In the Grip of the Lobster (1965) by B.J. Kleymens

I closed my relatively recent review of Ton Vervoort's Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963) with a promise to smear out my future explorations of those obscure, untranslated and long out-of-print Dutch detective novels, but curiosity got the better of me – happily tumbling down another rabbit hole. So here we are again. You can blame it wholly on the ghosts of Vervoort and the Frederic Dannay of the Low Countries, Ab Visser. 

Back in March, I reviewed Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963), subtitled "het dood spoor van de tweeling" ("the twins' dead end"), which is the second title in the so-called "Zodiac Mysteries." An ambitious collaborative effort, under the editorship of Visser, who gathered a dozen writers each tasked with writing a detective or crime novel in which one of the twelve signs of the zodiac plays a central and perhaps even a decisive role. This idea had a ton of potential and could have been a notable contribution to the genre, but the project was abandoned after two years and eight novels. You can find a list of the eight published zodiac-themed mysteries in the review of Murder Among Astrologists.

I don't know why the series was abandoned, but it could not have been due to a lack of writers to pen the remaining four novels. While playing internet detective, I came across an archived article from 1964 mentioning the four unpublished contributors. So this opened the door to the elusive Phantom Library with potentially more items of "Lost Media" to add to its shelves.

I already knew Robert van Gulik was one of the four writers and that he "had already finished his story for the series," which was likely published in The Monkey and the Tiger (1965) as the Judge Dee novella "De nacht van de tijger" ("The Night of the Tiger," 1963) and can be read as a backdoor entry in the series – as Judge Dee was born in the year of the tiger in the Chinese zodiac. But what about the other three writers? Leo Derksen was a journalist and writer, but, to my knowledge, not with roots in the detective story. Dick A. van Ruler was the art editor of Utrechts Nieuwsblad and one-time TV presenter who has one detective novel to his credit, Moord op een negatief (Murder of a Negative, 1963), which is currently on the big pile. Jacques Presser was a historian and part-time mystery writer who penned four madcap detective novels between 1953 and 1965. Nothing else to link those three names or their work to that abandoned series beside that one article.

So this begs the question whether the series was, on paper, completed with article mentioned that all twelve writers wrote a novel around one of the astrological signs. What happened?

I suppose the publisher pulled the plug (disappointing sales figures?), but what happened to the unpublished manuscripts Derksen, Presser and Van Ruler contributed to the project? Are the manuscripts slowly crumbling to dust somewhere in a drawer or were they thrown away decades ago? Or did one or two follow the Van Gulik route? Derksen appears to have not written anything in our genre and Van Ruler's only novel was published around the time the series began, which probably got him the gig, but Presser's Moord in de Poort (Murder in the Poort, 1965) possibly could be a lost Zodiac mystery. The window of the time is very narrow, as 1965 was the year the series was canceled, but Murder in the Poort was Presser's last detective novel and the only one to be published by N.V. W. van Hoeve – which also published the Zodiac series. So tracking down a copy has been added to my priority wishlist and finding any trace of an astrological plot-thread should settle the matter.

But what has all of this to do with today's review? While exploring the rabbit warren of the Dutch detective story of the 1950s and '60s, I also stumbled across several contemporary reviews of the Zodiac series. One title, in particular, caught my attention.

B.J. Kleymens' In de greep van de Kreeft (In the Grip of the Lobster, 1965) was the seventh or eighth novel to appear in the Zodiac series, which received some surprising and suspicious praise from the normally hostile critics. Carl J. Bicker evoked the name of Raymond Chandler and pointed out that the detective-characters introduced in the story were unlikely to carry a whole series, but also noted it was a well put together deduction story. I knew the name of the reviewer sounded familiar and a quick search revealed Bicker was a pseudonym of the editor of the Zodiac series, Ab Visser! A second review was published under his own name. There were a few warning bells, but the premise sounded like something straight out of a Christopher Bush or Brian Flynn mystery. So I took a small gamble and tracked down a copy. But this presented me with another puzzle.

Who was J.B. Kleymens? This is a question with an easy and difficult answer. The easy answer is that it was the shared penname of J. Kleijn and B. Mensen, but the difficult part is answering who they were. A little detective work allowed me to identify the former as the journalist and writer, Jek Kleijn. Jek is an unusual name and his surname means small or short in Dutch, which makes his involvement evident as one of the two journalistic detective-characters is named Jek Groot – whose surname translates as big, tall or long. You can Anglicize those names as Jack Short and Jack Long. Unfortunately, I've been unable to pin down the identity of his co-author, because, without a first name, Mensen returns too many unrelated results. Not a bad piece of genre archaeology, if I say so myself.

Just one more thing before finally getting around to the review. In the Grip of the Lobster is listed in the review of Murder Among Astrologists as In the Grip of Cancer, which is a technically correct translation. But in Dutch, the name of the zodiac Cancer is Kreeft (Lobster) and thought In the Grip of Cancer sounded a little brutal for a well intended, but completely amateurish, detective story. Yeah... I'm afraid the review is going to be significantly shorter than the long, roundabout introduction. 

In the Grip of the Lobster takes place in the small, sleepy and entirely fictitious provincial town of Rooldrecht where normally very little or exciting happens. Least of all during the tri-weekly council meeting at town hall. Jan Frens and Jek Groot in the press box were secretly looking forward to a cold glass of beer in the favorite pub of the local journalists, which is when it happened. An elderly, venerable councilor, P.C. Hooftman, apparently decided to take a nap during the meeting. Very much to the annoyance of the mayor, but Hooftman is not sleeping. He's as dead as a door nail. The doctor determines he had a stroke, but then lightening strikes twice when, an hour later, the town hall messenger dies under similar circumstances and that same evening Frens witnesses a shady individual, face hidden under a big black umbrella, breaking into town hall – rifling through the documents of that day's meeting. So he follows the mysterious man with the black umbrella, but it's Frens who's caught red handed and eventually imprisoned, which places the two local journalists in direct opposition to the police. Frens and Groot are determined to get to the bottom of the business before the police.

What ensues is clumsy, amateurish dance around shady, small town politics with a development project, a dry-as-dust document that everyone wants to get their hands on and a black umbrella with an astrological sign stamped the handle. But nothing particular clever or good is done with any of the plot pieces.

There were one, or two, good ideas with a glimmer of potential. Such as the risky poisoning-trick, which is already unconvincing, but the way in which the poison was delivered could still have made for a good howdunit. But what did they do? They simply tell the reader how it was done without any real detective work. I also expected something clever from the journeying umbrella that was lost, found and lost again. The last time it got lost something suggested it could have been "Chesterton's umbrella," but that possibility would have only fitted an even more unimpressive solution. 

