb to the Slaughter, which suppressed no inconvenient facts or impression. It showed why the jury had convicted Trevor and then "carefully explained why it had been wrong." A long, drawn-out legal and PR battle ended with Trevor being pardoned and Gregorian accompanying him back to Hope's End to the bosom of his family. Verity Birdwood is there right with him as an ABC-TV researcher to help setup a documentary and interview. But his return is not a happy homecoming for everyone. 

Daphne's parents and brother still live in Hope's End and her father is enraged that the man who killed his daughter only did "five bloody years in gaol," but Trevor succeeds in riling up the entire town – including his own "wonderful family." At the pub, Trevor attacks everyone who screamed for his blood or talked to the police, while his relatives blew their mouths to the press and made everything ten times worse. But now he's back. And he knows who really killed Daphne. Trevor lets everyone know he's going to reveal the truth to the world, but leaves them hanging for the night. So you can probably make an educated guess what happens next.  

This build towards that second, inevitable murder gobbles up one-third of the story and hardly gives unsuspecting readers the impression they're reading a whodunit in the tradition of Queen of Crime. Nor could you mistake the book for a squeaky clean, modern cozy as nothing could be further removed from the world of nosy cats, knitting patterns and soft pastel covers than Hope's End. 

Kate, of Cross Examining Crime, whose reviews of the series served as a reminder to track down one of Rowe's mysteries mentioned in her 2018 review she nearly stranded in the third chapter. She found the social milieu of the town and its populace, especially the Lambs, a little too unpleasant as "they just exude sweat, alcohol and crassness." Kate has a point. Hope's End is a rural, lower-class town of people close to the bottom rang of society and the place is pretty much life's end station. The picture Rowe gives of Hope's End is not a happy one and the story is definitely a little overwritten or drawn out in parts (such as the beginning), but something I can easily forgive when it serves a purpose or has a payoff. Lamb to the Slaughter has both with the story picking up when Trevor is murdered under identical circumstances.  

Since this second murder is guaranteed to get national exposure, Birdie has to discreetly play detective as she talks to everyone involved trying to piece together a fragmented past to see where it fits the present. There's one constant resurfacing in every conversation she has, "everyone loved Daphne," but, if Trevor didn't kill her, who did? There's also an interesting plot-thread concerning the missing murder weapon, which the police were unable to find and forensic evidence reveals "whatever was used to kill Trevor Lamb was used to kill his wife as well" and must have been hidden somewhere in Hope's End all along – right under everyone's nose. Rowe artfully dovetails every strand of the plot with characters backstories, histories and the various scenes to come to a conclusion that's both surprising and as inevitable as Trevor Lamb's murder.  

Where Lamb to the Slaughter cemented its status as classic is the finely-tuned balance between fair play clueing and devious misdirection. You see, I very briefly considered the murderer, but was unable to see how this person fitted that role and abandoned it as a possibility. Only to be shown this person was the murderer with all the clues being right in front of me! This is antidote I sorely needed after my previous disaster.  

Rowe's Lamb to the Slaughter is bright light in the dimmed nineties and rank it alongside Roger Ormerod and Mary Monica Pulver's Original Sin (1991) as the best the pure detective story had to offer at the time. Highly recommended!

The Shanghai River Demon's Curse (1997) by Seimaru Amagi

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the co-creator of The Kindaichi Case Files, Seimaru Amagi, wrote nine "light novels" in the series and four were translated as part of either the Kodansha English Library or Kodansha Ruby Books, which were intended as an educational tool to help improve the English of Japanese readers – not to dazzle Western readers. Hence, each novel ends with a nearly thirty-page long English-Japanese vocabulary list. 

According to our resident expert, Ho-Ling Wong, the English editions enjoyed a long print-run in Japan and there must be "a fair number in circulation," but, in the West, copies have become as rare and elusive as a Kappa. Not quite rare or obscure enough to elude me forever!

