The Metafiction Murder Case

"Coincidences are the worst enemies of the truth."

- Gaston Leroux (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) 

Just recently, I reviewed Matt Forbeck's The Con Job (2012), the first in a series of tie-in books picking up where Leverage, canned after its fifth season, left off and the crew's incursion of Comic-Con in order to take down a mark reminded me that I had another mystery novel knocking about that treaded similar ground.

Murder at the ABA (1976) is one of the more conventional mysteries I have read by that most unconventional author of detective stories, Isaac Asimov, and yet, it's far from an ordinary affair or run-of-the-mill. What struck me first about Murder at the ABA were the flashes of "Had-I-But-Known" preceding the discovery of the body, describing everyday trivialities that ended up being flagstones that paved the way for death, something that could've easily been staved off if one of those moments had played out differently or simply had not occurred – which is an unusual approach for a mystery not penned and/or narrated by a female.

Anyway, the dominos began to fall when Darius Just, our five feet two writer and narrator, arrives too late at the 75th annual convention of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to help out a friend, but before the day is through, he's inundated with requests to talk to his former protégé, Giles Devore.

Giles Devore is what we refer to now as a "Man Child," rising to fame as an author after Just assisted in whipping his first manuscript into shape that gradually became a success story upon its publication. However, there's precious little gratitude for the independent publishing house and small booksellers that took a risk by promoting him, and now he wants to sweep them from his coattail, which gives a lot of people ample motivation to do him – that's what Darius Just believes when he finds Devore's body in the bathtub of his hotel room. There’s also the pile of heroin Just found in the hotel room, before someone swiped it away, and the complex-ridden victim himself, who can not sleep with a woman unless she undresses and baths him like a child, and calling the woman in question "mommy," gives Just and the reader enough angles to keep them guessing what happened.

It’s not the plot that’s the most appealing feature of Murder at the ABA, but its self-awareness as a work of fiction and Just’s interaction with Isaac Asimov – who’s there to do research for his next book, Murder at the ABA. The book is even dedicated to a friend on whom he modeled Darius Just, fellow SF-writer Harlan Ellison, but I have to admit, Asimov’s depiction of his friend wasn’t exactly flattering at times. Not at all like the good-natured chops he saved for himself, but hey, you’re supposed to roast the ones you love.

That being said, the metafictional excesses became a bit wearing after Asimov and Just decided to carry on their light-hearted banter in the footnotes of the story. It stopped being cute after the third of fourth one, but alas, they are there to accompany you to final chapters.

Murder at the ABA was not an unentertaining and at times even interesting detective story with a plot that was basically hung upon "the blinkin' cussedness of things in general," which was better than the suicide-disguised-as-murder explanation that I was dreading – even if it lacked the dearth of clues that put the suicide theory in my head. There are, IMHO, few things worse in a detective novel than have the murder that fueled the plot be revealed as an elaborately staged suicide and I'm glad that Asimov didn't opt for that conclusion. In short: neither extremely good nor awefully bad, but just an average plot that shined a bit brighter due to the unusual approach of its author. 

A Town in Tumult

"A picture paints a thousand words."

- Proverb 

A few years ago, I picked up Phoebe Atwood Taylor's Death Lights a Candle (1932) and The Criminal C.O.D. (1940), after listening to some favorable reviews on Les Blatt's weekly audio pod cast, but they just didn't do it for me and forgot all about Mrs. Taylor – until I rediscovered Octagon House (1937) in the cavernous belly of Mt. To-be-Read. Hey, after Zelda Popkin and Kay Cleaver Strahan delivered the second time around, I judged correctly to give Taylor and her "Codfish Sherlock," Asey Mayo, another shot.

The town of Quanoment, Cape Cod's forgotten hamlet with a population of eight hundred, has been granted a new postal office with a mural from a local artist, Jack Lorne, but the town isn't thrilled. They recognize images of themselves in the mural and the depiction of the townspeople isn't exactly flattering. Plainly, it was Jack's wife, Marina, who put him up to it, and from the evidence, she was very adept at playing the role of killable murder victim – even though she never appears on stage herself. They room with Marina's father, Aaron Frye, whose spirit she broke, and her sister, Pam, at the titular house and it is Pam's precarious situation that brings her to the doorstep of Asey Mayo.

