Their Last Bow

"A theater can be a dangerous place, like all places where crowds of people gather."

 - Karen Gregg (The Gold Gamble, 1989)

The plot of The Gold Gamble (1989), contrived by that architect of crime, Herbert Resnicow, has a poetic structure – since it's the farewell performance of his golden pair, Alexander and Norma Gold. It's hard to gauge, though, if these final acts were penned with their retirement in mind or whether his commitment to other projects prevented him from returning to them, before his death in 1997, which is not an unlikely scenario, as the 1990s saw him outsourcing his talents to abet the likes of Pelé and Edward I. Koch with their literary aspirations, but on the other hand, the story does read like a best-off compilation of their previous investigations – and they seem to have full-filled nearly everything they set out to do in their first outing.

As I said before, The Gold Gamble bears all the familiar hallmarks of their antecedents with the New York Police Department and the criminal elements that patronized the museums and theatres of Manhattan, from a theatrical backdrop to a locked room conundrum with a solution that relays on the architectural features of the building, but there were also one or two notable changes in the personal situation of the lead roles.

Alexander and Norma amassed considerable wealth as consulting detectives, which is easy enough to do when your primary costumer base consists entirely of billionaires, setting them up for life – but continue to work to keep Alexander's brain cells from accumulating rust. It's, therefore, fitting that their final clients are, more or less, themselves when a murder threatens their $2.5 million investment in a Broadway musical.

Guys and Dolls was a critically acclaimed musical, based on a number of short stories that were penned by Damon Runyon, that premiered on Broadway during the early 1950s and Maxwell Sapphire, a washed up, but not untalented, producer wants to revive the play. It's the last opportunity he has at reestablishing himself as a theatrical producer, but the lack of financial funds keeps Sapphire from brightening his dimming star and ends up knocking on the Gold's door with his hat as a begging bowl in his hands. Well, at first he tries to keep up a front, but this, of course, evolves in a mental sparring match between him and Alexander – in which the intellectual heavyweight knocks him down a peck or two.

I really take delight in these customary, cerebral fencing matches between Alexander and his prospective clients, even though the roles were reversed here, but there was a tell-tale clue stuck between the pages that strongly hinted that you have to be a fan, like me, to appreciate these segments. Whoever owned the copy, I just read, before me left a one-line note that stated, "not bad but hard to get into." Well, I guess I sort of see this persons point, since these conversations do tend to drag on a bit, but I also love how unapologetically these books are in their lighthearted intellectualism and love for the arts. It's as if Resnicow bluntly says: this is a fun, but clever, detective story and you can take it or leave it! Needless to say, I took it!

But back to the story at hand: a financial agreement is reached between them and Sapphire, who, for some reason or other, I envisioned as Vincent Price, pockets the checks needed to set everything in motion, but there's a snag that could bring down the curtain on the show before it even opened – Sapphire's late night snack, Lisa Terrane!

Lisa Terrane is an inexperienced, untalented and spiteful chorine who got herself a small part in the show and is an understudy for the lead role of Adelaide, played by Carol Sands, but that's hardly enough to satisfy that enormous ego or quell her delusions of grandeur! So you would expect that Carol Sands has to be on her toes for dropping chandeliers or poisoned bottles of champagne, but it's her unimportant, easily replaceable understudy who is brutally murdered in her dressing room – killed with a clot of cold cream and a towel (read the book for details). Exeunt Lisa Terrane.

This unexpected exit of Lisa Terrane, should, in theory, have made everything run a lot smoother, but Carol Sands was the only other person on the floor when her understudy was being smothered and this lands her another leading role as the prime suspect in a murder enquiry – and with only three days before the critics' preview everything seems to be crashing down around them.

Alexander and Norma not only have to exonerate their leading star, but also cast someone else in the role of the murderer and figure out how this person was able to sneak pass the doorman, a guy named Pops, without being seen – which is a lot harder than you'd think. As a doorman, Pops appears to be omniscient, all-knowing and all-seeing. He sits in a booth and notes down everyone who comes and goes, even when he seems to be immersed in a complicated crossword puzzle, and sneaking pass him seems as impossible as bolting from a locked room or trotting over a field of virgin snow without leaving footprints. Norma tried and failed miserably. The secret of Pop's apparently super sensitive sensory perception is as clever as it simple and integral to the entirety of the solution to the problem of entering a floor whose entrance was under constant observation. It's not the most ingenious or mind-blowing impossible situation Resnicow dreamed up in this series, but, once again, it's completely original and shows how you can use an entire building to create the illusion of a sealed environment.

Note, however, that tracing the steps from the crime-scene back to the murderer of Lisa Terrane does not, necessarily, mean that they have saved the show and their multi-million dollar investment, because the guilty party can still be another person who can't be missed or replaced on a short-term notice – such as another one of their lead stars or the director. It's the proverbial quagmire and it will take a lot of brainpower to drag them out of it. 

