The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2020) edited by Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews

The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018) is a tribute to the American detective story, Ellery Queen, which collected a selection of quality pastiches, parodies and a potpourri of short stories paying tribute or poking fun at all things Elleryana – written by a who's who of the traditional detective genre. A smorgasbord of laudatory tributes from such notable short story writers as Jon L. Breen, William Brittain, Edward D. Hoch and Arthur Porges and mystery novelists like Lawrence Block and Pat McGerr. The anthology was apparently successful enough for Wildside Press to commission the editors, Josh Pachter and Dale C. Andrews, to put together two additional volumes with The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe (2020) and The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2020).

I've not gotten around to The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe with the exception of one short story, Thomas Narcejac's "L'orchideé rouge" ("The Red Orchid," 1947), because it has a lot of excerpts from larger works. And that doesn't really appeal to me. The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen, on the other hand, has been near the top of the pile for nearly two years and the reason why I only just got around to it is my obsession with obscure, rarely collected or anthologized short (impossible crime) stories. 

The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen has a similar structure as The Misadventures of Ellery Queen with anthology being divided in five parts, "Prologue," "Pastiches," "Parodies," "Potpourri" and "Postscript," but the stories from both anthologies compliment each other – continuing and even completing a few short-lived series. For example, it contains the second of two Celery Green stories by Porges and a second case for Pachter's young E.Q. Griffen. So put on your pince-nez, pretend you went to Harvard and jump into the Duesenberg. We're going on a road trip through Ellery's Wonderland.

The collection opens with J. Randolph Cox's "The Adventure of the Logical Successor," originally published in the September 1982 publication of the Baker Street Journal, which serves as the collection's prologue. It's not really a detective story, but tells the story of a retired Sherlock Holmes who has "succeeded in replacing the pursuit of the underworld with the keeping of bees." However, the Great Detective keeps getting visitors who aspire to take on his mantle. There were two Americans, Nick Carter and Craig Kennedy. A Montenegrin of "somewhat corpulent proportions" and "a little Belgian fellow with an enormous ego," but only when a young Ellery Queen comes knocking does Holmes sees a potential and logically successor to his legacy. But only "if he can overcome his affectations" and "tendency to impress people with how correct he is in his deductions." And "if he is fortunate enough to find the right Boswell." So a fun little opening yarn playing on one of my guilty pleasures (crossovers).

The second part with pastiches begins with Maxwell E. Siegel's "Once Upon a Crime," written in 1951 when Siegel "was seventeen and besotted with Ellery Queen," but the story was not published until it appeared in Old-Time Detection #16 (2007). Siegel story's casts Ellery as a middle aged writer who's "running out of ideas for his novels" and his turned to children's books, fairy tales and nursery rhymes for inspiration. But, one evening, his study is burglarized, vandalized and the book-lined walls strewn with flowers. This sets in motion is a string of bizarre, seemingly unrelated incidents without apparent rhyme and reason. Ellery is struggling to find a logical link to tie them all together, which he eventually does. Admittedly, the story is nicely done piece of fanfiction, but, even in the world of EQ, it seems like (ROT13) n ebhaqnobhg jnl gb qryvire n zrffntr.

The next story is actually the first half of Chapter 11 from Marion Mainwaring's Murder in Pastiche (1954), but skipped it as the book is currently awaiting trial on the big pile.

Edward D. Hoch's "The Circle of Ink," originally published in the September/October, 1999, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, resettles the series in modern times and finds Ellery Queen lecturing applied criminology at a university – reflecting on how casual classroom dress had become and the presence of laptop computers. Wherever Ellery goes in the world, or time, there's usually a murder or two waiting just around the corner. And he soon learns that Professor Androvney was shot and killed in his office at the university. A murder linked to four other shootings on the Upper West Side during the past few weeks, which all have two things in common: the victims were shot with .22-caliber target pistol (likely equipped with a silencer) and "a small red circle on the back of each victim's left hand." That's where the commonalities end. So do they have a Son of Sam-type serial killer on their hands? Ellery cautions that serial killers shouldn't be confused with series killers "who kill a certain number of people with some goal in mind." While they're both insane, the series killer's insanity is "twisted into a pattern the killer can see." Find the pattern and you know whodunit. Since this is an EQ story, there's method to the murderer's madness with a decidedly classical touch to the motive. Leave it to Hoch to deliver one of the better and more entertaining detective stories of the collection!

Mă Tiān's "The Japanese Armor Mystery" (2005) was translated from Chinese by Steve Steinbock and is my favorite story from the collection as its plot is firmly rooted in the Japanese shin honkaku school of detective fiction. The story is set in a small, unassuming town, Montreux, where Joseph Marlow retreated to raise his four adopted children in quiet luxury, but, as the old patriarch got old, he also got sicker. And, as the story opens, he's dying of cancer. During a cold, winter night, the family mansion becomes the scene of a bizarre double murder. A noise rouses the household and they find the body of a local troublemaker outside in the snow, but what's weird is that the body is clad in "a suit of samurai armor made completely of wood." He had been shot at close range without any footsteps in the surrounding snow! A second shot is heard and Marlow is discovered dead in his bed. Fortunately, Inspector Richard Queen, Ellery Queen and Nikki Porter happened to be in the neighborhood to lend the local police a helping hand. What's uncovered in less than 15 pages could have easily supported a novel-length story as it has literary everything. A snowy country house. A murdered patriarch and an impossible crime that form a "two-body problem." Alibis and clues. A somewhat surprising solution that I should have seen coming, but was too busy starring myself blind on a completely wrong pet theory. But loved the story. It reminded me of what you would get if you combined a 1930s Christopher Bush novel with John Dickson Carr-style impossible crime.

The next story is "The Mad Hatter's Riddle" (2009) by Dale C. Andrews, but already read and reviewed the story back in 2020. However, it has to be said that the title of the story ended up outshining most of the plot. You have no idea how brilliant it's until you read the solution. 

"A Change of Scene" by Jane Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is original to this anthology and has Ellery Queen, Nikki Porter and Inspector Queen going to Chicago during the holiday season to do some sight seeing, Christmas shopping and watching the Christmas parade with floats – celebrating both the season and the city's storied history. During the parade, William Nagel was in the crowd with his wife and relatives. One minute he was right there beside his wife and the next moment he was gone. Did he disappear voluntarily or did his union job get him into trouble with the mob? Either way, Nikki has "a desire to beat Ellery to a case's solution" and begins to investigate on her own. A pleasant, lightweight detective story with a quasi-impossible problem that made good use of its historical setting.