Several years ago, I came across Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), which is possibly the first detective novel to use the internet meaningfully in a traditionally-styled mystery complete with an isolated, snowbound setting and ironclad alibis. You can borrow a digital copy from the Internet Archive. Next one that fell into my hands was Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin (Opera House, the New Murders, 1994), published in English simply as The New Kindaichi Files, but the plain, uninspired title hides a classic, first-rate theatrical locked room mystery – translating into my favorite Kindaichi title to date. Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998) is a very minor, short and somewhat flawed detective story, but you can cross-off some of its shortcomings against an imaginative piece of miniature world-building and an inventive impossible crime. So that left with me with one more title to track down. 

Shanhai gyojin densetsu satsujin jiken (The Shanghai River Demon's Curse, 1997) is the fifth novel in the series and the third to be translated, which turned out to be a bit of an odd duck. 

The Shanghai River Demon's Curse brings Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase to Shanghai, China, where the famous Yang Variety Troupe performs a daily, two-hour variety show at the Mermaid Hall. An enormous ship moored along the bank of the Huangpu River. The main event of the show is an acrobatic underwater act, "The Legend of the River Demon," which is patterned after the tale of a creature that's half-fish, half-human that lives at the bottom of the river. A monster with the ability to curse, or even kill, human beings. In some places, it's considered "bad luck to mock such spirits on stage" like "in Japanese ghost stories."

Following a performance of "The Legend of the River Demon," the director of the troupe, Yang
Wang, is found in his office with a bullet in his head, but his body and the floor are unaccountably soaking – water has "the unpleasant odor of freshwater fish." Even stranger is that the murderer scratched a huge Chinese character for “spring,” a meter wide, on the wall. The first word of the lullaby of the river demon's curse. However, the Shanghai police have a very human suspect in their sights.

Once the show begins, with "animals like the tiger and monkey roaming around," the door to the dressing room is locked from the inside and it's "impossible for anyone from the audience to get in," which was still locked from the inside when the show ended. Nearly everyone on that side of the door had an alibi except the victim's son, Yang Xiaolong. His young sister, Yang Lili, writes her Japanese penfriend, Miyuki, a distressed letter saying her brother is suspected to have murdered their father. Miyuki decides to go Shanghai to help by bringing her childhood friend, Hajime Kindaichi, who's "the grandson of the master detective Kosuke Kindaichi" and "solved several cases for the Metropolitan Police Department." But his grandfather's name or reputation is not as well-known in China, which is one of the challenges facing the young detective who became a little timid when landed in foreign country for the first time in his life.

When they finally arrive in Shanghai, there are two big surprises waiting in the wings. Firstly, they find Detective Li Boer, of the Shanghai Police, in the company of their friend in the MPD, Inspector Kenmochi. Recently, the body in a decade old murder case was identified and "a small clue" led the Tokyo police to the Japanese director/producer of the Yang Variety Troupe. But is there's a link to the new murder? Secondly, Kindaichi and Miyuki get to witness a second murder during a performance of "The Legend of the River Demon" when a body plunged down from above the stage into the swimming tank. Another bullet to the head and the Chinese character for "summer" was slashed in the victim's back with a knife. So the murderer was intended to follow the grim lullaby. 

In spring, the boat is flooded,

In summer, the river turns a murky mauve,

In autumn, the traveler must drink putrid water,

In winter, fish no longer swim but sleep.

These murders also have an element of the impossible as the victims were shot with a derringer, which apparently can vanish, or materialize, whenever it's convenient to the murderer. The part of the ship between Yang's office and the dressing room was locked at the time of murder, which meant that nobody went in, or out, before the police arrived. So nobody had an opportunity to dispose of the gun, but they went over the entire ship with dogs and metal detectors without finding anything. They simply assume the murderer found a way to throw it in the river until discovering the second murder was committed with the same weapon! I've seen two variations on this type of vanishing weapon trick before and hated both of them. This one is marginally better, because Amagi tried to make it somewhat convincing. But the trick is still Yozaburo Kanari. Yes, Kanari's name in this context is a euphemism for shit.