Pam found the body of her sister in the garage, stabbed with a pocketknife that belonged to her and Jack screaming at her that she has killed Marina and that he has called the police, but there are also the incriminating and fabricated statements spouted by Nettie Hobbs – a town gossip who soured when Pam protected her father from Hobbs' advances. There's also the problem of the hundred-pound lump of ambergris that Pam chanced upon the beach, and fought over with her sister, but has now gone missing and appears to be lugged around all over the place. These elements combined with the setting almost gave you the idea of tramping around in one of Dorothy Cameron Disney's mystery novels and Pam's plight gave it shades of John Dickson Carr's He Who Whispers (1946)

Speaking of Disney and Carr, my edition of Octagon House is a Dell Mapback and includes a "What this Mystery is about" and "Wouldn't You Like to Know" section and the latter one asked a question that I have to address: why and how Pam disappeared from the locked bedroom?

Octagon House is listed nowhere as an impossible crime story, however, chapters five and six include a disappearance from said bedroom, which was locked from the outside and the key in possession of Asey Mayo, and the window screens firmly hooked in place from within. I should also mention that Pam disappeared from the bedroom when Mayo had one of the Frye's lodgers as a visitor named Timothy Carr! It's more of an Easter egg than an actual challenge, but it was treated exactly the way it should've been for something as simple (and short) as that and the explanation was more than acceptable. I was also intrigued to find another one of these miraculous side distractions, which also occurred when Jeff Troy vanished from a dumb-waiter in mid-air in Kelley Roos' Ghost of a Chance (1947) and Madeleine Magellan evaporated from a watched room in the Jonathan Creek episode, Ghosts' Forge (1999).

I know, I keep coming back to locked rooms, but I keep running into them, even when I assume I'm reading a straight laced whodunit (see: Dead Man's Gift, 1936). It's a gift... and a curse.

To round this review up, I enjoyed Octagon House and the "Codfish" Sherlock a lot more a second time around, because this one wasn't written around a joke (and punch line) that I saw coming a quarter into the book (i.e. The Criminal C.O.D.) There was plotting and mystification woven around such imagery as people running around with a lump of ambergris, an eight-sided house with clock strewn walls, brewing town riot and even an airplane crash in town square. I have to admit, it's not perfect (figured out whodunit) and the ending chapters tended to drag a bit in parts, but otherwise, I was entertained.

The theme of 2013 definitely is redemption and perhaps I should consider taking another crack at Sjöwall and Wahlöö. 

What's becoming of me?! :/

Mise-en-Scène

"A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins."

- Orson Welles

The backdrop is the largest studio at the disposal of the Elkin-Filmmaatschappij, an hour away from Berlin, Germany, where an internationally assembled cast and crew are shooting Vrouwen die vergeten (Women Who Forget), a "talkie," starring Neri Vallona and Iwan Inkow – with an unaccredited cameo from Death in one of the key scene. 

As you might have noticed from the language, this is not going to be a review of one of Ngiao Marsh's theatrically staged mysteries, but the author in question, Willy Corsari, performed on stage before becoming a successful writer. In January of last year, I reported on her country-house mystery, Voetstappen op de trap (Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937), and while there was a fatal flaw in the plot, I was nonetheless entertained – and the first example I found of a Dutch-language impossible crime novel from the Golden Age of Detective Stories!

De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Co-Player, 1931), which was also published as Het mystery van het filmatelier (The Mystery of the Filmstudio), is a standalone from early in Corsari's career and focuses on the peculiar stabbing of an unlikable, but desirable, actress in front of a camera. The opening chapters and structure of the book show imagination, rewinding and fast-forwarding between scenes like a movie, giving the reader a fractured view of what happened before Neri Vallona collapsed in Iwan Inkow's arms. It conjures up a picture of a woman who practically handed out motives, ranging from jealousy to greed, and even robbery is an option when discovered that her villa has been burgled and a necklace was snatched from the body.

Unfortunately, the impossible situation is underplayed and has a surprisingly routine (read: dull) solution based on a technique that locked room aficionados will be more than familiar with. I suspected Inkow for the longest time, because the medical evidence and movie reel proved conclusively that he was physically not capable of stabbing Vallona, but I presumed that she had died before the scene was shot – keep in mind that they're all in costume with dancers twirling around them.

The strong Inkow carries the body onstage, underneath his burly cape-like costume, with masked accomplish/mistress as a stand-in for Vallona and swaps places with the body when she swoops to floor (covered by the cape). He then slipped her out of the room when everyone was concerned with the body or when they carried her out there. A bit of a credulity stretcher, I admit, but the gaudy scene and confusing snippets that describe the murder would've been a perfect sell for such a risky method. Once the camera stopped, there was ample confusing to pull a switch and even if someone saw something, it's a detail that's easily lost in the chaos of the moment. It even provides a clue, if you put in a witness who swears s/he saw Vallona's "ghost" sneaking around the hallway after the murder. But you retain the illusion, because everyone thinks they saw her die in front of a rolling camera. Anyway, that's how I would have played it.