Arthur Porges' "The Indian Diamond Mystery" first appeared in the June, 1965, issue of EQMM and is reprinted here for the first time to open the volume's parody section. So who better to do the honors than Celery Green. This is almost a direct sequel to the previous Celery Green tale, "The English Village Mystery," in which Inspector Dewe East "scored a minor triumph" in titular village with assistance of the well-known American detective, Celery Green. Not before "almost the entire population had been exterminated." Inspector East has an opportunity to redeem himself when a tip puts him on the trail of a well-known, international jewel thief, Fanfaron Mironton, who "stole the hundred-thousand-guinea Indian diamond." Mironton is trapped inside a hotel, tries to shoot himself out of a tight corner and is eventually arrested, but "there was no trace of the Indian Diamond." Luckily, Celery Green is still in England and usually needs no more than a few hours to solve a crime. And he quickly figures out how the diamond could have vanished from a closely guarded hotel. The solution is in principle not impossible, but Porges made it extremely silly.

The second parody is Jon L. Breen's "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" (1969), but also reviewed that story back in 2019. So moving on to the next EQ spoof. 

"The Little Sister in Crime" by Theodore B. Hertel, Jr. originally appeared in a chapbook that was put together for the 1997 Bouchercon with Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister (1949) as a kind of unifying theme. All of the stories had to be titled "The Little Sister in Crime" and had to be set a fictional Bouchercon between 1920 and 1941 with a number of obligatory references and scenes that had to be included. So the story gave Ellery a little sister, Hillary Queen, who accompanied her father and brother to Bouchercon where they meet all the famous detectives like Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe and Perry Mason – most of whom either employ ghost writers to get their names out or trying to find one. Ellery Queen hires two cousins in New York to put together stories based on his cases and pays them "a pittance to do so." One of the attendees is a depressed Barnaby Ross who hasn't much work since Drury Lane's Last Case (1933) was published. But was it the reason why he committed suicide in his hotel room? And was the message scrawled in blood a dying message or a suicide note? There's a "Challenge to the Reader," but the solution couldn't have been more telegraphed if the story had been stuck in an anthology entitled The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen. Still a fun little story.

Jon L. Breen and Josh Pachter's "The German Cologne Mystery" had a long road to publication and began sometime during the 1970s as solo-effort by Pachter to write an EQ parody, which was originally titled "The Cologne Cologne Mystery." But the story was turned down by EQMM. Years later, Breen got to tighten up the story and was published in the September/October, 2005, issue of EQMM thirty years after it was originally conceived. The celebrated mystery writer and amateur detective, Celery Breen, is playing cards in a room of the Hotel Madrid when someone gets himself killed down the hall. Carlos Nacionale is lying in a pool of blood and clutching a pair of ordinary dice between his right thumb and forefinger, but Celery ensures his father, Inspector Wretched Breen, the victim had been poisoned and the slit throat was simply a shaving accident as all the classic symptoms of poisoning are there – no heartbeat, no pulse, no nothing ("Q.E.D."). Celery believes the dying message will reveal the source of the poison, but Inspector Breen draws a different conclusion. A very fun take on both the fallible detective and the exasperating sleuth who can't get to the point.

Rand B. Lee is the son of one half of the EQ writing team, Manfred B. Lee, whose "The Polish Chicken Mystery' is published here for the first time and has three famous detectives answering that age-old question. Why did the chicken cross the road? I didn't care much for Miss Marple's solution, but liked the one Sherlock Holmes came up with and Ellery Queen had the best answer. Although he had more to work with it. A fun short-short.

One of the highlights of the previous anthology was Josh Pachter's "E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name" (1968), which he wrote when he was sixteen and concerns the eleven children of a policeman all named after famous detective characters. “E.Q. Griffen's Second Case” is the sequel and first appeared in the May, 1970, issue of EQMM and has E.Q. assisting his father with the murder of a hippie, poet and children's author. Garrett Conway was stabbed while walking down the street, but Conway, "long familiar with the doings of children," scrawled a dying message on the concrete. A simple "1 2 3." The answer to the problem is not bad and a child would likely catch on to the meaning of the dying message faster than an adult, but the Author's Note explained that readers at the time complained about the dying clue. There's a technical flaw in it and a few simple changes would have improved the story, but Pachter decided to leave it as he originally wrote it. I agree and respect that. This story and premise of the whole series is nothing to be ashamed off considering how old he was when he wrote it. I still want that Gideon Fell Griffen locked room story!

Arthur Vidro's "The Mistake on the Cover of EQMM #1" (2018) was first published on the EQMM website and is more of a snacksized puzzle than a story with the story title summing up the puzzle. However, this short-short puzzle is loaded with Easter eggs and there's a lengthy Editor's Note ("Easter in the Autumn") pointing them all out. 

"The Pink Pig Mystery" by Jeffrey Marks is original to this anthology and visits an often overlooked patch of the Elleryverse, the Ellery Queen Jr. series. Between 1942 and 1966, eleven juvenile mystery novels were published with nine starring a young Djuna and his Scottish terrier, Champ. Marks returned took a stiff dose of childhood nostalgia and returned to the series with a story set during the Second World War. There were talks in Manhattan "about bomber strikes like the ones in London" or "the kamikaze attacks on Pearl Harbor." Ellery packed up Djuna and Champ to the country side, but there they become involved (together with two other kids) in the mystery of a pristine pink pig in a muddy pigsty. Very much a children's mystery with a simple, straightforward plot, but perfectly replicated those vintage juvenile mysteries and the EQJR series.

The collection ends with a postscript from the real "Ellery Queen," Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, which is an anecdote illustrating "the authors' recognition (and humility) that their deductive powers do not match those of their fictional detective." The piece is fittingly titles "The Misadventures of Ellery Queen" and made perfect ending to the collection. 

So, on a whole, my opinion of The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen is pretty much the same as The Misadventures of Ellery Queen. Not every story is a winner or will stick in your mind, but not a single truly bad story or even one I just disliked. An impressive accomplishment for any short story collection, but especially impressive when it's an anthology of pastiches, parodies and homages written by a bunch of unapologetic fanboys and fangirls – which makes it even more impressive I liked both anthologies. As some of you regulars know, I'm not very big fan of pastiches in general and stand with Rex Stout that authors should “roll their own,” but never had much of problem with EQ pastiches. Probably because the series (sort of) allows for all these alternative universes to exist. Hopefully, a third anthology is somewhere in the future as their should be more than enough material left. There's Donald A. Yates' "The Wounded Tyrolean" (c. 1955), Rintaro Norizuki's "Midori no tobira wa kiken" ("The Lure of the Green Door," 1991), Dale C. Andrews' "Four Words" (2020) and the uncollected radio scripts. Highly recommended to every EQ fan!

A note for the curious: I don't know if there anymore Misadventure anthologies in the work, but there's American detective character with the name recognition and more than enough material associated with him to cobble together The Misadventures of Philo Vance.