Well, so far, it seems like a fairly standard and typical Kindaichi story with exception of the setting and its effect on Kindaichi's normally cocky attitude, but the story moves away from the series formula in the second-half – turning into a chase story with a coming-of-age angle. Kindaichi helps Yang Xiaolong to escape from police custody and they're chased to Shanghai as they make a run to the Yang's home village. A dirt poor place where the children had to grow up faster in order to make money, which is why Xiaolong and his sister acts so much mature than Kindaichi. But, while their on the run, they both find something of themselves they had either lost or never had. This comes at the expensive of the usual plot structure with the alibis, impossibilities and the nursery rhyme theme of the murders being heavily underplayed during the second-half.

I also hated that during the first-half an intriguing, quickly discarded plot-thread was introduced when Kindaichi learned of a former troupe member, Wang Meiyu, who was a superb swimmer, but a bit strange. Meiyu not only swam really well and could stay underwater forever, but "she only ate aquatic plants and freshwater fish." And it was her talent that lead the troupe to adopt the "The Legend of the River Demon" as their signature act. But then strange rumors began to circulate. Members began to talk that every time she took a shower, the bathroom would "reek of fish" with "large fish scales on the floor." So they began to avoid Meiyu and culminated in her committing suicide by jumping into the river from the toilet window. She left four characters scrawled in blood on the wall and has now risen from "the depths of that murky river" to extract revenge. But the plot-thread was quickly brushed aside. And given an even quicker explanation towards the end. So the only reason why it was even brought up was to give the book a snappy title.

Thankfully, the solution was not all bad with a pretty good alibi-trick and an inspired piece of misdirection, which successfully hid the murderer for a good chunk of the story. I eventually figured it out, because if you how the gun can vanish and reappear, you know who pulled the trigger. Not so good is that other parts of the solution stretches things considerably with an unnecessary, rather cruel twist nearly ruining the whole thing. I mean, this murderer is very likely going to be executed. So why throw that revelation out there? Amagi is the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story who is nearly unmatched when it comes to erecting grand-scale plots with majestic locked room-and alibi-tricks, but when it comes to characters, sometimes he goes one twist too far. Deadly Thunder has a similar problem.

So, on a whole, The Shanghai River Demon's Curse is not entirely without interest and its break with the formula and foreign setting makes it a worthwhile read to long-time fans of the series, but don't expect anything more than an average detective story. Regrettably, the weakest of the four translated novels.

This more or less closes the chapter on The New Kindaichi Files light novels with such untranslated novels as Yūrei kyakusen satsujin jiken (The Ghost Passenger Ship Murder Case, 1995) and Onibijima satusjin jikes (The Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, 1997) remaining tantalizingly out of my reach. Well, the novels are out of my reach, but not the '90s anime adaptations. So I might make one of those my next stop in the series.

Owl & Raccoon: "WDYG" (2013) and "Not With a Bang" (2016) by Matt Ingwalson

Matt Ingwalson is a public speaker and independent writer who self-published three mystery novellas that are "part hardboiled police procedural and part classical locked room mystery," which features two ex-SWAT team members, Owl and Raccoon, who became detectives with the Missing Persons divisions – encountering more than one seemingly impossible disappearance. I read the first novella, "The Single Staircase" (2012), back in 2019 and stands as one of the most unconventional pieces of impossible crime fiction I've read to date. 

What makes this short-lived series standout is not merely the attempt to marry the modern crime novel with the traditional detective story, which has been done before. It's minimalists approach to the characterization, plotting and storytelling.

Ingwalson surgically removed everything from the police procedural and locked room mystery except the absolute bare essentials with short, unadorned sentences and several dozens of chapters running anywhere from a half-a-page to three or four pages – allowing to point a laser-focus on those bare essentials. Someway, somehow, this radical modernistic style actually worked with the author revealing himself to be somewhat of a master of the whydunit. More than the who-and how, Ingwalson is interested in explaining why such an artificial, time-worn trope as the locked room mystery turned up in a very modern, realistically presented setting. This is especially true for the last two novellas in the series. 

