The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Rue Morgue Press

 

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the permanent shuttering of our beloved, dearly departed Rue Morgue Press following a string of disasters from flood damage, health issues and financial problems to the death of Enid Schantz – severely reducing their output. Rue Morgue Press limped on until around 2015 and permanently closed down when their website went offline a year later. Tom Schantz followed Enid Schantz in 2023, aged 79, marking a definite end of an era.

It cannot be overstated how important Tom and Enid Schantz were to, what we have come to call, the Reprint Renaissance. And everything that followed in its wake.

Rue Morgue Press was not only one of the first independent mystery publishers setting up shop on the internet to cater directly to readers who simply love good, old-fashioned whodunits, but they also had consistent quality – because they wouldn't reprint just any old mystery novel. They concentrated, what they called at the time, "the second rank of mystery writers from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s," but who today would consider writers like Nicholas Blake, John Dickson Carr, Stuart Palmer or Craig Rice second rank? That had more to do with a lack of availability at the time than quality. Rue Morgue Press fixed that problem by simply reprinting their work over a nearly twenty year period from 1997 to 2016.

So there was a real sense of loss when they permanently closed down. Not that the end of the Rue Morgue Press ushered in a new dark age or an ink drought, because the avalanche known as the Reprint Renaissance had already started around 2014. It's just depressing the Reprint Renaissance was without the Rue Morgue Press, but at least Tom Schantz got to see that Reprint Renaissance blossom into a Golden Age revival. So, on this tenth anniversary, I wanted to commemorate their contributions to the revival of the traditional detective story by picking and highlighting my ten favorite Rue Morgue Press reprints.

If this list appears somewhat conventional, compared to previous lists, that speaks volumes of what Rue Morgue Press has done to resurrect the legacies of authors who were shrouded in near total obscurity only two decades ago. So here's to the Rue Morgue Press!

Thou Shell of Death (1936) by Nicholas Blake

Thou Shell of Death previously appeared on "The Naughty List: Top 12 Favorite Christmas Mystery Novels & Short Stories" and briefly considered a replacement (A Question of Proof, 1935), but Thou Shell of Death is the superior of those two Nigel Strangeways novels – appearing on that previous list as a contender for best Christmas mystery. The shooting of a World War I flying ace, on Boxing Day, shows Blake could as good as his Golden Age contemporaries delivering a perfect "blend of steely logic and pure moonshine."

Come Away, Death (1937) by Gladys Mitchell

Gladys Mitchell was one of those obscure, out-of-print mystery writers who had been all but forgotten at the start of this century. Only a few dedicated fans kept her memory alive, until the Rue Morgue Press started reprinting Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley series in 2005. Since then nearly all of her work has been reprinted in hardback, paperback and ebooks by numerous publishers, but it began with the Rue Morgue press. Come Away, Death is the most striking and memorable of their Mitchell reprints. A bright, exuberant and colorful tale steeped in Greek mythology, pseudo-archaeology and creeping madness as Mrs. Bradley joins Sir Rudri Hopkinson's tour of Greece to probe the Eleusinian Mysteries. A mystery novel only Gladys Mitchell could have written.

Postscript to Poison (1938) by Dorothy Bowers

I have read three of Dorothy Bower's five detective novels, but Shadows Before (1939) and the overpraised Fear and Miss Betony (1941) disappointed after the superb Postscript to Poison. Bowers seems to have been one of those mystery writers who nailed it on their first try and then fail to live up to it on their second, third and fourth try. A pity as Postscript to Poison is an Agatha Christie-esque poisoning mystery involving a diabolical matriarch miraculously recovering from near death, only to be poisoned when she was about to change her will. Not as cliché or trope-y as it sounds and still remember the wonderful solution. It's exactly the kind of mystery novel that gets it author labeled a Crime Queen.

The Man from Tibet (1938) by Clyde B. Clason

Clason has been somewhat overlooked during the Reprint Renaissance, but the Rue Morgue Press reprinted Clason's celebrated locked room mystery, The Man from Tibet, all the way back in 1998. Clason's The Death Angel (1936) was one of the last reprints Rue Morgue Press managed to get published. So you can call Clason one of their flagship authors and they reprinted many of his excellent detective fiction over the years like Blind Drifts (1937), Dragon's Cave (1939) and Poison Jasmine (1940), but The Man from Tibet remained Clason's flagship novel. A pure, Golden Age baroque mystery in which an antiquarian and collector dies under inexplicable circumstances inside the locked Tibetan Room of Chicago luxury apartment – solved by professor of Roman history, Theocritus Lucius Westborough. A highlight of the classic American detective novel from one of the brightest students of the Van Dine-Queen School.

The Judas Window (1938) by Carter Dickson

Rue Morgue Press was also among the first to attempt bringing John Dickson Carr back into print and was torn between picking The Crooked Hinge (1938) and The Judas Window (as by "Carter Dickson"). I decided to go with the classic. A vintage locked room mystery and courtroom drama rolled into one with H.M.'s only appearance in the role of barrister as he attempts to save a young man from the gallows.

