Spitting Image: "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" (1969) by Jon L. Breen

Some months ago, I reviewed two short stories by Jon L. Breen, "The House of the Shrill Whispers" (1972) and "The Problem of the Vanishing Town" (1979), which are gentle, but expertly done, parodies of John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell and Edward D. Hoch's Dr. Sam Hawthorne – two iconic detective-characters who are inextricably linked to the timeless locked room mystery. Breen is the genre's resident satirist and has taken the mickey out of many of the greatest mystery writers.

Frederick Dannay was one half of the bodily incarnation of the American detective story, "Ellery Queen," who invited Breen to take a shot at the Ellery Queen character. The result is a parody hearkening back to "the early Ellery of the pure-puzzle days." Naturally, there's a dying message and a challenge to the reader.

"The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" was originally published in the March, 1969, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in the anthology Ellery Queen's Eyes of Mystery (1981).

E. Larry Cune is a world famous detective and "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" takes him back to "the scene of his first great triumph," Greek Theatre, where he solved the murder of an asthmatic audience member, Mr. Anagopolous – a case commonly known as The Greek Coughin' Mystery. There are many more of these sly nods and winks in the story to EQ ("this is a calamity, Towne").

Orson Coward's new musical comedy, Gold, is debuting at the Greek Theatre and Cune is in the audience, but realizes that his mere presence put "the fear of sudden death in all those around him." The great detective hasn't attended a play or party without having "to solve a murder at some time during the festivities," because potential murderers are champing at the bit "to match wits with him." By the way, this "match wits" line also appears in the challenge to the reader. So is this story where the 1975 Ellery Queen TV-series got the idea for the famous "match wits with Ellery Queen" line? I don't remember it ever being used in any of the novels or short stories. Anyway...

Something is definitely happening, or has happened, backstage. When the show begins, the songs are out-of-order and during the intermission, Cune is told that Coward has been murdered. A weighty volume, entitled The Complete Wit of Orson Coward, appears to have been the murder weapon.

Cune deduces Coward expected to be murdered, but, when he saw Cune sitting in the audience, he knew it was going to be that night and left him a clue to help him identify his murderer, which Coward did by rearranging the songs – a predying message, if you will. Usually, in a detective parody, the answers to these kind of problems are nonsensical (e.g. "The Problem of the Vanishing Town") or disappointing, but the predying message can (sort of) be solved. I think the key to the meaning of the first, out-of-order song, "Never Been Kissed," is a bit more nebulous than "Alone in My Solitude" and "I Know the Score Now." However, if you get those last two, you can probably guess the answer to the first. And certainly pick the murderer's name from the cast of characters.

What has the Lithuanian eraser of the story-title to do with this theatrical mystery? Well, that's the punchline of the story. Something you have to read for yourself.

All in all, "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" is another excellent parody by Breen, who understands the writers he's lampooning, which is what makes them work and this time it even has a clever take on the dying message, but, more importantly, it was funny. My favorite scene is perhaps when Cune walked on stage to tell the audience there has been an unfortunate accident and immediately "men with black bags began making their way to the aisles all over the massive playhouse" (no, we don't need doctors, he's quite dead). This story should have made it into The Misadventures of Ellery Queen (2018). Definitely recommended, especially if you like Ellery Queen. Or simply in the mood for something light hearted and short.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) by E. and M.A. Radford

Back in March, the modern-day prospectors of Golden Age mysteries, Dean Street Press, reissued three classic, but obscure, detective novels by a forgotten husband-and-wife writing tandem, E. and M.A. Radford – who were big proponents of the fair play principle. As they demonstrated in their very early Murder Isn't Cricket (1946). A detective story littered with challenges to the reader, clues and a clue-finder.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) is the Radfords sixth mystery novel and one of three titles Dean Street Press selected for reprinting, which were picked on the strength of their "strong plots, clever detection" and "evocative settings." Nigel Moss noted in his introduction that these three titles also present an attractive portrayal of their series-detective, Dr. Harry Mason.

