The Great Escape

"We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch this basket carefully."

- Colonel Von Luger (The Great Escape, 1963)

Recently, Dan of "The Reader is Warned" compiled a two-part list, titled "5 Impossible Crime 'Thrillers' to Try” and "5 More Impossible 'Thrillers' to Try," which made a decent attempt at listing all the notable, high-paced thrillers with a locked room or impossible crime element, but both lists omitted the best specimen of this particular blend of crime-fiction – namely Michael Gilbert's outstanding Death in Captivity (1952). After littering Dan's comment-section with recommendations for the book, I decided to take down my copy from the shelves to see if it could stand re-reading. And it absolutely did!

Death in Captivity was reprinted in 2007 by the now defunct Rue Morgue Press, under its US title The Danger Within, which came with a foreword by Tom and Enid Schantz briefly going over Gilbert's personal experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Italy during World War II.

The foreword is titled "The Escapes of Michael Gilbert" and gives the modern reader an idea just how extraordinary this piece of detective-and thriller fiction truly is. Not only are the plot and setting practically unique within the genre, but many of the events in the book were inspired by Gilbert's first-hand experiences as both a POW and an escapee in enemy territory – which gave everything a chilling veneer of authenticity. Particular the depictions of everyday life at the prison camp, the secret tunneling activities in the various huts and the occasional pestering of the Italian prison guards ("a bit of sentry-baiting").

Another aspect that sets this book apart from other World War II mystery-and thriller novels is that it deals primarily with the Fascisti of Italy rather than the Nazis of Germany.

The Danger Within takes place in Campo 127, "easily the best camp" one of the prisoners had been in, but perhaps the most "comfortably lodged" group of prisoners are the six men held in Room 10 in Hut C. As a rule, the rooms were designed to hold eight men and usually overflowed with "ten or even twelve less fortunate prisoners." Captain Benucci had ordered the men, all of them notorious escapees, to occupy the same room. Reasoning that if he had "six dangerous criminals to watch, it was easier, on a whole, to have them together," but that only pooled all of their knowledge and experience in one place – resulting in "the oldest of existing undiscovered tunnels in the camp." A tunnel Colonnello Aletti, Commandant of Campo 127, claimed simply could not exist.

The entrance to this tunnel lay in the kitchen of Hut C and in the middle of this cookery, set in a six-foot slab of concrete let into the tiled floor, stood a stove. A huge cauldron, shaped like "a laundry copper," which hid a trapdoor to the tunnel and could only be revealed by the combined effort of four strong men with assistance of double pulleys – effectively evading discovery by being "too big to see." I thought this was a nice little Chestertonian touch to the all-important secret tunnel that will play a key role throughout the entirety of the story.

One day, the protagonist of the story, Captain Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles, crawls down to the tunnel to continue work, but discovers that during the night part of the roof had come down. Inexplicably, there's a body underneath the pile of fallen sand at the end of the tunnel. Something that should not be possible, because this person could not have gained access to the tunnel on his own nor could an outside group have entered the locked Hut C after nightfall. Even more troublesome is that the victim is identified as a Greek POW, Cyriakos Coutoules, who's suspected by everyone of being a stool-pigeon for the Italians or even a double-agent in the employ of the Nazis.

Two of the special detainees in Hut C, Captain Roger Byles and Captain Alex Overstrand, had previously uttered threats to lynch Coutoules. However, their immediate problem of Hut C and Colonel Baird, head of the Escape Committee, is how to tackle the problem of a dead man cluttering the best tunnel they had. So they decide to dump the body in a smaller tunnel, located in Hut A, that had been "allotted low priority by the Escape Committee" and stage a roof collapse there, but how they move the body from one hut to another, under the nose of the guards, is one of my favorite and funniest scenes of the entire story – something of a cross between 'Allo, 'Allo (war-time setting) and Fawlty Towers (the episode Kipper and the Corpse, 1979).

You occasionally get these brief burst of typical British humor. Such as when some of the prisoners are preparing a stage-play and they pick one in which one of the characters, rapturously, exclaims "Italy! Oh, it's hard to take in even the bare possibility of going there. My promised land, Doctor, which I never thought to see otherwise than in dreams." Needless to say, that line brought the house down.

But, on a whole, the story-telling tends to be serious in tone, because the myriad of (potential) problems facing the POWs of Campo 127 are no laughing matter.