In Grip of the Lobster is written well enough, especially its opening and closing chapters, but, purely as a detective story, it's nothing more than a well intended, clumsily plotted and sparsely clued piece of amateur detective fiction. There were many tells in the story betraying its authors were either the most casual of mystery readers or complete outsiders, but appreciated the attempt to craft a genuine whodunit. So a textbook example of the chase being more fun than the capture.

The Crimes in Cabin B: Case Closed, vol. 78 by Gosho Aoyama

The 78th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally published as Detective Conan, which has the longest story since vol. 58 that was setup in the previous volume and covers seven chapters with the second, three-chapter story acting as its aftermath – while the last chapter sets the stage for the return of Kaitou KID. A return alluded to in the opening chapter as KID's long-time nemesis, Jirokichi Sebastian, announced he was planning to use the Mystery Train to exhibit "one of his rare gems." Somewhat of a baited trap, as usually, but more on that in a moment. 

The Bell Tree Express is the "Mystery Train," owned by the Sebastian Conglomerate, which hosts an annual murder mystery game with "no stops until the final destination." A "murderer" and "victim" are chosen at random from from among the guests with the other passengers playing detective and "try to solve the mystery before the train reaches the station."

Anita presented Conan with a Mystery Train Pass Ring in the previous volume to lay the groundwork for a truly special kind of detective story. A story that succeeded in being both a classically-plotted, baroque-style mystery with no less than two impossibilities and a character-driven thriller with a galore of recurring characters and some major plot developments.

Firstly, the murder mystery game begins early when Conan and the Junior Detective League receive a note telling them they've been selected as the detectives and to follow instructions, namely visiting "Cabin B of Carriage 7 in ten minutes," where they witness a shooting – turning the murder mystery into "a game of tag" with the fleeing assassin. But when they meet one of the conductors, he tells them the mystery game is scheduled to begin in about an hour. So they rush back to Cabin B, which is when they make a startling discovery. Carriage 7 has "disappeared from a moving train" along with the victim in Cabin B!

Conan only needs a handful of pages to solve the impossibility of the vanishing train carriage, but the reappearance of Cabin B presents him with another miraculous murder. This time, the victim is actually dead with a very real bullet in his head, but the cabin door was "chained shut" from the inside and the conductor in the corridor "didn't see anyone enter or leave the cabin." A seemingly impossible murder in Cabin B begs to be compared to John Dickson Carr, but the story is unmistakably a clever and warm tribute to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934). There are many nods and winks to the story and Aoyama very effectively recreated a well-known scene for his own ends. Most amusing of all is Richard Moore badly imitating Hercule Poirot throughout the story and he barely broke character.

However, the story is not merely a lighthearted sendup of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express as the plot is quit good. The locked room-trick is a clever combination of simple trickery and elaborate misdirection strengthened by some good clues like the defective light above one of the cabin doors.

So the puzzle-side of the story is absolutely solid and a first-class specimen of the railway mystery, but there's a darker, parallel story taking place in the background involving a ton of recurring characters and agents of the Black Organization.

Black Organization received intelligence Anita, or "Sherry," is traveling on the Bell Tree Express, "a steel cell on wheels," which means the hunt is on and they intend to "flush her out like a deer" – catching a bullet as she leaps out. The opening pages revealed "Bourbon" is tasked with hunting down and eliminating Anita, but his, or her, identity has never been revealed. And, as to be expected, more than one familiar face has boarded the train who can all be the mysterious Bourbon. What follows is dangerous and explosive battle-of-wits crossed with a game of hide-and-seek, while Conan is busy investigating the impossible murder in Cabin B. A very well-done and handled piece of storytelling that not only added an extra dimension to the regular murder investigation, but furthered the ongoing story-arc and revealed the identity of Bourbon. My sole complaint is the surprise cameo, which pretty much was put to use as a deus ex machina. They were so lucky [REDACTED] decided to put in an appearance.

The second story is a strange and mixed bag of tricks, but not for the reasons you might think, because it's mostly a pretty decent detective story. The problem is that the various components don't "gel" together all that well.

A story best described as the aftermath of the previous case and "the Mystery Train was such a disaster" that "the Sebastian family decided to make up for it" and invited Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan to their villa in Izu – apparently famous for its tennis court. When they arrive, they find a group of college tennis players who use the court to practice and one of them gives Conan a light concussion with a flying tennis racket ("mada mada dane"). Bourbon is also there under the identity he was introduced to the reader. Conan is the only one who knows it. This seriously hampers his investigation when he wakes up in his room with a body blocking the inside the door, which places him smack in the middle of another locked room murder.

I liked the premise of Conan waking up in a locked room with a murder victim and the solution to the locked room found a new and original way to use an age-old trick. Something that has often been used for a very different type of impossible crime, but the premise and locked room-trick should have been two separate stories. I think it's a waste to not have used the premise for a story in which Conan is the only suspect. You can even have a never-before encountered police inspector who learns Conan has been involved in a ton of murder cases and begins to suspect he's a homicidal child. I don't think it helped the murderer stood out like sore thumb or that the plot played second fiddle to Bourbon looking over Conan's shoulder.

The last chapter sets the stage for another Kaitou KID heist, which was alluded to in the opening chapter, but Jirokichi Sebastian had to move the exhibit in the wake of the Mystery Train disaster. But the challenge to the master thief stands. KID already promised to steal the Blushing Mermaid on the opening night of the exhibition. Something that's easier said than done, because the pendant with a red diamond is stuck to the back of a turtle, named Poseidon, who swims in a large, bulletproof aquarium surrounded by twenty guards – which is as good as burglarproof. KID lives up to his reputation and stages a grand magic trick that makes both the turtle and pendant vanish from the aquarium. And leaves behind a note saying "the shy mermaid has dissolved into foam in my hand." This story will continue in the next volume.

So, on a whole, a pretty strong and interesting volume, but with all of its strength and interest lying in the Mystery Train story. The second story was not bad, but uneven and can't judge the Kaitou KID story until I've read vol. 79. A volume containing another promising-sounding, half-a-dozen chapters spanning impossible crime story involving vampire lore. More than enough to look forward to!

A Talent for War (1989) by Jack McDevitt

Back in 2013, Ho-Ling Wong introduced the traditional mystery corner of the web to James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977), a science-fiction novel that's at its heart a detective story, but on a scale that's impossible to do in a conventional, earthbound mystery novel – landing a comfortable spot on the Japanese Tozai Mystery Best 100. Hogan's Inherit the Stars left behind a who's who of the classic and modern detective-and crime story. Even science-fiction author and part-time mystery novelist, John Sladek, had to eat dust with his almost universally beloved Invisible Green (1977) trailing far behind Hogan's hard science-fiction tale. Something smelled fishy! 

A closer inspection of Hogan's futuristic puzzle of 50.000-year-old human remains in a spacesuit discovered on the Moon proved to tick "about every single box that we want to see filled" with a "slow, devious, torturous and extremely clever unraveling of a complex puzzle." So we shamelessly appropriated Hogan's Inherit the Stars from the science-fiction genre.