All in all, The Gold Gamble is another amusing detective story that provides its reader with an intricate puzzle, set against a background of a musical production in absolute peril, which also does a fairly good job at scattering the clues around the stage and corridors of the theatre – and the only thing I can raise against this book is that the pace is a lot slower than usual and that a map would've been neat feature during the reconstruction of the crime. Nevertheless, the love Resnicow had for both the detective story and the performance arts dazzles like a lead star on opening night, but if you are new to his work I recommend you make the acquaintance, of Alexander and Norma, over the coarse of one of their previous cases.

I have now read all of the Gold Murder Cases, five novels in total, but instead of giving the bibliography in chronologically, I will post them in order of strongest to weakest:

The Gold Deadline (1984) [*****]

The Gold Frame (1986)  [****]

The Gold Curse (1986) [****]

The Gold Gamble (1989) [***]

The Gold Solution (1983) [***]

I also reviewed the entire Ed and Warren Bear series: 

The Dead Room (1987) [*****]

The Hot Place (1990) [**]

And wrote a short overview of Herbert Resnicow's life and work:

Herbert Resnicow: Building a Career On Crime

The Skeleton in My Clock

"With sudden shock the prison-clock

Smote on the shivering air..."

- Oscar Wilde (The Balled of Reading Goal, 1898)

The Maestro!

 

I have broached this matter once before, when I posted a similar, but much briefer, message to the John Dickson Carr mailing list, in which I had set forth my reasons for suspecting that the greatest mystery writer who ever lived might have suffered from chronophobia – a suspicion that I based on his treatment of time and his depictions of clocks in his stories.

Douglas Greene professed skepticism, since Carr never exhibited any of the textbook symptoms that are listed for this condition, such as panic and terror, but I don't manifest these symptoms, either! It doesn't have to be extreme, like mine, which rarely goes beyond depressive bouts of nostalgia and a chronic intolerance for ticking clocks. Anyway, the matter wasn't definitely settled, one way or the other, but since we just entrusted another twelve-month period to the earth, I thought it was a perfect time to state my reasons for suspecting this to a broader audience – and see what you will make of it.

There was, first of all, his compelling sense of nostalgia and yearning for simpler times, which is probably why he turned to historical fiction when the 1950s rolled around – in an attempt to escape from a world that resembled his less and less with each passing year. This longing to slip through the cracks of time is reflected in the protagonists from The Devil in Velvet (1951) and Fire, Burn! (1957), who defied the then known laws of the universe and peddled up-stream in the river of time. I also think it's telling that he, more than once, compared events in his books with a Punch and Judy show (fond childhood memories clawing to the surface?).

Than there are the clocks and bells, often emerging as an allegory for death, the inevitable passing of time and usually closely associated with the demise of a character – and occasionally emblazoned with the face of the Grim Reaper himself!

Here's a list of examples: 

1) The murder weapon from Death Watch (1935) is a gilded clock handle and features a macabre Skull Watch.

2) Marcus Chesney uses a clock handle as part of his psychological experiment, moments before he's murdered, in The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939).

3) A clock in a store window and the sound of church bells has an important bearing on two seemingly impossible murders in The Hollow Man (1935).

4) Another representation of death as a clock/time can be found in The Skeleton in the Clock (1948).

5) "The Adventure of the Seven Clocks," collected in a volume entitled The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1954), brings the great detective face to face with a man who smashes every clock he sees to pieces.  

6) The victims from two stage/radio plays, "Thirteen to the Gallows" and "A Man Without a Body," were flung from the top-floor of a clock/bell tower.

7) In another radio play, "The Hangman Won't Wait," church bells are the first thing the falsely accused Helen Barton hears, when she regains her lost memory, in the condemned cell on the eve of her execution. 

8) "The Villa of the Damned," yet another radio play, has a unique victim for an impossible disappearance act: time itself!

These are just the examples that I can remember, but I am sure more of them could be added to this list and I still find them, especially combined, very telling and think it gives my suspicion some credence. But I would like to know what you think: are these the ramblings of a basket case, who tries to project his own mental short comings on his hero, or the astute observations of a brilliant armchair psychologist?

A Deluge of Poison

"Society murders are a pain in the neck."

- Inspector Barry (Up to the Hilt, 1945) 

When you read contemporary criticism of the genre, it takes an informed and primed reader to immediately dispel their false impression that the field, during that prosperous first half of the previous century, resembled the grimy, nearly dried-up pool that it is today – with one monoculture dominating the market (i.e. the run-of-the-mill thrillers crime novels you find in bookstores today). This faux representation often suggests that the genre was ruled over by a court of female writers, known as the Queens of Crime, which consisted of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham. You can also earn a sparkling Lion King sticker if you namedrop Josephine Tey.

This simplistic, almost childlike, delineation of the genre is not only incorrect, but also deprecating to the myriad of published writers who were active at the time and especially to the women of this profession – who are dismissed either out of ignorance, such as Christianna Brand and Gladys Mitchell, or for having written their books on the wrong continent. It is, after all, a well-known fact that Britain was the comfy home of the literate, if slightly snobbish, puzzle-orientated mystery novel, while the Americas were the tough slummy back streets of the detective story and therefore writers such as Craig Rice and Dorothy Cameron Disney seem to have never have existed in their world at all.