A portrayal showing a combination of powerful intellect, reasoning and "creative scientific methods of investigation," but never “losing awareness” and "sensitivity concerning the human predicaments encountered." A scientific police detective for the modern age!

You can find all these qualities within the pages of Who Killed Dick Whittington? A fine example of the theatrical mystery, plotted around the popular Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat, which here provides a stage for a bewildering murder – one that initially appeared to be utterly impossible. However, this is not an impossible crime story in any shape or form.

Henri de Benyat theater company is performing the pantomime Dick Whittington at the Pavilion Theatre, Burlington-on-Sea, with Miss Norma de Grey as the Principle Boy playing Dick, but Miss De Grey is famously unpopular backstage. De Grey "resented applause" except when "it was directed towards her own performance" and went as far as having gags or verses cut which gave other members "more applause than she herself received." So there's more than one members of the theatrical company who daydreamed about wringing her neck.

Dick Whittington and His Cat has a well-known scene, known as the Highgate Hill scene, in which Dick and the Cat take a nap on a mossy bank by the milestone on Highgate Hill. And dreams of the Bow Bells "Turn Again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London."

During the performance, Miss de Grey misses her lines and doesn't stir from the mossy bank. Someone else shouts her lines, the curtain comes down and they rushed to the bank, but Miss De Grey has passed away and the doctor has some dire news – she died from "a dose of prussic acid." The post mortem reveals the poison had been injected with a hypodermic syringe and the only person who could have done it is the man who played the Cat, Jimmy Martin.

Vintage poster

However, the Cat is found poisoned and on the brink of death in his dressing room. This gave the murder the initial appearance of an impossible crime, but this is illusion dispelled before the halfway mark. Nevertheless, the local police are getting nowhere and decide to call in the Yard.

Detective-Inspector Harry Manson, head of the Forensic Research Laboratory, is called in, but, while looking into the murder, he also investigates a secondary case. A firebug who's setting fires to dress shops, warehouses and antique stores with stock of "a peculiarly inflammable nature." Resulting in a total loss of inventory and high insurance payouts. This fire-raising case features some of the most satisfying scientific detective work since R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke solved crimes through science in Victorian-era England! Which is not all that surprising. Edwin Radford was "a keen admirer of the popular Dr Thorndyke." I wonder if he had also read the early forensic mysteries by Eric Wood (c.f. Death of an Oddfellow, 1938).

Dr. Harry Manson visits the scenes of the fires to collect samples, such as portions of charred wood, soot and ash, which are analyzed and revealed that the fires were no accidents, but the key piece of evidence are traces of "a curious metal" – which is exceedingly rare in Britain. Showing in the end how only one person in the whole country could have had a hand in the fires. Dr. Manson also engages in some good, old-fashioned detective work in the Dick Whittington murder case.

Most notably, Dr. Manson deduces that two items were taken from a dressing room and the reader is challenged to figure out what these two missing items are. Naturally, he finds a link between the murder of Miss Norma de Grey and the fires. Nearly everything, except for the motive, fitted nicely together.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? is a fascinating, highly successful merger of the sophisticated theatrical mysteries of Ngaio Marsh with the scientific detection of the Dr. Thorndyke series. The result is a satisfying detective novel that was even better than Murder Isn't Cricket. So expect a review of the third reprinted title, Murder Jigsaw (1944), sometime in the future.

I hope Dean Street Press decides to reprint more by the Radfords, because they have written some intriguingly-titled detective novels with equally intriguing premises: Death of a Frightened Editor (1959), Murder of Three Ghosts (1963), Murder Magnified (1965) and Death of an Ancient Saxon (1969).

The Opening Night Murders (2019) by James Scott Byrnside

Last year, James Scott Byrnside debuted with an ambitiously plotted, cleverly written historical (locked room) mystery novel, Goodnight Irene (2018), which he dedicated to one of the uncrowned queens of the Golden Age detective story, Christianna Brand – whose influence on Byrnside left a noticeable mark on the plot. Goodnight Irene was deservedly received with much acclaim and enthusiasm.