Needless to say, I was not adverse to reading more of these archaeological space mysteries, but only found Ross Rocklynne's 1941 novella "Time Wants a Skeleton." A whowasdunin centering on an out-of-time human skeleton found inside cave on an ancient asteroid. But nothing more came to my attention until recently. 

Jack McDevitt is an American science-fiction author who specialized in archaeological and historical novels set in the far-flung future that often have a detective hook. McDevitt came to my attention as some of his work has been compared to Ellery Queen and probing a little deeper discovered that he credited G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown as hugely influential on shaping his Alex Benedict series. This comes with the caveat that McDevitt is not "an enthusiast about detective stories in general," but loves "the magic of Father Brown" that have more to do with "trying to figure out what on Earth happened" than simply whodunit and cites one of Chesterton's well-known locked room mysteries, "The Arrow of Heaven" – collected in The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926). So he belongs to the school of thought that believes the how of a crime is often more interesting than the who. A school that has Dorothy L. Sayers as its headmistress and John Rhode as its main lecturers.

So why not give McDevitt a shot and, if I like the series, boldly go where I've seldom gone before by dabbling in some chronological reading. 

A Talent for War (1989) is the first title starring Alex Benedict, an antique dealer, who lives and operates about 10.000 years into the future when "a thousand billion human beings" had settled "several hundred worlds" that formed a troubled Confederacy of planets. The story opens with the news that the flagship of the newest class of interstellars, Capella, had "slipped into oblivion" along with twenty-six hundred passengers and crew members, which failed to reenter linear space. Something that has happened before and none has ever reappeared. So everyone aboard is pretty much lost forever. And legally dead.

One of the passengers was Alex's uncle, Gabe Benedict, who left his estranged nephew his
entire estate and a historical puzzle dating back to "the last great heroic age" which has "provoked historical debate for two centuries." Two hundred years ago, an ever-expanding humanity came across an alien civilization, Ashiyyur, which resulted in an armed conflict between possibly the only technological cultures in the entire Milky Way. Christopher Sim was a history teacher from Dellaconda who became the leader of the Resistance and from the helm of his "immortal warship," the Corsarius, "spearheaded the allied band of sixty-odd frigates and destroyers holding off the massive fleets of the Ashiyyur," which eventually turned the tide as the other planets began to recognize the danger – driving the aliens back to their sullen worlds from which they came. But this victory came at a price. During his famous last stand, Sim was betrayed and abandoned by his crew with the name of navigator, Ludik Talino, becoming synonymous with cowardice. The names of the other deserters were lost to history and so is what exactly went down during that decisive and historically significant battle.

What did Gabe Benedict, an amateur archaeologist, knew that sent him tracking off into a region of space, known as the Veiled Lady, two centuries later? What is the connection with secretive journey of the CSS Tenandrome?

CSS Tenandrome is a big survey ship "involved in exploration of regions deep in the Veiled Lady," a thousand light years from Gabe's home planet, which returned under very mysterious and hushed circumstances. This churned the interstellar rumor mill. Officially, it was reported the ship's Armstrong units were damaged, but all kinds of rumors were flying around alleging it was either a plague ship or there was a time displacement that severely aged the crew members. There even rumors that the ship came across a new race of aliens or "an ancient fleet adrift," but "something among the encrusted ships" had "discouraged further examination" and returned home.

Alex has to take a deep drive into history to not only figure out what really happened two-hundred years ago, but what his uncle knew that could rewrite history. Admittedly, this makes for an engrossing, but slow-paced, read that takes some time to finish.

Alex has to gather and track down a ton of historical records, online and offline, war-time poetry, notebooks and watches simulated reenactments as well as visiting distant worlds, a historical society and even interviewing a representative of the Ashiyyur. But everything moves very slowly with only three points of action in the entire story. One very brief with the other two being saved for the end of the story.

So most of the story has either Alex sifting through information or talking with people, which is approach exceedingly rare in the detective genre and don't think it even has a name. I suppose you could call it a "research novel" with Katsuhiko Takahashi's Sharaku satsujin jiken (The Case of the Sharaku Murders, 1983) as the only example that comes to mind, but done on a much smaller scale than A Talent for War. The Case of the Sharaku Murders merely deals with an academic search for the true identity of a mysterious woodblock print artist who was briefly active during the late 1700s under a pseudonym. This makes the puzzle component of the plot is difficult to discuss, because it's as vast as our own star system. However, I was very impressed with the amount of world-building that was done. A massive, multi-worlds world that felt like it's actually populated with a human civilizations.

Over the years, I've read a tiny sampling of science-fiction mysteries and one thing always surprising me is that the earliest titles sketch a picture of the future in which culture and technology has stagnated or even regressed. Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet (1942) takes place on a drought-stricken Mars in the 30th century, but technology is clunky with references to only 19th and early 20th century literature and culture. David V. Reed's Murder in Space (1944) takes place in mining community around an asteroid belt, but courtroom photographers still use flashbulbs and John Russell Fearn's The Master Must Die (1953) has snail mail between Earth and Mars. One stamp is enough to cover the cost of sending a letter from Mars to Earth. What a difference half a century makes!

I'm not an expert, of course, but I thought technology was much more convincingly handled here with Alex's conversation with an A.I. version of his dead uncle being eerily predictive of the very recent developments with a controversial deepfake technology digitally resurrecting dead relatives or friends. I also appreciated that the Armstrong Drive was not used as a magic wand to simply transport between the stars, because there are some serious limitations as to its reach and maneuvering that required a ship "to materialize well outside star systems" – which "left the traveler with a long ride to his destination." A trip to Andromeda was still off the table. But what I really appreciated where the little historical and cultural touches in combination with current affairs playing out in the background giving you the idea all those worlds truly are swarming with humans.

Every chapter begins with an excerpt or quote from a fictitious piece of future literature, philosophy or commentary on the war and wished McDevitt had told more about the history and myths surrounding the various settled worlds.

Alex reminiscent about his own home world that "only an historian can tell you now who first set foot on Rimway," but "everybody on the planet knows who died in the attempt" and trying to find the wreckage of Jorge Shale and his crew was the first archaeological project of his life. But he never did. Alex also visited a settled water world, appropriately known as the Fishbowl, which shares its binary star system with a planet that was once the home of an intelligent species, Belarius. A now inhospitable place which houses fifty-thousand-year-old ruins that were "humanity's only evidence that anything else had ever gazed at the stars" before their running into the Ashiyyur. Belarius has been largely given up as it's "an incredibly savage place" crawling with "highly evolved predators" in its dense jungles. What a great backdrop that place would be for an archaeological, space age mystery novel. Something halfway between Agatha Christie and Predator!

