About the Murder of a Circus Queen (1932) by Anthony Abbot

Back in November, I reviewed an excellent short story by Anthony Abbot, "About the Disappearance of Agatha King" (1932), which might not have been much as an impossible crime story, but the who-and why were splendidly and detailed clued – punctuated with a well-done and satisfying ending. A glittering gem of the short Golden Age detective story that begs the question why Abbot still hasn't returned to the printed page. 

So it was time to do some detective work and track down a secondhand copy of one of his long out-of-print novels, which brought one of Abbot's most striking detective novels my way. A novel with a "classic crime in Madison Square Garden" and a mention Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). 

About the Murder of a Circus Queen (1932), alternatively published as The Murder of a Circus Queen, marked the fourth appearance of Commissioner Thatcher Colt, of Centre Street, who's visited in the opening chapter by Colonel Tod Robinson – owner and manager of the Combined Greatest Shows on Earth. Colonel Robinson is "the last of the large independents" and recently obtained an engagement at Madison Square Garden, which required a large investment, but ever since the circus has been plagued by costly accidents. A train wreck destroyed two display floats and a gondola loaded with bleachers and grandstand seats. Sickness broke out along the elephant line, a "peculiar malady" attacked the bulls, their prize lion died of indigestion and trained clown mule broke its leg and had to be shot.

All of that could have been put down to a string of bad luck, but then the star performers began to receive threatening letters warning them, under penalty of death, "not to exhibit their best tricks during the New York engagement."

Initially, a little skeptical ("...I suppose you are advising the newspapers that in spite of these thrilling threats, your star performers are positively going to appear..."), Colt decides to personally tackle the case when the news reaches them that a mechanic had toppled off a high platform. So the police is confronted with a colorful cast of characters who form a closed community that's next to impossible to penetrate and "the black magic of dark ages" that filled the hardened New York policemen with horror.

The star of the show is the Queen of the Air, Josie LaTour, who's "paid the biggest salary in the history of the business" and Colt is an attendance when her flying body performed death defying stunts, but all of a sudden, she began to shake and struggle to keep her grip on the rings – uttering a cry before plunging to her death. Colt knows what he saw was not an accident. An impossible crime with nearly twenty thousand possible suspects and witnesses!

As a quick aside, to my knowledge, there's only been one other detective novel MSG as a setting, Ellery Queen's The American Gun Mystery (1933), which came a year after About the Murder of a Circus Queen. There's something else in About the Murder of Circus Queen that makes me suspect it might have given Queen an idea that was turned into The American Gun Mystery.

Anyway, Abbot made excellent use of the circus background of the case to fill the MSG with a pool of colorful, sometimes even lurid, suspects. There's the victim's husband, Flandrin, who's a rising young trapeze artist and really seemed to have loved his wife, but also has motives and opportunities to spare. They employed a husband-and-wife team of catchers, Flandreau and Flandra. Marburg Lovell is the millionaire backer of Colonel Robinson who had a side-interest in the Queen of the Air, which appeared to have earned him a black eye. Signor Sebastian is known as the King of the Air, but he's getting older and might be on his way down the ladder. The most curious of the bunch are undoubtedly the Ubangis, of the Mazzi tribe, who only speak a tribal dialect. Something that will become a stumbling as only their witch doctor, the educated Keblia, speaks English and he's conducting his own investigation.

Even more troublesome, the Unbangis possibly have a motive as the temperamental LaTour ("just a human tiger") savagely whipped two of them when she found them snooping around in her dressing room. Understandably, the Unbangis were quite sore at her and had closed door meeting. Throughout their investigation, the police come across "crude, awkwardly shaped" mud images that nevertheless "bore a definite and forceful resemblance to Josie LaTour" with long, sharp needles driven straight through the heart. Some of you are probably gritting your teeth at this point, but the depiction and treatment is not as harsh, or unflattering, as this plot-thread suggests. You'll probably be surprised how their role in the story is played out. Yes, it's a bit rough and unpolished by today's standards, but it's certainly not another The Stingaree Murders (1932).

So what more could you want from a vintage, 1930s mystery novel? A plot, you say. Abbot has you covered there!

Abbot plotted About the Murder of a Circus Queen like a chess player who willingly sacrificed (i.e. gave away) part of the solution to successfully misdirect the reader (this one anyway), not once, but twice. The observant, or seasoned, armchair detective will likely spot something that apparently gives the whole game away, but you'll probably get suspicious along the way, because the police is only too willing to go along with the obvious solution – particular the unlikable D.A. who loves third-degreeing suspects a little too much (see About the Murder of Geraldine Foster, 1930). Regardless, I figured the solution (how it was done) was not as obvious in 1932 as it's in 2021 and assumed Abbot banked on its relative newness to be more carefree with his clues and hints. A line halfway through the story, "what curious motives may exist in the terra incognita of the circus," gave me pause for thought and another suspect occurred to me. Someone who fitted the role of murderer perfectly and the clue of the second (not exactly) impossible crime also appeared to point towards this person.