"WDYG" (2013) brings Owl and Raccoon to a mall where 17-year-old Amanda McDonald was last seen shopping with her three school friends, Sarah Neils, Haley Comet and Katrina Dempsey. When they arrived at the food court, Amanda told her friends she had to use the bathroom while they waited right near the entrance. They never moved from that spot. After 15 minutes, they began to wonder what happened to her or why she didn't respond to their text messages ("where did you go?"). Katrina walked into the bathroom to discover Amanda's shopping bags in the corner of a stall, "paper bags ripped up" and "the clothes she bought all over the floor." Amanda's purse is later found in a trashcan, but she's nowhere to be found. She had vanished as if by magic!

Owl and Raccoon have a tricky situation on their hands, because they have no idea how reliable their witnesses actually are. They were texting and "teenage girls, you know? They lie." But why? She apparently had no reason to run away from home, nor was there's a way she could have been kidnapped without it being seen. So what happened? A case complicated as their witnesses could also be bratty, eye-rolling suspects who keep their lips closely sealed. Not to mention the discovery of a body (not Amanda), which could get the case assigned to another division.

The solution has some great synergy between the inexplicable disappearance of Amanda and the more darker, sordid plot-elements, one being a consequence of the other, but particularly liked how the illogical side of a logical decision fueled the plot – hinged on a rarely-used motive to rig up a locked room. John Dickson Carr gave four motives in The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) to create a locked room scenario, but one that's rarely mentioned or used is (ROT13) perngvat na vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba vf gb trg bhg bs n qnatrebhf fvghngvba be qvirefvba. My only misgiving is that the vanishing-act has an obvious answer staring you in the face, which, yes, made the why even more perplexing. And there was more than enough reason why Owl and Raccoon were "chasing shadows" before finally getting to the truth. But the only reason why it took Owl so long to figure out the vanishing-act, is because the plot wouldn't allow an earlier disclosure.

So, besides that one very minor flaw, "WDYG" is a glimpse of what the crime and detective genre could have looked like had it continued to build on its rich history instead of discarding it. 

"Not With a Bang" (2016) is the third and, as of this writing, last entry in the series and poses a spectacular impossible disappearance during a hostage situation. A commuter stops in the middle of Five Points, a busy intersection, blocking traffic in all directions. A police man approaching the bus is greeted with gunfire and calls-up the SWAT. Fifteen minutes later, there were "twelve patrol unites all over the damn place" with snipers covering both sides of the bus and a drone directly overhead. A teenage boy opens a window and yells, "please don't shoot my dad."

The boy is quickly identified as 17-year-old Todd Gonzales who disappeared the previous day when "he was allegedly snatched at gunpoint by his absentee father," Cody Jacobi. What follow were more shots and "a stampede of hostages" being released from the bus, which left Cody with only his son as a hostage. But then Cody opened a window and yelled, "you tell that bitch goodbye for us, we'll see her in hell." So they stormed the bus after throwing a flash bang grenade and tear gas canisters through a window, but they found Cody alone. There was "no trace of the teenaged boy who'd cried desperately through the window just a few minutes before."

What a way to begin your story! But the premise is perhaps a little misleading and you shouldn't expect some kind of thriller with an impossible crime angle, because everything quickly calms down.

JJ, of The Invisible Event, who directed the fandom's attention to the series back in 2015 and described "Not With a Bang" perfectly as "a deliberately, almost obstinately, lo-fi undertaking." Owl and Raccoon have a free hand to investigate the disappearance of the boy as his father is safely in custody, but says he has no idea what happened to his son or where he could be. So they have to retrace the steps of father and son during those twenty-four hours and dig through their family history, but "the not knowing" part of working Missing Persons is beginning to take its toll on the two detectives. 