This is why it's left to me, a dilettante instead of an actual scholar, to praise Anne Rowe's Too Much Poison (1944), a distinctly British mystery penned by an American woman, for its striking portrait of an unhappily married nurse, embroiled in two upper-class poisonings with snake venom, and her engaging narrative voice that continuously invites you to read one more chapter – which can also be frustrating if you're attempting to read it during one of the busiest weeks of the year!

When Mona Randolph married Dr. Harvey Carstairs, a rising Park Avenue specialist, he convinced her to keep their marriage under wraps – until he had established himself within the Manhattan social set as a physician to the rich and famous. This situation seemed to drag on interminably, while Mona acted as his secretary-nurse and furnished him with what little money she had, until her sister, Iris, married into a wealthy and well-bred family. Mona's newly acquired in-laws are not exactly charmed when they learn of her secret marriage arrangement with the young doctor and forbid Iris to see her until the Carstairs publicly acknowledge their marriage. At first, these demands seem like a blessing in disguise, to the downtrodden and neglected wife, as she can finally cash in on the interest rate of her sacrifices and take her rightful place next to her husband as Mrs. Carstairs.

But there's just one problem: her husband is involved in a serious affair with another woman, socialite Caryl Ellington, and wants to sever the ties that bind him to his common and homely wife – who had faithfully stood by his side for over three years and it takes the interference from his influential colleague and friend to make an honest woman of Mona before they each go their separate ways. During a celebrative get-together, at their home, they reveal their marriage to the world, but since this is a detective story the party is really nothing more than a prelude to murder.

First the atmosphere of this belated wedding reception is poisoned when Caryl Ellington, with her café society cronies, crash the party and followed-up with a botched suicide attempt of one of Harvey's patients, one Joyce Prentiss, who's murdered minutes later – when one of the guests introduces her to a lethal dose of poison tapped from the fangs of an exotic cobra. Enter Inspector Barry, assisted by Cliff Mallory, a renowned polo player and amateur sleuth who also moonlights as Mona's knight in shining armor, whose combined jobs consist of capturing the snake that slithered from the grassy front lawn into this party, assertively mingling with the other guests, before striking at its victim.

The most valuable asset this novel has, as I mentioned at the start of this review, is its preterite narrative, which is both inviting and lucid, however, its splendid characterization also makes it a perfect piece of counter-evidence against the claim that mystery writers from 1930-and 40s dotted on the upper classes. This story sketches a decidedly unflattering picture of the social set of the time and their cheerful, devil-may-care demeanor is nothing more than a thin veneer that gives their rather shallow existence a buoyant coating – and their petty stance against and ill-treatment of Mona Carstairs garners them no sympathy whatsoever.

So character-wise, Too Much Poison is an excellently written, in-depth story that does an above average job at bringing the people that populate its pages and their problems to live, however, it's kept from obtaining a place in the first ranks by a sloppily clued ending and a few missed opportunities. The clues are thinly spread out over two hundred and some pages and the main one isn't brought up until the second murder, which is committed with only quarter of the story left to go, and everything that could've clued you up on the motive was unfairly withhold. I also felt that more could've been done with the origin of the snake venom, which was explained in a rather off-hand manner, and the method for the public poisoning of Joyce Prentiss would've easily lend itself for an seemingly impossible situation – which certainly would have elevated the plot above that of merely avarage.

This makes Too Much Poison an excellent reading experience for fans who enjoy detective stories for their characters and past settings, without paying too much attention to the clues or be distracted by inconsistencies in the plot, but it will leave readers who want a fair shot at solving the problem themselves with a slight feeling of disappointment after they turn over the final page. In short, this novel could've been better and it could've been worse, but I still think it's worthy of our attention – if only for the characters. 

I scribbled this review in haste, as it's the last one of this year and time hasn't been entirely on my side, but I hope the amount of mistakes has been kept at a minimum and hope to welcome you all back in the new year – and wish you all the best during those dozen months that make up 2012!

Anne Rowe's bibliography:

Curiosity Killed a Cat (1941)

The Little Dog Barked (1943)

Too Much Poison (1944)

Up to the Hilt (1945)

Fatal Purchase (1945)

Deadly Intent (1946)

The Best of 2011: A Year in Review

"Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?"

- Ogden Nash

Christmas with Detective Conan

There were a number of motivating factors for starting this blog, but the most important one was the presence of another blog on the web, The Case Files of Ho-Ling, maintained by Ho-Ling – who is perhaps the only other person here, in the Netherlands, as consumed and enamored with classical and neo-orthodox detective stories as I am. I have been following his train of thoughts on the genre ever since it embarked on its journey, back in 2009, but it wasn't until his review of Ayatsuji Yukito's The Decagon House Murders (1987) that a light bulb appeared above my head and the filament began to glow. "Hey," I thought, "I can do this, too!" and when I told him the response was brief and to-the-point: "Do it!"

I finally had found a path that, in the deluded, self-made reality that exists only in the brain box of yours truly, might end, if properly treaded, with me becoming a 21st century equivalent of Anthony Boucher or Frederic Dannay – and usher in the dawn of a Silver Age of Detection. But in spite of this enthusiasm driven folie de grandeur, I still found remnants of doubts and uncertainty, which were left there by my notorious super-sloppy-typing-skills and could prove itself to be a handicap in this endeavour, but these fears turned out to be unfounded – as the responses that began pouring after putting up the first couple of review were overwhelmingly positive. Not only in the comment section of this place, but also in responses left on other websites, like the GADdetection Group, and I want to bestow my gratitude on each and everyone of you who took the time to peruse my vague little ramblings and compile responses.