Surprisingly, in an interview with "JJ," of The Invisible Event, Byrnside revealed he had only been seriously reading classic detective fiction since January, 2017, when he came across an audio-book of A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery (1922) on YouTube. This makes Goodnight Irene even more remarkable, because the characterization, plotting and writing showed a firm grasp and understanding of the traditional detective story.

I always assumed it took years to discover, develop and fine-tune your taste, which gives you an understanding of the genre as a whole, but Byrnside moved with prodigal speed from listening to Milne's The Red House Mystery to writing a Western equivalent of a Japanese shin honkaku mystery novel – potentially lightening the spark of a second Golden Age. I, on the other hand, can still be genuinely amazed at the sheer volume of detective fiction produced between 1920 and 1960. And the resulting endless procession of obscure, long-forgotten mystery writers who keep clawing to the surface.

So most of us where eagerly looking forward to Byrnside's second impossible crime novel, entitled The Opening Night Murders (2019), which promised to be a detective story along the lines of Brand's superb Death of Jezebel (1948). Well, I was not disappointed.

The Opening Night Murders is set in Chicago, 1935, and begins on a somewhat similar note as Goodnight Irene and Death of Jezebel.

Rowan Manory and Walter Williams are two Chicago-based private-detectives who are essentially Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but interact with each other more like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin without them really resembling any of these characters – which makes them descendants, instead of cheap knockoffs, of those famous detectives. Their next intricately-plotted, elusive and puzzling headache of a case is brought to them by "the finest actress in all of Chicago," Lisa Pluviam.

Lisa and Jenny Pluviam are sisters who been in theater, in one form or another, their entire lives. They started in high school, "farted around flops and dives in Chicago for seven years" and studied in New York, which turned Lisa into a proper stage actress and Jenny became a director/playwright. So an unexpected inheritance from their estranged father placed in the position to open The Red Rising Theater and put on their own productions. The Balcony is one of those productions, written and directed by Jenny Pluviam, with Lisa Pluviam as the lead star of this promising play, but Lisa is "a little spooked" when she receives an anonymous death threat. A note had been left in her office, in the theater, promising she'll die on opening night and there's only a window of twenty-four hours in which the note could have been left – only seven people had access to the theater during that time frame. Two of them are Lisa and Jenny Pluviam. The others include four actors, Timothy Brown, Edward Filius, Allison Miller and Maura Lewis, rounded out by the grizzled stage technician, Sam "Grizz" Thompson.

I think the opening chapter excellently showcases Manory's experience and skill as an old, weather-beaten detective as he mines the story presented to them for facts and details, which allows him to make some accurate deductions about the characters and the play – which is always an open invitation to draw comparisons with Sherlock Holmes. However, here it wasn't done in order to dazzle the client or reader with amazing feats of deductions based on a particular type of clay or scratches on a pocket watch. Manory was earnestly probing the problem and this made him come across, in spite of his verbosity, as an honestly intelligent detective.

Lisa convinces Manory to come to the opening of The Balcony to keep an eye on her and act "sort of like a bodyguard," which might convince her would-be-assassin to abandon his, or her, plan. Sadly, this turned out not to be the case.

On the right side of the stage, there's "a twenty-foot-high tower with the two balconies side by side," on which Lisa and Edward's characters meet, but, during her balcony scene, Lisa toppled over the rail and plunged twenty-feet. She landed face first with "a sharp, sickening crack of her neck." Lisa had been all alone on the balcony and there were two-hundred people in the audience to back up that claim, but Manory is convinced one of his six suspect had planned and carried out, what looked like, the perfect murder. And now the story, or rather the plot, becomes a little tricky to discuss.

Years ago, I compared the plot of M.P.O. Books' De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011), one of the best Dutch detective novels ever written, to a kaleidoscopic photograph. A plot that initially appears to be a confusion of scattered, seemingly unconnected plot-threads, but, as the story progresses, the lens is slowly turned back into focus – creating a complete and coherent picture of the case. Byrnside has a similar plotting-style except with him there's never any doubt the plot-threads are connected, but the effect is pretty much the same. JJ hit the nail on the head when he called the plot of The Opening Night Murders a "mesmerizing, intoxicating performance."