"Not With a Bang" closes the door on the series without locking it so tightly that a fourth novella, or perhaps a full-length novel, is out of the question. A potential sequel is actually alluded to in the penultimate chapter. Even if a new story never materializes, this short-lived series received a fitting and satisfying conclusion with Ingwalson's most ingenious and daring locked room-trick. A trick with a very precarious and flashy setup demanding a good deal of motivation to convince the reader, which here was quite a hurdle to clear, but a lot of thought was put into the motive – dovetailing it with the backstory, characterization and clues. Add a good, old-fashioned piece of locked room trickery, brazenly performed in front of "a dozen rifle scopes," you have somewhat of a minor gem on your hands.

Matt Ingwalson wrote three beautifully paced, well balanced and thoroughly unconventional locked room stories, which shines a spotlight on the why of the impossibilities and how they came about. So they succeeded as both traditional, plot-driven detective stories and very modern, hardboiled police procedurals. More importantly, the Owl and Raccoon series possibly could be one of those extremely rare cases where a modernist build on tradition to create something truly good and special. Even demonstrating the modernistic dictum that sometimes less can be more. This is why Owl & Raccoon: Locked (2016), collecting all three novellas, deserves a place on the shelves of every self respecting and fanatical locked room reader.

In the Grip of the Lobster (1965) by B.J. Kleymens

I closed my relatively recent review of Ton Vervoort's Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963) with a promise to smear out my future explorations of those obscure, untranslated and long out-of-print Dutch detective novels, but curiosity got the better of me – happily tumbling down another rabbit hole. So here we are again. You can blame it wholly on the ghosts of Vervoort and the Frederic Dannay of the Low Countries, Ab Visser. 

Back in March, I reviewed Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963), subtitled "het dood spoor van de tweeling" ("the twins' dead end"), which is the second title in the so-called "Zodiac Mysteries." An ambitious collaborative effort, under the editorship of Visser, who gathered a dozen writers each tasked with writing a detective or crime novel in which one of the twelve signs of the zodiac plays a central and perhaps even a decisive role. This idea had a ton of potential and could have been a notable contribution to the genre, but the project was abandoned after two years and eight novels. You can find a list of the eight published zodiac-themed mysteries in the review of Murder Among Astrologists.

I don't know why the series was abandoned, but it could not have been due to a lack of writers to pen the remaining four novels. While playing internet detective, I came across an archived article from 1964 mentioning the four unpublished contributors. So this opened the door to the elusive Phantom Library with potentially more items of "Lost Media" to add to its shelves.

I already knew Robert van Gulik was one of the four writers and that he "had already finished his story for the series," which was likely published in The Monkey and the Tiger (1965) as the Judge Dee novella "De nacht van de tijger" ("The Night of the Tiger," 1963) and can be read as a backdoor entry in the series – as Judge Dee was born in the year of the tiger in the Chinese zodiac. But what about the other three writers? Leo Derksen was a journalist and writer, but, to my knowledge, not with roots in the detective story. Dick A. van Ruler was the art editor of Utrechts Nieuwsblad and one-time TV presenter who has one detective novel to his credit, Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963), which is currently on the big pile. Jacques Presser was a historian and part-time mystery writer who penned four madcap detective novels between 1953 and 1965. Nothing else to link those three names or their work to that abandoned series beside that one article.

So this begs the question whether the series was, on paper, completed with article mentioned that all twelve writers wrote a novel around one of the astrological signs. What happened?

I suppose the publisher pulled the plug (disappointing sales figures?), but what happened to the unpublished manuscripts Derksen, Presser and Van Ruler contributed to the project? Are the manuscripts slowly crumbling to dust somewhere in a drawer or were they thrown away decades ago? Or did one or two follow the Van Gulik route? Derksen appears to have not written anything in our genre and Van Ruler's only novel was published around the time the series began, which probably got him the gig, but Presser's Moord in de Poort (Murder in the Poort, 1965) possibly could be a lost Zodiac mystery. The window of the time is very narrow, as 1965 was the year the series was canceled, but Murder in the Poort was Presser's last detective novel and the only one to be published by N.V. W. van Hoeve – which also published the Zodiac series. So tracking down a copy has been added to my priority wishlist and finding any trace of an astrological plot-thread should settle the matter.