It's thanks to you that the page counter sped by the 10.000 mark after only a few months, which, I think, proves that readers who enjoy a classically constructed detective story shouldn't be listed as extinct – and this is also reflected in the blogs from fellow mystery addicts who were also able to garner unexpected successes and popularity with their mystery blogs:

Patrick released At the Scene of the Crime only a short month after I opened up this place business, but just as quickly became one of the must-read blogs for everyone who enjoys a good, old-fashioned whodunit. Pretty Sinister Books covers a more broader scope of fiction, but when he dabbles in Golden Age Detective fiction you can be assured that the stories are obscure and that you probably haven't read it. One of his semi-regular features, entitled Left Inside, is one of the best things going in the blogosphere today! Sergio from Tipping my Fedora and Steve the Puzzle Doctor from In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel are the all-rounders of our crowd, covering everything from classic mysteries and modern crime stories to historical fiction and thrilling movies, which makes their blogs perfect places to seek inspiration if you have no clue what to read or watch next. Keep up the good job in 2012, guys! Bev from My Reader's Block and Patti from Pattinase are the glue of the community with their Vintage Mystery Challenges and the Friday's Forgotten Books listings. William's Traditional Mysteries has really taken off in the past few months and specialized himself in short, to-the-point reviews of both GAD and neo-GAD mysteries. Definitely recommended! Mystery scholar and author of the forthcoming Masters of the Humdrum Mystery (2012), Curt Evans, has began blogging and will be wondering through the genre, as The Passing Tramp, and has already established himself as rival to John Norris – when it comes to brining up obscure, nearly forgotten detective stories that most of us probably have never read before. Les Blatt's weekly audio reviews keeps us posted on which past gems are currently in print. And then there's the always knowledgeable Xavier Lechard, who blogs over At the Villa Rose, whose posts are infrequent but always worth reading.

I also want to thank authors Bill Pronzini and M.P.O. Books, for tirelessly bouncing emails back-and-forth with me, and Patti for welcoming me as a contributing member of the FFB crew.

And now it's time to announce the best and worst detective novels and short story collection read during the year 2011!

My top 35 of favorite detective novels read this year (in alphabetical order):

The Trampled Peony (Bertus Aafjes, 1973)

Mystery and More Mystery (Robert Arthur, 1966)

Jumping Jenny (Anthony Berkeley, 1932)

The Last Chance (M.P.O. Books, 2011)

The Case of the Solid Key (Anthony Boucher, 1941)

The Wooden Overcoat (Pamela Branch, 1951)

Death of Jezebel (Christianna Brand, 1948)

Fire, Burn! (John Dickson Carr, 1957)

The Dead Sleep Lightly (John Dickson Carr, 1983)

Killed on the Rocks (William DeAndrea, 1990)

Killed in Fringe Time (William DeAndrea, 1995)

Death in the Back Seat (Dorothy Cameron Disney, 1937)

The Strawstack Murders (Dorothy Cameron Disney, 1939)

The Anubis Slayings (Paul Doherty, 2000)

The Stoneware Monkey (R. Austin Freeman, 1939)

Something Nasty in the Woodshed (Anthony Gilbert, 1942)

The Fourth Door (Paul Halter, 1987)

Inspector Ghote Draws a Line (H.R.F. Keating, 1979)

The Last Express (Baynard Kendrick, 1937)

Mother Finds a Body (Gypsy Rose Lee, 1942)

Mr. Splitfoot (Helen McCloy, 1968)

Pick Your Victim (Pat McGerr, 1946)

St. Peter's Finger (Gladys Mitchell, 1938)

The Seclusion Room (Fredric Neuman, 1978)

The Glass Mask (Lenore Glen Offord, 1944)

Death and the Maiden (Q. Patrick, 1939)

Hoodwink (Bill Pronzini, 1981)

Shackles (Bill Pronzini, 1988)

The Tragedy of Errors (Ellery Queen, 1999)

Black Widow (Patrick Quentin, 1952)

The Gold Deadline (Herbert Resnicow, 1984)

The Dead Room (Herbert Resnicow, 1987)

Death on the Board (John Rhode, 1937)

The Anagram Detectives (Norma Schier, 1979)

The Silver Scale Mystery (Anthony Wynne, 1931)

Special Awards:

The Worst Mystery Read in 2011: Elvire Climbs the Tower (Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe, 1956)

The Best Impossible Crime Story Read in 2011: The Dead Room (Herbert Resnicow, 1987) (just for being completely original in its set-up and execution)

The Best Short Story Collection Read in 2011: Murder – All Kinds (William DeAndrea, 2003)

The Greatest Discovery of 2011: Herbert Resnicow 

Well, that was it for this summing up. I hope everyone had a magical Christmas and wish you all the best in 2012! 

The Ghost in His Name

"Who do you think you are, Ellery Queen?"