The events at the POW camp take place against the backdrop of the impending invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland by Allies, eventually culminating in the disposal of Benito Mussolini, but the consequences of an Allied victory in Italy is a double-edged knife for both parties at the camp. On the one hand, the POWs fully realize the Germans aren't going to set free the sixty thousand prisoners in Italy and that, one day, they could simply find themselves being put on a train "to Krautland." On the other hand, the card-carrying members of the Fascist Party, such as Captain Benucci and the sinister Mordaci of the Carabinieri Reali, know they'll be put in front of a military tribunal when the Allies arrive – which would probably end with them having to face a firing squad.

So the inexplicable death of Coutoules and the accompanying cloud of suspicions does very little to improve the slightly strained situation at the camp, but the situation becomes rather serious when Captain Byles is charged by Benucci with the murder of the Greek POW and is placed in solitary confinement – condemned to die in several days time. Captain "Cuckoo" Goyles is asked by the Escape Committee to investigate who killed Coutoules, why and where. And, most importantly, how his body ended up in the tunnel.

In my opinion, the explanation for the impossible appearance of a body in a hermetically sealed, air-tight and blocked tunnel is as simplistic and logical as it's original. A one-of-a-kind impossibility in a completely unique crime novel that performed a perfect juggling act with its detective story elements, thriller components and spy material. Gilbert never allowed one of those elements to overshadow the other, but neither were they diluted. They worked in perfect harmony with one another. For example, the clues that will help you solve the detective story elements are provided by some of the more gruesome, thriller-ish aspects of the plot. You'll know what I mean when you get to it.

The Danger Within is an impressive and perfect latticework of differing genres, which is what makes it impossible to pigeonhole the book, but the climax of the story is a fine piece of wartime fiction as the inmates of Campo 127 prepare themselves to make "The Great Crawl." A fitting end to this semi-autobiographical wartime crime story. An ending that fitted like the final piece of the puzzle that completed the whole picture of this marvelously clever and exciting story. I simply can't recommend this one enough.

I'll end this review by saying that re-reading The Danger Within has inspired me to finally airlift my other Gilbert titled from the snow-capped tops of Mt. To-Be-Read. I'm not sure which titles actually reside there, but I believe they were Close Quarters (1947), Death Has Deep Roots (1951) and The Killing of Katie Steelstock (1980). So you can look forward to a review of one of those titles in the hopefully not so distant future.

Finally, Kate at Cross Examining Crime and Mike of Only Detect also reviewed the book (here and here), while Sergio of Tipping My Fedora reviewed the 1959 movie based on the book (here).

Putting Down the Dog

"The impossible, the possible, and the probable were sorted into groups, and from the kaleidoscopic jumble of evidence was formed a pattern."

- Ngaio Marsh (Death at the Bar, 1940)

Joanna Cannan came from a family with a high concentration of published authors and took her first, tentative steps in the world of literature at age ten, when she helped her sister edit The Tripled Crown: A Book of English, Scotch and Irish Verse for the Age of Six to Sixteen (1908), but, as a novelist, she would garner success as a writer of children books and detective fiction.

Cannan is perhaps not one of the best remembered figures in the world of detective fiction, however, she has enjoyed a longer print-run than many of her contemporaries. Several of her mystery novels, such as Body in the Beck (1952), were reissued as large print editions in the Linford Mystery Library and she rode the first wave of the current Renaissance Era when the Rue Morgue Press reprinted two of her books in 1999 – namely They Rang Up the Police (1939) and Death at the Dog (1940). They must have been eagerly picked up at the time, because they were both out-of-print again halfway through the previous decade.

I guess that's why she, sort of, receded into the background again, but something put her back on the top of my list. I don't actually remember what, but some comment here or a blog-post there made me move her to the top of the pile.

Death at the Dog takes place in the countryside village of Witheridge Green during the first months of the so-called "Phoney War," which began with the British and French declaring war on Germany and ended with the invasion of the Low Countries – which took place between September 1939 and May 1940. The opening chapter mentions "it was only six weeks since the beginning of the war" and this places the events of the story in the second and third week of October.

So only six weeks since war was declared, but so far, the only noticeable effects were the rigidly enforced blackouts, the mobilization of the army, petrol shortages and Londoners who were fleeing to the safety of the countryside. All of these problems did not bypass Witheridge Green and in particular Eve Hennisty, licensee of the local pub, called "The Dog," who worries about the black paper that has already began to warp, tear and split. As well as the disastrous effect it has on the amount of visitors who enter the more exclusive lounge bar of the pub, but they also have lingering, old-world problem hanging out in the bar.