But more important is that long-ago battle and the symbol Christopher Sim has become to the Confederacy, which is just as important two centuries later as there's a political crisis brewing in the background of interstellar proportions. Earth is holding "a referendum on the matter of secession" and there are constant clashes along the Perimeter with the Ashiyyur. So hostilities with the Ashiyyur might be "the cement that binds your Confederacy together" and "stem the political power of separatists." This makes finding answers to a 200-year-old mystery potentially dangerous and highly explosive.

McDevitt wrote an imaginative, richly detailed and engrossing story that constructed entire worlds with its own history around the central puzzle with the only drawbacks being the slow pacing and not having quite the detective pull of Hogan's Inherit the Stars. But you can probably put the latter down to having to setup an entire universe while exploring one of that interstellar civilization's many stories. So you can expect a review of his second novel in the not so distant future.

The Three Taps (1927) by Ronald A. Knox

I obliquely referred to Father Ronald A. Knox's "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) in my review of Ton Vervoort's Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963), which played with one of his commandments without breaking it and suddenly reminded that Knox represents a glaring blind spot in my Golden Age reading – like Josephine Bell, R.A.J. Walling and the Coles. So far my sole exposure to Knox's detective fiction has been his Chestertonian short story "Solved by Inspection" (The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, 1990), but somehow, his novel-length mysteries never left the big pile. Why not do a little penance by reading his first Miles Bredon mystery? 

You can definitely chalk Knox's The Three Taps (1927) up as another detective novel I should have gotten to a lot sooner, because it was a fine and immensely enjoyable detective yarn. A detective yarn that possibly had some influence on such lauded mystery writers like Anthony Berkeley, Leo Bruce, Christopher Bush and J.J. Connington. 

The Three Taps could just as easily have been titled The Three Detectives, The Three Suspects or The Three Possibilities. All of which would give the reader a better idea what kind of game Knox has in store. Well, perhaps not in 1927, but 21st century Golden Age mystery reader certainly would prick reading a title like The Three Detectives or The Three Possibilities.

Knox sets the tone, right off the bat, with a humorous introduction to Miles Bredon's employer, Indescribable Insurance Company, whose fabulous reputation promises that "every step you take on this side of the grave" can be ensured with "handsome terms as the step which takes you into the grave" – guaranteeing "the man who is insured with the Indescribable walks the world in armour of proof." Even in the case of practical difficulties, the Indescribable would "somehow contrive to frank your passage into the world beyond." So many humorous wags have been made at the company's expense alleging "a burglar can insure himself against a haul of sham jewels" or "a client who murmured 'Thank God!' as he fell down a liftshaft." The whole story sparkles with witty and satirical descriptions and dialogue like that.

Indescribable Insurance Company most popular product is the so-called Euthanasia policy, which is potentially disastrous to any scheming relatives weary of waiting for nature to take its course. 

A Euthanasia policy comes with very heavy premiums ("that goes without saying") and, if the policy holder dies before the age of sixty-five, a small fortune is paid to the heirs. But, if the policy holder outlives that crucial age, he becomes a pensioner of the company with every breath they take being money in their pockets. Their heirs assigns, normally looking forward to cash-in their inheritance, conspire to keep their "body and soul together with every known artifice of modern medicine." I wish this Euthanasia policy had become a shared-universe object turning up in the works of other British mystery writers. Such a waste it was used only here. Anyway...

Jephthah Mottram is a successful and wealthy businessman from Pullford, a large Midland town, who, two weeks before sixty-fourth birthday, was told by a Harley Street specialist he's suffering from a malignant disease – giving him no more than two years with increasing pain. Mottram needs ready money to pay doctor's bills, treatment and foreign travel, but all his wealth is tied up and money is pretty tight. So he went to the Indescribable to try to negate on his Euthanasia policy with a business-like offer. Indescribable pays back half the premiums from the time the policy started and, if he dies before his sixty-fifth birthday, pay no insurance. And, if he lives, no annuity. Naturally, they refuse to cancel the original contract, but it would not be long until they have send out their in-house detective to investigate their clients untimely passing.

Indescribable retained its own private detective, Miles Bredon, who's introduced "a big, good-humoured, slightly lethargic creature still in the early thirties" whose excellent mind is "the victim of hobbies which perpetually diverted his attention." There were, however, two events, or interventions, that stirred his mind in the right direction. One is that his brilliant wartime record as an intelligence officer allowed him to accept the position as an insurance investigator on his own terms. Namely that he didn't have to sit in an office all day and play around at home until he was needed. Secondly was his marriage to Angela who had no illusions other than spending her life with "a large, untidy, absent-minded man who would frequently forget that she was in the room." A man who needed a nurse and chauffeur as much as a wife, but I don't think there was a better and funnier husband-and-wife detective until Kelley Roos' Jeff and Haila Troy arrived on the scene in the 1940s.

So, one day, Miles Bredon is asked to go with Angela to Chilthorpe, a small town, where Mottram always spends his annual, two-week fishing holiday and always stays at the same inn, the Load of Mischief. Mottram appears to have met with an unfortunate accident with the gas, but some of the silent witnesses suggest it could have also been suicide or murder.

Mottram went to bed the previous night, took his sleeping-draught and either turned on the gas-tap or forgot to turn it off, but, when the door was broken down, they discovered that the windows were wide open and held by its clasp – which means "there could have been no death." So that means a person or persons unknown interfered with the scene, but there are "iron bars on the inside to protect it from unauthorized approach" and the door was locked with the key on the inside. This adds another impossibility to the problem whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. When the body was discovered, the main gas-tap was turned off, but there were "no marks of fingers turning it off." A fact that in case of suicide is utterly impossible and in case of murder needlessly stupid and inexplicable.

So there you have thoroughly puzzling and inexplicable death buzzing with contradictory facts and evidence with the main question being whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. This approach strongly reminded me of Connington's The Case with Nine Solutions (1928) and Bush's The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938), which center on finding the right combination of accident, suicide or murder to explain double deaths. John Rhode turned this combination-lock style of plotting on its head in Death in Harley Street (1946) with a fatal poisoning that neither have been an accident, suicide or murder. You can see how Knox may have influenced Connington's 1928 novel which, in turn, provided a model for Bush's The Case of the Tudor Queen and Rhode added a twist to it. However, you can't really compare Knox or The Three Taps to any of those big bugs and giants of the so-called humdrum detective story.

There's a technical aspect to the plot typically associated with Crofts and Rhode, but The Three Taps stands much closer, in spirit, to Berkeley's The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936). A third detective enters the story when Bredon discovers that the investigating policeman is an old army friend, Inspector Leyland of Scotland Yard, who take opposite views of the case. Bredon naturally prefers "suicide masquerading as accident" while Leyland favors "murder masquerading as suicide," but there's a litany of clues and red herrings that keep messing with their pet theories. Most importantly, the gas-tap, the locked door and open windows, but there's also an half-finished document, a guestbook signed on arrival, a letter to a local rag attacking Mottram and a wound-up, eight-day watch – coming on top of shocking lack of motives or opportunity. Leyland and the Bredons have only three potential suspects to work with.