- Melva Lonigan (Crime on My Hands, 1944)

During the early 1940s, Craig Rice, Queen of the Screwball Mystery, collaborated as a scenarist on The Falcon movies, which starred actor George Sanders as a debonair gentleman detective with an appreciation for the female form, and from this pool of creative consciousness eventually sprang Crime on My Hands (1944) – a lighthearted detective romp in which George Sanders takes it upon himself to clear-up a number of fatal shootings on the set of an action-packed Western. 

The name that was printed on the front cover and across the title page of this book was that of George Sanders, but there was, at least, one silent partner, working behind the scenes of this project, who did most, if not all, of the work. Craig Rice was the ghost in the typewriter, however, it's unclear if Cleve Cartmill, who seems to have strayed from his usual haunts, science-fiction and fantasy, to help her pen this facetious detective novel. But then again, it's not entirely impossible, either, and his part could've been limited to lending his expertise, as a science-fiction writer, to help her with the technical details on one of George Sanders' inventions – which he rigged up in order to trap the killer. It proved to be unsuccessful enterprise.

Crime on My Hands opens with a sneak-peek at George Sanders at work, as he shoots one of the final scenes for his latest movie, Die by Night, in which he plays the role of a self-assured, philandering amateur sleuth to perfection, but the thespian has grown tired of always playing the detective. 

"The vogue is for the light-hearted playboy with a butter heart and iridium brain to become involved in a murder situation. Now the audience knows that I, as the amateur detective, am going to triumph in the end. There's no suspense, except of an intellectual nature. The melodramatic action seeks to cover that dramatic fault, but I know suspense is lacking. I can't be wholehearted about it when I know that I will win, no matter what."

Fortunately, for him, he had to foresight to hire a clever and competent business agent, Melva Lonigan, to look after his professional interests and she managed to procure a contract in his name for the lead role in Seven Dreams – a fast-paced, action-filled Western fraught with danger and romance set against the backdrop of a barren, sun blasted desert landscape. Unfortunately, for him, this change of pace and setting is short-lived, as he, once again, finds himself hunched over the sprawled, blood-spattered remains of an extra, in the middle of a circle of wagons, but this time the cameras aren't rolling and the microphones are turned-off – and our on-screen gumshoe quickly notices that movie villains are nothing like their the real-life counterparts.

This murderer, for example, neglected to lither the scene of the crime with incriminating evidence for him to glance at and mutter cryptic remarks. As a matter of fact, this evasive gunman even expunged the few tell-tale clues, such as a film can protecting the undeveloped scene of the fatal shooting and a pair of silver handled revolvers, which our self-styled amateur sleuth had to go on. Not a good sport at all.

What I found interesting, whilst reading this book, was how well Rice had obliterated nearly every trace that could identify her as its author. There are still one or two sequences in this book that bear a partial finger print of her style, such as filming a scene in an artificially created sand storm, in which Sanders seems to be confronted with his shadowy adversary, and the parade of suspects who came tramping into his cabin during a botched attempt at entrapping the gunslinger, but, all in all, this is not a detective story that conformed to her usual style. 

In a way, this is also quite amusing, if you take into consideration that the authorship of Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders (1941) and Mother Finds a Body (1942) were ascribed to her. I have only read the latter, but I immediately understood why people found it so easy to believe that they were penned by Rice – since they were covered with, what appeared to be, her fingerprints. There was a whiff of surrealism that emanated from the pages, the three main characters formed a unity (all but one of Rice's series detectives are team players) and the zaniness was vintage Ricean.

Lee's authorship of The G-String Murders and Mother Finds a Body has now been established and they were probably put down on paper with Rice's style and plotting technique in mind – which simply explains how a not entirely untalented amateur could equal the best efforts of a professional. Crime on My Hands also reinforces this claim, in a topsy-turvy way. Why would she ghost one book in her own, unique and easily identifiable style and cleverly disguise the other. I mean, if I wouldn't know any better and was asked to hazard a guess, as to who ghosted this book for George Sanders, the closest I would get to hitting the mark would be blurting out Stuart Palmer's name – on the fourth or fifth guess.

On a whole, Crime on My Hands is an OK story of crime and detection, but a must-read for fans that prefer their sleuths at their most amateurish and face their perils and brave their dangers in an upbeat manner – with a roguish grin plastered across their face. It's just plain fun, even if the track to the solution runs along a badly maintained railway line. But that shouldn't impair the fun derived from the overall story. The Rue Morgue Press should definitely take a look at this one for their catalogue.

There's a second detective novel that bore the name of George Sanders on its cover, Stranger at Home (1946), but this one was from the hand of Leigh Brackett – a writer primarily known for her science-fiction and screen writing. But contrary to its, more well-known, predecessor, this book is actually still in print and one that I will probably take a look at in the upcoming year.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

 "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

 - Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

According to the back-flap of the dust cover, wrapped around the binding of the first printing of The Seclusion Room (1978), its author, Dr. Fredric Neuman, is a practicing psychiatrist from New York – which probably explains why this story left me in a confusing, dual state of adoration and detestation. Psychiatrists are apt to mess with your mind like that.

