It Takes a Thief

"You are right. I am not a detective, but a thief. And stealing is what thieves do best, even if it's a persons heart."

- Kaito KID (Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan a.k.a. Case Closed)

Last week, I posted a review of The Iron Angel and Other Tales of the Gypsy Sleuth (2003) by Edward D. Hoch, a giant of the short story form, but sadly, this particular collection of detective stories proved to be underwhelming as a whole and completely under-performed compared to the author's other, more well-known, detective-series – like the ones featuring Simon Ark or Dr. Sam Hawthorne. A sentiment that was shared in the comment-section.

There were, however, two nuggets of gold in the collection reflecting Hoch's monumental reputation as a craftsman of short tales of mystery and detection. Stories that showcased his expertise in twisting together clever, well-clued puzzle plots and simply wanted to read more of them.

So I decided to return early to Hoch's massive contribution to the pantheon of detective-fiction, close to a thousand short stories, which brought me to a volume about his most popular creation, Nick Velvet, who's a thief-for-hire specialized in pilfering unusual or even bizarre things – often without any apparent monetary value.

Nick Velvet was born in the once Italian dominated neighborhood of Greenwich Village, New York, as Nicholas Velvetta, but shortened it on account of his name sounding like a cheese. He lives together with his long-time girlfriend, Gloria Merchant, who has "only a vague notion of his profession" and believes he's an industrial consultant, which meant regularly trips abroad. During those days away from home, Velvet carries out some of the most singular thefts and burglaries the police forces of the world must have on record.

Velvet charges a flat fee of $20,000 for his odd thefts with "an extra $10,000 for especially hazardous tasks" (e.g. stealing a ferocious tiger from a city zoo in broad daylight). As a result, the stories tend to be multifaceted as one part of the plot deals with how Velvet is going to complete his task, while the other part concerns itself with the question why anyone would plunk down twenty grand, or more, in cash to get their hands on a toy mouse or an old circus poster. Something that provides these rogue stories with an interesting detective-angle.

The professional thief debuted on the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1966 and would go on to appear in 85 additional short stories, a crime-spree lasting over forty years, with the last one being published in 2007 – a year before Hoch passed away. Velvet was not only one of Hoch's most popular series-characters, but also proved to be the "most financially successful" one and probably the reason why some of his exploits were collected as early as the 1970s.

One of these collections is The Thefts of Nick Velvet (1978) and is a selection of stories from the first ten years of the series. Mostly, they're excellent and entertaining crime stories demonstrating why, not only, Nick Velvet is Hoch's most popular series-character, but also showing his creation was a worthy addition to the Rogue's Gallery of gentleman thieves – which includes Arsène Lupin and A.J. Raffles. So let's take a closer look at the thirteen short stories that make up The Thefts of Nick Velvet.

The opening story, "The Theft of the Clouded Tiger," also kicked off this long-running series and was originally printed in the September 1966 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM), which has a plot that's still rough around the edges and can even be considered hardboiled. Velvet is hired by the representative of "a Middle Eastern prince with a private zoo" to steal a clouded tiger, a very rare specimen, that had been captured near the Sino-Indian border and donated to the Glen Park Zoo.

Velvet's plan to take the tiger from his cage is pretty much a crude smash-and-grab job, but the crux of the plot turns out to be a double-cross forcing the thief to bloody his hands in order to even the score. It is, however, noted in the introduction that, after this first story, he "rarely killed anyone."

"The Theft from the Onyx Pool" appeared in the June 1967 issue of EQMM and is easily my favorite entry in this collection. Velvet is hired by a young girl, Asher Dumont, who wants to pay him the twenty grand to steal the water from a swimming pool belonging to a writer and producer of mystery plays, Samuel Fitzpatrick. A task requiring theatrics and some grease money, but the best aspect of the plot is the reason why the pool had to be drained and Hoch does not underestimate the intelligence of his readers, because two of the three likely explanations were quickly disposed of – which leaves the reader with a possibility that doesn't really answer why the water had to be stolen. But that is explained through a marvelous bluff by the client. As Velvet said, "I'd hate to be your enemy."

Note for the curious: Velvet is introduced to Fitzpatrick under the guise of having an idea for a stage-play, which happened to be "a locked room sort of thing" and gives a brief rundown how the trick works. A gimmick used elsewhere, in a much later work, to ignite a deadly fire inside a locked apartment.