The police arrest Jan Ewoud Martens, the recording supervisor, on suspicion of the murder, prompting his friend and mystery writer, Juttu, to launch an investigation of her own – and yes, it's a simmering love story. Juttu soon bumps into an allay, Inspector Lusch, whose head's filled with fanciful theories and still pursuing leads on the case, but it's Juttu who reaches the unexciting end of the problem that began very promising.

I have to say in it's defense that it's mountainous improvement over her first detective novel, De misdaad zonder fouten (The Faultless Crime, 1927), which is a profusion of hackneyed plot devices like twins, sleepwalkers and duplicate keys – all of them brought in with a straight face. The Unknown Player may not be a groundbreaking detective story, but it lost its juvenile plumage that made her first outing an embarrassment and put me off her trail for years. And they can't be all classics.

However, what was interesting is that this may be one of the earliest examples of a fictional mystery writer complaining about growing tired of her own detective(s).

If you're interested, I compiled (some time ago) a list of Dutch-language locked room mysteries on the GADWiki.

Bill Pronzini: That 70s Crime Writer

"The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective."

- letter, 19 April 1951, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962) 

Raymond Chandler was right. The great detectives of fiction, if they exist, would probably not be private eyes, of some renown, but occupy a seat in front of a computer and dream up the plots they would have solved if they had existed on the pages of a Dashiell Hammett or John Dickson Carr story.

For he's a jolly good fellow!

On April 13, 1943, a mystery writer was born who would not look inconspicuous wearing a fedora and raincoat, prowling those mean streets of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, or stalk the hallways of a decaying mansion were people have disappeared as if by magic – spurting cryptic remarks and chuckles that drives the official policeman up the wall. Alas, common criminals are rarely known for their storybook-like ingenuity and that's why Bill Pronzini criminal ties are merely fictional ones. 

Pronzini's career began in the early 1970s with the publication of The Snatch (1971), which was selected by our common deity hero, John Dickson Carr, as one of the best detective novels of the year, and solidified his name as one of the top crime/mystery readers in the succeeding decade. I'm fairly much a novice when it comes to his work, but what I have read was enough to list him among my favorites and not just because Pronzini is a damn good writer. 

What lights the fire in Pronzini's stories, that keeps most of us drawing to his work like moths, is that he's an avid mystery/collector himself and brings 170 years worth of insight into detective, thriller and private-eye fiction to the game – drifting himself quite naturally between those styles. Pronzini prefers to vary his style and approach to keep it fun and his long-running series fresh, which means that you can bounce with the Nameless Detective from an impossible crime buried in the past (Bones, 1985) to soul-searching suspense (Shackles, 1988). Historical mysteries, stand-alone thrillers, short stories, and that rare beast of crime fiction, properly done crossovers are part of Pronzini's repertoire, but more importantly, characterization reflects the modern era without turning a story into a collection of mini-biographies – adding instead of distracting from the stories. You get to the learn the (main) characters, bit by bit, which I always thought was much far more realistic and makes me care about what happens to them then when I would've waded through hundreds of pages of personal misery with a backpack full of past angst. 

Exactly the same can be said about a number of other post-GAD era writers that I, as a staunch classicist, nonetheless enjoy reading, such as Marcia Muller, William DeAndrea, Herbert Resnicow, Paul Halter and M.P.O. Books, and they have one thing in common with Pronzini: they all love(d) to sink their teeth in a good detective story and sometimes possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. Personally, I believe that their grasp on the genre has enriched their stories and continued to a tradition that others seem to have forgotten. You don't believe me? Xavier Lechard has a gem buried on his blog, a post from 2009, which reports on an Edgar-winning author, Tana French, chortling about how she carries on "the traditions of mystery fiction," and that's true, but than she blasts everyone with a nodding acquaintance with detective stories in the face with a shotgun blast of ignorance: "...my book is narrated in first person, which is an old convention of the genre except that in this case the narrator lies." I wonder if she spend a couple of days in an isolation tank for inspiration, but Agatha Christie was probably struck by that idea when she was doing the dishes. 