In many ways, The Seclusion Room is a model of what contemporary mystery crime writers, who took it upon themselves to blur the borders and shove the genre into the mainstream, should be aiming for. On the other hand, the inveterate classicist within me was not amused at the solution, which, admittedly, was clever enough, but something important and essential was sacrificed in order to achieve its effect. But let's begin at the beginning.

The backdrop of this story is a psychiatric hospital, named Four Elms, where, during the waking hours of a particular dreary and unwelcoming morning, Dr. Abe Redden is roused from his reverie by the ringing of the telephone – which conveys immediate summons to one of the wards. One of his patients, Seymour Ratner, seems to have committed suicide behind the blocked door of the seclusion room, one end of a strip of cloth knotted around his neck and the other end tied to the radiator, but the circumstances in this bare room, with check-ups at fifteen minute interval, should've made this impossible. Even more baffling is the fact that Seymour Ratner was thoroughly searched before being secluded, however, when they finally pried open the door to the room they discovered that he had a knife in his possession and used this to carve the words THEY HAVE KILLED ME in the linoleum floor!

But murder is as infeasible as suicide, since this hypothetical murderer would not only have to be invisible, in order to sneak around in the hallway unobserved, but also able to phase through a solid door of a room that was temporarily made inaccessible by plugging the keyhole with a wad of wires – and a freak accident doesn't account for the presence of the knife and wire in the room.

Detective William Moore is not only confronted with a death that seems factually impossible on all counts, but also with an assortments of suspects and witnesses that could've wandered from a nightmarish rewrite of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Schizophrenics, alcoholics, child abusers, manic-depressives, rapists and half of these people are on the staff of the hospital!

However, it's not Detective Moore's footsteps who the readers follows, as you wander through the dimmed corridors of this institution, but those of one of their staff members, Dr. Abe Redden – whose wry and cynical narrative voice will delight fans of such writers as William DeAndrea and Raymond Chandler. The way in which he delineates characters, both patients and staff members, sketches situations and his pessimistic observations makes this an enthralling read, which, at times, really made this a book elevate itself above its status as genre fiction.

The Seclusion Room is a very modern novel that takes a serious approach at characterizing and fleshing out the inhabitants of the psychiatric wards, nurses stations and doctors offices at Four Elms and grapples with serious topics, such as a rape, but this does not mean that the book takes itself too seriously – as the characters and setting also easily lend themselves to a few very funny, but dark, comedic sequences. My favorite part from the book is probably when Redden and Moore visit the pathologist, who lectures them and tells anecdotes while his arms are buried in the abdominal regions of his latest patient. Yes, I'm aware that I have issues.

So, I hear you wonder, what's exactly the problem with this book? Everything I have said up this point indicates that I regard this a novel as a companion to those that were penned by Bill Pronzini, Herbert Resnicow and William DeAndrea. The problem is that the cleverness of this detective story is that the plot starts out with a baffling, classically-styled locked room problem that could've been lifted from the pages of a John Dickson Carr novel, "with all the mad logic of a dream," but once the story has descried itself, after a morbid send-up of the classic scene in which all of the suspects are gathered in the library, what is left of the problem is nothing more than a routine, common garden-variety crime, which, in essence, I liked, but to achieve this effect the locked room angle was turned into a sacrificial lamb. 

In spite of the fascinating set-up and the fact that it secured a spot in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991), this is not a locked room mystery and the explanation to why I was dropped-off at the final page of this story with a split personality.

Overall, this is a very well written novel, populated with intriguingly sketched characters set in a world that sometimes resembles a ghoulish fun-house packed with cracked mirrors, and the modernistic approach to the traditional detective story definitely deserves praise, but this was one of the first novels I picked from Adey's listing of locked rooms and expected much more of this as an impossible crime story.

The technical aspect of the solution was a bit of a let down, but not disappointing enough to prevent me from further pursuing this author and he recently published another detective novel, Come One, Come All (2011), which is described as "a locked-room mystery, and a take-off on locked room murder mysteries" as well as a "comic novel, but realistic." So that one will be near the top of the heap for next year.

In conclusion, I'm left with only one more thing to say: Dr. Neuman, if you read this, you owe me a free consult! ;)

Death Throws a Party

"No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully."

– Nero Wolfe.

The trees have shed their leaves, which blanket our lawns and sidewalks, as the days have become notably shorter, the nights a lot colder and we pour ourselves a warm beverage – while we wait for the first snowflake to drop or a pond to freeze over. Decorated trees adorn our living rooms and dens. Jolly-looking, white-bearded, red-clad men in shiny boots took up their residence in the store windows and radio DJ's receive letters from listeners who threaten to burn the station to the ground if they play Wham's Last Christmas one more time. Ah, yes, Christmas must be upon us!

Over the past few years, I made it a holiday tradition to read two or three Christmas themed mysteries or detective stories with an evocative winter setting. Last year, it was the turn of Pierre Véry's The Murder of Father Christmas (1934) and Anthony Abbot's The Creeps (1939), but for this yuletide I had only one book lined up, Rex Stout's And Four to Go (1958), which can be put down to the fact that stories from the first category are becoming a bit scarce. I have less than a handful of them to go and I will spread them out over the years ahead of us, but, for the moment, it's time to head back to that familiar and comfy brownstone of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin – and is there a better spot in "Cloud Cuckoo Land" to spend Christmas than at their place?