The Frightened Stiff (1942) by Kelley Roos

Kelley Roos, a shared pseudonym of William and Audrey Roos, is my favorite discovery from the Rue Morgue Press as their Jeff and Haila Troy series has one of my all-time favorite comedic mystery novels. The Frightened Stiff is a genuinely funny mystery novel even after more than eighty years and begins with the Troys moving into their new basement apartment in Greenwich Village. Haila's first lines set the tone of the story, "jumping from a window would bring no release," but even worse is Jeff recognizing their apartment as his old speak easy. And the body of a naked man in their back garden doesn't help either. Normally, these comedic mysteries with bantering, wisecracking husband-and-wife detective teams take a light touch to the plot, but the Rooses were solid plotters. The Frightened Stiff is their masterpiece!

Home Sweet Homicide (1944) by Craig Rice

Where to even begin? Home Sweet Homicide centers on the three children of a widowed, mystery writing mother, Dinah, April and Archie, who grab the opportunity to get some much needed publicity for their mother when shots ring out in their otherwise quiet neighborhood. So they lay a trap for both the killer and bachelor homicide detective. This is a sickening sweet detective story as the children were based on Rice's own and it has been suggested she wrote Home Sweet Homicide as an apology to them. Whether that's true, or not, the result is a detective novel you wish was twice as long and glad it never got a sequel to spoil the magic.

Nipped in the Bud (1951) by Stuart Palmer

Stuart Palmer is another once famous mystery writer who was reintroduced through the Rue Morgue Press after having falling into obscurity. I believe their reprint of Palmer's The Penguin Pool Murder (1931) had their most iconic and recognizable cover art, depicting Miss Withers and Oscar Piper among a colony of penguins, but Nipped in the Bud has always been a favorite. Palmer's best known novels were published in the 1930s and '40s, but wrote two of his best in the early 1950s. Nipped in the Bud has Miss Withers and her beloved poodle, Talleyrand, trailing a possible witness and chief suspect in a murder down to Tijuana. This comes with all of Palmer's customary humor, charm and ingenuity, but even better than the characterization, storytelling and plotting is the shape of the plot. Mike Grost summed it up perfectly: "if one were to construct a diagram of the book, the best approach would be a 3D model using a set of Tinkertoys" as "each colored stick would represent a different branch of the book's plot, which forks off in all directions making a three dimensional tree." So no idea why it's not better known.

The Youth Hostel Murders (1952) by Glyn Carr

When first learning of Glyn Carr and his unique output of detective fiction, it can feel like reading about an alternate universe John Dickson Carr. Glyn Carr was the penname of Showell Styles, an explorer and mountaineer, who wrote fifteen climbing mysteries taking place "among the crags and slopes of peaks scattered around the world" – solved by Shakespearean actor and mountaineer, Abercrombie Lewker. So this Carr became known for so-called open-air locked room mysteries ("...managed to find a way to lock the door of a room that had no walls and only the sky for a ceiling"). I wouldn't strictly call them locked room mysteries, more howdunits, but enjoyed their reprints and particularly The Youth Hostel Murders. Lewker goes undercover at a youth hostel following the suspicious death of a rock climber and there appears to be a link to an ancient stone circle where the Old Ones dwell. The Youth Hostel Murders is basically Scooby Doo for adults.

The Danger Within (1952) by Michael Gilbert

Just like Blake's Thou Shell of Death, Gilbert's The Danger Within previously appeared on "The Hit List: Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels," but it's too good and too much of a classic to be left off. The Danger Within, alternatively published as Death in Captivity, was inspired by Gilbert's experience as a prisoner-of-war and escapee in Italy producing an unforgettable, semi-autobiographical wartime mystery thriller taking place among British prisoners of an Italian POW camp. A daring escape is being planned and prepared, but an inexplicable murder in the partially collapsed escape tunnel threatens to put a stop to "The Great Crawl" of Campo 127. The Danger Within is not only one of my all-time favorite detective novels, but, in my opinion, one of the best detective novels from the second-half of the previous century.

His Burial Too (1973) by Catherine Aird

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh is a British mystery novelist, known as "Catherine Aird," who started her writing career in the sixties with The Religious Body (1966) and published her most recent novel, Constable Country (2023), when she was 93 – bringing the tally to twenty-nine published novels and short story collections. All except the non-series, standalone novel A Most Contagious Game (1967) featured her series-characters, Inspector C.D. Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby of the fictitious Calleshire County.

Catherine Aird was a personal favorite of Tom and Enid Schantz, of the erstwhile Rue Morgue Press, who decided to break expand their own rules to include Aird's non-vintage, police procedural-like mystery novels. Rue Morgue Press reprinted the then already forgotten A Most Contagious Game and reissued eight Sloan novels, before closing down in 2016. I first learned of Aird through the Rue Morgue Press and an endorsement from the Schantz is good enough to try one out. Unfortunately, I somehow picked the worst possible title.