That’s why I find it hard to warm up to today's best-selling thrillers and popular police procedurals. They not only lack the historical depth, but I genuinely don't care about the troubled cop with his messy private life – if that's the only thing they have to offer. I want to be entertained or captivated with clever and imaginative plots (clues abound!), engaging characters, atmospheric settings and memorable scenes. Give me the tale of John Quincannon and Elena Oliverez, kindred spirits separated by a hundred years, who managed to help each other solve an even older case (Beyond the Grave, 1986; with Marcia Muller). Give me Nameless and Kerry Wade for a couple, whose mutual love ignited amidst "Carter Dickson-effects" in Hoodwink (1981) and Scattershot (1982). Give me any case that passes through the offices Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services (The Bughouse Affair, 2013). Give me the kind of "fictionalized realism" that drives a good plot (Dragonfire (1982) & Savages, 2005), because actual realism would result in a 600-page novel painstakingly describing a stakeout of a suspect without a payoff. That's what realism in crime fiction would be like. 

But this celebratory post is threatening to turn into a diatribe, and yes, this is embarrassing heap of praise is a mea culpa for not having a proper review ready to mark Bill Pronzini's 70th birthday – unlike some of my fellow bloggers. Rest assured that I'm thoroughly assumed of this fact and will review one of the Nameless novels I have kicking around later this/next month. Until then, I want to congratulate Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller with reaching this personal milestone and hope they've a great day tomorrow, and many more years together to trust their nefarious schemes to paper.

Avengers Initiative

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

- Michael Corleone (The Godfather III, 1990) 

TNT may have canned Leverage after a run of five seasons, but the creative force behind the series are exploring new avenues to pull Nathan Ford and his crew back into the game, which is possible because the show was produced independently, and a movie is a popular rumor at the moment.

In the meantime, they'll keep us fans hooked with a series of paperback tie-ins they've commissioned and the first one in line, The Con Job (2012), proved to be a lot more fun than the bland title would have you believe. Matt Forbeck penned the first novelisation and I think it's a worthy addition to the canon, which also added to it, but the best part is that it still felt like Leverage – and that we can tag along with them again.

The Con Job takes place between The Gold Job and The Radio Job, episodes 16 and 17 of the third season, and Alec Hardison, hacker extraordinaire and resident geek, has found themselves a target: a disreputable dealer, Lorenzo Patronus, whose been filching rare comic-books and valuable cover art from their old creators. These were works from poor, freelance artists who hung on to them as an alternative retirement plan. Well, that pissed off a genius hacker/geek, who has a little Justice League of his own, and they're off to Comic-Con – where their mark intends to sell off the stolen goods.

As to be expected, the plot is littered with pop-culture references, ranging from Star Wars to Spider-Man, cameos from Stan Lee and Patrick Stewart, and even a sub-plot involving the manga publishing industry and a few "play-fights" that the combat hardened Eliot had to participate in – enough material for some of that Leverage humor. The con they play is basically a "Devil's Contract" that could fulfill Patronus' boyhood dream, becoming a recognized comic book artist, which is a cue for Sophie Devereaux's character, talent agent Jess Drew, to discover an unrecognized talent. But there's more than meets the eye (pop-cult reference!), when an old nemesis turns up, the less-than-scrupulous and source of general annoyance Cha0s (Hardison's rival), which is not a weird thing in itself considering that they're at Comic-Con, but when Hardison goes missing – they know that a third party is involved.

However, it's the crew that, as to be expected, stole the show in The Con Job and that’s immediately my only quibble: my favorite character, "The Mastermind," Nathan Ford was pushed into the background and gave Hardison the lead. His reluctance to enter Comic-Con is one of those things that added to the character, but I preferred to have had him a bit more in the front. That aside, I tremendously enjoyed tailing Eliot, Parker and Sophie around the stands and watch them off-page deal with the amount of unusual trouble you'd expect from Leverage. Heck, Eliot and Parker cosplaying as a Stormtrooper and Princess Leia, as they struggle through a crowd, should be the end all argument to bring the series back on the air and kick-off the new season with an adaptation of this book.

Anyhow, what matters are that Leverage is back and Forbeck penned a story that's very much in the spirit of the show. It's just unpretentious fun on an exciting and dangerous job. Far more than I expected from a TV tie-in novel and I'm looking forward to the next one, The Zoo Job (2013), which I probably will get to next month. A warning to the reader: avoid the reading the synopsis on the backcover of The Con Job, it gives away too much.

And to my fellow Leverage fans, if you enjoyed The Con Job for more than just a continuation of your favorite series, than I would like to draw your attention to Mack Reynolds' The Case of the Little Green Men (1951) – a comedic private-eye novel set in the world of SF-and Fantasy fans and features a loveable loser detective. He’s hired to by a bunch of oddball SF-fans investigate alien life on Earth, who have been taking potshots at them with ray guns or dropping them from flying saucers and the investigation takes him to an early SF/F con. It has been reprinted and I think if you liked The Con Job, you’ll love this one as well.