Firstly, there's the victim's anti-clerical, diminutive secretary, Brinkman, who may have been in the best position to have done some tampering, but lacked a motive. Simmonds is Mottram's disinherited nephew who disliked his uncle very much and possible had a foot inside the door of the inn, but would not have gotten a dime out of his uncle's death. Mr. Pulteney is a schoolmaster on holiday with no apparent link to the victim, except staying at the same inn, but "shows rather too much curiosity" as he acts almost like a fourth detective. Pulteney even draws an interesting comparison between schoolmasters and detectives as part of his function is having to figure out "who threw the butter at the ceiling, which boy cribbed from which, where the missing postage-stamp has got to." This was echoed more than a decade later by Dr. Gideon Fell in John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939).

There's an element to the story, a core component of the puzzle plot, clearly betraying the influence G.K. Chesterton had on Knox. Mottram had been pestering the local bishop whether it's "lawful to do evil in order that good might come." I don't think he handled this good-evil paradox as good as Chesterton would have done, but it was put to good use as an important puzzle-piece.

Miles, Angela and Leyland throw themselves at these contradictory problems with all the zest and zeal of spirited amateur detectives instead of salaried employers. A discussion of detective stories is used to check which brand of cigarettes everyone is smoking and a fake conversation is staged for the benefit of an eavesdropper, but some of their questions prove to have unexpected answers and even the best laid plans can backfire. Slowly, but surely, they work towards a solution. Well, there actually are three solutions with two of them being false-solutions in the tradition of Berkeley. However, the three solutions is also where the only flaw of the story is revealed. 

The Three Taps is one of those detective novels in which one of the false-solutions is better and more inspired than the correct solution. Not that the correct solution is bad, or unsatisfying, but not as clever or inspired as the first false-solution. What the solution lacked in brains was made up with guts, because it was very gutsy to use it as an explanation. And it worked!

So, all things considered, The Three Taps is a cut above the average, 1920s detective novel and portent of things to come with its sparkling dialogue, rich storytelling and a complicated, puzzle-driven plot – crammed with clues, detectives and false-solutions. And perhaps had a bigger hand in shaping the British detective story of the 1930s that it has gotten credit for. So, in short, a mystery reader's detective novel! 

A note for the curious: Robert Knox's older sister, Winifred Peck, wrote two detective novels herself, The Warrielaw Jewel (1933) and Arrest the Bishop? (1949), which were reissued in 2016 by Dean Street Press. She well worth a read to everyone who has a taste for those alternative Crime Queens who have been unearthed over the past few years. Another thing... did you know Knox may have influenced Orson Welles' 1938 radio-hoax with his January, 1926, broadcast of "a simulated live report of revolution sweeping across London." Knox was somewhat of an originalist, wasn't he?

Murder Among Actors (1963) by Ton Vervoort

This year, I began exploring the work of an unjustly forgotten, long out-of-print Dutch mystery writer, Peter Verstegen, who wrote a handful of lightly written, but smartly plotted, detective novels during the early and mid-1960s – published as by "Ton Vervoort." Just two of his detective novels were reissued, in 1974, as part of Bruna's Zwarte Beertjes pocket series. So none of his detective novels has been in print for half a century and have since disappeared from the public's memory. And the pool of secondhand copies is beginning to dry up. 

Fortunately, the copies that still float around don't cost an arm and a leg or a spare kidney, which made it both urgent and easy to begin collecting them now. Who knows how rare and difficult to obtain some of these titles will become ten years down the road. Not much gets reprinted in my country unless its fashionable or really, really profitable. That hasn't done the Dutch detective genre any favors.

So it was a pleasure to come across Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963), which seemed like an interesting book to contrast with W.H. van Eemlandt's astronomical-themed detective novel Dood in schemer (Death in Half-Light, 1954). 

Amazingly, the detective story centering on the pseudoscience of astrology turned out to be so much better than the whodunit staged during a minutely-timed, scientific observation of a solar eclipse. Murder Among Astrologists under promised and over delivered that came with one of those rare, Dutch-language takes on the Ellery Queen-style dying message, which I read as an open invitation to come back for seconds, thirds and fourths – revealing a top-tier, second-string mystery novelist. Having read three of them over the past few months, I've noticed Vervoort's detective series can be summed up as a bicycle tour through the genre and the Netherlands. 

Murder Among Astrologists is set in the millionaire's enclave of Bloemendaal with a plot that pays homage to the zany, Ellery-in-Wonderland mysteries complete with strange architecture and a dying message. Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964) started out as a closed-circle of suspects situation in a 17th century canal house until a serial killer cut loose and goes ham on the invalids of Amsterdam. Striking everywhere from the Rijksmuseum to the rowdy Zeedijk. Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) combines a convent school setting with the festive, seasonal holiday mystery beginning with the strange death of a student playing Saint Nicholas and moved from Amsterdam to Maastricht where the story concludes during the annual, three-day carnival celebrations. Vervoort even threw in a (minor) locked room problem that doubled as a (late) clue.

So he took a different approach in plotting and storytelling in each novel that regularly
ventured outside of the Amsterdam canal belt. This certainly is true for the subject of today's review. 

Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Actors, 1963) is the second novel in the lamentably short Inspector Floris Jansen series and, as the title suggests, takes place among the members of a traveling theatrical company with a big role for his friend and narrating chronicler, Ton Vervoort – who gets to shine as a detective rather than as a Dr. Watson. Vervoort also falls in love here with one of the actresses, Sannah Wigman, whom he married in Murder Among Virgins. This time, it's Jansen who comes to Vervoort to ask him to go undercover as an extra in Erik Le Roy's theatrical company in a quasi-official investigation.

Until two years ago, Erik Le Roy was "one of the top actors who played the municipal theaters," but got too few starring roles to his liking and decided to start freelancing. A disastrous decision that reduced him to doing television bits and only turned his situation around when he began a theatrical company, which traveled "the provinces to bring art to the countryside" and claimed "principled motives" to turn down state subsidies. Although the truth is that the company doesn't qualify for state subsidies. But by doing production in-house, everything from translating and directing to lighting playing dual roles, they managed to turn a profit. Le Roy's financial success and his stance against drama schools acting as gatekeepers to the stage-lights made him popular with both actors and the always hopeful extras.

So who could possibly have a reason to send Le Roy threatening letters saying "you will die soon," "you will be dead very soon" and "it won't be long now." Jansen hopes it's a practical joke, but fears it could be a war of nerves to mentally whittle down the actor or even a murderer-to-be with plans to remove him in a more permanent fashion. Vervoort goes from Watson to independent detective ("quite a promotion") and travels with the company to Winschoten, Groningen, as an extra. But as the opening line of the story betrayed, Vervoort didn't succeed in stopping the anonymous letter writer from becoming a killer.