Old Mathew Scaife is the local squire and the largest landowner in the county, but, during his stewardship of the ancient estate, the family home had "decayed into a ruin" and "thistles and nettles advanced like armies" on the surrounding grounds – constantly appearing in court for his neglectfulness and ignoring regulations. He was also an unpleasant character who has been called "that begotten old reptile" and "foul old beast." And his latest scheme involved evicting long-standing tenants from their cottages and let them to London evacuees at a much higher price.

So there are more than enough suspects when Mathew Scaife is found slumped over his table in the lounge bar. Dead as mutton. One of the pub's patrons had jabbed the old man in the back of the neck and injected him with a deadly dose of nicotine!

I've to point out here that Death at the Dog was published in the same year as Ngiao Marsh's Death at the Bar (1940), which also concerned a very unusual poisoning of a prominent person at a bar and a game of darts played a role in both murders. However, it's unlikely that one influenced the other, because they must have been written around the same time, which is what makes the resemblances all the more amazing.

Secondly, isn't it baffling that there are so few mysteries with a pub-setting? You'd think it would figure more prominently in detective stories from the British Isles, but I could not think of any other example. Anyhow...

Detective-Inspector Guy Northeast is put in charge of the case and quickly comes to the realization that "two-thirds of the population of Witheridge Green" had a motive to murder the unpopular squire, but only a handful of them patronized the lounge bar on the night of the murder. And this gallery of suspects includes the victim's two sons, Edward and Mark Scaife. An architect, by the name of Adam Day, who "had been too young to fight in the Great War" and was now, frustratingly, "too old to fight in Hitler's War." He was in the lounge bar at the time of the murder with his wife, Valentine. There are also the Franklands: David is on the staff of a struggling newspaper, while Bridget is a fervent farmer and naturally came into contact with Scaife. But the most likely suspect of the lot is "a lady novelist," Crescy Hardwick.

Crescy Hardwick is an unpredictable, somewhat eccentric woman you either liked or disliked, who lived in a rented cottage with several dogs, cats and a one-eyed pony, but Old Scaife has given her a month's notice to vacate the premise she has come to regard as home – which lead to a confrontation in the pub. Hardwick called him an a "bloody old profiteer" and confessed she had been "planning murder" ever since she received his letter. But there's also physical evidence pointing in her direction: she possesses a book on toxicology with the page about nicotine poisoning dog-eared, possessed the poison and she used powdered pumice to clean the harnass of her pony. There were traces of powdered pumice found inside the needle-wound in Scaife's neck.

However, Northeast is reluctant to take the easy route and tag her as the murderer of the old man. So he has to piece together an alternative explanation from such clues as an electric fan, a dud dart and a stolen bicycle, which reveals a well-hidden murderer. But this explanation has also one notable weakness: it's too clever for its own good and a trick that simply might not have worked. For one thing, Northeast admitted, in the final chapter, that the murderer probably had tried to kill Scaife before, because the method was depended on the right set of circumstances and (as it turned out) even sheer chance. So this puts a strain on the believability of the overall solution and you can't help but wonder if it had not been easier for the murderer to engineer an accident in the dangerous, rundown surroundings of his own home.

That being said, Death at the Dog was still a fairly competent and interesting detective novel in the vein of such literary Crime Queens as Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Bowers, which comes recommended to readers who love that particular mode of crime-fiction and those who are fascinated by mysteries that take place during World War II.

Clatter on the Roof

"When he discovered the wondrous stage of the attic, that predilection for crime... came rushing back..."

- Edogawa Rampo ("The Stalker in the Attic," 1926; collected in The Edogawa Rampo Reader, 2008)

Constance and Gwenyth Little were two Australian-born sisters from East Orange, New Jersey, who were called "the reigning queens of the screwball mystery comedy" and they earned this reputation as the co-authors of twenty-one wacky, "screwball cozies" - all of them standalone novels published between 1938 and 1953.

Unfortunately, the genre has seldom been kind to the memory and legacy of prolific authors of standalones (e.g. Max Murray). So the work of the Little sisters quickly fell into neglect when publishers began to move away from the traditional detective story during the fifties. As a consequence, they were doomed to wallow in literary oblivion, but, one day, two saviors appeared on the horizon.