"The Theft of the Toy Mouse" was first published in the June 1968 publication of EQMM and his latest assignment brings him to a sound stage in Paris, France, where an American motion picture is being shot. Velvet is paid his flat fee to steal "a little wind-up metal mouse," with a retail value of 98 cents, from the prop department. There's an amusing, well-written scene in which Velvet burglarizes the prop room from atop the roof's skylight, but the reason why his client wanted the mechanical mouse stolen was a little obvious. Still, the story was a good and fun read.

"The Theft of the Meager Beaver" originally appeared in December 1969 in EQMM and is the first of three stories from this collection that involves a fictitious country.

Asignar is the Minister of Information for the island Republic of Jabali, "not far beyond Cuba," where the reigning president, General Tras, is an enormous baseball fan who has personally trained a national team – except that they have nobody to play against. Velvet is hired by the Jabali government to steal a major league baseball team from America and bring them to the tiny island nation. So this is really more kidnap story, and a crude one at that, than a proper theft, but a secret (political) plot is tied to the arrival of the American baseball team. Velvet has to turn against his clients in order to prevent a political assassination cleverly disguised as a legal execution. Somewhat of an unusual entry, but not a bad one and reminded me of an updated version of Arsène Lupin.

The next story, "The Theft of the Silver Lake Serpent," was published in the January 1970 publication of Argosy and is the most outlandish of all the stories gathered in this collection! Velvet is asked by the desperate owner of a lake resort, Earl Crowder, to steal "a sea serpent" from the lake of a neighboring competitor, which has been draining his place of all its guests – because people are flocking next door in hopes of seeing a real-life Loch Ness Monster. What's fascinating is that the eyewitnesses appear to have really seen a legendary sea serpent with a small head on "a fairly long neck" with "two coils or spines or lumps" breaking the water behind the head.

It's not the easiest of jobs, considering people have been hunting lake monsters for ages without any success, but Velvet persevered where others have failed and solved an unaccountable death along the way. However, the explanation for the true nature of the serpent makes you want to hug and strangle Hoch at the same time. One of those solutions that's as original as it's almost unacceptable. And, no, it's not a mini-submarine disguised as a lake monster.

"The Theft of the Seven Ravens" was published in the January 1972 issue of EQMM and is the second story about a fictitious country, which is represented here by "the newly independent nation of Gola" where the image of a raven is an important symbol. So during the first official state visit, the President of Gola is going to represent the Queen of England with seven Golaen ravens and Velvet is hired by the British government to prevent the animals from being stolen. Around the same time, Velvet is asked by an Irish nationalist to steal the ravens before they can be presented to the Queen. A situation that quickly turns into a quagmire.

There's an excellent set-piece when a room is filled with black birds, but otherwise, the (core) plot came across as somewhat repetitive read so shortly after "The Theft of the Meager Beaver." But not a bad read by itself.

"The Theft of the Mafia Cat" is lifted from the pages of the May 1971 edition of EQMM and is easily the most amusing yarn contained in this volume of stories.

Velvet is engaged by a childhood friend, named Paul Matalena, with whom he grew up in the Italian section of Greenwich Village and is reputedly "a big man in Mafia these days." Matalena wants Velvet to steal a cat, which seems an easy enough job, but the snag is that the animal is owned by "a big man in the Syndicate," Mike Pirrone, who absolutely adores the one-of-a-kind cat – which could turn this job in a suicide mission when gets caught. Or at least gets taught a lesson by Pirrone's personal security. The way in which Velvet manages to snatch the cat from under the nose of the gangster is fun enough, but the cherry on top is the very clever and original reason why Matalena needed to "borrow" the animal for a short while. Loved it!

"The Theft from the Empty Room" was originally published in the 1972 issue of EQMM and has been tagged everywhere as a locked room, or impossible crime, story, which is technically correct, but an outside-of-the-box kind of mystery would be more accurate.

Roger Surman is hospitalized with a serious liver problem and hires Velvet from his hospital bed, which he solemnly promises to be "one of the most unusual jobs" he has ever worked on. A statement that proved to be somewhat prophetic. Surman wants Velvet to burglarize the storeroom of his brother's summerhouse, currently closed down for the winter, but when he gains entrance to the place he finds a bare, empty storeroom – a layer of dust covering the floor from wall to wall. So what could have been in the room and how could it have been removed from the room without disturbing the film of dust on the floor? Velvet actually has to do some proper detective work in order to solve the mystery and complete his task. A good, pleasant and clever detective/rogue story with an original problem.