So I had it all figured out, who, why and how, but then Colt began to talk about enclosing the murderer in "a narrow circle of deduction," a circle growing smaller and smaller, until an unexpected name remained – leaving me with egg and greasepaint on my face. It was comforting to know Colt worked on the exactly the same "false theory" before arriving at the correct solution, but none of that changes the fact that this was another one of my famous Roger Sheringham moments.

Only thing that can be said against the solution is that it only accomplished to skillfully sneak the murderer pass the reader, who's likely too busy with turning red herrings into fantastic theories, while either of the incorrect theories would have given the story a better, more fitting and darker ending. The actual solution is more in the "tadaah, surprise!" category.

But who cares? About the Murder of a Circus Queen is a genuine, fair play detective novel with a fascinating, vividly realized backdrop and a masterly-done piece of double-layered misdirection designed to teach readers who like to pretend they're the flesh-and-blood incarnation Mycroft Holmes a lesson. A small, plot-technical marvel and a fine piece of old-fashioned craftsmanship showing why the 1930s were the Golden Years of the Golden Age. Abbot deserves to be reprinted!

Death in White Pyjamas (1944) by John Bude

Last year, the British Library Crime Classics added a twofer volume to their lineup with a brace of John Bude's non-series detective novels, Death Knows No Calendar (1942) and Death in White Pyjamas (1944), of which the former is a locked room mystery that differed in one important aspect from his main series – a tricky plot with substance. The Detective Inspector Meredith novels I've read were well written, but the threadbare, scantily clued plots made them stories about a detective rather than proper detective stories. Death Knows No Calendar told a very different kind of story. So it was about time I got to the second novel in the volume, Death in White Pyjamas. 

Death in White Pyjamas is in turn very different from Death Knows No Calendar and closely resembles a typical Ngaio Marsh novel with the first half focusing heavily on the characters as the story slowly builds towards the murder. Second half brings in the police to put the pieces together.

Sam Richardson is a successful businessman who amassed "a cool million" out of biscuits, but he grew tired of biscuits and sold his factory to hunt for a fresh stamping grounds. Sam finds what's he looking for when he meets a theatrical producer, Basil Barnes, whose the polar opposite of the friendly, generous and generally all-round nice guy, Sam Richardson. Someone who "could never listen to a hard-up story without putting his hand in his pocket." Basil is "slightly sinister" looking man, who you would expect to produce a revolver when he put his hands in his pocket, but "they paired off perfectly" and he convinces Sam to become a theatrical promoter – buying and converting an old cinema into the Beaumont Theatre. Theatrical background of the characters is another aspect linking Death in White Pyjamas to Marsh.

The members of the Beaumont Theatre playing a central role in the story, beside the promoter and producer, comprises of a grand old character actor, Willy Farnham, who has a chronic gambling addiction ("he'd gamble on anything—cards, billiards, horses, weather, bluebottles or cockroaches"). A "brilliant young ingénue from the provinces," Angela Walsh, who's "a sweet young creature" and made two men loose their heads. Clara Maddison is "the company's most tried and trying actress" as well as the doting aunt of a young and aspiring playwright, Rudolph Millar. Basil pretty much vetoed to put on his play, Pigs in Porcelain. Lastly, there's Deirdre Lehaye, a designer of stage sets, who's an ambitious woman with a mercenary mindset and works mercilessly on building "a four figure reputation." A nice way of saying that she "collected enemies with as much energy as less perverted people collect postage stamps." So a potentially explosive cocktail of clashing personalities and emotions.

Old Knolle is Sam's place on the outskirts of the village of Lambdon and every year, in early summer, he opened "the doors of his castle as a kind of theatrical rest-house for his company." Often the first rehearsals of the next winter season were held at Old Knolle. But this time, the family party atmosphere gradually disappeared underwent a change.

A sizable sum of money is filched from Sam's desk and opens up the thief to a spot of blackmail. Basil and Rudolph both fall in love with Angela, but it's Basil, "a man whose past reputation was something to shudder at, whose future behaviour was something to be dreaded," appears to be the one who's winning her favors – while Deirdre plays her dangerous little games in the background. This culminates when one of them is found dead in the artificial lake of Old Knolle dressed in white satin pyjames, which both baffles and intrigues Inspector Harting and Sergeant Dane. 