Yes. The blog-to-blog mystery evangelist never lets an opportunity slip through his fingers to harvest a soul or two.

Memories Lost

"Time is a terrible thing, because it erases joys and pains at the same time."

- Gosho Aoyama

Coincidently, this is the third post in as many days that I'll be discussing a detective story, or rather a compendium of stories, from the comic book spectrum and you might have noticed that another Case Closed/Detective Conan review has been long overdue.

The 45th installment of this long-running series begins, as often is the case with this series, with a story that was set-up in the previous volume and this yarn fits in with another theme that's prevalent on this blog – seemingly impossible crimes! The setting is a high school where a student, Hosaka, tumbled down a flight of stairs to his death and his ghost appears to be playing malicious pranks on his old classmates. At the conclusion of the previous book, they found his desk in the school courtyard with a note on it that said, "I HAVE YET TO SETTLE MY GRUDGE," but the rain that had fallen moments before left the note bone-dry and the field of mud surrounding the desk was bare of any footprints.

Conan does an excellent job in pointing out the prankster among the group of friends and Aoyama worked with numerous tropes popular in Japanese (manga) mysteries for this one (e.g. scholastic setting with legends haunting the hallways and the avenger-from-the-past theme), but here, IMO, it resulted in one of the best examples I have read to date. I guess it's because it didn't result in a gruesome murder case and stayed on a human level that fitted the backdrop and characters. 

Aoyama's art in Case Closed is always great to look at, especially when clues are abound, but it was here that it struck me how beneficial it can be for a story on an emotional level – because there's nothing that Hosaka's friends could have said that gave the reader more of a connection with him than showing his smiling face in class whenever they're talking about him. Much better than biography-approach you find a lot of contemporary crime and thriller novels.

The materialization of Hosaka's desk in the muddy courtyard carried the mystery aspect of the story, showing the strength of a well thought out, but non-violent, locked room gambit, but was also surprised to find out that it was practically the same explanation I had dreamed up for the no-footprints situation in William L. DeAndrea's Killed on the Rocks (1990). That was the only real good solution I ever came up with for the no-footprints situation. Oh, well.

Next up, Conan, Doc Agasa and the Junior Detective League take time to go on a fishing trip, and before long, they find themselves enmeshed in another case that has all the earmarks of an impossible crime: an angler sitting on his regular fishing spot, a pile of tetrapods sticking far out of the water, is found more dead than alive and foul play is suspected. However, nobody approached the man until they noticed that something was up and while he's rushed to the mainland, Conan is unsnarling the events of that day. Aoyama packed a nice bag of tricks for this volume and his solution is rather ingenious, but risky, method for poisoning someone from a distance – a versatile mind to be sure and one that should please a lot of my fellow mystery enthusiasts, if they ever decide to pick this series up. But be warned, it take six to seven volumes before the stories become really good.

Anyway, the third case is an out-and-out homage to Columbo and just about as enjoyable. Richard Moore is invited to come to Okinawa for a TV conversation with Toshizo Nose, a famous baseball player for the Jaguars, and the moderator is a former teammate and sports reporter – Motoyama, who harbors a grudge against Nose. A grudge that drives him to murder and constructs a cast-iron alibi to get away with it. Conan pops up every now and then to ask pesky questions, before he has given him enough rope to hang himself.

Finally, we are treated to a three-chapter story that will be concluded in the next volume and involves astronomy, an outstretched forest that hide a skeleton and a dying message, invitations from a missing man and a fresh corpse.

Cherchez la femme

"Locked rooms and mysterious disappearances smack of deliberate subterfuge."
- Sabina Carpenter (Bill Pronzini's "Gunpowder Alley")

John Pugmire is a self-published translator of French-language impossible crime tales, under the enterprising name of Locked Room International, whose résumé includes translations of Paul Halter and Jean-Paul Török – and has recently launched a website to keep us abreast of his publishing plans.

Dumas in 1855 (*)

It was on Pugmire's new website that I learned that he had translated an Alexander Dumas (yes, that Dumas) story, "House Call," for the June, 2013, issue of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and it's actually an excerpt from Les Mohicans de Paris (The Mohicans of Paris, 1854). The introduction notes that "House Call" is the first story since Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 inaugural locked room story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," that employed the device and according to Pugmire, this is the story were "Cherchez la femme" originated from.