The hook of The Opening Night Murders isn't simply the excellently positioned and executed impossible crime in front of two-hundred witnesses, but the way in which every single aspect and detail of the story logically dovetailed together in the end. This allowed Byrnside to play around with that beloved plot-device of puzzle-plot enthusiasts, the multiple interpretations/solutions, which is used quite effectively towards the end of the story. Simply amazing!

Once more, I can't give you too many exact details about this intricate, maze-like plot, littered with clues, but the second murder deserves a mention. A murder that's the exact opposite of the carefully planned, coolly executed murder of Lisa Pluviam. The second, gory murder was a frenzied killing carried out with a straight razor and kitchen knife. However, the murderer turned out to have a logical reason to go to town on this victim that you normally only see in Japanese shin honkaku mysteries, in which a dismembered or mutilated body often turns out to be a key-piece of the puzzle. Byrnside truly is a neo-orthodox mystery writer!

The Opening Night Murders is not simply a detective of cold, hard logic, but one that becomes very close and personal for the two detectives, which results in an unforgettable ending. Granted, I have read similar kind of endings in detective stories, but not quite like this one!

So, where the characters, plot and story-telling is concerned, I have practically nothing to nitpick about, except that the colorful vernacular of the characters seem very modern at times, but I have a piece of advice for Byrnside. Don't become a one-man tribute band by leaning too heavily on Brand as a foundation for your stories, because it's going to take away from your own ideas in the long run. Instead, you should follow the example of Paul Halter, a disciple of John Dickson Carr, who emerged from his idol's shadow to carve out a legacy of his own as a modern master of the locked room mystery. You can do it!

The Opening Night Murders has rich story-telling that logically navigates a beautifully designed, labyrinthine-like plot to its inevitable conclusion and hopefully a sign from the Gods (Poe, Doyle and Chesterton) that a second Golden Age is on the horizon. I'm eagerly looking forward to the third entry in the series, The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire (2020), which is a prequel and will be released next summer. I'm kind of curious to see how exactly R. Francis Foster's Something Wrong at Chillery (1931) has influenced the interaction between Manory and Williams (see comment-section).

On a final, semi-related note: I crammed this review in between my planned ones (still more than a month ahead of schedule) and this came at the expense of yesterday's review of The Doll Island Murder Case from the Kindaichi series. So, if you missed that blog-post, it's there.

Myths and Murders: "The Case of the Modern Medusa" (1973) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch had a storied, decades-long career as a voluminous writer of short stories and passed away, in 2008, with close to a thousand short stories to his name, but he was equally productive when it came to creating series-characters – somewhere around twenty of them. Some where better known or had longer lifespans than others.

I've previously discussed short stories collections starring some of Hoch's most celebrated series-detectives, such as The Thefts of Nick Velvet (1971), The Ripper of Storyville (1997) and Challenge the Impossible (2018), but there's an entire roster of lesser-known, secondary series-characters whose stories have remained uncollected to this very day. A roster comprising of characters such as Father David Noone, Ulysses S. Bird, Sir Gideon Parrot and Paul Tower. Most of them only appeared in a handful of stories.

I've yet to encounter any of these characters, but plan to track down a couple of these uncollected stories from some of Hoch's short-lived, unsung series and found an excellent locked room mystery from the slightly more successful Interpol-series – counting fourteen stories that were published between 1973 and 1984 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The protagonists of this series are Sebastian Blue, "a middle-aged Englishman formerly of Scotland Yard," who now works for Interpol and has been paired with a promising talent from the translation department, Laura Charme, to investigate "airline crimes around the globe." They operate from an office on the top floor of the Interpol headquarters in Saint-Cloud, Paris, France.

The third story in the series, "The Case of the Modern Medusa," was originally published in the November, 1973, issue of EQMM and brings the two Interpol agents to Geneva, Switzerland.