Tom and Enid Schantz of the now, lamentably, defunct Rue Morgue Press were arguably the biggest fans of the Littles and they practically adopted them as the flagship authors for their publishing house.

During the late 1990s, the Rue Morgie Press began to reissue the then long-forgotten work of the sisters and they became a mainstay of their catalog over the course of the succeeding decade – which saw reprints of all of their work. As a matter of fact, some of the earlier reprints (e.g. Great Black Kanba, 1944) had gone out-of-print again by the time they closed down for business.

I've been aware of the Littles for some time now, but never got around to sample their work and my excuses vary from decade to decade: back in the 2000s, I was still fully immersed in my fundamental period and I would not deign to touch wacky crime novels. I had not yet been exposed to the wonderfully funny, alcohol-fueled and punch-drunk madness of the screwball mysteries by Craig Rice. So, I hope that, somehow, excuses my ignorance at the time. And this decade, we have been flooded by a deluge of reprints and translations, which has put most of the reprints from the 2000s on the back-burner.

However, the festive season that's almost upon us provided me with a convenient excuse to plunge headfirst into one of their first detective stories.

The Black-Headed Pins (1938) was the second novel by the Littles, but the first one to have "black" in the title and takes place in "a dilapidated, creepy old barn" situated in "the wilds of Sussex County," New Jersey, which belongs to a Scrooge-like lady, Mrs. Mabel Ballinger – who puts "every penny through a mangle before parting with it." She cheaply employed the narrator of the story, Leigh Smith, as a live-in companion. Or, as she refers to herself, a general slave.

Luckily, Mrs. Ballinger decided to invite several relatives over for Christmas and Leigh is relieved to know she won't be alone with her employer, during the holidays, in the large, sprawling and gloomy barn. But a shadow is cast over this prospect when an old family ghost stirs from his slumber.

Over a hundred years ago, the nonagenarian Edward Ballinger lived there with a handful of servants and he broke his leg when alone in the attic room. He was not found until one of the servants heard him trying to drag himself across the floor towards the stairs. The old was brought to his bedroom and a doctor was summoned, but the only thing he could do was sign a death certificate. However, this is not where the story ends: when the undertaker arrived the following morning they found the body on the floor over on the other side of the room, but the doctor swore he was dead the first time he examined the body. And thus a family legend was born.

The story goes that "if ever there is a dragging noise across the attic floor" someone with Ballinger blood will meet with "a fatal accident," but if the body is not watched until it's buried, "it will walk." That's right, zombies!

I've to point out here that the dragging noise from the attic qualifies as a borderline impossible crime, because the solution would have lend itself perfectly for a locked room situation. And the dragging noise really should have emanated from a locked attic. It would have been a nice touch to the overall story, but what's really unforgivable is how the authors missed out on a scene that would have practically written itself. Several of the characters, including the local policeman, staged a stakeout in the attic to catch whatever made the unnerving sound, but there should've been a scene in which they bolted from the attic, down the stairs, as the dragging noise from an invisible source was crawling into their direction – which would fit the method for the trick perfectly. Oh, well.

Thankfully, the Little sisters used the second part of the family legend, about the walking corpses, to full effect.

John Ballinger is Mrs. Ballinger's favorite nephew, which is a practical affection, because he has a "fondness for tools and repair jobs." It was his form of recreation and there was more than enough odd jobs to do for him in the large, half neglected home of his aunt, but that's when the family legend lives up to its reputation. John was repairing the leaky roof when he fell to his death and physical evidence shows someone had tempered with the scaffold he was standing on. So it's a case of murder.

After the death of John, the sisters did a commendable job in balancing the story between a dark, doom-laden narrative and lighthearted, good natured detective work.

The ghostly back-story and the walking corpses result give some excellent set-pieces to the plot, but the doom and gloom also springs from the personal circumstances of the characters. One example is John's widow, Rhynda, who was pregnant at the time of his death and one of the unexpected guests to the house, Richard Jones, has shown a certain interest in her – as well as in our narrator. But there's also a good deal of enthusiastic sleuthing on the part of Leigh and some of the relatives and friends in the house. I also loved Mrs. Ballinger's horror over the expanding costs of her Christmas party and all of the extra mouths she has to feed.

It keeps the reader engaged, interested and (more importantly) entertained, which made it forgivable that the story continued pass the point when the story should've ended. The Black-Headed Pins should have been a novella with thirty or forty pages shaved off it, but, as said before, the Littles knew how to entertain and captivate their audience. So this is really not that big of a deal. Hell, I was sufficiently entertained that, while having a decent conclusion, the plot lacked the proper fairplay to help you reach the same conclusion as the character. After all, you have to take into account that storytelling and humor take center-stage in the work of these sisters.