"The Theft of the Crystal Crown" was published in the January 1973 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and is the third, and last, story in this collection about fictitious country. The Kingdom of New Ionia is "a very old and very small island in the Mediterranean," situated between the southern tips of Italy and Greece, where the national symbol is a glass crown. A relic shown only once a year during a masked ball at the palace and Velvet was paid to snatch it during this yearly ball, but the smash-and-grab job is the only good set-piece in this story. Otherwise, I really didn't care about this story.

"The Theft of the Clouded Tiger," EQMM, 1966

"The Theft of the Circus Poster" originally appeared in the May 1973 issue of EQMM and a man, dressed as a clown, commissions Velvet to a steal a 1916 circus poster from the private collection of retired clown, Herbie Benson. However, the protective granddaughter of the old man, Judy, proves to be great foil to the professional house-burglar. She's a professional snake-charmer and every night she lets loose "a sackful of rattlesnakes" in house, as a precaution against burglars, but Velvet now also wants to know why his client wants to steal a poster from such a kind, old man. A good, solid and fun story unless you really hate clown and/or snakes.

"The Theft of Nick Velvet" was published in the February 1974 issue of EQMM and has a potentially interesting premise: Velvet is kidnapped in order to prevent him from being hired to do a job, but manages to convince his captors to allow him to the job for them (i.e. stealing a ship's manifest). Unfortunately, I found this story to be completely underwhelming and simply did not care about it. So moving on.

“The Theft of the General's Trash” appeared in the May 1974 issue of EQMM and Velvet takes his long-time girlfriend, Gloria, to Washington to see the cherry blossoms, but shortly after they arrived in the political nerve-center of the United States the telephone in their hotel-room rings – with an offer for a high-paying job. Sam Simon is a columnist and investigative journalist who wants Velvet to steal "a bag of garbage" belonging to the President's adviser on foreign affairs, General Norman Spengler. Simon swears the garbage bags contains nothing but refuge and their content is only of interest to him, as a reporter, which turns the illustrious thief into a glorified garbage collector. However, he receives his normal fee several times over, because he has to net more than one bag for his client. Of course, the much desired item in one of those bags is directly related to the political swamps of Washington, but the best part of this story is Velvet trying to get his hands on these bags.

On a side note, this is the story that convinced Gloria that Velvet is not an industrial consultant, but a agent, or spy, working for the United States government. Something he allowed her to believe, because it "helped cover his awkward absences." Who knew Edogawa Conan took relationship advice from Nick Velvet?

Finally, we have the last story from this collection, "The Theft of the Bermuda Penny," originally published in the June 1975 edition of EQMM and is a full-blown impossible crime story!

Velvet is hired by Jeanne Kraft to steal the titular penny from an inveterate gambler, Alfred Cazar, who is approached by Velvet in the guise of a magazine writer doing an article on the Saratoga racing season. So he accompanies the Cazar on a car-ride to the race tracks and the gambler cleans out the pockets of the thief during several impromptu bets, but during the ride Cazar miraculously vanished from the back seat of a closed car going nearly 70 miles an hour – leaving his seat-belts still fastened!

This is one of those rich, multi-layered stories Hoch was more than capable of putting together. First of all, there's the secret attached to a modern-day penny without any apparent value. The small-time cons Cazar played on Velvet during their joined car-ride and his impossible disappearance from a moving car. Lastly, there's a, sort of, whodunit-angle, which are nicely twisted together with some clues and foreshadowing thrown into the mix. Not one of his absolute masterpieces, but it's a perfect example of why Hoch will remain a staple of mystery anthologies for many, many decades to come.

So, all in all, The Thefts of Nick Velvet is an excellent collection of short stories. There were only two stories that failed to grasp my interest, but the remainder of the stories were pretty consistent in quality with some truly excellent specimens. Some even managed to surprise (one with the sea serpent!). I can perfectly understand why Nick Velvet emerged as a fan favorite and will probably return to his exploits before too long, because there's another volume of Nick Velvet stories on my pile with some potentially interesting (locked room) stories.

However, the next review is going to be of a once rare impossible crime novel with an excellent reputation and a fascinating backdrop. So keep your eyes out for that one.

Devil's Drought

"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"
- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

Gladys Mitchell's The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935) is the sixth recorded case of her psycho-analyst detective, Mrs. Bradley, which was reportedly inspired by lecture on witchcraft given by her personal friend and fellow mystery novelist, Helen Simpson – who famously gave Mrs. Bradley her second name, Adela, when they exchanged detectives in Ask a Policeman (1933).