Two years ago, Otto Dolliman opened a Mythology Fair in Geneva and it appears to be merely a tourist attraction, but Interpol has reasons to believe the Mythology Fair is a cover for "a gold-smuggling operation" linked to the world-wide narcotic trade. A suspicion strengthened when Gretchen Spengler, a West German airline stewardess, was murdered shortly after "the live-action tableaux" of Perseus slaying Medusa. Gretchen Spengled worked at the Fair during her spare time and Interpol believes she used her position, as a stewardess, to smuggle cold out of Switzerland. So they send down Charme to take Spengler's place, as Medusa, but a few days later, the murderer strikes a second time and this murder is an impossible crime – except that "the room wasn't really locked."

Otto Dolliman has a small office-room dominated by an eight-foot-tall statue of King Neptune, holding a very real and sharp trident, which was driven by the murderer into Dolliman's stomach. There are only two problems: the only window in the office was covered with a wire-mesh grille, firmly bolted in place, while the only (unlocked) door had been under constant observation by Sebastian Blue!

A great locked room situation with an excellent and original explanation, easily one of Hoch's better impossible crime stories, but as good as the locked room-trick is a cheeky clue that doubled as a red herring by diverting your attention away from the truth. A splendid locked room-trick that perhaps would have better at home in the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series, where it would have been more appreciated, but "The Case of the Modern Medusa" predates the first Dr. Hawthorne story, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge," by more than a year – published in the December, 1974, issue of EQMM. So, purely as an impossible crime story, this one comes highly recommended to every locked room reader.

The pool of suspects is practically bone dry and the murderer is pretty much the only person standing in it, but, since this is a how-was-it-done, not a whodunit, this is of no consequence. A well-hidden murderer would have certainly rocketed this story to the status of a modern classic, but I'm more than happy with what I got. And then there are the two detectives.

Admittedly, Sebastian Blue and Laura Charme aren't exactly three-dimensional characters, who appear to lean on the gimmick of being police-detectives without borders, but they pleasantly reminded me of Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong – creations of Dutch mystery writer "Anne van Doorn." A somewhat older, former policeman who mentors a younger woman and they're occasionally confronted with an impossible crime.

All in all, "The Case of the Modern Medusa" has a cleverly constructed locked room problem and would like to see more of Blue and Charme. So I'll definitely be returning to this series and, predicatively, I'm already eyeballing "The Case of the Musical Bullet" (1974).

Death of a Beauty Queen (1935) by E.R. Punshon

Last month, I reviewed Brought to Light (1954) by E.R. Punshon, a late entry in the series, which saw Bobby Owen at the tail-end of his career when he had reached the rank of Deputy Commander of the Metropolitan Police. The story was excellent, full of zest and vitality, but ended my post with commenting that I preferred the early period novels when Owen was a young, fresh-faced policeman moving through the ranks – traveling the British countryside on his motorcycle. So I decided to return to one of the earlier novels when Owen was still working under the guidance of Superintendent Mitchell of Scotland Yard.

Death of a Beauty Queen (1935) is the fifth novel in the Bobby Owen series and begins with a beauty contest in the Brush Hill Central Cinema, organized by Mr. Sargent, who's the manager of the cinema.

Before I go on, a brief aside on the setting of the story: last year, I wondered in my review of John Russell Fearn's One Remained Seated (1946) how many detective novels or short stories had a cinema as setting, because it looks as if they are few and far between – only P.R. Shore's The Death Film (1932) and Fearn's Pattern of Murder (2006) came to mind. Now we can add Punshon's Death of a Beauty Queen to the list. Even if the cinema was only used here as the stage for a beauty contest.

The dead-on favorite to win the contest is Miss Caroline Mears, "a veritable goddess of old Grecian dream," whose only flaw are her hard, blue eyes, but her overall beauty silenced the dense crowd for a minute before bursting into applause. Before she can be announced as the winner, Mears is found fatally wounded in her private dressing room and is rushed to the hospital. Where she died upon arrival.