What I do object against are the titular black-headed pins, which were meaningless red herrings and an unnecessary distraction. They meant nothing in the end and I suspect they were only added to the plot to give the story a name with black in the book-title.

But, all in all, The Black-Headed Pins turned out to be one of the more memorable Christmas-time mysteries and comes very much recommended, especially if you enjoy reading such holiday-themed detective stories around this time of the year. Plot-wise, it might not be as solid or fair as some of the others of its kind, but it's better written and far more original than most Yuletide mysteries – which tend to be cast from the same mold as Agatha Christie's Murder for Christmas (1938).

Death's Sober Lamplighter

"Deep in the forest hideaway,

the outlaws made their getaway.

From the sheriff and his men..."

- Opening theme from The Great Adventures of Robin Hood (1990-92)

Clyde B. Clason was arguably one of the brighter, more gifted pupils from the Van Dine-Queen School of Detection, who wrote ten novels between 1936 and 1941, which starred a genial, mild-mannered professor of history as the series character – namely Theocritus Lucius Westborough.

The books are penned in a literate, old-fashioned style without coming across as pretentious and are stamped with all the hallmarks of the Van Dine-Queen School.

First of all, there's an intelligent, well-educated amateur assisting the official police and they operate on a basis of mutual respect. Secondly, the cases often take place on the upper crust of society, where private collectors dwell, or have an industrial background – which provided Clason with more than enough material to put some meat on the bones of his plots to flavor them. 

The Man from Tibet (1938) and Dragon's Cave (1939) are notable examples of stories revolving around dead collectors and artifact-stuffed private "museums," while Blind Drifts (1937) and Poison Jasmine (1940) are interesting specimens of the industrial mystery novel. The latter is, in fact, excellent!

However, The Death Angel (1936) is a departure from rooms harboring privately owned collections and worlds of cutthroat commerce in favor of an English-style country house mystery.

Westborough has come to the estate of a personal friend, Arnold Bancroft, situated in southern Wisconsin and the place is aptly called "Rumpelstiltzken," because the dark woods surrounding the place reminds one "of a German fairy tale."

The plan of Westborough, author of a "ponderous eight-hundred-page tome" on Emperor Trajan, was a spot of relaxation as a guest of his friend, but the region is being disrupted by several events – such as an escaped convict roaming the area and local authorities being tied up in a grim, slowly escalating milk strike. What's about to happen at the estate are soon added to that list.

Bancroft has received several strange, threatening notes and shows one of them to Westborough. It has a few lines of "block capitals" that were "lettered in crayon" saying Bancroft has been cautioned and should now "beware my sting," which was signed "The Firefly." This note of warning is quickly followed by Bancroft's disappearance and the sound of a gunshot emanating from Bowen's Rock, which has a trail of bloody evidence suggesting someone got shot and was chugged into the river below. However, Bancroft isn't the only person who's missing from the house party. So who got shot and why?

Sheriff Art Bell is engaged with "crazy farmers" who "have burned two trucks," spilled "milk over the road from hell to breakfast" and even attempted "to blow up the bridge on the state highway" – showing French truck drivers how to do a strike properly.

The sheriff is short on manpower, resources and time, but is aware Westborough is the "fellow who straightened out those killings at Hotel Equable" and deputizes the professor to carry on the investigation in his absence. Occasionally popping back into the story when there are new developments.

Westborough has his fair share of clues and plot-threads to sift through, which include a bloody handprint, a missing motorboat, a purloined bow and arrows and a stolen saucepan – as well as sorting out alibis in combination with possible motives. This murder-without-a-body investigation absorbs a good half of the book, before other plot-threads begin to manifest itself.

The missing bow and arrows are used in an attempted murder by "a legendary, chimerical figure," a masked archer, "who had vanished in the forest like a phantom" and the firefly is leaving notes again.

But the best part of the plot commences when Westborough begins to extrapolate on the lightening bugs and poisonous mushrooms, which are the main ingredients of a double murder back at the estate – a crime in which the "odds” were “1,542 to 1 against" the victims "receiving all the poisonous mushrooms through chance and chance alone."

I've been arguing with myself if the overwhelming odds, in combination with the logical explanation, makes it qualify as an impossible crime novel, but I can't sway myself one way or the other.