The Devil at Saxon Wall has a hell of a reputation with Mitchell's acolytes and has often been cited as one of her best novels. Nick Fuller even listed the book alongside the well-known masterworks by Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, but can the book hold its own in such esteemed company? Let's find out!

The story begins with what is, essentially, a lengthy prologue covering the first three chapters, which take place during the early years of the 1920s and tells the gloomy tale of Constance Palliner. A story that ended in a double tragedy.

Constance had been an unhappy woman, destined to the existence of a spinster, but her life took an unexpected turn when, at age twenty-four, she accompanied her parents to Naples, Italy, where she met Hanley Middleton at Pompeii – a physician attached to the R.A.M.C. Middleton proposed to Constance mere hours after they first met and she accepted. So they return to England and took possession of a large, old house, called Neot House, standing in an ancient village with a slightly backwards population. And that's where the problems begin to manifest themselves.

The village of Saxon Wall lies in "a remote part of Hampshire" and gives the impression of a place out-of-time. A holdover from the days before Alfred the Great ruled over the island. The villagers looked like a pre-medieval population, described as having "thick, dirty, fair hair, unkempt and more like frayed rope," who "feared and loathed" witchcraft and paganism as much as they participated in it – such as the practice of fertility rituals. I think the depiction of pagan survival in a dark, dilatory village, as old as the hills, is the best aspect of the book. You can feel the presence of history and an ancient history all around the place, which Mitchell used to great effect to further the plot.

Hanley is a silent, preoccupied man, "enamored of long lonely walks" and "whiskey by the half bottle," but a change occurred after the passage of nearly two years and his personality took a turn for the worse. One day, he brought a woman home from a conference and she left after a fortnight with a bruised eye-socket. He began to ill-treat animals and manhandled Constance when she happened to be in his way.

Briefly, Constance leaves her husband and returns to her parents, but when she comes back her husband has descended into debauchery and she finds him with their half-clad maidservant in his arms, Martha Fluke – who's the daughter of the local witch. Old Mrs. Fluke is said to have made a pact with the devil and rumored to have the ability to make adders "dance on their tails by moonlight." Or make them "spell the names of the angels of darkness" at witches' sabbaths. She is said to have a hand in all evil going on in the village and was even implicated by the doctor in the death of her infant grandson. A child who had been born during Constance's absence and had died in her own house. Something she should have taken as a cue to turn around and leave cartoon smoke in her wake, but she stuck around and in the end gave birth to a baby boy, Richard, but passed away soon thereafter. Hanley followed suit when he died during an emergency operation.

A period of almost ten years passed and "the village peaceable returns to its dirt." The wickedness died down for the most part and the new vicar, Rev. Merlin Hallam, immediately put a stop to the cock-fighting, which had enjoyed "an unbroken survival from the fourteenth century or earlier." On top of that, a persistent drought is slowly resulting in a water shortage and the vicar wants to use this as a leverage against the pagan ways of the villagers. Because his well still holds plenty of water.

So a relatively peaceful period for the village, but it ended when an outsider arrived in their midst.

Hannibal Jones had earned "a dishonest livelihood for seventeen years" by "writing sentimental novels," but suffered a nervous breakdown and severe case of writers block. So he consulted the famous psycho-analyst, Mrs. Bradley, who poked him between the ribs with a yellow claw, cackled horribly, and gave him an unusual piece of advice: go on a hunt for a secluded village and become a part of it – without trying to write about them. After nineteen days of driving, Jones ended up in the remote, drought-stricken village of Saxon Wall and there he blissfully sank into peaceful obscurity.

However, his task to immerse himself in local affairs exposes a number of skeleton and lays bare one of the most twisted, serpentine plots Mitchell ever conceived. A tortuous plot that hard to discuss without giving anything away, but let's take a shot at it anyway.

Jones hears of the deaths of Constance and Hanley Middleton, who had been dead for the better part of a decade now, but local rumors whisper that their child, Richard, was mixed with the supposedly dead baby of the maid – which would guarantee trouble when the boys came of age. One of the boys is believed to be a changeling. There's another tall tale telling of Hanley Middleton's supposed twin brother, Carswell, who was patiently waiting to claim his inheritance. Or the story of a local sailor, Pike, who vanished from his sickbed around the same time Hanley died on the operating table.

All of these whispers are suggestive, mostly unsubstantiated, gossip stories compounded by local obfuscation and plain old superstition. But then a very real and tangible murder is committed at Neot House.