Kate, of CrossexaminingCrime, noted in her own review that the weakness of Death in White Pyjamas is "the strength of the characterization," which makes it very easy to identity the murderer and motive once the body is discovered. This is also another feature the book has in common with Ngaio Marsh. For example, Marsh's Swing, Brother, Swing (1949) has an excellently written and characterized first half telling you enough about everyone involved to immediately tell who, why and how the moment the murderer strikes. So the second half is undeclared inverted mystery in which you read how the police eventually puts everything together. 

Death in White Pyjamas more or less follows the same pattern with one notable difference. The how is not immediately apparent, or fairly clued, but figured it had something to do with that, because a contemporary of Bude used the same gimmick in another 1940s detective novel. It stood out to me. A somewhat crude, but effective, piece of gimmickry that reminded me of E.C.R. Lorac. I actually wonder if Bude took his cues from Lorac and Marsh as it mirrors their work so perfectly and vastly differs from his Meredith novels. 

Death in White Pyjamas has a very strong, character-driven first half admirably using characterization as clueing to give the reader more information than the detectives who arrive at scene after the facts, but this begins to work against it in the second, more labored and workmanlike part of the story – which he should have played as howdunit a la John Rhode. Only a lack of clues as to how it was done prevented this. It surely was an interesting read, not a very challenging one, but it was mostly a well done, character-driven mystery. However, if you get this volume, I recommend you begin with the superior of the two novels, Death Knows No Calendar.

On a final, related note: I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a reprint of Bude's other long out-of-print locked room mystery novel, Death on Paper (1940). Please, BL, help me get one step closer to crossing off every title in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) and Brian Skupin Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019).

The Fortescue Candle (1936) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's The Fortescue Candle (1936) is the eighteenth novel in the Anthony Bathurst series and had not been reprinted since its initial publication, 85 years ago, which Dean Street Press finally rectified last October with their second set of Flynn reprints – introduced by the doctor of puzzlelogy, Steve Barge. The synopsis promised a detective story reminiscent of early period Christopher Bush and Steve's introduction made even more curious as he named it "one of my favourite motives from Golden Age detective fiction." I can appreciate a good and original motive as much as an expertly crafted alibi or locked room-trick. The Fortescue Candle didn't disappoint! 

The Fortescue Candle begins with the unpopular Home Secretary, the Rt. Honorable Albert S. Griggs, giving consideration to "one rather troublesome problem" that "must be settled within the next twenty-four hours" at "the most generous estimate." Walter and Harper Fowles, two brothers, were condemned to death for the murder of a servant girl during a botched burglary. Griggs was now "the sole arbiter of life and death for two fellow-creatures," but decided not to overturn the verdict. On a wet morning in early March, the Fowles brothers, blazing with resentment and proclaiming their innocence, were duly hanged. And they left a very angry, spiteful father behind.

A few months later, the chambermaid of the Lansdowne Hotel finds the body of Griggs half lying out of his bed with a bullet hole in his throat, but the absence of a gun rules out suicide. There may be more to the murder than mere revenge.

Griggs is somewhat of a philanderer and, before his untimely passing, he had been visited by a rough character, Charles Wells, who promises "to let the daylight into his ugly carcase," if he continues to molest his daughter, but Griggs had already set his sights on another woman, Phillida Fortescue – a stage actress who found his attention unwelcome. Nevertheless, "the Griggs moth flutters to the Fortescue candle" (hence the title) and his stalkerish behavior gave his murder its most curious and baffling aspect. Shortly before his murder, Griggs followed Phillida to the Pier Pavilion, at the seaside town of St. Aidans, where an actress, Daphne Arbuthnot, was poisoned on stage during a performance. Griggs was backstage when it happened! The "two murders are so different in every way," but both cases pretty much share the same cast of players. Pure chance or a sinister design?

So the police reaches out to that amateur reasoner of some celebrity, Anthony Bathurst, who recognizes that the double-sided investigation is "one of the most remarkable cases with which he had ever been called upon to deal" as works hard to separate the genuine clues from the red herrings. And there are plenty of both to be found in this case!

Just consider the following: a small, white cube of chalk found in the pocket of the dead man's pajamas and drawings of a skull and crossbones, drawn in chalk, on the soles of his shoes. A maid passing the door of Griggs' hotelroom and catching snippets of a conversation mentioning murder, fowls and Griggs stating they belonged to him and entitled to do with them as he pleased. The missing glass of "poisoned spirits" that Bathurst expects the murderer disposed of in "an unexpected manner" at the pavilion. A coil of rope that the electrician of the pavilion, Mr. Fowles (yes, him), wore around his body and melon seeds found inside the pages of a book Griggs was reading before he was shot, which can be construed as a warning from "a mighty secret society" that "strikes absolute terror into the hearts of those unfortunate enough to incur its enmity," the Ku-Klax-Klan – which has to be given some serious attention as two witnesses have unexpectedly departed for America. Obviously, this plot-strand is Flynn's obligatory nod and a wink to Conan Doyle and this time picked the least triumphant of all of Sherlock Holmes' cases, "The Five Orange Pips" (collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891), to pay homage to. Not as customary with Flynn is that aspect of the plot pays tribute to that "marvelously clever creation" of G.K. Chesterton, Father Brown, who he trashed in The Billiard-Room Mystery (1927). Steve suggested Flynn might have been angling for an invitation to the Detection Club. Anyway... 