The Death Angel could just as easily be labeled a (semi-) impossible crime as well as a calculated, but botched, attempt at a perfect murder. I decided to tag it as a "locked room mystery" just for the hell of it.

Well, either way, it's was a clever, involved method providing the book with unusual ending concerning the revelation of the murderer and nicely dovetailed with the previous plot-threads – out of which this one arose naturally. Even though, Clason felt compelled to warn his readers that "such complications" arising from multiple, interwoven plots "seem beyond all bounds of credulity." I really thought it fitted nicely together as well as drawing my attention away from the murderer and was completely out of my depth in explaining the odds, which can be as fun as hitting the bulls-eye.

So, yes, I quite enjoyed The Death Angel and just noticed there are only two left in the series to read, which kind of blows. If you haven't had read Clason yet, I'd recommend picking up the previously mentioned The Man from Tibet or Poison Jasmine.

It's a Dog's Life

"They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral." 

- Dr. Mortimer (Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

There weren't a myriad of opportunities amidst the busy hum of the holiday preparations and celebrations to chip away at Mt.-to-be-Read, but now that life has snapped back to normal, it's time to pick up where I left off. And surprisingly, it's not a locked room mystery!

I was in the mood for a flippant, humorously inclined and, above all, a fast paced read to start the New Year, which brought me to The Mouse in the Mountain (1943) by the highly regarded pulp writer Norbert Davis – whose first foray in full-length novels garnered praise from the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and introduced a pair of unique detectives to the scene. Doan is a short, plumb, low-end private eye with the imposing, fawn-colored Great Dane, named Carstairs, being the brains and strong arm of the duo. Oh, Doan knows how to shoot people! There is, however, a slight consequence to their unusual partnership in that it gives the books a slight nod to the borders of SF/Fantasy, because Carstairs is obviously capable of higher cognitive thought processes and basically the brave, literary ancestor of Scooby-Doo. I would even go as far as placing Carstairs in the detective lexicon alongside such notable snobs as Philo Vance, Lord Peter Wimsey and early-period Ellery Queen.

The Mouse in the Mountain can be categorized as both a World War II mystery, Carstairs is in the army training dogs to protect airfields and is now on furlough, and a Busman's Holiday, which begins before they can board a bus from the Hotel Azteca to the remote, isolated Mexican mountain village of Los Altos – in spite of being advised to cancel the tour for the time being by the local authorities. Doan and Carstairs meet their fellow passengers and the first they bump into is Miss Janet Martin, a schoolteacher following the trail of the long dead pioneer Lieutenant Perona, but there are also the Henshaws and their horrendous offspring, Mortimer. I honestly kept my fingers crossed someone would chuck Mortimer under the bus or tossed him to Carstairs as a chew toy. Happy New Year, by the way. The party is rounded out with a flypaper heiress, Patricia van Osdel, her gigolo, Greg, and personal maid, Maria, but the real star of this company is their driver. Bartolome is a licensed chauffeur and tour guide with "English guaranteed by the advanced correspondence school," adding, "conversational and classic," but uses these acquired skills to string together flowery insults – like calling his fat boss "a flesh-laden criminal."  

While banter and comedic scenes mark the overall tone of the story, there's a dark undercurrent flowing from the personalities and motives of the characters. Even the most innocent characters are moral derelicts in one-way or another. Mrs. Henshaw's over-motherly, protective behavior created an uncontrollable monster and his father can only resort to idle promises to twist his neck. Van Osdel bribed the hotel to put the tour back on the road and Doan's reason for going to Los Altos is up for debate through out the story, but does not flinch in demonstrating his flexible morals upon their arrival by shooting a bandido under surveillance by the local authorities – represented here by Captain Emile Perona. Granted, it was a clear case of self-defense.

The Captain is a descendant of the man who captured Miss Martin's imagination and didn't conform to most of the stereotypes of the day, but this lovely subplot had the emotional depth of a low-budget, daytime soap opera. However, the way in which this plot-thread was tied up was, inadvertently, hilarious. Captain Perona is one of more honest characters in The Mouse in the Mountain, but Perona is vain with old-fashioned, aristocratic notions. The final bit was simply a portrait of an undaunted man who, after the first feminist wave subsided, calmly whisked out a discreet handkerchief to dab his face and mentally noted the day when it all really ended.