Hanley Middleton's hypothetical twin brother, Carswell Middleton, proved to be more substantially than assumed, because his body was found at the vacant house of his late brother – bludgeoned to death with a poker. Jones dispatches a telegram to Mrs. Bradley, requesting her presence at Saxon Wall, who arrives "grinning like an alligator" and "dressed like a macaw." And luckily she's at the top of her game when she started to pluck at the threads of this intricate skein.

I should remark here that, while the plot is admittedly ingenious, it just might be a little but too much of the good stuff. I know, I know. What is this world coming to when even I begin to complain about a detective story having too much plot, but I think there's an important difference between a complex mystery novel (e.g. The Echoing Stranger, 1952) and a convoluted detective story – which here required an addendum to the final chapter, titled "End Papers," clearing up all the loose ends. Once again, the plot is absolutely ingenious and Mitchell deserves admiration for not losing herself in this labyrinthine story, but this is type of detective novel that can easily leave a reader disoriented. And unsure whether he understood the solution.

However, when you have everything figured out, checked the "End Papers," you can't help the artificial conveniences Mitchell had strewn throughout the book that kept this plot from going. One of these conveniences is that the real Richard must be color-blind, which is used to determine the real identities of both nine-year-old boys. A second one is the handy fact that "the inhabitants of Saxon Wall were incapable of making straight-forward statements" or how the murderer's madness is used as an equally handy linchpin to keep a number of the plot-threads together.

For a third time, you have to admire the intricacy of the plot and how Mitchell plotted a route through this contorted maze, but it all felt very, very contrived. Mitchell has handled similar, trickily constructed, plots with more aplomb (e.g. Come Away, Death, 1937) and grace (e.g. St. Peter's Finger, 1938).

So, plot-wise, Mitchell has done better, but the story-telling is, as always, absolutely top-notch. Something that's exemplified in the final chapter when the murderer's demise coincidences with a massive downpour relieving and cleansing the long-suffering people of Saxon Wall. A powerful scene that has been likened to the fall of Lucifer and the manifestation of God's mercy. But what else could you expect from the Great Gladys.

Overall, The Devil at Saxon Wall went completely into the deep end with the plot, but the story-telling and characterization is vintage Mitchell, which, on a whole, might not have resulted in her best detective novel, but the book definitely deserves a place among her better and more memorable titles. Just take the time to carefully read the explanation and the explanatory addendum cleaning up all the loose ends.

The Gypsy Detective

"Is there anything that I can do for you?"

- Hagar (Fergus Hume's "The Sixth Customer and the Silver Teapot" collected in Hagar of the Pawn-Shop, 1899)

The late Edward D. Hoch was arguably the most prolific mystery writer of short stories from the previous century, producing nearly a thousand stories during his lifetime, which were published in such publications as Famous Detective Stories, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine – most impressively is the unbroken string of monthly appearances in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that lasted from 1973 to 2008. A streak that will likely never be broken.

During his fifty-three year career, Hoch wrote more than a dozen series and created a whole host of memorable, and popular, detective-characters.

Simon Ark is one of his most iconic series-character, who claims to be a 2000-year-old Coptic priest, but equally popular are his thief-for-hire, Nick Velvet, and Dr. Sam Hawthorne – a country physician specialized in solving seemingly impossible crimes. One of Hoch's lesser-known series-character is Michael Vlado, the Gypsy Detective, who was specially created for an anthology from the mid-1980s.

Bill Pronzini invited Hoch to contribute a short story to The Ethnic Detective (1985), a collection he was editing with Martin H. Greenberg, which might have given us "an Eskimo detective," but the choice fell on a Romanian Gypsy.

Michael Vlado is a leading member of a tribe of Gypsies who stopped wandering the globe over a century ago and settled down in the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps in Central Romania where they farm the land and breed horses. Formally, King Carranza is the leader of the tribal village, named Gravita, but the elderly man is crippled and unable to rule. So the power was exercised by Michael and this meant that he presided over "an informal court," called a kris, but his decisions were usually honored by the community and as a community leader he was often consulted on all kinds of problems. Surprisingly, a good portion of Michael's cases are brought to him by Captain Nicol Segar of the Government Militia.

You can say the series brimmed with potential and the fact that they were written by Hoch should've been a guarantee seal of plot-quality, but sadly, the characters, settings and political background of Communist Romania and the political upheavals in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s were used as a gimmick – a crutch that the plots heavily leaned on. Consequently, the plots are notably weaker than those found in the short stories about Simon Ark or Dr. Hawthorne.