Snuffing up the mouth-watering aromas wafting from Fritz's kitchen, taking a stroll through the forest of orchids on the greenhouse roof and listening to the bickering, between Wolfe and Goodwin, emanating from the office as they plot petty larceny and throw marriage licenses around. Yup, there's only one place like that on the printed page!

Christmas Party (also published as The Christmas Party Murder)

The detective business has been rather slow at that famous brownstone, on West 35th Street, and without a profitable client or pressing matters to tend to, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin gave up on resisting their juvenile tendencies – which means that they no longer put in effort not to annoy one another too much. An agitated Archie is the first one to clamber out of the trenches of this childish workplace skirmish, after finding out that he's been scheduled to drive his oversized employer to Mr. Lewis Hewitt, who'll be entertaining a well-regarded hybridizer from England, on the same evening he's expected at a Christmas party, and charges straight ahead to deliver a cataclysmic blow to Wolfe's disposition: slapping a marriage license for himself and a woman named Margot Dickey on his desk.

Wolfe's response is a predictable one, "you are deranged," but Archie claims this battle and takes his fiancée to the party, however, it comes to an abrupt halt when the host, Kurt Bottweill, takes a swig from a poisoned goblet of Pernod – and the fatter-than-usual Santa Claus, who was tending the bar, vanished like smoke through a chimney. Plot-wise, this is a not ingenious or complexly plotted detective story, but a typical, average fare that you come to expect from Rex Stout. Luckily, we don't read his stories for their plots, but to cross the threshold of that comfy brownstone and spend a few hours in the company of a bunch of character who, at times, make you feel like you're visiting old friends and they wrapped themselves up in enough trouble to keep the story moving along nicely.

Easter Parade (also published as The Easter Parade Murder)

Mr. Millard Bynoe, an affluent man with a deep-rooted love for flowers, succeeded where Wolfe has been failing for years: cultivating a flamingo-pink Vanda, "both petals and sepals true pink, with no tints, spots, or edgings," but he simply refuses to display the orchid until the next International Flower Show – which is in this story marked down on the calendar for the following year. Wolfe finds this stalling unacceptable, but a rumor has it that his wife persuaded him to let her wear a spray of it during the church service on Easter Day, which inspires the stout detective with arguably the worst scheme of his career! He begs Archie to act as a go-between in attracting and hiring a thief to pluck the rare orchid from the innocent woman's bosom, but the plan goes awry when Mrs. Bynoe collapses in the street and Archie was seen running after the orchid snatcher.

Wolfe and Goodwin find themselves, once again, in a world of trouble and this time they have more on their plate than just a baffling and daring murder – literarily committed in the public eye. The gumshoes also have to obliterate any trail of the petty larceny of a flower that might lead to their doorstep. A great story, character-wise, but also depressing as hell that Stout wasn't able to do more with the plot – which could've been turned into a full-fledge impossible crime story with just a little bit more imagination.

Fourth of July Picnic (also published as The Labor Union Murder)

And while we're on the subject of impossible crimes, this story secured a spot in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991) as a falsely advertised locked tent mystery. Nero Wolfe has agreed to venture outdoors to give a speech at a picnic of the United Restaurant Workers of America, under the condition that they stop pestering his personal, live-in gourmet chef, Fritz Brenner, to join their union, but a body turns up with a knife handle protruding from his back – and the locked and watched environment of the tent only functioned as a pool to keep the splash of dodgy characters from spreading all over the place (i.e. create a closed-circle of suspects situation). This was the least interesting and exciting story of this collection with its only really interesting point being Archie's short biography of himself.

Murder is No Joke

In spite of what the title, in combination with the theme of this collection, might suggest, this is, sadly, not a story with a plot that revolves around an April Fools joke with a killer of a punch line – which would've been great if only for the interaction between Wolfe and Goodwin on that day! But no, this is the only novella in the collection without a holiday theme, however, the plot of this story finally shows a shimmering of imagination. Flora Gallant asks Wolfe for help in dealing with a woman who has a negative influence on her brother, but the shrew is murdered in mid-conversation with Wolfe and Archie on the phone! The clueing was still below par, but the central idea was not devoid of merit and once again makes you wish Stout had been more adept were his plotting skills were concerned.

All in all, a fairly average outing for these two gumshoes, which derives it interest mainly from the situations they find themselves in rather than from their plots, but that's to be expected and not something I will hold against Rex Stout. These are stories about two detectives rather than detective stories and fans will no doubt delight in the way these two spend their holidays. Recommend... if you are a fan. 


Les Blatt also reviewed this book, as an audio podcast, last Monday over at Classic Mysteries. 

And on an unrelated note: I now own a copy of Adey's Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes and have already placed several orders based on descriptions in this book. Two very obscure, somewhat scarce and pricey titles will arrive here within the next 4-5 weeks, but a third, less obscure, book was delivered today and will be up next on this blog. So you know what to expect from this place in the new year: more impossible crime! 