The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka (1966) by Josef Skvorecky

Josef Skvorecky was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher, born in former Czechoslovakia, who became an internationally acclaimed author of works like Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone, 1967) and Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls, 1977), but he was also a pillar of support to Czech dissident writers – printing and smuggling their books into the country in defiance of Communist censorship. When he was not thumbing his nose at the totalitarian regime lording over his home country, Skvorecky was "an avid reader of Ellery Queen, R. Austin Freeman, John Dickson Carr, et al."

Skvorecky love of mysteries found expression in a series of detective stories about a melancholic, sad-eyed Czech policeman, Lieutenant Josef Boruvka, who appeared in three short story collections and a novel. The series has been described as "mischievous parodies" of the traditional detective story with Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox, 1973), a collection with each story breaking one of Father Knox's "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929), standing as the most well-known representative of that reputation. However, the plots all hinge on a unifying gimmick, like Agatha Christie's The Labours of Hercules (1947), which didn't allow him to really showcase his abilities as a plotter. All he had to do was present a solution or situation that violated one of Knox's ten rules.

There is, however, one of the three collections in the series that has been on my wishlist for ages. Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka, 1966) introduced Lieutenant Boruvka in twelve short stories that are either tongue-in-cheek or serious renditions of the classic detective stories of yore, but loaded with bizarre clues, strange crimes and a number of locked room mysteries. Robert Adey listed only three of the stories in Locked Room Murders (1991), but there are several more to be found here. So let's get started! 

"The Supernatural Powers of Lieutenant Boruvka" opens the collection and explains why Constable First Class Sintak is "firmly convinced that Lieutenant Boruvka wielded powers that were not entirely in keeping with normal human abilities," like a wizard, which he irrevocably proved to Sintak in the Semerak case – a case officially handled by Boruvka's young sergeant. Sergeant Malek meets with his superior at the scene of the crime, an attic where an elderly woman was hanging by her neck from a rope tied to a ceiling beam, but enthusiastic sergeant knew it was murder and the whole story is basically a conversation between the two. A conversation that quickly begins to poke fun at the fictional detective who love being complicated for the sake of being complicated. Malek's has complicated timetables, collected a piece from a building as evidence and ordered divers, backed by a helicopter, to go over a pond to look for a discarded bike. Meanwhile, Boruvka tries to get in a word edgewise ("certainly, but..." "it's just that...") and it takes him a while before he can point out something really obvious in the attic. Something proving without a doubt that the old woman had been murdered. 

This story has a very thin plot, which hinges on the obvious, but it was a genuinely amusing take on the exasperating, fictional detectives and Malek gave his amateur counterparts a run for their money. But what made the simplistic solution work is that both detectives were correct. Only difference is that Malek took the long way round and Boruvka a short cut. A great introduction to the lieutenant and his sergeant!

Unfortunately, the second story, "That Sax Solo," is the weakest and my least favorite story from the collection. The lead singer of a Jazz band is murdered at a hotel and Boruvka has to use a musical clue to break down a musical alibi, but the clue was used in the worst possible way to end the story. 

"The Scientific Method" is the third story and one of the stories in the collection that was overlooked by Adey in Locked Room Murders. This is also the first theatrical mystery of the collection and brings Lieutenant Boruvka to the Odeon Theatre where a ballet dancer has been killed, a bullet fired "straight into the nape of her neck," while she was taking a shower, but "a body search of all the ladies" was conducted before they left the showers – no weapon was recovered. Malek remarks they have "a miraculous marksman" on their hands. However, the trick has been done before and the idea behind it can be considered as one of the earliest innovations in impossible crime plotting. But the solution is the first one to show Skvorecky's fascination as a plotter with trajectories and movement along horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. You'll find this approach in his more trickier and complicated stories. 

"Death on Needlepoint" is potential anthology material and reminiscent of the mountaineering, open-air locked room mysteries by Glyn Carr. The story begins with three mountaineers, Patera, Bartos and Jirina, climbing the rocky face of Needlepoint linked by only a rope with a sixty-foot precipice yawning beneath them. Patera is the first one to make it over the overhang of the summit, but then the rope slackens and when Bartos completes his harrowing ascent to the top, he makes a terrifying discovery. Patera sat, "strangely contorted," on the bare summit of the rock with his face between his knees and "the carved handle of a bowie-knife protruding from his back." Bartos recognized his own knife which he assumed was back at the camp in his tent. When the police arrives, Boruvka discovers Patera and Bartos were rivals who tried to win Jirina's affection. But how was the murder carried out?

Boruvka has a crime scene "which the murderer couldn't have reached and from which he couldn't have escaped," but the place is not half as inaccessible as it appears on first sight. There are several very well done false-solutions with the one accusing the third climber, Jirina, standing out as particular ingenious, but the actual solution is no slouch either. Only thing lacking was a diagram. It would have made the tricky solution so much clearer. Unquestionably, one of the collection's stronger stories. 

"Whose Deduction?" is a minor, forgettable story which I already have trouble remembering. The story is part of a character-arc that runs through the collection and concerns a young policewoman, Eva, who was introduced in the third story and Boruvka is beginning to fall in love with her. However, he's a married man with a teenage daughter and an unimpeachable reputation as an inspector, which will cause some serious trouble in later stories. So the modern trope of the troubled policeman rears its ugly head here, but there's kind of a payoff in the stories ahead. This story is not one of my favorites, however, it perfectly demonstrates why I prefer plot over character.

The next story is "The Case of the Horizontal Trajectory," but have previously discussed it in my review of John Pugmire and Brian Skupin's monumental anthology, The Realm of the Impossible (2017). It's one of the standout stories of the collection and a solid impossible crime story in the tradition of the scientific detective stories by Arthur Porges. 

"A Tried and Proven Method" breaks with the routine of previous stories as Boruvka promised his 17-year-old daughter, Zuzana, to spend a holiday together in Italy ("the home of her mother's family") under the condition her school report turned out well, which she interpreted as not failing her classes – collecting an abundance of Cs, Ds and two As. Boruvka gave in and took Zuzana on her first trip abroad, but the holiday slowly turned disastrous. They run out of gas in the mountains and have to climb on foot to the hotel, but they come across two very unusual sights in their track to the top. Firstly, Zuzana notices that the pale, gold sand on a plateau sixty feet below is disturbed "as though a struggle had taken place there," but no tracks led to the spot. The sand all around was "absolutely smooth." Secondly, they come across a dead woman near the stony path. Boruvka knows its murder, but, as a Red policeman from a communist country, he's regarded with suspicion and mocked to his face ("in your country everyone suspicious"). Besides, the local police knows it must have been suicide. Not murder. 