The Fortescue Candle is "a labyrinthine chase" with many, independent or incidental moving parts and treacherous red herrings, which comes with both up-and downsides, but either way, it's very impressive Flynn succeeded in stringing everything together in a coherent and logical way. Some parts of this plot shined with Flynn's usual creative and innovative brilliance. One example is the original motive for one of the murders, which certainly was a new one to me, but Flynn also snug one of those double-edged red herrings into the story. A red herring that becomes a clue once you realize it's a red herring and stands in stark contrast with the other, more crudely executed red herrings.

There is, however, a downside. Very nature of the plotting and storytelling makes the whole scheme a little loose in the joints and some aspects needed a little shoehorning to make it all fit. For example, a very little, but very convenient, coincidence allows one of the most important clue/red herring to the first murder fit the story like Cinderella's slipper or the unanswered question (ROT13) jub ernyyl xvyyrq gur freinag tvey? Jrer gur Sbjyre oebgure'f gur ivpgvzf bs n zvfpneevntr bs whfgvpr be qvq gurl qrfreir gb unat? I thought it was weird to leave this thread dangling considering its importance to the overall plot.

So this looseness in the joints of the plot prevented The Fortescue Candle from taking a place among Flynn's top-tier novels, like The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928), Murder en Route (1930) and Fear and Trembling (1936), but it's a genuine, Golden Age mystery with a complex, maze-like plot littered with clues and red herrings – some a little better handled than others. But the logical conclusion is everything but disappointing. Flynn deserves a posthumous Detection Club membership!

The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937) by Anthony Boucher

The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937) is the ambitious first detective novel from the hands of respected genre critic, editor and science-fiction author, Anthony Boucher, which drew heavily on his college days and knowledge of the detective story – delivering what can only be described as a mystery reader's mystery novel. Boucher also used his debut as a stage for his diverse array of talents and interests.

Boucher was "a natural linguist" who was fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and more than averagely proficient in Sanskrit. During his college days, Boucher was active on-and around the stage as an actor, director and playwright, which are all worked into this academic mystery novel. More importantly, the plot, structure of the novel and storytelling radiates with its authors love and understanding of the Grandest Game in the World. Boucher is more restrained in his later novels (The Case of the Solid Key, 1941), but him going all out here was a treat. I can understand why so many readers consider The Case of the Seven of Calvary to be his best detective novel.

The Case of the Seven of Calvary hits the ground running with its dramatis personae that comes with a footnote: "the reader who approaches a mystery novel as a puzzle and a challenge is cautioned that he need keep his eye only on those characters marked by an asterisk; the rest are merely necessary extras." But it doesn't stop there.

The story begins with a prelude in which Anthony Boucher discusses whether, or not, the Watson is "an outworn device" with one of main characters of the story, Martin Lamb, who's a student and resident of International House at the University of California – where he once acted as a Watson to Dr. John Ashwin. A well-known and celebrated professor of Sanskrit whose translations rank among the indispensable standard works of every library worth its name. Martin begins to tell him the story and promises that his account "shall be a model of fair play."

A story that begins with the arrival of Dr. Hugo Schaedel, an unofficial ambassador of the Swiss Republic, who's on a worldwide lecture tour to preach World Peace and argue in favor of a universal brotherhood of man. A brotherhood as exemplified by the "incredible assortment of nationalities" at International House, which is one of the reason why he decided to address them. So a peaceful and harmless man, who was a complete stranger, but, during an evening stroll, Dr. Schaedel is attacked and killed with an ice pick! The murderer left behind a piece of paper with a symbol on it: "a curious sort of italic F, mounted upon three rectangles shaped like steps."

This symbol is quickly identified as the calling card of the Vignards, "Seven of Calvary," which is an obscure Swiss sect of political and religious sectarians who have fomented and fostered "most of the dissensions which have torn Switzerland." Such as their 1920s secret campaign against the League of Nations, but even Dr. Ashwin finds this possibility "a trifle too early Doyle" for his taste.