Before we dig in, I would like to point out that The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000), edited by Mike Ashley, mentioned that Thomas Bailey Aldrich's "Out of His Head," a self-contained episode from an eponymous novel, was the second only after Poe to feature a locked room problem – except that Aldrich's story is dated 1862. On top of that, Aldrich might not even be third: M.M.B.'s "The Mystery of the Hotel d’Orme" was published in the same year and Dumas has a similar problem, if you consider Wilkie Collins' "A Terribly Strange Bed" as a proper impossible crime, but that's something for the scholars to mull over. I thought it noteworthy that both stories, credited with coming in second, are excerpts from otherwise non-mystery novels.

Anyway, a young woman vanished like a gust of wind from her closed quarters at a boarding school and head of the Sûreté, M. Jackal, is called up to investigate, but it must be said, for a master detective he has to work on his priorities. Jackal is informed upon his arrival that they aren't sure if there had been a disappearance, because the room hasn't been entered yet, but instead of breaking an entrance he parades everyone around the garden to look for clues – and establishing that the door and shutters are bolted and hooked from the inside. Fortunately, this does not deter the story in any way and the outdoor scene is actually quite fun, if you like these kind of deductive reconstructions, and even gave me an early example of the rival detective (e.g. Simon Brimmer in the Ellery Queen TV-series from the 1970s and should be used more often!) as M. Jackal is bested in one or two deductions by a friend of the missing girls' fiancée.

The explanation for the disappearance from the sealed room is dated and often used in later stories as a throw-away suggestion, but "House Call," if it's indeed the second locked room in modern fiction, than this is were the trick first appeared. 

Bill Pronzini, always up to something

And to pad out this post, I decided to pick an impossible crime story from a contemporary fictioneer and ended up choosing Bill Pronzini’s "Gunpowder Alley" – which appeared in the August, 2012, edition of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. You probably picked up on the opening quote that this is a Carpenter and Quincannon story, who appeared recently in The Bughouse Affair (2013), but this time it's mostly a solo-case for John with Sabina on commentary in the background, and naturally, there's a murder that looks everything but natural. 

Quincannon accepted a job from a reluctant client, Titus Willard, to put a stop to a blackmailer who's squashing him for thousands of dollars, but refuses to supply any details and with nothing much to work on, he sets a trap at the drop off – tailing the suspect to a tobacco-store in Gunpowder Alley. A talkative policeman walking his beats bumps into Quincannon when the sound of gunshots whips them into action. The door and windows are bared and secured from the inside, but they do offer a smudged view of a body sprawled on the ground of a cluttered room. 

It's one of those days that John has to relay on his noggin instead of his Navy Colt or a clenched fist. And he did it better then me this time. I was completely lost on this one and Pronzini walked a fine tight-rope, because part of the solution used a gimmick that I am not overly fond of, but once you get the overall picture, it's a nifty trick that shows that the author knows his classics. 

Well, I think if there's one conclusion  we can draw from this post, it's that I love a good locked room mystery.

The Dark Pages

"So to summarize, we're basically dealing with three concentric locked-room mysteries."

- Special Agent Bay of the Library Police 

The last review that appeared on here, a rundown of Jack Iams' Death Draws the Line (1949), is still smoldering, and while it's already a contender for worst mystery read this year, the final portion of the book that included the Little Polly Pitcher comic-strip served as reminder that I still had to check out the work of an actual comic book artist – who drew and penned an attractive contribution to the locked room sub-genre.

Jason Shiga's Bookhunter (2007) is a modern-historical, set in Oakland, California, 1973, but the fact that the story's protagonist is a special agent, named Bay, attached to the Library Police clues you in that you're still in comic-book land. However, the plot is delightfully classically in tone with a cartoon-y hardboiled edge to it. The story is split up in four chapters, three of them detailing Bay's investigation, and the first introducing him when he's organizing a raid on a "freelance censor," who swiped several political books from the shelves, and has been locating by printing the same book he was targeting with radioactive dye! A confrontation with the self-appointed censor ends in the same way that got a lot of old Looney Tunes episodes canned or censored, "my bladder," before Bay moves on to a more cerebral problem.

The rare book room of the Oakland Public Library had an English bible on loan from The Library of Congress, which "was given to John Quincy Adams by a group of Mendi tribesmen in commemoration of his representation of them in the Amistad slave ship case," and by all accounts, appears to have been spirited away from the library.