On the bright side, the fifteen short stories collected in The Iron Angel and Other Tales of the Gypsy Sleuth (2003) contained only one real stinker and two (minor) gems, while the remainder of the stories managed to be consistent in being pretty average at best. So maybe the overall quality of the stories is not as bad as I made it out to be, but the series is definitely a notch, or two, below Hoch's other work, but for now, let's take the stories from this collection down from the top!

"The Luck of the Gypsy" is the series-opener and was originally written for the previously mentioned anthology, The Ethnic Detective, which introduces the reader to the two main characters, Michael Vlado and Captain Segar – who descended upon the hillside village on official business. A caravan of Gypsies had crossed the border into Romania and underneath one of the trucks several gold ingots were found, but by that time most of the caravan had been ushered through the checkpoint. And now the Communist government fears "counterrevolutionary activities" are brewing and that the gold might have been smuggled into the country in order "to foment unrest."

Captain Segar has been ordered to stay in the area, in case the caravan passes through the village, which is exactly what happens only an hour later, but not an ounce of gold is found inside the vehicle carrying two strange Gypsies. However, the occupants are gunned down a short while later and Michael figures out the culprit based on a dirty license plate. This is actually not too bad a story with a decent enough plot that made good use of an opportunistic murderer who's in possession of a better motive than simply personal greed.

"Odds on a Gypsy" was the first story from this series to be published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (hereafter, EQMM), which appeared in the July, 1985 issue and can best be described as a travelogue. Captain Segar has a brother in the Agriculture Ministry in Moscow, Konrad Segar, who's one of the government officials in charge of running the only horse race track in the capital – a place famously known as the Hippodrome. So a young Gypsy farmhand, named Tanti Slatina, with a passion for horse-riding is given a golden opportunity to race Michael's horse, Rom Way, at the Hippodrome.

Michael accompanies the young member of his tribal village to Moscow and the best aspect of this story is its depiction of "squalid grandeur" of the once magnificent race track, which has badly worn marble steps and soiled walls. A mere shadow of what it was when the building was erected in the 1800s. However, a body is eventually found in the stables of the race track, but the explanation for this murder was rather obvious and this killed the effect the revelation was trying to aim for. Not a bad story, but nothing special either.

"Blood of a Gypsy" appeared in the January, 1986 publication of EQMM and is the first locked room mystery of the series.

Once again, Captain Segar travels to the hillside village of Gravita and asks Michael "to represent his people at a state function in Bucharest," but Michael suggests another respected and educated member of the Gypsy community, Nicolae Gallipeau – who had attended school in Bucharest. Nicolae is also a controversial person who took a younger lover after his wife had passed away, which placed him at odds with his brother and a much younger rival. So there are several potential suspects when Nicolae is found in his home with his throat slit, but the problem is that Michael and Captain Segar were standing in front of the house at the time of the murder. And the backdoor, while unlatched, opened on a field of unbroken snow. How did the murderer managed to do the dirty deed without being seen or leaving footprints in the snow?

Well, the murderer had to improvise the locked room trick, on account of the witnesses at the door, which is well done for the most part, but the last act of the trick is hardly credible.

"The Gypsy Treasure" was first printed in the May 1986 issue of EQMM and takes place a month after the previous story. Michael has taken the place of the murdered Nicolae as a representative of his people at the state function in Bucharest, but longs to return to his wife and home village. However, the journey back home has to be put off when "the daughter of an old Gypsy king" approaches him with news that her uncle, Greystone, had been fatally stabbed. And this compelled Michael to attend a Gypsy festival on the Hungarian border where a long guarded secret from World War II will be revealed.

At the outbreak of the war, the Gypsies of Hungary and Romania "banded together" to "keep their gold and jewelry from falling into the hands of the Nazis." The treasure was hidden on the grounds of the festival and the whereabouts was entrusted to five men, "each of whom was given a portion of the secret." A secret encoded in five worn playing cards with the name of a location scrawled across it and you can actually crack this code, but you have to be observant and know your card games. And in case you were wondering, I embarrassingly failed to notice the obvious and crack the code.

"Punishment for a Gypsy" was originally published in the January 1987 issue of EQMM and is one of the two gems of this collection, which, technically, also qualifies as an impossible crime story!

Michael relates a story to Captain Segar about the day he took a shortcut and passed through a small mountain settlement, a village called Bistritz, where local superstition is compounded by Gypsy lore and vampire myths – which Michael learned first hand when he stopped his pickup truck in the center of the village. A small group of people had gathered at the crossroad and they immediately pulled him out of the truck, while yelling "we have us a Gypsy." One of the men informs Michael that a Gypsy, Arad Bercovia, is to be executed for murder at high noon and they were following an "ancient law" stating that "the first Gypsy met on the road is to serve as his executioner."