Someone fired two shots at Le Roy while he was driving and his car ended up in a canal, but only his passenger resurfaced and news of the incident resulted in an attempted suicide and a second murder. This is the point where the story becomes difficult and tricky to discuss.

We all dislike it when an author, or detective, plays his cards too close to his chest, but not Vervoort (the author), who boldly plunked down his cards that suggested a solution that was hard to accept – a solution that thumbed its nose at Father Knox without committing a cardinal sin. But it was so on the nose, I refused to believe it and subsequent information seemed to agree with my skepticism. Or did it? What can be said about the plot is that Vervoort performed a juggling act with multiple alibis, identities and motives to create a detective story that's halfway between an inverted mystery and a whodunit. Or did he? I can't say much more about the plot except Vervoort performed a juggling act with alibis, identities and motives to keep the reader guessing whether they're reading an inverted howdunit or a genuine whodunit. I think fans of Brian Flynn would love this mystery.

Vervoort playing bluff poker with the genre-savvy mystery reader, while playing a more than fair hand, earned Murder Among Actors a place next to Murder Among Astrologists as the strongest entries in this short-lived series. Even if the eventual explanation doesn't exactly leave the reader slack-jawed, Murder Among Actors stands as a good, old-fashioned and technically sound piece of detective fiction that makes it all the more regrettably Vervoort bowed out of the genre so quickly. My country needed a mystery writer like him!

Luckily, I still have Vervoort's Moord op toernee (Murder on Tour, 1965) to look forward to and discovered it's not a standalone novel, but part of the Floris Jansen series without Ton Vervoort as the narrator. I've also tracked down one of his short stories and want to reread Moord onder studenten (Murder Among Students, 1962), which I read and reviewed (poorly) some years ago. And have been looking into a few other, long-forgotten Dutch mystery writers. Don't worry. I'll try to smear them out as far apart as possible.

The Case of the Climbing Rat (1940) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Climbing Rat (1940) is the 22nd novel in the Ludovic Travers series, written and published 1926 and 1968, which formed with The Case of the Flying Donkey (1939) a two-book arc and "a heartfelt tribute" to the French nation – a nation that would soon be invaded and occupied. Curt Evans noted in his introduction that the "glimpses of a peacetime world" in these Tour de Frances of Bush brought back "better and far less jaded days" when "death could still be treated as a game." This is true enough in spirit. But they also standout as unconventional in plotting and storytelling that makes them hard to recommend to anyone who isn't already a fan of the series. Something that's even more true of The Case of the Climbing Rat than The Case of the Flying Donkey. 

The Case of the Climbing Rat begins interesting with two, apparently unrelated, problems with one of them sending Ludovic Travers to France to confront the black sheep of the family.

Gustave Rionne is a disgraced Harley Street surgeon and the uncle of his wife, Bernice, who once made a name as "the very first plastic surgeons who really did anything worth while," but an abortion and a botched skin-grafting operation got him stricken off the list. Some of these were done while practicing under a false name, which lead to his expulsion from Luxembourg and Switzerland. Rionne went, "or escaped," to France where lived on a small pension bequeathed by Bernice's late Aunt Emily, but she warned Bernice that Rionne might begin pestering her for money, which is exactly what has happened and the second letter was horrible – raking up things and "hinting at making trouble." Travers is travels to Hótel de Sud, Carliens, to have a word or two with Uncle Gustave.

The second problem is of an entirely different magnitude: Inspector Laurin Gallois, of the Sûreté, receives an anonymous phone call telling him that the reports Armand Bariche's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Armand Bariche was, or is, a notorious slippery serial killer and not even the grisly career of Henri Landru was as "horrifying than that of Bariche." A serial killer who, unlike Landru, picked his victims from "a superior class" whose scandal-shy relatives would do everything to avoid publicity, which is why the police believe most of his victims were still unknown. Gallois believes there are likely many people "who guessed that some daughter or female relative had been a Bariche victim," but would never dare risk "scandal in their own localities." Everything the police knew about Bariche came out when he supposedly died in a fire together with his last victim. So all Galois knew about the serial killer came from words on paper and secondhand impressions, but he always believed he was still alive. And here he finally had a potential lead.

So two very different, unconnected problem concerning a pesky relative who spends too much money and the potential presence of an active serial killer in the South of France, but Gallois and Travers cross paths when Rionne is stabbed to death in a public lavatory. You can see the hardboiled influence creeping into Bush's writing with this murder, because I don't remember another detective novel from this period in which someone was murdered in a public lavatory while in "the act of urinating." Not exactly the libraries or private studies commonly associated with the classic detective story.

Anyway, there's a second murder of a Swiss national, Georges Letoque, who was shot and killed at the villa he rented in the Rue des Pins, which was preceded by a suspicious-looking car accident involving Gallois' secretary and right-hand man, Charles Rabaud – who was on his way to meet the anonymous informant. But the story becomes a little muddled and slower once everything has been setup. Only to become remarkably clearer in the final chapter. 

The Case of the Climbing Rat is more of a rambling shaggy dog story than a normal, conventionally structured detective story with clues and suspects to examine. It more about who's exactly who or what their part in the story really is with the only constant being the possible presence of Bariche and three masked trapeze artists rumored to be either German anti-Nazis or relatives of the late Tsar. What's exactly the role of their little small white rat who, "brave as a lion," climbed the rope to the top of the tent to fly through the air with trapeze artist? Why did it refuse to climb the rope one night and died shortly after? Regrettably, The Case of the Climbing Rat is one of those novels where having France as a setting is an excuse to slacken the pace and loosen the plotting (e.g. E.R. Punshon's Murder Abroad, 1939). It's not until the last chapter that most of the loose, fuzzy plot-threads are pulled tight to reveal that there was something good and clever hidden underneath it all. Such as one of Bush's patent alibi-tricks, but some structure and substance to the middle portion would have been bigger benefit to the overall plot than a surprisingly clear and stronger ending closing an otherwise pretty muddled detective yarn.

So, yeah, The Case of the Climbing Rat is, plot-wise, not a highlight of the series and can only be recommended to readers who are already fans of Bush and Travers, but they'll be able to appreciate the dynamic between Travers and Gallois – who's a very different kind of foil than Superintendent Wharton. While they have mutual admiration and respect, there's a hint of rival-detectives between them. A plot-device not always appreciated by Western mystery writers, but Bush excellently made us of it here to give the story a good and solid ending.

If you're new to Bush and not prejudiced against cherry picking, I recommend you begin with The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) or his home front trilogy, The Case of the Murdered Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942). You can also go for some old-fashioned, Golden Age baroque with Dead Man Twice (1930) and Dancing Death (1931) or his John Dickson Carr-style impossible crime novel, The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935). I also liked Cut Throat (1932), but practically everyone disagrees with me on that one.