The gravely ill victim was not bludgeoned to death, but had fallen from a terrific height and likely threw herself out of a cable cart, which she had repeatedly threaten to do. She was seen boarding the cable cart alone and it arrived at the station empty with an open door. Nobody could have gotten to her. Boruvka is still convinced it was murder and comes up with an interesting solution befitting such an unusual, bizarrely staged impossible murder. A solution treading dangerously close to the territory of second-rate pulp trickery, but Skvorecky handled and presented the trick very convincingly. 

"Falling Light" is a sequel, of sorts, to "A Tried and Proven Method" in which Boruvka and Zuzana spend a few days of their Italian holiday as guests of Signor Greffi. A relative of the victim from the previous story and out of gratitude for capturing her murderer, he invited father and daughter to his Venetian residence. Boruvka finds himself in a "linguistic isolation" among the English and Italian speaking guests, which is a situation that's hardly improved by the murder of their host. This story is a quasi-locked room mystery masquerading as a closed-circle whodunit, but this time the solution is unmistakably pulpy in nature. Something you would expect from John Russell Fearn or Gerald Verner. Nonetheless, I can appreciate a good, pulp-style impossible crime and liked the clue of the ugly doll. 

"Aristotelian Logic" begins with the murder of a model during a fashion show, stabbed to death in her dressing room cubicle, but the murder serves as vehicle for an argument between Boruvka and "the policewoman," Eva. Boruvka is annoyed at his infatuation with Eva and becomes quite unpleasant to her over the course of the investigation, which results in him chiding her that "the homicide squad cannot be guided by feminine logic" and "she had no idea what Aristotelian logic was." However, while Eva's view of the case "could hardly be termed strictly Aristotelian logic," she beats Boruvka to the solution. Not the strongest of the stories collected here, but an interesting, well done variation on that rarely used trope of the rival detectives. 

"The End of an Old Tom-Cat" has better storytelling and imagery than plotting beginning on the night Boruvka is kept awake by a whole quartet of cats, wailing a concert on the roof of his house, while an old tomcat lay dying at the other end of the city – foreshadowing next morning's murder case. Boruvka is summoned to the home of a well-known Public Prosecutor, Paul Hynais, who died in his bed that night with all the tale-tell signs of poisoning. Hynais turns out to have been somewhat of roguish tomcat, in human guise, who accepted favors from women to go light on the men in their lives in the courtroom. This angle brings back a character from an earlier story, but, on a whole, the story surrounding the murder was more interesting than the murder itself. Boruvka actually finds part of the solution in Ellery Queen's The Roman Hat Mystery (1929).

For some reason, "The End of an Old Tom-Cat" strongly reminded me of the Inspector Ghote novels, like Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade (1966), by H.R.F. Keating. 

"His Easiest Case" is shortest story of the bunch with an incredibly misleading title, because it's kind of brilliant, plot-wise, but how the story is structured and told makes it one of the standouts of The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka. The policewoman who has been occupying Boruvka's thoughts is attacked with meat chopper in a murderous assault and left critically injured, but Sergeant Malek already has a suspect and an indisputable piece of evidence. A thumbprint with "a very clear and distinctive scar." A print that belongs to Boruvka and it was the only print found in the apartment that has been professionally wiped clean. So did he actually took a swing with a meat chopper? Only way out is to find an explanation how the fingerprint could have ended up there and that explanation truly is an inspired piece of plotting. An idea that deserved a novel-length treatment, but the who-and why had equally fascinating solutions. Something you can only, sort of, anticipate if you've paying close attention to one of the previous stories. The same applies to the last story. 

“Crime in a Girls' High School” is best described as an anti-detective story and actually a prologue that was put to better use as an effective closing-act. Boruvka tells Eva how he had to abandon his first profession as a gym teacher, which happened nearly twenty years ago in the wake of a theft. A former private detective was called in, Jaroslav V. Klima, who acts as a hotblooded Hercule Poirot as he follows all the clues to uncover a very different kind of problem. The ending explains to Eva why "deep, infinite sadness" was "ineradicably engraved on the lieutenant's face." There were clues to what's behind his melancholy in previous stories that fitted the clues Klima was tracking down. So, while a little unorthodox, the story is a fitting end to an unusual collection of detective stories solved by a reassuringly human detective.

So, on a whole, The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka follows to the tradition of short story collections by being a little uneven in quality with a few duds and focus shifting from plot to character or storytelling, which resulted in some tightly-plotted locked room mysteries and some more loosely-told character-arcs – although the clueing was a little murky at times. However, the overall result succeeded in venturing off the beaten path while remaining (mostly) true to the fundamentals of the traditional detective story. For example, the last two stories. Skvorecky's The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka is a noteworthy and original contribution to the genre during a period when these type of detective stories were considered old-fashioned or even obsolete. Skvorecky demonstrated early on that you can have a fusion of styles complementing both the classical and modernist schools.

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) is the third, wintry-themed anthology published in the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards, collecting eleven festive stories about "unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow" and "the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations" – wrapped and presented to the reader like "a seasonal assortment box." This collection presents a wide variety of merry mayhem from the pens of some very well-known mystery writers to a few names who have only recently been rediscovered. But none of the stories have been, what you could call, anthologized to death. So let's pig on this suspicious looking, crime sprinkled Christmas pudding, shall we? Hmm, smells like bitter almonds! 

The collections opens with Baroness Orczy's "A Christmas Tragedy," originally published in the December, 1909, issue of Cassell's Magazine, which has a Christmas Eve party keeping an ear out for "the sound of a cart being driven at unusual speed." A sound that has lately become associated with a series of "dastardly outrages against innocent animals" in the neighborhood of Clevere Hall. So everyone is very keen to put a stop to these cattle-maiming outrages and the cart is heard that night, but this time it was followed by a terrible cry, "Murder! Help! Help!" Major Ceely, host of the party, is found on the garden steps with a knife wound between his shoulder blades. The local police gladly accepts the assistance of Lady Molly, of Scotland Yard, whose success or failure will decide the fate of an innocent man. Not a bad story for the time, but not one of my personal favorites. 

Selwyn Jepson's "By the Sword" first appeared in the December, 1930, issue of Cassell's Magazine and has claimed a place among my favorite seasonal mysteries. Alfred Caithness is spending Christmas with his cousin, Judge Herbert Caithness, who has an idyllic home life with a wife, Barbara, who's twenty-eight years his junior and a five-year-old son, Robert – who loves playing with his toy soldiers. So the perfect setting for an old-fashioned Christmas party, but Alfred has reasons to be more than a little envious of his cousin. He has loved Barbara ever since attending their wedding and sorely needs the kind of money Herbert has aplenty, which is why he decides his cousin has to go when he denies him another loan. So, inspired by the family legend saying that "a Caithness always dies by the sword," Alfred begins to plot the perfect murder with all the evidence pointing to an outsider. However, the entire universe, or the Ghosts of Christmas, appear to be against him as even the best-laid plans can go awry. A fantastic inverted mystery from the hoist-on-their-petards category.