A Greek Tragedy

"Take me away, far, far from Thebes,

quickly, cast me away, my friends—

this great murderous ruin, this man cursed to heaven,

the man the deathless gods hate most of all!”

– Oedipus

Over the summer, I reviewed Moord op het eindexamen (Murder During the Final Exams, 1957), an proficiently plotted and intelligently written detective story set at a small-town gymnasium during a hectic and enervating exam period, which was partly extracted from real-life – since the author himself was an educator. Tjalling Dix was the nom de plume of Libbe van der Wal, a well-regarded professor and former rector at a gymnasium in Delft, who probably escaped from the pages of a Michael Innes novel, but you have to read my previous examination of his work if you want to be formerly introduced to this delightful don.

Een kogel voor Oedipus (A Bullet for Oedipus, 1954) was the first of only two detective novels to appear from the hand of Van der Wal and the backdrop for this one, instead of the buzzing teachers lounge and the austere classrooms, is a perturbed theatre company, Het Grote Toneel (The Grand Theatre), whose members are united only in their common hatred for their director and lead player. 

Gustaaf de Waeles was a gifted and accomplished actor, but he was also a vulgarian at heart who took up blackmail as a leisure entertainment.

As a manipulative oppressor, who made a sport out of slithering in between the bed sheets of any woman he found even remotely attractive and resorted to extortion if people didn't comply with his wishes, De Waeles was unrivaled. Needless to say, this thespian will not be as successful in drawing tears at his own funeral as he drew people when he took the stage, but then again, that can be considered as a trifling matter if you bowed out with a bullet wound in your head – and your murderer dressed up your final performance as an un-theatrical suicide. Heck, he even took his last bow off-stage!

During the intermission of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King, the main attraction of The Grand Theatre is all of a sudden taken ill, claiming to be unable to stumble back on stage, he heads back home. For the second act, the role of Oedipus was played by De Waeles' personal substitute, who was unable to sustain the quality of acting of their lead man and the play was somewhat of a bust, but this was made up, for them anyway, when they heard that the illness was probably due to a case of acute compunction – which prompted him to take his own life!

The body of the actor was found in his own living room, unceremoniously slumped on a sofa in a dark corner of the room with a revolver, that seems to have slumped from the dead man's hand, on the floor, but it's the inartistic nature of this suicide that awakens a deep suspicion within the theatre-loving Inspector Joris de Corthe. De Corthe's theory that the man was shot is not very popular with his superior, who prefers a simple suicide over a complicated homicide, but the story that the silent witnesses have to tell him, ranging from a pair of clean shoes and broken coffee cups, slowly, but surely, convince him that his inspector might be on to something.

I can understand why this book was well received by the critics, whom, especially over here, have not always been patrons of the classical whodunit novel, on the contrary, but they must have fallen for Dix's characterization – which was described by one reviewer at the time as follow, "...can put people on paper, roughly sketched, but always on the on-the-mark and life-like." It probably also helped a lot that most of the characters carried emotional baggage from the war with them, a popular subject in Dutch literature, as they refer to family members who died during those dreadful years and one of them is even a political delinquent – who was recently released from jail after serving a term in prison for collaborating with the Germans.

Plot-wise, this book also deserves praise for its simple, but nonetheless clever, construction, even though a lot of the conventions seem to have been culled from the pages of detective stories that were penned during the 1910s, as nearly all of the suspects were trudging around in the murder room, one after another, before the police were finally brought in, which resulted in one or two clues being dropped. However, in this case it added some considerable charm to the story and minor quibble measured against the overall quality of the story.

There were clues, some better than others, such as the brilliant hint of the broken coffee cups, that did an excellent job at both telling you the truth as well as directing your attention away from the obvious culprit – and make you rethink your position and isn't that what a good detective story is suppose to do? The only thing I can hold against this book is that it didn't came alive in the same way that its successor did, which, I think, can be ascribe to the fact that everything in this story took place off-stage and was focused completely on the characters and plot. He simply neglected to turn the theatre into a stage for this story, but, as I noted before, this is a lesson he learned from and was not repeated in his next novel.

Overall, this is another competently written and cleverly constructed detective story from a writer who, sadly, only penned two of them and is all but forgotten today. A revival in his native country seems unlikely, but perhaps, one day, his work can be introduced to a more appreciative, English-reading audience. Hey, we can hope!

On a final note, I would probably murder indiscriminately in order to take a peek at the drafts/notes of his two detective stories (that is, if they exist), because I suspect that both were originally envisioned as full-fledge locked room mysteries, but something kept him from doing it. It could be that coming up with a good and original solution was a lot harder than he anticipated or that his publisher rejected it as unfeasible, but the crime-scenes in both novels were a bolt away from becoming sealed rooms.  

Other Dutch mysteries discussed on this blog: 

Bertus Aafjes' De vertrapte pioenroos (The Trampled Peony, 1973)

A.C. Baantjer's Het lijk op drift (The Corpse Adrift, 1998)

M.P.O. Books' De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011)

Tjallin Dix's Moord op het eindexamen (Murder During the Final Exams, 1957)

Ben van Eysselsteijn's Romance in F-Dur (Romance in F-Dur, 19??)