Barcovia had seduced the daughter of the local shopkeeper, Marco Rapnell, who swore he would kill the traveling Gypsy, but it was Bercovia who was seen throwing a knife through the open window of the shopkeeper's house and the locals believed "a Gypsy curse guided around a corner to its target" - since the victim was found in the kitchen next to the room with the open window. And all of the other doors and windows were locked and bolted from the inside. So that leaves Michael with only an hour to find a way out of this dire situation and the ending is an unexpected twist in what is arguably the best story from this collection. That's all I can say about this story without giving anything away.

"The Gypsy Wizard" made its first appearance in May 1987 issue of EQMM and brings Michael to the Italian city of Milan. One of the former inhabitants of Gravita, Josef Patronne, left the region of the Carpathian Mountains forty years ago and settled in Northern Italy after the war – where he became known as a wizard. Patronne's brother saw his picture in the newspaper, under the headline "FIFTY WIZARDS KEPT FROM THE POPE," which prompted him to ask Michael to go and check up on his brother.

Patronne claims the power of flight and, not long after Michael's arrival, the wizard's body is found at the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele and the first impression is that he fell to his death after attempting to fly. However, the autopsy shows he had been drugged and could not have climbed to the roof by himself. So not really a bad story, but the ending tore a page from a very famous and celebrated detective novel.

"Murder of a Gypsy King" was first published in EQMM of July, 1988 and is an important story on account of the brutal murder of a relatively important side-character, King Carranza, whose death allows Michael to take his place – officially becomes the Gypsy King of Gravita. The story also introduces a character, Jennifer Beatty, who will return in one of the later stories.

Jennifer Beatty had been touring the Balkans on the backseat of her boyfriends motorcycle, but "the inevitable finish" came and she simply took Peter's ride. She was directed to the village of Gravita by Captain Segar and shortly after arriving there the King is found beaten to death in his home. Plot-wise, the story is not very complicated and the truth behind the murder is a very sordid one. Nevertheless, the story is not without interest, providing an outsider's perspective of Michael's village, and the consequences of King Carranza's death makes this an important entry in the series.

"Gypsy at Sea" comes from the December 1988 issue of EQMM and is a spy-cum-detective story with a predictable sequence of plot-twists. Michael receives a letter from a woman who had known long ago in Greece, but she had drowned in the Aegean Sea twenty-five years ago and he had identified the body himself. So he travels down to Athens to see her and learns she had been working as a spy for a private information gathering agency. As to be expected, shortly after their reunion, she ends up being murdered. The truth behind her death, and the subsequent, twist were very predictable and made for a rather bland crime/spy story.

"The Gypsy Delegate" was originally published in the October 1990 issue of EQMM and takes place mere weeks after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. So Captain Segar now serves the new government, who placed him in charge of the region, but they also have a special mission for Michael.

King Michael I of Romania was forced to abdicate at the end of 1947, when the Communists took over, but the King is still alive (even today at age 95) and has been living in exile in Geneva, Switzerland. The new government wants to send an unofficial delegation to the disposed king and Michael, who was named after the king, was picked as a representative of the Gypsy population of the country. A five-men delegation boards a train to Geneva, but en route a delegate is found stabbed to death in his compartment and Michael's explanation foiled a terrorist plot. However, the solution was balanced on a single clue. So, once again, not a terribly bad story, but not a particular good one either.

"The Iron Angel" came from the October 1992 issue of EQMM and is the second story to involve the American tourist, Jennifer Beatty, who arrived at the village when the previous leader, King Carranza, was murdered in his own home. But this time, she's a person of interest in a drug-related stabbing death of a Gypsy in Bucharest. She was in a cellar, or drug den, getting high when a mortally wounded man stumbled into the place and mumbled something about "the three eyes on the iron angel."

A story with some potential, but hampered by its short length. I believe the story could have been expended into a novella or even full-length novel with the titular angel being as unnerving a presence as The Golden Hag from John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge (1938).