Anyhow, the arrival of the company at Los Altos brings along more than just rich tourists hunting for overpriced souvenirs, there's a boatload of trouble and a soaring body count in the surroundings of the once peaceful village – which also suffers under the tremors of a small earthquake. Doan's original quarry is killed when a roof collapses and the cause of a conflict of interest between the detectives, which leads to Doan and Carstairs being briefly incarcerated. The earthquake also gave cover to an opportunistic killer (and the exact opposite of the revealing quake in Bones (1985) by Bill Pronzini), but the plot never blazes with the same fire as the descriptions of the Mexican highlands or the crisp, witty hardboiled storytelling, dialogues and the (somewhat) morally decrepit characters. They were the real draws of The Mouse in the Mountain.

Note(s) for the curious: I've read the second Carstairs and Doan novel, Sally's in the Alley (1943), shortly before I began blogging, which left me with an unanswered question. Why didn't Carstairs smell the blood-spattered corpse in the boot of their car? Couldn't he be bothered or was prolonging the discovery of the body designed to cause as much discomfort to Doan as possible?

Carstairs may also be tagged as the ancestor of the soft-boiled, semi-comedic television series Kommissar Rex (Inspector Rex) – a krimi from Austria.

Finally, the Rue Morgue Press reissued all three Carstairs and Doan mysteries years ago.

The New Zealand Bird Mystery

"A man will turn over half a library to make one book."

- Samuel Johnson

Contrary to the usual modus operandi of Clyde B. Clason, The Purple Parrot (1937), fourth in the series featuring the meek little professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough, was written from the perspective of one of the characters, Barry Foster, a lawyer who's hopelessly in love with the ward of one of his clients – a rich and influential book collector named Hezekiah Morse.

Morse has hand picked a suitor for his granddaughter Sylvia, a personal friend and next door neighbor, Thomas Vail, and has drawn up a will that effectively disinherits her if she dares to marry anyone else except for a paltry statuette of a purple parrot from New Zealand.

As one of Morse's lawyers, Foster is more than aware of this new development and has decided to confront him, but someone beat him to it and stuck a knife in the old bibliophile! What's worse, all of the evidence seems to be pointing an accusing finger at Sylvia. Morse was stabbed in his study/library and one of the doors was locked from the inside and Sylvia was in the adjoining room holding the only unlocked door under constant observation, but no one was seen either entering or leaving the room (and premise) since their arrival. She also has plenty of motives for wanting her grandfather out of the way.

Luckily, Lt. Johnny Mack, "a bluff, old-school Chicago police detective," owed a favor to that quiet professor of Roman history, Westborough, and gave him permission to follow him around during his next assignment – and he's not convinced of Sylvia's guilt and attaches great importance to the missing statuette of the bird. But why would anyone kill in order to obtain something that isn't even worth the trouble of stealing in the first place? Westborough has a lot of woolgathering to do before he can even begin to disentangle a plot involving, among other threads, a bootlegger and a well stocked wine cellar, a library filled with rare editions and how the psychology of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" fits in with the ancient tomes stored on its shelves and the life-saving role of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Clason was a writer from the Van Dine-Queen School and his work is exemplary for this school, but The Purple Parrot felt as the most Van Dine-like of his books (The Parrot Murder Case!). Here Westborough isn't visiting an estate to make a discreet enquiry into the disappearance of a jade figurine of a Taoist goddess or descending into a Colorado goldmine as one of the shareholders, but here he plays the Philo Vance to Mack's Markham and with Morse's residence (with its private library full of rare, first editions) as the center of all the action – it really helped establish that Van Dinean feeling. Minus the annoying presence of Vance, but with the insightful tidbits of information and lectures! The part were the police were analyzing the pool of blood and compared it with the witness statement, in order to determine a more exact time of death, was especially interesting and gives the reader a peek through a window in time showing forensic science before the DNA/digital era.

That's why I don't get the solution. I mean, I understand who stabbed Hezekiah Morse, and all that, but not why Clason opted for an explanation that effectively turned an intelligently written story into a gaudy parody of a shilling shocker. This book was published in 1937! What was Clason attempting to do here? By all accounts, Clason was an intelligent man and I refuse to believe that this was his idea of a "spoof" or a "least-likely-suspect"-scenario. I'm even more baffled that it came as a follow-up to a far more convincing solution, and Clason knew it was good, because he retooled it for one of his later novels. Maybe it was challenge to make this particular scenario as convincing as possible or perhaps we're all missing the punch-line of a now long forgotten inside joke.