Dr. Ashwin acts throughout the story as an armchair detective and uses Martin as an accessory to his reasoning (i.e. a Watson) as they discuss and analyze that immortal trinity of detective fiction – namely Motive, Means and Opportunity. They go over the six motives for murder classified by F. Jesse Tennyson in Murder and Its Motives (1924) and exchange ideas why a murderer would leave behind a cyrptic message. Was it an artistic embellishment? A warning to others? A red herring? There's also the question of opportunity and a peculiarity with the alibis or why the murderer used an ice pick to kill his victim. Was it because it's an uncharacteristic and untraceable, but deadly, weapon? Dr. Ashwin funnily remarks that Sherlock Holmes would have deduced from the ice pick that "the murderer was a cuckold," because "his household still employs an icebox in these days of electric refrigeration" and "most probably occasioned by his wife's intrigue with the proverbial iceman."

Boucher made a gutsy move during the first seven chapters by revealing the truth behind the murder, minus the murderer's identity, which is something that has been done before and since, but usually trotted out as a surprise twist towards the end. A surprise that rarely lands. But here it beautifully paved the way for the second murder. An onstage poisoning during a dress rehearsal of a college play, Don Juan Returns, with another cryptic note left on the stage.

The Case of the Seven of Calvary very much belongs to that category of the simon-pure jigsaw-puzzle detective story (to borrow a phrase from Boucher) sharing the essential facts with the reader and then, "in the manner of the admirable Ellery Queen," challenges them to solve it – referring back to all of the clues in the footnotes of the penultimate chapter. And urges the reader to check their solutions against "the obvious certainty of Dr. John Ashwin." That's how you write a detective story!

Nevertheless, classifying The Case of the Seven of Calvary merely as a solid, puzzle-oriented detective novel in the Van Dine-Queen School would be selling Boucher short as a writer in general. All of the locations in the book are places where Boucher had lived, studied or worked and this allowed him to portray university life in an authentic and convincing manner. It feels like a real place filled with real people. Boucher was very brazen for his time when he touched upon the interracial romances at International House and an abortion, which must have raised some of his readers' eyebrows at the time. You have to remember that the author of The Strawstack Murder Case (1936), Kirke Mechem, had his second manuscript rejected because these subjects were central to the plot. The manuscript was lost to history and Mechem never wrote another detective novel.

So it was quite daring for a debuting novelist to casually throw that into the story, but Boucher didn't stop there. Dr. Ashwin and Martin discuss how a very sordid crime, known as the Twin Peaks Murder, usurped the newspaper headlines. A married man who left behind his mistress, naked and dead, in his own car that was parked on Twin Peaks. The murder weapon, covered with fingerprints, was found nearby. A stark contrast with the puzzling, seemingly motiveless, murder of the visiting emissary and the curious symbol that was left beside the corpse.

But these realistic touches and convincingly drawn backdrop helped massage out a flaw usually found in these overindulgent detective stories that are more than a little conscious that they're a detective story ("Well, I'm that worst abortion of nature, an amateur detective"). As fun as they may be to wholesale consumers of detective fiction, they tend to be a trifle artificial, but that was not the case here. The Case of the Seven of Calvary reads like a storybook murderer had escaped the printed page and there just so happened to be a brilliant professor and a student on hand to help sort out the mess as that "imperishable Master of Baker Street" and his indispensable Watson. I also liked how Boucher handled and used, what could be called, an unrealistic, minutely-timed alibi and cleverly employed in the greater good of the plot. And how it related to the second murder. Very 1930s Christopher Bush! And that's another point in its favor!

So, all in all, The Case of the Seven of Calvary is an enthusiastic and vigorous first detective novel from a well-known, highly respected critic and with logical, fairly clued plot that arguably makes it one of the best debuts of the Golden Decade of the Golden Age. Highly recommended!

Cue for Murder (1942) by Helen McCloy

If Agatha Christie was the British Queen of Crime, then Helen McCloy was the First Lady of the American detective story. A first-class mystery writer whose cunningly plotted, subtly clued and excellently characterized detective novels can only be compared to the works of Christianna Brand and John Dickson Carr, who all three wrote more than one celebrated locked room mystery, but McCloy differed in two ways from them – an interest in Fruedian psychology and suspense fiction. This lead her to write some unusual detective novels that were a little off the beaten track.

McCloy's Through a Glass, Darkly (1950) is arguably the detective story's most well-known treatment of the doppelgänger phenomena and she decided to develop a taste for the traditional locked room puzzle during a period when the light of the Golden Age had dimmed considerably. Such as blending espionage and suspense with a locked room problem (The Further Side of Fear, 1967) or penning one of the best rooms-that-kill stories (Mr. Splitfoot, 1968), which is as good as anything written by Carr.