John Pringle is perhaps best remembered today by his principle pseudonym, "Gerald Verner," who prolifically produced pulp-style detective and thriller novels during his lifetime. "The Christmas Card Crime," published as by “Donald Stuart,” originally appeared in the December, 1934, publication of Detective Weekly (No. 96). Trevor Lowe, a well-known dramatist and amateur detective, who you might remember from my reviews of Terror Tower (1935) and The Clue of the Green Candle (1938) is en route with his secretary Arnold White and Detective Inspector Shadgold to spend Christmas with a friend in a small Cornish village, but their train becomes stranded when the heavy snowfall blocks the line. So they have to walk back to the previous station along with seven other passengers, six men and a woman, but they have to go from the empty station to an old, gloomy inn of ill-repute. During the night, two people are murdered in short succession with the thick, undisturbed carpet of snow indicating "no one came from outside and no one has left from within." The only real clue Lowe has to work with is a torn Christmas card. A good and fun piece of Christmas pulp, but more memorable for its mise-en-scène than its plot. However, I have to give props for turning the last words of the second victim in a kind of dying message sort of pointing to the murderer.

The next two stories have been previously reviewed on this blog, here and here, but, needless to say, Carter Dickson's "Blind Man's Hood" (1937) and Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) can be counted among the best stories in the collection. Both come highly recommended! 

Francis Durbridge's "Paul Temple's White Christmas" first appeared in Radio Times on December 20, 1946, but reads more like vignette than a proper short-short story. Paul Temple's dream of a white Christmas in Switzerland is granted when he's asked to go there to identify the main suspect in that Luxembourg counterfeit business he had help to smash. So not much to say about this one with only half a dozen pages and a razor thin plot. 

Cyril Hare's "Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech" was originally published in the Evening Standard on December 23, 1949, which is another one of my personal favorites from this collection. Timothy Trent was brought up by his step family, the Grigsons, but Timothy was the only "one of that clinging, grasping clan" who "got on in the world" and made money – someone from that family has been annually blackmailing him. Every year, around Christmas time, he receives a payment notice signed by "From your old Leech." Timothy was actually surprised by the latest demand, because he assumed he had gotten rid of Leech last February. But here he was again. Or was it a she? Timothy goes to the Grigson family party determined to smoke out the blackmailer, but, once again, even the best-laid plans can go awry and here it comes with a particular dark, poisonous sting in the tail. An excellent crime story demonstrating why Hare was admired by both his contemporary brethren and modern crime writers like P.D. James and Martin Edwards. 

E.C.R. Lorac's "A Bit of Wire-Pulling" originally appeared under the title "Death at the Bridge Table" in the Evening Standard on October 11, 1950, which is another short-short. Inspector Lang, the old C.I.D. man, tells the story of the time he had to protect an important industrialist, Sir Charles Leighton, who received threatening letters promising he will be dead before the old year's out. So he accompanies him, incognito, to a New Year's Eve bridge party where's shot to death in front of Lang's eyes and the murderer apparently managed to escape. However, the sharp-eyed detective quickly begins to pick up the bits and pieces that tell an entirely different story. More importantly, he trusts the men he has personally trained. Lorac was somewhat of a female John Rhode, as she was very keen on technical trickery, but you can't help but feel the murderer was doomed from the start by employing such a ballsy method. A pretty decent short-short. Not especially memorable, but not bad either. 

John Bude's "Pattern of Revenge," another short-short, was first published in The London Mystery Magazine (No. 21) in 1954 and surprisingly turned out to be an impossible crime story set in Norway. The story is a retrospective of a rivalry between two men, Thord Jensen and Olaf Kinck, who vy for the attention of a beautiful woman, Karen Garborg, but one morning she found dead on the doorstep of her cottage – stabbed through the heart. There was "only one set of tracks in the fresh-fallen snow," single footprints alternating with deep pock-marks, "characteristic of the imprint left by a wooden leg." Olaf has a wooden leg and his fingerprints were on the knife. So he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a deathbed confession shed new light on the murder and attempts to right a wrong. A very well done short-short and a truly pleasant surprise to come across this unusual take on the footprints-in-the-snow impossible crime. 

John Bingham's "Crime at Lark Cottage" was originally published in the 1954 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News and brings a slice of domestic suspense to the family Christmas table. John Bradley gets lost on a dark, snowy evening while his car is on the verge of breaking down and ends up at a lonely cottage. There he finds a woman with her small daughter and asks to use the phone, but is offered to stay the night as there's not garage around who would come out to the cottage at that time of night in foul weather. But she appears to be frightened. And it looks like someone is prowling around the cottage. A very well done piece of crime fiction that would have served perfectly as a radio-play for Suspense.

The last story to round out this seasonal anthology is Julian Symons' "'Twix the Cup and Lip," but nothing he wrote interests me and skipped it. That brings me to the end of this collection.

So, on a whole, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories is a splendidly balanced anthology with Dickson, Hare, Jepson, Knox and Stuart delivering the standout stories of the collection with the other entries being a little too short or dated to leave an indelible impression on the reader. But not a single real dud or over anthologized story to be found. Two things that tend to be obligatory for these types of short story collections. Definitely recommended for those cold, shortening days of December.

More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn (2021) by Anne van Doorn

Four years ago, M.P.O. Books launched a new series under a now open penname, "Anne van Doorn," which starred two particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators), Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong, who specialize in cases that have gone stone cold and occasional miscarriages of justice – ranging from missing persons to murder cases. Fascinatingly, Corbijn and De Jong were introduced in a promotional freebie, "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," 2017). A short story that actually received an English translation and appeared in the September/October, 2019, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 

I have since read and reviewed two novels, two short story collections and a handful of short stories culminating with the magnificent De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019). A monument of a Dutch detective novel with two impossible crimes, a dying message and a revelation about one of the characters that caught me by complete surprise. One of those painful moments in which the professional mystery novelist showed the amateur armchair detective who the real murder expert is.

The series went dormant for nearly two years, but has now reemerged with a third volume of short stories, entitled Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021), collecting ten detective stories of various plumage – including two previously unpublished stories. However, I've already read and reviewed "Het huis dat ongeluk bracht" ("The House That Brought Bad Luck," 2018), "De bus die de mist inging" ("The Bus That Went Into the Fog," 2018) and "De brieven die onheil spelden" ("The Letters That Spelled Doom," 2018) on this blog before. So I'll skip them for the sake of brevity, but it needs to be said that they represent the standouts of the collection. And with that I mean they're the most classically-styled of the bunch full with unbreakable alibis, impossible murders and ghostly mischief. Don't overlook those separate short story reviews. 