But what has all of this to do with today's review? While exploring the rabbit warren of the Dutch detective story of the 1950s and '60s, I also stumbled across several contemporary reviews of the Zodiac series. One title, in particular, caught my attention.

B.J. Kleymens' In de greep van de Kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965) was the seventh or eighth novel to appear in the Zodiac series, which received some surprising and suspicious praise from the normally hostile critics. Carl J. Bicker evoked the name of Raymond Chandler and pointed out that the detective-characters introduced in the story were unlikely to carry a whole series, but also noted it was a well put together deduction story. I knew the name of the reviewer sounded familiar and a quick search revealed Bicker was a pseudonym of the editor of the Zodiac series, Ab Visser! A second review was published under his own name. There were a few warning bells, but the premise sounded like something straight out of a Christopher Bush or Brian Flynn mystery. So I took a small gamble and tracked down a copy. But this presented me with another puzzle.

Who was J.B. Kleymens? This is a question with an easy and difficult answer. The easy answer is that it was the shared penname of J. Kleijn and B. Mensen, but the difficult part is answering who they were. A little detective work allowed me to identify the former as the journalist and writer, Jek Kleijn. Jek is an unusual name and his surname means small or short in Dutch, which makes his involvement evident as one of the two journalistic detective-characters is named Jek Groot – whose surname translates as big, tall or long. You can Anglicize those names as Jack Short and Jack Long. Unfortunately, I've been unable to pin down the identity of his co-author, because, without a first name, Mensen returns too many unrelated results. Not a bad piece of genre archaeology, if I say so myself.

Just one more thing before finally getting around to the review. In the Grip of the Lobster is listed in the review of Murder Among Astrologists as In the Grip of Cancer, which is a technically correct translation. But in Dutch, the name of the zodiac Cancer is Kreeft (Lobster) and thought In the Grip of Cancer sounded a little brutal for a well intended, but completely amateurish, detective story. Yeah... I'm afraid the review is going to be significantly shorter than the long, roundabout introduction. 

In the Grip of the Lobster takes place in the small, sleepy and entirely fictitious provincial town of Rooldrecht where normally very little or exciting happens. Least of all during the tri-weekly council meeting at town hall. Jan Frens and Jek Groot in the press box were secretly looking forward to a cold glass of beer in the favorite pub of the local journalists, which is when it happened. An elderly, venerable councilor, P.C. Hooftman, apparently decided to take a nap during the meeting. Very much to the annoyance of the mayor, but Hooftman is not sleeping. He's as dead as a door nail. The doctor determines he had a stroke, but then lightening strikes twice when, an hour later, the town hall messenger dies under similar circumstances and that same evening Frens witnesses a shady individual, face hidden under a big black umbrella, breaking into town hall – rifling through the documents of that day's meeting. So he follows the mysterious man with the black umbrella, but it's Frens who's caught red handed and eventually imprisoned, which places the two local journalists in direct opposition to the police. Frens and Groot are determined to get to the bottom of the business before the police.

What ensues is clumsy, amateurish dance around shady, small town politics with a development project, a dry-as-dust document that everyone wants to get their hands on and a black umbrella with an astrological sign stamped the handle. But nothing particular clever or good is done with any of the plot pieces.

There were one, or two, good ideas with a glimmer of potential. Such as the risky poisoning-trick, which is already unconvincing, but the way in which the poison was delivered could still have made for a good howdunit. But what did they do? They simply tell the reader how it was done without any real detective work. I also expected something clever from the journeying umbrella that was lost, found and lost again. The last time it got lost something suggested it could have been "Chesterton's umbrella," but that possibility would have only fitted an even more unimpressive solution. 

In Grip of the Lobster is written well enough, especially its opening and closing chapters, but, purely as a detective story, it's nothing more than a well intended, clumsily plotted and sparsely clued piece of amateur detective fiction. There were many tells in the story betraying its authors were either the most casual of mystery readers or complete outsiders, but appreciated the attempt to craft a genuine whodunit. So a textbook example of the chase being more fun than the capture.