There were no signs of forced entry on the outside doors and windows. The fire-escapes were alarmed, but they were last heard the year before. The safe were the book was kept overnight is unscratched. And finally, if the thief got past these obstacles, there is still the stop-point gate that will be triggered by a magnetic strip embedded in the book. Unfortunately, these security measures were to no avail and someone skipped out of there, unnoticed, with a valuable book.

I have to compliment Shiga for planting a false explanation in my mind with his art work that would've made the triple locked room far less complicated, and I think every seasoned mystery fan would latch on to that like it was an actual clue, but the eventual solution was more involved – relaying on the inner workings of a library and the building itself. In a way, the plotting reminded me of Herbert Resnicow and perhaps I should also mention Bill Pronzini's novella "Booktaker," collected in Casefile (1983), because the resemblance between the titles alone speaks for itself. They have completely different solutions though.

Anyway, I couldn't tell more without divulging too much of what is essentially a short story, even if the page count lies somewhere around the 140, and I recommend you read it for yourself – especially if you're a fan of locked rooms, comics and/or bibliophilic mysteries.

All in all, Bookhunter is an off-beat gem that deserves more attention from the mystery readers, combining art that fits the mood of the story with tongue-in-cheek action sequences and meticulous plotting, but let the reader be warned, there's a lot of technical talk on locks and bookbinders lore. Heck, there's enough of that stuff in this story that Julian "Bloody" Symons’ would probably have broken a thumb and forefinger, because he couldn’t slap "humdrum" label on this book fast enough. ;)

Cartoonist in a Tailspin

"Something didn't seem right. There was something about the whole set-up that smelled like someone else's hydrant."

- Ace Hart (Dog City, 1992-94) 

When the founder of Whitcomb Feature Syndicate, Big Bill Whitcomb, passed away the general-manager, Mark Wallis, inherited the responsibility to keep the business afloat that, in turn, keeps the vultures that were circling his sickbed in luxury and comfort. The only honor they give to their late benefactor is an annual diner to commemorate his birthday, which went well for nearly ten years, until their star cartoonist, Zeke Brock, made a drunken scene and the family has summoned Wallis before the next diner – and thus begins Jack Iams' Death Draws the Line (1949).

Zeke Brock is the creator of the Little Polly Pitcher comic strip and alcohol was his poison of choice, which seems to have done him, after Wallis planned to let him sleep for a couple of hours before towing him to the party. However, Wallis' becomes suspicious when Brock's will, leaving the copyright to his assistant, Mary Bradley, appears to be missing and ask a befriended D.A. for an autopsy – much to the chagrin of the acid-tongued and scandalized Widow Whitcomb. Of course, the fact that the autopsy showed that Brock was drowned (!) was not enough for Wallis to hold on to his job, because he neglected to put the interest of the company and the family on the first place.

Unfortunately, the snobbish, childish and decadent manners of the Whitcomb family pretty much sets the tone for the book and Iams appears to have been determined to drive home the fact that they're wicked people. Instead of following up on an interesting premise, Wallis has to endure the wrath of the Widow Whitcomb, tangle with her nymphomaniac of a daughter, Pamela, who's seen by Wallis approaching men in a dim-lit street, wrestle a gun from her brother Fenwick and knocks out with his former simpering assistant, Henry Parfield, who perhaps hopes to marry into the family. There are also sappy love feelings boiling between Wallis and Mary Bradley and a second murder, in which Wallis briefly becomes a suspect, to distract from the story. 

Crime Map on the backcover

It’s not like the murder of Zeke Brock is completely delegated to the background, but a lot of details were lost that could've made for a better story and not only in regards to the plot. Through out the story there are mentions of Avenge Polly Pitcher Clubs and movements popping up all over the country and you could have peppered the story with newspaper snippets (perhaps from one or two Rocky Rockwell's The Record?) of their activities. Yes. It would have still been padding, but it would've been more fun than what we actually got. There was also no background on the comic book industry of the 1940s. The murder of Brock also had some confusing points. None of the police involved seemed to give much thought on how the murderer entered the premise. Was I reading a locked room mystery or not? It was mentioned that Brock gave keys to practically every woman he ever slept with, but that was never looked into. Even after a suicide attempt takes that may be a botched attempt at murder takes place there. Somehow, someone got in... yes... that's a remarkable feat of deductive reasoning, detective. Why don't you go to a Coffee-and-Donut store and sit this one out.