So, in comparison, I always assumed Cue for Murder (1942) was one of McCloy's more conventional novels with a theatrical murder committed in full view of the audience, but, now that I've read it, I can only describe it as a demonstration of her abilities as a plotter – devilish complex in its simplicity. McCloy felt confident enough to give her readers the most important clues up front. What a woman!

The prologue states that the Royal Theatre was "solved through the agency of a house fly and a canary." The fly discovered "the chemical evidence that so impressed the jury at the trial," but "the canary provided a psychological clue to the murderer's identity" before "the murder was committed."

Cue for Murder begins with Dr. Basil Willing, medical assistant to the District Attorney, specializing in psychiatry, reading a "pleasantly trivial" newspaper column reporting a puzzling burglary at Marcus Lazarus' knife-grinding shop. The shop is little more than a shack, tucked away in an alley, which contained nothing worth stealing, but the intruder had opened "the cage of Lazarus' pet canary and set the bird free." A petty little problem that teased Dr. Willing's imagination "as prettily as a problem in chess or mathematics," but he would grasp the importance of the freed canary until he attends the opening of a revival play of Victorien Sardou's 1882 Fedora – because the shop in the alley leads to the stage door of the Royalty Theatre. The curtain was raised on murder long before the actors climbed on stage!

During the first act, there are four actors on stage. The leading lady and star of Sam Milhau's theatrical company, Wanda Morley. A young and upcoming actor, Rodney Tait, who's been seen a lot in public with Wanda and an engagement is rumored, but all the time he had been engaged to the costume designer, Pauline. Leonard is the more experienced and talented actor of the group who recently returned to the New York stage after a year's illness. Finally, there's the unknown man who plays the quiet, undemanding role of the mortally wounded Count Vladimir. A character who lies quietly in alcove on stage without uttering a single line, but at the end of the first act, he's discovered with "the grooved handle of a surgical knife" protruding from his chest.

This discovery presents Dr. Willing and Assistant Chief Inspector Foyle with a diabolically planned and executed murder, committed within the forty-eight minutes of the first act, by one of those three actors on stage – all of whom had opportunities and no alibis. Dr. Willing notes that, as a rule, murderers try to disassociate them from the murderer with a false alibi, but this murderer realized there is safety in numbers and "obliterated the alibi of two other people." So the murderer "dissipated suspicion by diffusing it equally among three people."

A situation very reminiscent of Christie's Cards on the Table (1936) in which a man is stabbed while the only four suspects were playing bridge and the deceiving simplicity of the situation is what made it one of Christie's trickiest whodunits. The reason why the clues and psychology of the suspects are so important in Cards on the Table and Cue for Murder. Regrettably, there's a tiny weakness to the clueing and psychology of the suspects that prevented the story from being an undisputed classic.

The clues are mostly excellent. I already mentioned the clue of canary, but there's also the curious behavior of the fly that kept "banking and diving like a miniature plane" around the knife-handle. But never landing on the bloodstained blade. There's manuscript with a seemingly unimportant, but ominous, line underscored and the best clue is perhaps the title of the book. However, the problem is that the clues, physical and psychological, can fit any of the suspects without showing why the two other suspects couldn't have committed the murder – even the titular clue is hardly cast-iron evidence. Because they have no way of telling when exactly the fatal knife blow was delivered. A lawyer would have torn that piece of evidence to shreds in court.

Another problem is that everyone appeared to have an association, or fondness, for canaries, which showed the influence of Freudian psycho-analyses had on McCloy ("no human being can ever perform any act without a motive"), but it severely weakened that clue. And it hampered the fair play aspect of the story. A story that would have otherwise been as close to perfection as you could wish a detective story to be.

Regardless of my technical nitpicking, you should not feel discouraged and drop the book to the bottom of your to-be-read pile. Cue for Murder is not one of McCloy's greatest triumphs, but it's unquestionably one of the better and most original theatrical mystery novels from the genre's Golden Age. McCloy brilliantly used the psychology of actors and the closed environment of the stage, "the frontier between reality and illusion," to create a truly baffling murder mystery. Only thing it lacked was a process of elimination clearly demonstrating why the other suspects couldn't have committed the murder, which would have strengthened instead of weakened those crafty clues. But, in the end, Cue for Murder is a near-classic that can still be admired and enjoyed for the all things it did right rather than leaving the reader annoyed at its few mistakes. I definitely enjoyed it. Recommended, with reservations.

A note for the curious: the prologue mentioned how the chemical evidence impressed the jury at the trial, but the murderer took the easy way out in the last chapter. So there was no trial! McCloy was a little sloppy here when it came to the finer details of her storytelling and plotting.