Superintended Mitchell and Sergeant Bobby Owen quickly come to the conclusion that there were several people in the "regular pandemonium" backstage with a potential motive for murder. Mears played a dirty trick on one of the contestants, Lilian Ellis, which effectively ruined any chance she might have had. Ellis had been promised a job as permanent mannequin at the Brush Hill Bon Marche, if she met with any success, but Mears spoiled those plans. And she was known to have a temper. Mr. Sargeant has been flanked the whole evening by Paul Irwin, an influential member of the borough council and a hard-line Puritan, who's only son, Leslie, is sweet on Mears and wants to marry her – much against his wishes. They discover Leslie in Mears' dressing room and he flees. Shortly after the murder, a man arrives at the cinema, named Claude Maddox, introducing himself to Mitchell and Owen as the fiance of Mears.

And then there are such complications as to what happened to the victim's handbag, who was the "tough looking bloke" looking for one Carrie Quin and why was the murder weapon traced back to the door-keeper, Wood.

So the premise is fairly standard affair: a body surrounded by a small circle of suspects supplied with motives and opportunity. Unfortunately, this is the only problem and the story lacked the labyrinth of plot-threads characteristic of Punshon's work, which made this one of his unusual slender detective stories – much like It Might Lead Anywhere (1946). It didn't help that the murderer was incredibly easy to spot.

Nevertheless, it was, always a well written story and the last half sprung a pleasant surprise on me when it introduced two, (quasi) impossible situations. Firstly, a suspect escapes from the police, in bare feet and pajamas, but, unlikely as it may seem, this person appears to have vanished into thin air. Successfully eluding the posse of constables. This much amuses the British press and the world-wide community who reported and speculated wildly on the matter. Several prominent Nazis in Germany expressed their believe that "the Jews were at the bottom of the whole thing," while French newspapers dispatched special correspondents "to report on this strange manifestation of 'l'hysterie Anglaise.'" A fun little side distraction in the story.

A second, full-blown locked room mystery is introduced in the last three chapters of the book when a murder is committed in a cottage under police observation, back and front, but the only other person on the premise was a maid – who obviously is not the murder. The locked room trick also explains the unlikely escape of the bare-footed suspect, but these closely linked impossibilities are slightly marred by the fact that the ancient solution was cribbed from Conan Doyle. And not clued at all. So, while I appreciate to find two impossible crimes in a book not listed in Locked Room Murders (1991), I could have done without them. You see, I picked Punshon to smear out my locked room reading and have a bit of variation. What does Punshon do? He springs not one, but two, on me. I should have gone with The Dusky Hour (1937) or Suspects – Nine (1939). Oh, well.

All in all, Death of a Beauty Queen is a mixed bag of tricks. It was good to see Owen back at the side of Mitchell and him playing a secondary role suddenly reminded me of those written by Christopher Bush, in which Ludovic Travers plays the shadow of Superintend George Wharton. The book was as well written and characterized as any of Punshon's best detective novels, but the plot was unable to sustain itself pass its strong opening. On a whole, not too bad, but Punshon has written better.

Well, I was planning to take a short break from the locked room mystery and spread them out a bit, but now that Punshon has ruined that, I'm going to return to Fearn for my next read. Hey, I have to moral compass of a heroin addict when it comes to impossible crime fiction. Why wouldn't I use kindly Mr. Punshon as an excuse to indulge in my locked room vice. I would sell your children's soul to the devil to get back the lost manuscripts of Hake Talbot and Joseph Commings. :)

The Straw Men (2013) by Paul Doherty

The Straw Men (2013) is the twelfth title in Paul Doherty's "the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan," a series of historical mysteries that originally appeared under the name of "Paul Harding," which emerged from a decade-long dormancy with Bloodstone (2011) and a red-thread runs through these novels – culminating in The Great Revolt (2016) of 1381. Normally, I tend to skip through these series without paying too much heed to chronology, but the Great Uprising brewing in the background made me decide to read these later novels in the correct order. You have to respect history.

The Straw Men takes place in January, 1381 and begins when Sir John Cranston, Lord Coroner of London, is waiting with a comitatus of mounted men-at-arms in "the bleak-white wilderness" of winter. Cranston has been tasked with escorting the Flemish allies of the self-styled Regent of England, John of Gaunt, to the Tower of London, but the Flemish have brought a prisoner with them. A hooded woman on horseback with a masked face. As to be expected, this retinue with escort is ambushed by the Upright Men, members of the Great Community of the Realm, who plot "to root up the past" and "build a New Jerusalem by the Thames" – only to fail in their objective. And this is not the only setback the Upright Men suffered.