Golden Rain (1980) by Douglas Clark

In my previous two blog-posts, I reviewed Douglas Clark's The Libertines (1978) and Roger Ormerod's An Alibi Too Soon (1987), two British genre conservationists, who attempted to modernize the great detective stories of yore during the post-WWII decades and why I grouped them together as modern, neo-traditionalists – which may need a small correction or footnote. Having read two of their novels back-to-back, I noticed a subtle difference in the way they tried to mix the traditional with the modern. 

Ormerod evidently was closer aligned to the modern, psychological and character-driven crime novels (e.g. The Key to the Case, 1992) than Clark, but with unmistakably traditionalists bend. And reveled in the use of double-edged clues, red herrings, twisted alibis and locked room mysteries (e.g. A Shot at Nothing, 1993). Clark was much more covert in his approach and his novels not only masquerade as modern police procedurals, but apparently tend to underplay the traditional elements of the plot a little. Or, to be more accurately, disguising his plots as pharmaceutical mysteries and poison-puzzles. You can do and get away with a lot of trickery that involves poisons, medicine or the victim's medical condition. An approach that allowed so much room that Clark was even able to wrote something as incomparable as The Longest Pleasure (1981).

However, I've only read a handful of Clark's novels and my observation could be completely wrong. So why not read another one to see if the pattern repeats and what better to use than one of his reputed, uncatalogued locked room mystery novels? 

Golden Rain (1980) is the thirteenth title in Clark's Master and Green series and takes place at Bramthorpe College for Girls, "always referred to simply as Bramthorpe," where Miss Mabel Holland reigns in her double role as beloved headmistress and benevolent dictator – as "discipline was strict and punishments were few." She reformed the school most diplomatically, economized without austerity and was very cross when learning one house had saved money on catering one term. Because "the school was not in business to make a profit out of the girls' food fees." Everything was done under her watch to ensure the girls could realize their full potential that, in turn, raised the academic standard of the school. So nobody could have possibly have had a reason to kill her, but Miss Holland becomes the subject of a precarious murder inquiry. An inquiry in which even Scotland Yard has to tread carefully.

Miss Holland lives in the School House and shares the place with a housekeeper, Mrs. Gibson, who has Tuesday as her day off, but, upon her return, she smelled vomit. A trail lead to the bedroom where she discovered the body of Miss Holland. An autopsy revealed she had been poisoned with laburnum seeds, which grow from a poisonous plant with pea-like, yellow flowers commonly called Golden Rain. Miss Holland was "chock full of the seeds," but the local police is more than willing to settle on an accidental poisoning or suicide. She was alone the house, locked up tight, with "no signs of forcible entry," but some people close to her have good reasons to believe she neither committed suicide or accidentally poisoned herself.

Miss Holland was a level-headed, cheerful and happy woman who looked forward to her holiday in Malta and had written her mother to tell she had "a lovely surprise" that would overjoy her, which hardly suggests a suicidal frame of mind. Secondly, Miss Holland was a biologist and botanist who would be able to identify laburnum seeds and know of their toxic qualities. But how do you force a spoonful of crushed laburnum down someone's throat in a locked house without a struggle or a trace of poison anywhere? So what they needed was a big bug from Scotland Yard to clear up this messy case.

Funnily enough, I've read some recent reviews criticizing Clark's overstaffed cast of police characters as a massive waste of resources and manpower, which made me wonder if he faced similar criticism during his lifetime – because it becomes kind of plot-thread in the first-half of the story. The local police is divided with Detective Inspector Lovegrove intending to squash the case at the inquest to get a verdict of suicide or accidental death. Detective Superintendent George Masters and Detective Chief Inspector Green with Detective Sergeants Reed and Berger arrived less than a day before the inquest, which gives them precious little time to come up with evidence to the contrary. And the prickly, autocratic coroner wants plain facts to bring in any other verdict. The presence of a specialized Scotland Yard team "cost money and time," which makes an exhaustive investigation hard to justify without a shred of evidence in "the face of a coroner's unfavourable verdict."

Unfortunately, this angle is only used to pad out the first-half with Clark holding back all the good and clever bits for the second-half.

First of all, the locked room situation is, as expected, completely underplayed and barely acknowledged, but the locked doors and windows were, sort of, incidental. Some of you likely would not even label it as a locked room mystery or impossible crime. Miss Holland was poisoned in a locked house, but the deviously clever piece of plotting is in the poisoning-trick that's almost as good as the one from Detective Conan's "The Loan Shark Murder Case." But it's not merely a trick. Clark skillfully dovetailed the poisoning-trick with all the other facets of the story and employed something common in schools as an original piece of camouflage. Something that threw me off the scent and was initially a little disappointed as it introduced an until then unknown character into the solution. There was no reason to be disappointed. Clark used it to give the murder something "strange for a major crime" like murder, which revealed the camouflage the murderer draped across the poisoning-trick.

I was equally impressed with the late problem of three sets of fingerprints discovered at School House and particular the third set poses a tricky problem, but the explanation either makes you want to slap Clark's shoulder like a good sport or strangle him with his own necktie – nicely fitted the setting and period. Only problem is that it didn't give enough room to be used to its full potential and give the solution more of a punch. But, other than that, the ending and solution placed Clark back on the same footing with Ormerod as a top-tier, neo-traditionalist mystery writer.

Where they differ is Clark's clandestine alliance to the classics as he tries to sneak all the good stuff pass the reader (or critics?) without trying to draw attention to them like a closeted alcoholic lacing his coffee with booze. Almost like he felt it was necessary to lure the reader in with the premise of a contemporary police procedural before hitting them with the more traditional stuff disguised, or presented, as a pharmaceutical or poisoning mystery. Death After Evensong (1969) appears to be an exception to the rule, but than again, there's nothing subtle about shooting someone point blank with a magic-bullet. However, it showed that his work could have been even better had he continued to embrace and indulge in the traditional, plot-driven side of his detective novels.

So, all things considered, Golden Rain begins slowly and delays the most important plot developments and clues until the second-half, but the end result is an excellent, first-class take on the classic, college-set mystery novel and an admirable dovetailing act. Recommended to everyone who appreciate a good, old-fashioned puzzle plot or detective stories that take place in the world of academia.

Just a heads up, I might bookend these two Douglas Clark posts with reviews of Ormerod. So the next one might be one of Ormerod's 1990s mysteries, but haven't made up my mind yet. However, I'll will return to the Golden Age in one of the next two posts. So don't touch that dial!