Rescue Rangers: Case Closed, vol. 72 by Gosho Aoyama

The 72nd volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally published in Japan as Detective Conan, begins with the conclusion to the massive story that covered nine of the eleven chapters of the previous volume, which brought Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan to London – where Conan becomes engaged in a hunt for Sherlock Holmes-themed clues. A hunt leading him straight to Wimbledon where he has to prevent the public assassination of the Queen of the Grass Court, Minerva Glass.

Plot-wise, the last act of this story is pretty standard for the series with Conan having to locate the culprit in a capacity-filled stadium, which has been done before, but the tennis setting provided a way to make this culprit stick out "like a sore thumb." However, the plot played second fiddle here to the main-characters and particular the story-line between Jimmy/Conan and Rachel.

The second story begins with Conan and Anita discussing the former's adventure in England. Interestingly, Anita addresses my complaint mentioned in my review of volume 71.

I can see how it made sense to keep Jimmy's predicament a secret from Rachel when the series began, but, in the story, more than two years have passed and the secret has become a story-telling device to create these needlessly complicated personal situations – keeping Jimmy trapped between Rachel and Conan. Logically, she should have been told by now. Aoyama will probably resolve this problem by saying she knew all along and the final panel of the series will show them with their son who's a carbon-copy of Conan.

Anita reminds Conan what he has said about not allowing Rachel to get too close to him, because not being able to be with him would only make her unhappier. So he can't be in the spotlight and has "to hide in the wings until the right moment," but the brats of the Junior Detective League overheard them and misinterpreted it as a suggestion to play a game of hide and seek. One of them knows an abandoned building, scheduled to be demolish, perfect for such a game. During the game, they get "an emergency earthquake alert" on their cellphones and they hear someone knocking out the emergency-code for "Rescue Needed," which leads them to two shady looking construction workers. Conan concludes "a person in need of rescue" from kidnappers is trapped somewhere inside the mostly empty building.

Generally, I dislike kidnapping stories because they're seldom any good, or memorable, but there are two reasons why this story is one of the exceptions. Firstly, the clever way in which Conan and the Junior Detective League used their personalized cellphones to squeeze out of a very tight corner. Secondly, the identity of the kidnap victim came as a genuine surprise. I honestly didn't expect that twist!

The second, complete story of this volume brings Conan, Rachel and Serena Sebastian to Teitan University, renamed here as Baker University, where Richard Moore giving a lecture, but "he's just drooling over college girls" and a group of Film Majors offers them a more palpable sight – a haunted house exhibition. Students are working on a horror movie as their project thesis and want to make it "as realistic as possible." So they created a house of corpses and want to test it on the girls, because Rachel and Serena have seen dead bodies before. The exhibition does what it intended to do... scaring the girls.

One of the film students, Anna Tadami, is strapped to an operating-table and surrounded by dummy surgeons, but, when they walked pass this scene, she started "trembling and thrashing her legs." She shook so hard "it rattled the bed." Anna Tadami was dead! There's "an almond smell" at her mouth and "the remains of capsule between her teeth," which means suicide as Rachel and Serena saw nobody else standing around the operating-table. So a quasi-impossible crime with an obvious murderer, a hack stage-trick and a motive that felt tacked on resulting in an average story at best.

The third case is another kidnap story, of sorts, but this time without Conan, because he's in bed with a serious cold. Conan was supposed to meet the Junior Detective League at Amy's house to play karuta, a Japanese card game, but, when Conan is video chatting with them on his cellphone, a young boy knock's at the door of Amy's department – screaming that there are "bad people" he doesn't know in his apartment. Masao is a boy with a reputation in the apartment building for playing pranks and telling lies, but cries he doesn't know the man and woman who introduce themselves as his parents. And he's dragged back into his apartment. Conan tells them to call the police, but they decide to investigate Amy's neighbors for themselves.

At the heart of the story is a coded message Masao surreptitiously sends under the nose of the culprits to the Junior Detective League over a game of karuta, but this is one of those language-based codes. So practically unsolvable for most non-Japanese speaking readers. Not a bad story, but a pretty minor one.

Sadly, the last chapter is the beginning of new story that will continue in volume 73 and the premise is intriguing, to say the least! Richard Moore is hired to protect the matriarch of the Hoshina family, Rukako Hoshina, who's obsessed with clocks and the ancestral manor house is ticking to the brim with clocks – even has a clock tower. Rukako Hoshina received a death threat accusing her disrespecting "the flow of time" and she'll die at the time she "came into this world." The letter was signed with the moniker, The Guardian of Time. I can't wait to read the rest of the story!

So, all things considered, this volume can be summed up as an average entry with only one good story and the conclusion of the London-case as its sole standout moment. I don't think it helped either that it ended with a teaser of a case that already promises to be much better than the three complete cases that preceded it. Oh, well, here's hoping for the best in the next volume!