"Het schilderij dat niet bleef hangen" ("The Painting That Didn't Hang Around," 2018) is a case that was nothing more than "a comical snack" to Robbie Corbijn, but not to the people who were directly affected by it. Isabelle Valck comes to Recherchebureau Corbijn – Research & Discover to ask them to reopen an unsolved, thirteen year old case concerning a 350-year-old painting by Jan Steen. The painting was stolen in 2003 from De Catharina Hof, in Gouda, where Maarten Lippinkhoff was the curator of the museum when the burglary took place. Lippinkhof was Valck's father and he had always been haunted by the theft, but Valck received a shock when she discovered the stolen painting, badly damaged, in his attic shortly after he passed away. She really wants to know what exactly happened and the painting is closely examined, but, whether the painting is authentic or a masterly done forgery, neither gives a satisfying answer why it was found in the attic of the former conservator. Not until Corbijn forces someone's hand by staging a denouement in the attic and has a laugh at everyone's else expense. A fun and almost typically Dutch little crime caper. 

"De vrouw die onraad rook" ("The Woman Who Smelled Trouble," 2018) presents Lowina de Jong, series-narrator and detective-in-training, why Corbijn has "a spitting hatred for adultery cases" and thoroughly vets prospective clients – before accepting or turning them down. De Jong remembers Corbijn harshly turned down such a case, but De Jong wants to help her out. Melanie van Staveren-de Maillie tells De Jong her tragic history that eventually lead her to be kind of unfaithful to her husband, which now has some potential devastating consequences. She has received a threatening warning letter and had an eerily realistic dream in which “an ice cold hand” was chocking her. But was it a dream? A week later, De Jong reads her obituary in the newspaper and suspect foul play, but Melanie appears to have died from natural causes in her sleep. When she was all alone in a locked house (not an impossible crime) and the clock is ticking away the hours until the body is cremated.

So a how-was-it-done kind of detective story, but the impressive part of the story is not the how or why. It's the slippery, but impressive, wire-walking act Corbijn had to perform to convince the reader the who was completely fair. When I learned the identity of the murderer, I frowned disapprovingly at the page as it was just plain unfair. Corbijn started to explain and pointing out why the solution is correct and not unfair at all, which is technically true, but not very satisfying. Not one of my personal favorites. 

"De pianist die uit de toon viel" ("The Pianist Who Fell Out of Tune," 2018) has a disappearance problem somewhat reminiscent of Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) with a solution that twists and snakes like a John Dickson Carr story! Maurice Kleinluchtenbeld was a famous pianist who reached the charts in most European countries in the 1990s with "his modern, romantic interpretations and arrangements of classical pieces," but vanished under mysterious circumstances in 2004. Corbijn remembers the case and described it to De Jong as having the appearance of "a botched magic trick." One moment the pianist was walking back home across a hill, De Soester Eng, which is surrounded on all sides by houses and the next moment he was gone. Vanished without a trace! Now he son wants the case reopened.

Corbijn and De Jong have two logical, yet unlikely, possibilities to explore: a voluntary disappearance or foul play, but, if he disappeared voluntarily, how could a famous musician with striking features stay hidden without ever getting spotted or even discovered – murder should have produced a body. The time, place and eyewitnesses at the time of the disappearance places constraints on a murderer with barely enough time to get rid of the body so effectively it was never found. Solution is a thing of beauty, "a clever magic trick," which rendered more than one character practically invisible. A pure, neo-Golden Age detective story. 

"Het bruidje dat geen afscheid nam" ("The Bride Who Didn't Say Goodbye," 2018) is a more of a thriller than a detective story and puts the spotlight on Corbijn's assistant, Lowina de Jong. Two times before, De Jong had been allowed to handle an investigation on her own and the first and last time her involvement lead to someone's untimely death. This third case is the second time it goes horribly wrong. De Jong took some vacations days to go to Finland to help find a missing and recently married woman, but the trip, told through a series of diary entries, is turned on its head when she finds herself trapped on a remote, desolate island with a captor who can vanish and reappear out of nowhere. There are some touches of the Had-I-But-Known School ("If only I had stayed in the Netherlands" or "if I hadn't kept deadly quiet, I probably would have ended up with my throat cut"), but the punch of the story is in its tragic and almost cruel ending. An ending that taught the detective-in-training a harsh lesson. 

"De man die wilde vliegen" ("The Man Who Wanted to Fly," 2021) is the shortest and perhaps the most ambitiously-plotted story of the collection. A story in which Corbijn tells a story to De Jong about his time with the police that taught him a valuable lesson. Always beware of the unreliable witness.

Ten years ago, Corbijn accompanied his then chef to the scene of what appeared to him to have been an impossible murder. A man had fallen to his death from a watchtower in a wooded, hilly area and there were two witnesses present who saw and heard the man fall. One of them was ascending the staircase and heard the victim hit the ground, while the other saw him fall and was seen bending over the body when the first witness arrived at the top of the tower. They all knew each other and the two witnesses have a strong motive, but neither witness/suspect were close enough to have pushed the man and that gives them, what can be a called, a positional alibi – which opens the door to a series of false-solutions. Corbijn demonstrates why "the unreliable narrator is a pitfall in any investigation" with an unexpected, third possibility. Anthony Berkeley would have loved this story that proved Anthony Boucher right that the rules and conventions of the genre can only be broken by writers who understand and respect them.

On a side note (Spoilers/ROT13): Z.C.B. Obbxf/Ina Qbbea unf orra rkcrevzragrq va gurfr fgbevrf jvgu znxvat gur zheqrere n crevcureny punenpgre be rira na haxabja K, juvpu (vs V erzrzore pbeerpgyl) snvyrq gb jbex va “Qr negf qvr qr jrt xjvwg jnf” (“Gur Qbpgbe Jub Tbg Ybfg ba gur Jnl,” 2018). “Gur Jbzna Jub Fzryyrq Gebhoyr” jnf n grpuavpny vzcebirzrag, ohg ur anvyrq vg jvgu “Gur Zna Jub Jnagrq gb Syl.” This is why this story deserves to be translated, because an international, English-speaking mystery reading audience will appreciate it more than Dutch readers. One is sadly more knowledgeable than the other where classic detective fiction is concerned. 