The Libertines (1978) by Douglas Clark

In my previous review, I mentioned several modern classicists like the pharmacist of crime, Douglas Clark, who specialized in medical mysteries and ingenious, sometimes impossible poisonings that were quite popular in the 1970s and '80s – only to disappear into obscurity upon his death in 1993. Strangely enough, these retro mystery writers tended to vanished quicker and more thoroughly from popular culture than their Golden Age counterparts. But they, too, are being rediscovered today. 

Douglas Clark has been fortunately enough to have all twenty-six of his Detective Superintendent George Masters and Detective Chief Inspector Bill Green reprinted over the past five years by Lume Books (formerly Endeavour Media).

So, technically, the series is available again to the public, but they're very much hidden in plain sight. Lume Books is a small indie publisher that pumps out novels ("...over 3000 books written by 800 authors"), but settled on a bleak, unimaginative style of generic and uniform cover-art that gives the impression Clark wrote dark, psychological crime thrillers – which couldn't be further from the truth. Clark wrote traditional, fairly clued detective novels posing as a police procedurals with a pharmaceutical gimmick. And eschewed cheap thrills or plunging the murky depths of the human psyche. For example, the most rounded and fleshed out character in The Longest Pleasure (1981) is the botulism bacteria. Clark simply wrote pure, Golden Age-style detectives and howdunits.

The Libertines (1978) is the tenth title in the series and takes place on Samuel Verity's Ravendale Farm, situated in Ravendale Bridge, Yorkshire, which hosts a yearly cricket fortnight during high summer. Versity is one of the founding members of a cricket club, the Libertines, when none of the members had much money. So they were determined that it should not become a rich man's club, but "a cricket club anybody could afford to join" with everyone contributing something to hold the Libertines' fortnight. A tradition that began right after the war ended.

Three decades later, there are only three original members left. Samuel Verity and his long-time friend and London solicitor, William Dunstable, whose family will become intertwined as his son, Stephen, is dating Sarah – who's the daughter of Samuel and Sally Verity. But not everything is roses and sunshine. Old Tom Middleton, "an irascible old devil," is the third surviving member whose behavior is tolerated because he's a wine-shipper and furnishes the bar for the fortnight at wholesale rates. But he has become worse as his health declined. And very venomous.

Last year, Tom advised Sally Verity to keep "a motherly eye" on her daughter, because he had witnessed Sarah and Stephen "misbehaving at nights in the copse" when he was out on a light night walks. She called him "a dirty old peeping-tom" and Sarah not only denied it, but she was "quite willing to have old Dr Michaelson examine her to prove she was still intact." Stephen is less than pleased when he learns of this a year later and her brother, Teddy, also gets the Middleton treatment. Soon the younger members of the team are talking among themselves about "breaking the old bastard's neck" and that "the best place to dispose of the body would be the dung tank," which sets the stages for murder. Tom is not the first to bow out of the story with his nose in the air.

Nick Larter is an elderly, ailing and retired window cleaner who's not a Libertine, but he's been barman for the fortnight ever since it began. A fun, exciting summertime job that earned him a few extra pounds, but his health has been deteriorating rapidly and, while shaking Middleton's customary three drops of bitters in a gin glass, he collapses behind the bar – dying a few minutes later. A death that hardly surprises his doctor and unhesitatingly signed the certificate, but, three days later, Middleton dies in the wake of the first cricket game. So the local authorities order post mortems on both bodies, which revealed the presence of the quick-acting poison nicotine.

Superintendent George Masters and Detective Chief Inspector Bill Green are dispatched to Ravendale Bridge to untangle this poisonous puzzle.

A double poisoning Green described as "one by a chance which is mathematically impossible" and "the other by a means which is physically impossible," but whether or not they count as impossible crimes depends on your generosity. I don't think Middleton's death has any claim to it, but Larter's poisoning is a different story. While serving behind the bar, Larter slipped with the bottle-opener and snagged his right forefinger on the serrated edge of the crown top, "a trifling cut," but he died minutes later with "a qualified doctor and a score of others as witnesses." But nobody could daub nicotine on a crown top expecting the victim would touch it, "let alone scratch his finger on it." However, the trick here is figuring out how the two poisonings can be linked together. Don't read it solely for the impossible crime element.

Clark excellently contrasted the death of the "poor old retired window cleaner" with the murder of the "well-heeled wine importer who lived hundred of miles apart" and "the only possible link between those two was this annual cricket lark." This makes it a double murder that could have only taken place at Ravendale Farm during those two weeks of summer. A very well done and convincing closed-circle of suspects situation.

You can say contrast is the overarching theme of the story with the older characters struggling to keep up with a changing world and social mores, while the younger generation try to live up to the standards of the old-world while trying to find their own way and voice. Good examples of this are the conversation between Sally and Sarah concerning Middleton's accusation and Sam and Teddy trying to balance traditional and modern methods to run the family farm. I thought that made for a more interesting backdrop than the cricket scenes, which I don't understand and everything related to it completely went over my head, but I know it's supposed to be a boring, excruciating slow-paced game with older players taking naps – which doesn't seem like a sport that can be played with "a savage intensity." Playing cricket savagely sounds like a brutal game of curling or a grueling round of golf. Anyway...

So the characters, setting and setup are good and sound, but what about the plot, you ask? Not too bad. Admittedly, the clueing is a little sparse, but Clark's approach here wasn't without interest. Masters and Green begin to hunt for "anomalies in the conversations" conducted with the club members in lieu of physical clues to see if they can "explain away that which is odd or out of character." When they've sniffed out such anomalies, they "look very closely at those involved." Not wholly unlike Agatha Christie with one remark unmistakably echoing one of her 1940s mysteries ("Guvf qevax vf svygul"), but Masters and Green also have to search for a piece of physical evidence hidden somewhere on the farm. Where this piece of evidence was hidden points straight to the murderer, because only the murderer could have hidden it there. You can figure out where it's hidden and, in combination with the anomalies, identity the murderer with only the motive requiring a bit of educated guesswork. The whole puzzle is pretty solvable without being too obvious from the beginning. If you pay attention to what's being said and done, you can see where and how all the puzzle pieces fit.

There are, however, two (minor) drawbacks. The ending felt a little flat with Masters cutting a deal with the nonthreatening and even sympathetic murderer, but rather liked the final lines of the story. I already said Clark created a murder mystery that could only have taken place at Ravendale Farm during those summer weeks, which turns out to have been 100% preventable. Secondly, I don't think The Libertines is a good title for this kind of detective story. I don't think it really fitted the story. The Libertines' Fortnight or the more genre-driven Sudden Death would have been better titles. Looking at a glossary of cricket terms, Contrived Circumstances or Farm the Strike would have been even better titles for this cricket-themed detective novel.

But all things considered, The Libertines stands as a good, rock-solid and competently plotted continuation of the British Golden Age detective story with a poisoning-trick that would have received the nodding approval of the Queen of Crime herself. However, if you're new to the series, I still recommend you begin with the excellent Death After Evensong (1969).