Brother Athelstan is the parish priest of St. Erconwald's in Southwark, secretarius to Sir John Cranston and is the Father Brown of the 14th century.

Several days after the attack, Cranston fetches Athelstan and asks him to accompany him to a tavern near the Tower of London, called Roundhoop, where he has trapped some of the Upright Men, but they've taken hostages and threaten to fight to the death – unless they can speak with the Dominican friar. Probably to negotiate a safe passage out by river. However, the situation dissolves into a bloodbath and Athelstan can only listen to the dying words of their masked leader ("tell my beloved to continue gleaning"). These last words were not meant as a dying message, but it became one by the end of the story. I thought that was an interesting use of the dying message that I had not seen before.

So the opening of The Straw Men is packed with battles and bloodshed, but all of this was only the prologue. After these events, a murderer begins to stir within the bulwarks of the Tower. The result of this is a handful of seemingly impossible murders!

The first of these miraculous crimes occurs when John of Gaunt is entertaining his guests with his personal troupe of stage actors, known as the Straw Men, when two arrows, out of nowhere, cut down two of the guests as two heads inexplicably appear on stage. However, the unseen loosening of these arrows and planting the severed heads on stage turned out to be more of a quasi-impossibility. But the next impossible murder is a genuine locked room mystery.

One of the Straw Men, Eli, is murdered in a tower room by a crossbow bolt to the face, but the door was "locked and bolted" from the inside, while the eyelet in the door was immovably stuck in place by old-age and the window was tightly shuttered – both from within and without. The solution to this locked room conundrum is not bad at all. It's as simple as it's elegant and deftly combines technical trickery with human psychology to create the illusion of an impossible murder. Even more importantly, it was fairly original in its execution.

There are two more locked room slayings in the second half of the story and they were cleverly linked together: two men are found dead in their respective tower rooms, one room is situated directly above the other, in which one man appeared to have hanged himself and in the room below someone was stabbed to death. The two-pronged solution to these two locked room murders aren't terribly original or have the same level of synergy as The Case of the Séance's Double Locked Room from Detective Conan, but liked them nonetheless. They were a nice little extra.

This is still only a fraction of the entire plot. Athelstan and Cranston have to contend with spies, conspirators, political secrets and a litany of gruesome murders. A hangman is brutally slaughtered and an entire family, except for a baby, is wiped out. So you can forgive an overworked Athelstan that only caught sight of the murder long after the reader has identified this person.

Everyone who pays a modicum of attention and has a passing acquaintance with Doherty's detective fiction can spot the murderer long before the end, which is my sole problem with this otherwise solid entry in the series. The Straw Men is a fast-moving, intricately plotted historical detective novel packed with impossible crime that fascinatingly inches closer to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 – only slightly marred by the obvious murderer. I find it fascinating how Doherty is slowly, but surely, shepherding this series towards the Great Revolt and plan on returning to Athelstan sooner rather than later.

The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) is the eighteenth mystery novel by Christopher Bush and has the unfortunate, two-sided reputation of being an ingeniously plotted detective story marred by lackluster writing and paper-thin characterization. This appraisal of the book is not entirely without merit. However, I can be very forgiving of a detective story's imperfections, like a cast of cardboard characters, if the plot is well put together – probably the reason why I never had a problem with the so-called humdrum school of mystery writing. The Case of the Tudor Queen has quite a rack of a plot on her!

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

A tricky, complicated plot that slowly begins to unravel when Bush's lanky, bespectacled economist and freelance detective, Ludovic Travers, is driving his Rolls-Royce up from Southampton.

Superintendent George "The General" Wharton is in the passenger seat next to him and Palmer is sitting in the back, which makes for a diverse party that provides the book with brief, but interesting, character sketches of the men – only genuine piece of characterization in the entire novel. Travers is described as a man who had been born with "a gold spoon in his mouth" to whom "deduction and the chase were the most thrilling of hobbies" and as a detective was always looking for "the short cut." Wharton was a man who had risen from the ranks and his preferred method is "patient inquiry, slow accumulation" and "the gradual elimination of the unwanted." They were "the perfections of the opposite that make the unique fit."