The only point of genuine interest was the batch of missing Little Polly Pitcher comic strips and they were actually included in this book, drawn by Roy Crane, and they tell you what you probably suspected all along, but it’s a nifty gimmick nonetheless. I can only see this book of being of interest to scholars looking into the visual elements in detective stories. In short, Death Draws the Line was not just a step down from previous books I have read by Jack Iams, like The Body Missed the Boat (1947) and What Rhymes With Murder? (1950), but a suicide dive off a cliff and I think that is a wish we should respect and leave it at that.

Oh, and I know it's folly to post two reviews on the same day, so if this is the first time today that you decide to take a peek at this blog, you might also want to take a look at my rundown of the new Jonathan Creek special, The Clue of theSavant's Thumb (2013), which aired last night. The tone of that review is also a bit more on the positive and upbeat side. I hate

Jonathan Creek: The Clue of the Savant's Thumb

“The locked room is an exercise in illusion – a magician's trick. Otherwise it's impossible, and the impossible can't be done, period. Since it had been done, it must be a trick, a matter of distracting attention, and once you know what you're really looking for, the answer is never hard.”

- Michael Collins' "No One Likes the Be Played for a Sucker" 

The long anticipated return of the sleuth in duffle-coat, The Clue of the Savant's Thumb (2013), aired on BBC One last night and it was an improvement over the last disaster, The Judas Tree (2010), even if parts of the plot echoed previous episodes – and another detective story for that matter. But first things first! 
 

Savant's Thumb opened with a prologue, peeking fifty years into the past, set at Waxwood Hall, a strict convent school, where disobedient girls were locked up in the "Quiet Room" to contemplate and pray. They often emerged with stories of having seen god, but it was also the place where a girl died mysteriously in her bed and other girls woken up to find a red ring on their foreheads – events that have haunted Rosalind Tartikoff ever since.

Rosalind's life, however, has quieted down in the preceding decades and married Franklin Tartikoff, writer-producer and polymath, and together have an adopted daughter, Fariba, but when we met them life has become a bit knottier and complicated. She has a relation with the family doctor and Franklin is plotting something, but then murder in one of his miraculous guises steps in. Rosalind has to look through the keyhole of her husbands study to see Fariba hunched over the bloodied remains of Franklin, before slumping to the ground herself, and snaps a picture of the crime scene with her phone through the keyhole, however, when the door is finally opened they only find Fariba!

A honey of a problem that eventually attracts the attention of two detectives and they both have changed since their last appearance. Rik Mayall reprises his role as D.I. Gideon Pryke from the series masterpiece The Black Canary (1998), but a bullet landed him in a wheelchair – giving him shades of another locked room expert, Cyriack Skinner Grey. However, Jonathan Creek's metamorphosis from an inventor of stage illusions to the world of marketing and having married a wealthy wife is the more astonishing one of the two. And at first, Creek is a bit reluctant to pick up his old hobby, mainly due to his wife, but the problem of a body disappearing without a trace from a locked and watched room proved to be too much of a temptation.

Creek, Pryke and Ross are an excellent threesome to sort out the clues that will, somehow, uncover a secret buried for half a century in a now derelict Catholic girls' school, how a murder victim was spirited away, tell them what was written in a coded message and lead them to a mysterious society, but I also have a big issue with the solution.
 

SPOILER, select or press CTRL+A to read:

The entire explanation felt like a best-of compilation of the series: the disappearing act with a fainting witness in a locked and watched room was done in Danse Macabre (1998) and the solutions even share some similarities, but the main gist of the trick was eerily similar to one from The Kindaichi Case Files – right down to the clue of the victims hands. That's what put me on to the solution so quickly. Next is the botched magic trick (with a saw) that was also at the heart of The Black Canary and we have seen that ridiculous government conspiracy before in The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish (1999). 

I was also a bit under-whelmed when I learned how Franklin died. Surely, that could've been done a tad-bit more convincing. Really hope that at least one or two of the new episodes is a return to brilliant and original plotting of Jack-in-the-Box (1997), Danse Macabre, Black Canary, Satan's Chimney (2001) and The Tailor’s Dummy (2003) 
 

In spite of this "patchwork-plotting," I enjoyed most of what Savant's Thumb had to offer, and while I wouldn't rank it among the best in the series, it had its moments that gave me that feeling what proper adaptations of John Dickson Carr and Hake Talbot may look like – which is not a bad thing at all. 

Conclusion: not a perfect but nonetheless promising re-start of this series and looking forward to 2014. 
 

In case you missed it, I posted a list of real-life, but little known, locked room mysteries and impossible situations over the Easter Weekend and might be fun follow-up to this review: Just About As Strange As Fiction: Day to Day Miracles. I also reviewed the Jonathan Creek episode Time Waits for Norman (1998) last year.