The Stately Home Murder (1969), originally published as The Complete Steel, sounded promising enough at the time. A modern rendition of the classical, Golden Age-style country house mystery, but ended up trotting out cliches (SPOILER/ROT13: obqvrf va gur yvoenel naq gur ohgyre qvq vg) that were presented as clever, funny and subversive takes on the genre. That left enough of a bad taste that I never returned to Aird and Sloan. Not even the fat carrot that has been dangling in front of me for years wasn't enticing enough to return... until now.

The fifth title in the Calleshire series, His Burial Too (1973), is one of the few, notable locked room mysteries to be published during the 1970s and shortly highlighted in "The Moderns" section of Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991) – only mentioning that it "incorporated an impossible killing." Worryingly, the only person who's beating the drum for His Burial Too is Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included the book in his "A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books" ("...one of the best methods of achieving this effect yet employed"). A red flag, if there ever was one, but His Burial Too came out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library." So finally moved it to the top of the pile to judge it for myself.

His Burial Too begins after one of the hottest days in the history of the shire with the discovery that a prominent member of the Calleshires village of Cleet has gone missing the previous evening.

Richard Tindall, of Struthers & Tindall, was supposed to be in bed that morning, but his daughter, Fenella, found the still made bed empty. Tindall failed to show up at the office and his car is later discovered in the unlocked garage. Not a sign of the man himself anywhere. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby travel down to the village, but their missing person's inquiry soon turns into a murder investigation when construction workers discover his crushed body inside the church tower. Tindall was flattened by a huge, marble statue ("a weeping widow and ten children all mourning the father"), known as the Fitton Bequest, toppled from its plinth a good few feet high and smashed to pieces – covering the floor with "a vast quantity of smashed marble." This wreckage not only ended up killing Tindall, but the broken pieces blocked both doors from the inside ("there must be all of half a ton of marble up against the back of it"). So getting inside to secure the crime scene and excavate Tindall from the debris resembles a small scale disaster relief operation taking several men and chapters. A great way to hammer down the impossibility of the situation! Once they manage to get inside and the body out, it becomes apparent Tindall had been deliberately killed. And how the murderer managed to stage this locked room scenery is not the only complication facing Calleshire's finest.

That "rather odd firm," Struthers & Tindall, is a research and development company specialized in doing research or analyses for companies without their own research departments/laboratories. Sometimes these are hush-hush jobs involving security, dishonest employees or industrial espionage. Tindall is not the only one or only thing that disappeared. A very important report, Mellemetic File, is nowhere to be found. Nor can they find the chairman of United Mellemetics, Sir Digby Wellow, who's known as "one of the country's more colourful industrialists" ("and vocal..."). A receipt is found on the body for pair of diamond and emerald clips, presumably a birthday present for his daughter, but they've gone missing too. Gordon Cranswick, of Cranswick (Processing) Limited, comes forward claiming Tindall was ready to sell the firm to him. However, it's the locked room problem that gives the plot its weight.

First of all, while His Burial Too is a genuine locked room mystery, it's closer in vein to Dorothy L. Sayers than John Dickson Carr. From the literary chapter headings and backdrop (The Nine Tailors, 1934) to the how being far more interesting than the who-and why. The locked room-trick is ingeniously contrived, original even, but not entirely convinced it could have done as described. Perhaps better suited as one of those immensely satisfying, false-solutions that fall apart under closer scrutiny (ROT13: gur gevpx fgevxrf nf qrcraqvat zber ba yhpx guna fpvrapr naq gvzvat va beqre gb xabpx bire frireny gbaf bs zneoyr). Despite not being wholly convincing, I still enjoyed it and appreciated Aird made real work of the locked room in both presentation and solution. It would have been disappointing if the statue had been pulled down with a rope that had been retrieved through the narrow slit window, crack of gap. So a little surprising His Burial Too failed to leave much of an impression in our niche corner as at the time it must have been like coming across a cool, tall glass of water in a scorching wasteland. Edward D. Hoch and John Sladek were the only two who made serious contributions to the locked room mystery during the 1970s, but failed to secure a place on the 1981 and 2007 ranking of best impossible crime novels – collectively known today as the "Locked Room Library." At least it got nominated this time around. Simply as a locked room mystery, it deserves the opportunity.

When it comes to the overall story, I can keep it short and simple. His Burial Too should have been either edited down to an excellent short story and potential anthology mainstay or expanded into a novel-length mystery in order to flesh out the underdeveloped characters, setting, motive and sub-plots. The latter option would have resulted in a gentler, kinder precursor of the more gritty, neo-traditional detective novels and locked room mysteries Roger Ormerod would go on to write in the years and decades ahead. The problem of the blocked doors reminded me a somewhat of the locked room problem from Ormerod's When the Old Man Died (1991) where shattered, undisturbed glass on the floor showed nobody opened or closed the door after the murder. It sure is an unusual way to lock and seal an open, unlock room and not something that has been fully explored, which is another reason why the trick feels satisfying. At least I know why Jim likes it so much. And why he finds it convincing.

So not a full throated recommendation, but, if you demand some ingenuity and work going into your impossible crime fiction, His Burial Too is worth a try. It's a short enough novel that you can breeze through in two hours.

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.