Travers had missed a turn along the way and they got lost, which is how they ended up at the front-gate of a cottage standing on the outskirts of a tiny village.

A woman emerged from the gate of the cottage, as they passed it, who looked in a hurry and they offered her a ride to the nearby train station. The name of the woman is Edith Bunce, a maidservant and dresser, who's in the employ of a well-known theatrical actress, Mary Legreye – currently playing Mary Tudor in Stony Heart. Legreye had given Bunce a three-day holiday and expected her back at the cottage that day, but the cottage was still all locked up and Legreye had not come with the last train of the day.

Travers and Wharton decide to accompany Bunce back to the cottage, which turns out to have been burglarized. The telephone-line had been hacked through with a knife and later two miniatures, that had hung on the wall, are discovered to be missing.

There's evidence Legreye had arrived at the cottage, but inexplicably left again without her hat, fur and gloves. So this interests our detectives and they decide to take a gander at the main residence of the missing actress, a two-storey house in Westmead called Arden, which is dipped in darkness when they arrive there and awaiting them inside is the scene of a bizarre, double tragedy – which could be either murder, suicide or a combination of the two. Fred Ward was employed by Legreye as an indoor servant and part-time gardener, as "a kind of permanent charity" on her part, but the man was now laying on the kitchen floor. Ward had been dead for many hours.

Legreye is eventually found in an immense room that ran along the whole front of the house and the room had been cleared of all furniture, which had been placed behind a large screen. The only furnishing in that bare room was a single high-backed, winged chair with a side-table next to it. A throne on which the body of Mary Legreye was seated, like "a queen posed to give an audience," with an empty glass and an uncorked bottle standing on the table besides her. Legreye and Ward had both been poisoned. And there was a twenty-four hour gap between their deaths!

Admittedly, I think these opening chapters are the only really engagingly written parts of the story with the investigation at the dark, gloomy house, after the bodies had been discovered, resembling a mansion-story by Roger Scartett – in which the house almost becomes a character itself in the story. Travers is even relieved when finally two uniformed constables arrive, because the house no longer seemed "as clammy and deadly silent." The arrival of the local police had miraculously turned the place into "a mere building" that held "a grim, and even alluring, mystery."

However, I can understand why some readers have a problem with the remainder of the story, which is, regrettably, as flatly written as it's characterized and the plot is structured like one of the earlier novels from the series (c.f. Dead Man Twice, 1930). Something probably not every reader will appreciate.

The Case of the Tudor Queen is divided into two parts, respectively titled "Presentation" and "Solution," which gives the main-stage almost entirely to Superintendent Wharton. As he questions suspects and tests the soundness of their alibis, Travers recedes into the background, like a chameleon, to polish his “monstrous hornrims” and ponder the case. A similar role he had in the earlier novels, like The Perfect Murder Case (1929), but Travers is still the one who eventually gets hold of the solution. Although it took a while in this instance.

The last portion of the story takes place months after the initial investigation, which lead to nowhere, but, by pure chance, Travers is placed on the right track that allows him to completely demolish one of the suspects air-tight alibis – which also explained the clue of the "flake of green enamel paint." I wanted to kick myself for having missed that "the vital clue" that tied the murder or Legreye to the play and the life of the historical character she had portrayed on stage. In my defense, this link didn't occur to Travers either until the last couple of pages.

So, on a whole, The Case of the Tudor Queen is an imperfect detective novel, notably the lackluster story-telling and flat characterization, but the plot is an interesting take on the theatrical mystery. A theatrical mystery that primarily took place in the private life of the lead actress and how the murders came about, as well as why her body was posed on the throne, is vintage Bush. This made for a clever, intricately plotted detective novel that was perhaps not told as well as it could have, but this did not deter me from enjoying the book. I think fans of Bush, Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode will agree with me. Unless you're JJ.