"De studente die zichzelf tegenkwam" ("The Student Who Met Herself," 2018) shows the author of these stories is not only a traditional mystery novelist and a modern crime writer, but also a massive Sherlock Holmes fan. A story with an unmistakable hint of Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" (collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892). Veerle Peeters is an archaeology student and active in an amateur theater company, but recently, she got involved in a bizarre situation. Veerle wants Corbijn and De Jong to find out whether she unwittingly collaborated in something criminal, or not, because a sick woman might be held against her will by her own family. The student was hired by a Hilda Jonckheere to play the real-life part of her terminal ill daughter, Bernadette, who was summoned to the deathbed of her estranged grandfather. Something is obviously at stake for the parents. But following a few critical questions, Hilda and her family simply vanish without a trace. So what really happened? What's the significance of the tattoo Veerle spotted on the wrist of the dying Bernadette? More importantly, what happened to everyone? And why? The plot and solution is a grand play on breaking down identities and really deserved a novel-length treatment. There were some great scenes, discoveries and revelations that would have been perfect to pace out and deepen the plot of a detective novel. And then there's the ending. Corbijn receives an envelope with a missing piece of the puzzle, but who mailed him the newspaper clipping is "a mystery that has never been solved." I vaguely remember that happening at least once before in another story and perhaps The Man Who Relieved His Conscience has made me paranoid, but begin to suspect there's a shadow detective looking over Corbijn's shoulder. You won't fool me this time. I think I can make an educated guess who this potential rival-detective could be. 

"De man die liever binnen bleef" ("The Man Who Rather Stayed Inside," 2021) is a perfect specimen of, what I like to call, oranje pulp (orange pulp) and I say that with the upmost affection as the story delivers a pulp-style locked room thriller remindful of two writers previously discussed on this blog – namely John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner. A case with very little interest to Corbijn, a broken relationship without an apparent crime, which is why De Jong is tasked with most of the work. De Jong has to try to get into contact with a reclusive software millionaire, Hadley Green, who lives in a manor house on an estate "separated with a high fence and barbed wire" from the outside world. One day, without an explanation, he kicked his girlfriend and their 5-year-old son out of the house. She desperately wants answers. De Jong quickly finds out that getting past the gatekeeper and estate manager is easier said than done. She eventually gets passed the gate on a dark, stormy night when the entire house is plunged into darkness and potentially crawling with intruders culminating in a shooting in a tightly locked bedroom. Just when I thought I had figured everything out, De Jong's return to the estate the following morning threw an entirely different complexion on the case. A very well done take on the pulp-style thriller with an impossible crime in a house under siege (see Brian Flynn's Invisible Death, 1929).

So that brings us to the end of More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn. A rewarding collection with a dodgy story, or two, but without a single genuine dud to be found and traditionally there are one or two bad stories in every short story collection and anthology – speaking volumes about the overall quality of the series. Another plus is the variety within the series and this collection. Covering everything from armchair detection and (pulp) thrillers to locked room mysteries and contemporary interpretations of the Doylean-era crime story. This type of crime-and detective fiction is regrettably all too rare in my country, because not that many Dutch writers have the know-all to clue, misdirect or play around with the conventions and tropes of the genre. That's why I've been enjoying this series so much, but don't assume that completely clouds my judgment. Only a little. And many of the stories collected here would charm the pants off of non-Dutch detective fans, if they ever get translated. Here's hoping!

Six Against the Yard (1936) by The Detection Club

The members of that august body known as The Detection Club, a Who's Who of British Golden Age mystery writers, produced a number of experimental collaborations that, nearly a century later, are still practically unique in the genre's history – which too often get dismissed as mere trifles or curiosities. Sure, the Detection Club collaborations never produced a genuine genre classic, but their experiments are not entirely without merit or interest. 

The Floating Admiral (1931) is a round-robin mystery novel written by no less than thirteen  different authors with each one, like a potluck luncheon, bringing something new and unexpected to the story. An experiment that should have ended in an unmitigated disaster had it not been for Anthony Berkeley's last chapter, "Cleaning Up the Mess," which made it appear as if they had planned the whole thing from the beginning. No mean feat! Ask a Policeman (1933) is not only one of those exceedingly rare crossovers, but a very unique type of crossover in which the collaborating writers exchanged their series-detective characters. So you have Berkeley taking on Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and Sayers getting to work with Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. And they're all investigating the same murder! Something that was never done before or since. Not in our genre, anyway.

Not as experimental, but no less fascinating, is The Anatomy of Murder (1936). A collection of five true crime essays, penned by the likes of Berkeley, Sayers and E.R. Punshon, who shine their light on some infamous murderers and murder cases – such as Henri Landru and the Julia Wallace murder case. So you basically get a handful of mystery novelists who play armchair investigative journalists with real-life murder cases. Funnily enough, the Detection Club published a collection of short stories in which the roles are reversed with a former policeman nipping at their heels! 

Martin Edwards said Six Against the Yard (1936) is an ingenious and perhaps unique "variation on the conventional detective fiction anthology" with a half-a-dozen stories in which club members present their "potentially foolproof murders," but each chapter is followed by an analysis from ex-Superintendent Cornish of Scotland Yard. And it's his task to expose "the flaws in the criminal scheme" presented to him. A true battle-of-wits pitting theory against practice! Yes, I'll be keeping score throughout the review. 

Margery Allingham is the first in line to take a crack at devising the perfect murder with "It Didn't Work Out," a theatrical mystery of sorts, in which she kind of casts herself in the role of murderer, but not as Margery Allingham, the mystery writer – assuming the identity of a stage actress, "Polly Oliver." The story plays out over several decades during which Polly has to look on hopelessly as a close stage pal, Louie Lester, who married Frank Springer. A "four-flushing gasbag" with "such an inferiority complex" that "his whole life was spent trying to boost himself up to himself." And "the more weak and hopeless and inefficient he saw himself the wilder and more irritating his lies became." Over the years, decades even, he tore down his wife career and spirit. Until, many years later, they become lodgers of the now elderly and retired Polly who started her own boarding house. Polly decides enough is enough with Frank's charming personality and circumstances presenting her with an opportunity to stage a fatal accident.

Ex-Superintendent Cornish admits that Allingham's murder is "diabolically ingenious" and under favorable circumstances can be completely successful, but he can't be sure whether, or not, the murder truly represents a perfect crime. Because there are some avenues for the police to pursue. However, Cornish only gives a possible outcome of a more thorough police investigation, which depends the mentally unbalanced murderer confessing, but the altruistic motive and method would make securing a conviction a Herculean task. Cornish points out that a successful murder could emboldening Polly "to stage another apparent accident" when another situation arises that convinces her murder is "a reasonable and laudable act." But that's mere conjecture. So Allingham takes the first point for the Detection Club. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-0.