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Santa Slayings by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

The Santa Slayings is the 7th volume in the original series of The Kindaichi Case Files, written by Yozaburo Kanari and illustrated by Fumiyo Sato, which was among the 17 volumes that received an official release in the West – published during the golden days of TokyoPop. I mentioned in a previous review that there were gaps in my reading of the American releases and The Santa Slayings was one of the gaps.

So what better time to finally read, to my knowledge, the only seasonally-themed mystery in the series than the week preceding Christmas?

The Santa Slayings opens with a bleak prologue telling the reader that, ten years previously, the body of an unidentified woman was found off the coast of Kushiro, Hokkaido, which marked "the beginning of a tragic case." A case that would conclude ten years to the day later.

Hajime Kindaichi is unexpectedly invited by Detective Kotaro Tawarada, who first appeared in the abysmal The Mummy's Curse, to attend a Mystery Night at an exclusive, Western-style hotel during Christmas. However, this gracious invitation is in actuality a plea for help. The hotel received a letter threatening that whoever dares to disturb, or spoil, the writer's sanctuary "a bloody death as retribution" awaits them on Christmas Eve – signed "The Red-Beared Santa Claus." A mysterious figure who rented Room 315 for ten years and lived there as a recluse, but vanished one day. Reportedly, he had died in an accident.

A second problem bugging Detective Tawarada is the presence of the coldly competent, hard-bitten Hokkaido Police Superintendent, Fuwa Narumi. Several weeks before, there was a joint investigation between Aomori and Hokkaido Police, but, when the case was successfully closed, she wrote in her report that "the case was hindered by the Aomori police." And this damaged their reputation. So Detective Tawarada is now burdened with proving the real worth of the Aomori police force.

After this, the focus of the story shifts to the members of The Aprodia Theater Group, lead by the hated Suzue Bandai, who'll perform a two-part mystery play, but they immediately become the target of the red-bearded menace. Suzue Bandai receives a severed, but gift-wrapped, cat's head and their dressing room is thrashed. And that set the stage for murder.

During the final scene, the characters in the play share a toast, but the glass of the troupe leader contained cyanide and the police surveillance ensured nobody could have "snuck on to the stage to poison the glass" – which limited possibilities to "someone within the theater group." What follows is a series of murders, leaning heavily on some clever tricks, that carried the story. Starting with the poisoning-trick that made the murder on stage appear as if it was completely random. A trick that, in theory, only works with a very specific kind of victim, but a clever stunt nonetheless.

 

The third murder in the series is a tragic one and involved and involved Kindaichi personally, in more ways than one, when his roommate is murdered in Room 315 and Kindaichi is rendered unconscious by the murderer. So, when the door is opened, Kindaichi is placed under arrest, because he's the only one who could have committed the murder. The doors in the hotel have locks that can only be opened and locked with key cards, which automatically expire every twenty-four hours and the timing of the murder seems to exclude everyone except Kindaichi. A second aspect of the impossible murder is that Detective Tawarada saw the murderer standing in front of the window, of Room 315, five minutes pass midnight, but how did he manage to disappear from the locked room?

What makes this, plot-technically speaking, an interesting locked room problem is not the patchwork-trick, but how thoroughly the explanation broke down that locked room and the triple-layered motive justifying this elaborate setup – making this impossible murder a key-piece of the plot. Another noteworthy plot-thread is the one-hundred year history of Room 315. A grim history beginning with the suicide of the original hotel owner and the long occupation of the room by the red-bearded stranger, but it was never explained how this person was able to turn the whole room red.

So with a bag full of good tricks, false solutions and a surprising departure from the customary avenger-from-the-past motive, you would assume The Santa Slayings stands as one of the better, early titles in the series. Well, you're wrong. Remember, this is one of the volumes that was written by Yozaburo Kanari. And the poor sod was unable to keep the plot together during the denouement.

Despite all of the good or interesting plot-strands, Kanari thought it was necessary to add one more layer to the story. A layer allowing to add a surprise twist to the identity of the painfully obvious murderer, but this twist, coming out of nowhere, is so cringe-inducing ludicrous and unnecessary that it soured the whole story for me. I suspect this was only worked into the plot so that Kindaichi could have one of his moralizing speeches and emotionally break down the murderer in the last chapters. This is why I dislike Kanari so much. Watching him trying to plot and keep it together can be like watching a fly trying to get out of an open window.

I can only recommend The Santa Slayings to genuine fans of The Kindaichi Case Files, but advise everyone else to save themselves the money you'll likely have to spend in tracking down an overpriced, secondhand copy of the TokyoPop edition.