"The Puzzle Garden" was first published in the February 1994 issue of EQMM and involves a treasure hunt in a long-neglected, overgrown garden on an estate that has been returned to the family of the original owners after the overthrow of the Socialist government in 1989. Before the Communists began the collectivization, the Sibiu family buried a valuable statue in the Garden of the Apostles and the only clue mentioned the last Apostle. So this makes for a fun little tale about the search of a hidden treasure and the plot-patterns created when they start digging are pleasing, but the presence of the dead Gypsy, who was found in the garden with a knife in his back, was an unnecessary addition to the plot – slightly spoiling the effect of what was found in the whole they had dug. And the subsequent discovery.

"The Gypsy's Paw" was published in the September 1994 issue of EQMM and is one of the two gems in this collection, which is best described as an impossible crime story reminiscent of John Dickson Carr and Hake Talbot – with a dash of G.K. Chesterton.

Michael learns from his wife, Rosanna, that there's "a Rom with magic powers" plying her trade in the neighboring village of Agula. She is an elderly woman, Esmeralda, who carries around an old, severed bear's paw and takes money in exchange for wish-fulfillment, which might lead to trouble down the road. So Michael decides to drive down to the village and, as a local leader, have a talk with the old crone, but what he gets is a front-row seat to a first-rate miracle. She's about to call on "a wealthy couple with a missing son" and Michael accompanies her as an observer.

The demonstration does not work as Esmeralda had planned, because the missing son does not return when he's called upon with the bear's paw and a telephone call tells them their son had drowned several days ago. Suddenly, the loud knocking on the front door freezes everyone solid and the other son of the couple grabs the bear's paw to wish his brother in his watery grave. And when the distraught mother tore open the door, the only they saw was "a line of recent footprints leading to the front door." Whoever made the footprints either walked through "the bolted door" or simply "vanished without a trace."

A splendid story rich in both atmosphere and clues with an eerie impossible situation worthy of the previously mentioned artisans of the locked room story.

"The Clockwork Rat" originally appeared in the May 1996 issue of EQMM and is an unusual, bizarre and colorful tale that takes place in post-Soviet Moscow, which at the time was dominated by the Russian mafia. Michael is visited by Old Caspian who tells him about his grandson, Maksim, who's a dwarf with a talent for training rats. But the debts incurred by his father made him practically a slave to the mobsters who run a fancy nightclub. So Michael has to come up with a way to free Maksim from forced servitude, but that's easier than done and even becomes complicated when mobster dies when a windup toy-rat explodes in his hands.

Not much else I can say about this entry except that it has a decent enough plot and some excellent, almost surrealistic, story-telling that begs to be compared to the detective stories by Craig Rice.

"The Starkworth Atrocity" was published in the September-October 1998 double-issue of EQMM and the story is an absolute train-wreck. An uncharacteristically bad and sloppy job by Hoch.

The political upheavals in Eastern Europe maneuvered Michael in a position that he was constantly "summoned to a faraway place" to plead "the cause of Romanies seeking political asylum." Lately, he was acting on behalf of the European Union to observe the stream of Gypsy refugees pouring into the British Isles. At first glance, the story shaped up to be a politically-tinged narrative, which would have been bad enough, but the plot quickly degenerated when over fifty refugees were gassed to death at the nursing home where they were temporarily stored – which turns out to have been deliberately. Michael does some parrying with the press and solves a throat-cutting that had been thrown in for good measure, but the solution for the mass murder makes no sense and is even incomplete! One of the characters even says, "I suppose we'll never know any more." Really, Hoch?

Finally, "A Wall Too High" from the June 2000 issue of EQMM is more of the same, but with a coherent, if obvious, plot. Michael is commissioned by a human rights organization to go down to the Czech Republic and plead that the wall separating the Roma section in Masarak Street to be torn down. So he simply has to play the role of Ronald "Tear Down This Wall" Reagan, but the situation becomes volatile when a policeman is killed at the wall and authorities issued a twenty-four hour ultimatum for the murderer to surrender – or else the police and militia will clear all Gypsies from Masarak Street. Unfortunately, the plot was rather predictable and my suspicion was confirmed when Michael was told that the body of police lieutenant had been cremated.

Well, that's the end of The Iron Angel and Other Tales of the Gypsy Sleuth, which left me internally very divided. On the one hand, the collection contained two lovely gems and the quality of the remaining stories were consistent throughout. However, as you probably noticed, I was not exactly smitten by the series as a whole and had I read any of the stories beforehand, I probably would have opted for one of the short story collections about Nick Velvet, Jeffery Rand or Ben Snow.

So, yeah, sorry for this lukewarm, overlong and probably poorly written blog-post, but it was cranked out when I was running low on enthusiasm. I guess I'll pick one of those other collections, before too long, to make up for this one.