The very cheeky Father Ronald Knox presented with "The Fallen Idol" the most striking, unusual and non-inverted story of the bunch with a Ruritanian murder plot in Latin America. Somewhat reminiscent of Roger East's Twenty-Five Sanitary Inspectors (1935). Enrique Gamba, the Inspirer of the Magnolian Commonwealth, who emerged victorious from a coup and rules over the country with his right-hand man, General Almeda, but unpatriotic messages and threats are circulating the capitol city – promising to burn down Gamba's house with him in it. All of these threats were signed by "The Avenger." There's a fire at the house and Gamba is killed, shot through the head, before his body is flung out of an open window. Colonel Weinberg, the Chief of Police, has the unenviable task to find out who, how and why, which is a hazardous undertaking in a country like Magnolia. Fortunately, ex-Superintendent Cornish is in the luxurious position to not having to take the tinderbox politics of the country into consideration as he explains his case against the murderer and what probably happened after Knox ended the story. A very convincing account that evened the score. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-1.

So the previous story took place in an imaginary, cloud cuckoo-cuckoo land in South America, but Berkeley's "The Policeman Only Taps Once" imported a hardboiled confidence trickster from the United States to Jolly Old England. Eddie Tuffon managed to keep his record spotless, but the place was getting too hot and decided to go to England to give the marriage swindle the good old college try. A huge mistake! Eddie managed to get himself tied to an enormous, square-faced woman with numerous chins, Myrtle, who constantly bosses him around. Nor is she as rich as he had hoped. Myrtle constantly reminded him that her income is hardly enough "to keep an able-bodied husband in idleness" to the point where he "pretty near slugged her once or twice." Eddie comes to the conclusion that she has to go, but, even in an inverted mystery, there's always room for one of Berkeley's trademark twists. Unfortunately, Cornish points out in his analyses of the story, entitled "...And Then Come the Handcuffs," that Berkeley was "more successful in his clever and amusing parody of the new manner in American fiction than in his 'perfect murder''"– "ingeniously as he has worked it out." The twist in the story could very well end up being the one that tied the hangman's knot. Although he does admit that his case purely rests on a heap of circumstantial evidence, but, if there is enough of it, "circumstantial evidence is just as deadly as direct testimony." TDC vs. Cornish: 1-2. 

Russell Thorndike is a new name to me who warrants further investigation, because "The Strange Death of Major Scallion" is easily my favorite from this collection. Such a well written and imaginative story in which the narrator tells the reader about his intention to kill his cousin, of sorts, the titular Major Scallion. A "fat, full-blooded, loud-voiced, bearded and young" man full of conceit, self-satisfaction and tall tales who likely never served a day. Major Scallion has a hold over the narrator which he handily uses to make a claim on his purse and hospitality. Nothing more, nor less, than blackmail. Slowly, the narrator's disgust turned into a cold, terrible hatred and began "a close study of murder as an art" to concoct the perfect method to avoid scaffold. Interestingly, the murder that inspires the narrator comes from an account of Thorndike's anti-hero series-character, Doctor Syn, who's an 18th century parson and smuggler. He even name drops his off-page opponent ("that other enemy to murder, Mr. Cornish"). Eventually settling on a seemingly ingenious method involving Major Scallion's excessive smoking habit, homemade nicotine poison and "a sinister family of house beetles." Regrettably, for our narrator, the method is full of holes and you don't need Cornish to spot the fatal flaw that will deliver him into the capable hands of the public hangman. TDC vs. Cornish: 1-3.

Dorothy L. Sayers returns to the theater setting with "Blood Sacrifice" as a young playwright, John Scales, finally gets his big break when a well-known actor-manager, Garrick Drury, decides to put on his play, Bitter Laurel – which was intended to be cynical and shocking play. Drury slowly reshaped the play into something "revoltingly different" that appealed to the masses and not without success. Scales even wrote the new scenes and lines himself, because "his own lines would be less intolerable than the united efforts of cast and producer to write them for themselves." This killed him on the inside as his name is now associated with sob-stuff and ruined his reputation with his artistic friends, which made him think of murder. However, the inevitable death of Garrick Drury wasn't a premeditated murder or even an act in the heat of the moment. Drury was send flying through a shop window by a skidding car and cut an artery in his arm, which required a blood transfusion to safe his life. So while the doctor and ambulance men try to safe his life and test everyone to find the right blood group, Scales notices the test plate get mixed up. Drury likely got a deadly blood transfusion, or did he? Not even Scales is entirely sure what he saw, but he kept his mouth shut.

Ex-Superintendent Cornish admits he "could not hope to prove, either to a jury's satisfaction or to my own, that John Scales was guilty of the crime of murder," but points out that "neither could any other detective." Not even that distinguished amateur, Lord Peter Wimsey, because Sayers had "failed to establish the fact of murder." There's a case to be made that Scales is morally guilty, but nothing that can be brought home unless the police can prove that he knew the test plates were mixed up and said nothing. Something that's next to impossible. So, in spite of Cornish's objections, Sayers scored a much needed point for her team. TDC vs. Cornish: 2-3. 

Freeman Wills Crofts has the opportunity to end this battle-of-wits in a draw with his contribution, entitled "The Parcel," which is as simple as it's technical tricky and comes with a diagram of the murder weapon. The premise of the story is practically identical to Thorndike's "The Strange Death of Major Scallion" in which rehabilitated, one-time criminal, Stewart Haslar, returns to England with a wife and a modest fortune that he made when he sold his Australian chain of fruit stores. Only person who knows his real identity and past, Henry Blunt, returns to impose on Haslar's generosity. After nearly two years, Haslar comes to the conclusion Blunt has to go and devices, what he thinks, is a bombproof plan by sending his blackmailer a homemade explosive over the mail. A plan hinging entirely on the assumption that there's no traceable link between Blunt and Haslar, but, as Cornish pointed out, Blunt is unlikely to have covered his tracks as thoroughly as Haslar, which is one of the many paths the police can investigate in this murder – slowly building a complete case to present to the judge and jury. And "there is little doubt what the verdict will be." TDC vs Cornish: 2-4.

The 2013 reprint edition of Six Against the Yard closes with an afterword, or rather an introduction, to a 1929 true crime essay by Agatha Christie, but the only reason it was included was to emblazon her name on the cover. Why not include her own perfect murder story, “Wireless” (1926), with an analysis from a modern police inspector, or forensic detective, to show how the police could have brought the killer to justice. That would have given them a legitimate reason to plaster her name on the cover. Now it borders on false advertisement. Anyway, the introduction to the essay ended with this bummer of a line, "sadly, Superintendent Cornish, who died on 6th February 1959 at the age of 85, is unavailable for comment..." A salute to you, Superintendent Cornish! You were no Lestrade!

So, all in all, the Detection Club lost rather badly here with four of the six ending up in the docks, but the end score could have easily been flipped around had Berkeley and Knox showed off their plotting skills instead of their storytelling abilities. Nonetheless, I enjoyed these stories tremendously and particularly Cornish picking them apart that showed the police has one critical advantage over the amateur criminal: a ton of experience. Highly recommended! Particularly to mystery readers with a fondness for the inverted detective story.