All in all, I would still recommend The Purple Parrot to fans of the series, but I advice readers new to Clason and Westborough to start off with The Man from Tibet (1938) or Poison Jasmine (1940). The wonderful Rue Morgue Press has made most of Clason’s work available again.

Speaking of the Rue Morgue Press, they haven't updated their website since 2011 (?), but new books were still being published until September of last year. And then it just stopped. I'm aware that this is my own interest speaking, but I hope Tom Schantz will continue to save out-of-print detective stories from biblioblivion for me us to read. They introduced me to Craig Rice, Stuart Palmer, Glyn Carr, Clyde Clason, Torrey Chanslor, and one of my all-time favorites, Kelley Roos. They made collecting Gladys Mitchell actually look easy and inexpensive! We simply can't afford to lose the Rue Morgue Press! Of course, we also genuinely care, but let's face the facts, we're addicts and we need our regular fix! ;)

On a final note, Less Blatt also reviewed The Purple Parrot in one of his weekly audio reviews. 

Mine Your Own Business

"A box without hinges, key or lid; yet a golden treasure inside is hid."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

The elderly, gentle minded professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough, a scholar whose expertise encompasses the Roman Empire, was the brainchild of mystery author Clyde B. Clason who produced ten detective novels during the mid 1930s-and early 40s.

Clason belongs to the Van Dine-Queen School of Detection and was clearly influenced by its members, from stories centering on collectors with private museums stuffed with artifacts from erstwhile civilizations (e.g. The Man from Tibet, 1939) to taking a murder tour in a business enterprise or institution like perfume manufactures (e.g. Poison Jasmine, 1940), but more importantly, they were cleverly crafted and minutely analyzed mysteries. Sad to say, Clason's insistency to hang on to that particular branch of crime fiction also meant that, once the sex and violence school of Mickey Spillane began to pick up momentum, he felt there was no longer a place for the cerebral detective of yesteryear and never wrote a follow-up to Green Shiver (1941) – which thus became Professor Westborough's last (recorded) case.

However, Clason left us with a small, but memorable, body of work and a notable one for connoisseurs of miracle problems, because more than half of them contain a variation on the impossible crime. Granted, they're not exactly spectacular illusions that are pulled off with the routine of a Las Vegas stage magician, but simple, workable (and convincing) gimmicks that are cogs in the machine of the overall plot. Clason is one of those writers you can get an overall enjoyment from: stories as intelligently written as they are plotted and populated with interesting characters that move around in specialized fields.

For his third outing, Blind Drifts (1937), Clason took a shot at explaining how someone could be hit with a bullet fired from a non-existent gun in front of seven witnesses in a mineshaft at a depth greater than the height of the Empire State Building and to do so he dispatches Westborough from Chicago to Colorado as one of the shareholders of the Virgin Queen Gold Mine – inherited from his late brother. Barely out of the plane, the mild-mannered professor is thrust into a feud between Mrs. Edmonds, major stockholder, and Jeff LaRue, owner of the neighboring Buenaventure Mine, who wants to lease the Virgin Queen. This also gives Clason an opportunity to illuminate his readers on the inner workings of a gold mining company.  

As Westborough takes a few days to inform himself, he also looks into a local mystery that may have ties to his current predicament, a department store owner and a Virgin Queen director, George Villars, disappeared without a trace, but it's the ongoing dispute between Edmonds and LaRue that ends up providing the main puzzle for the mild-mannered professor. Instigated by the suspicious mind of Cornalue Edmonds, they descend into the belly of the Virgin Queen, where, inside one of the blind drifts and in front of a number of witnesses, Edmonds is felled with a bullet, severely injuring her, and a smoking gun fails to turn up in the subsequent search.

It's the side-puzzle of the dissolved gun that contributes the most satisfying portion of the overall solution, simple and therefore convincing, but the remainder of Westborough's problems, including a pair of successful murders, are marred by a convoluted explanation. I love ingenious, complexly woven plots that consist of multiple layers, but juggling with timetables and travel schedules just doesn't do it for me.  

All in all, Blind Drifts is a solid, but not the highest rated, entry in this, altogether too short, series and will be appreciated by both fans of Westborough and puzzle-oriented mysteries.

Clason's work is fairly obscure and older editions of his books come with a hefty price-tag attached to them, however, the Rue Morgue Press has reissued a seven of his ten books and Blind Drifts is their latest offering.