Beware the Red Herring!

"So, Morse, must the evil that men do live on after them?"

- Mrs. Radford (Inspector Morse, The Sins of the Father, 1990) 

George Michaelmore is a well-preserved, middle aged widower of independent means with four adult children in their twenties, whom he provided for with their own apartments in the family's ancestral home christened "Sunbay." However, the Michaelmore household is in for an overhaul following a letter from their father announcing his intensions to marry a woman, named Adelaide, he met abroad and intends to bring her home in a fortnight.

Thus begins Herbert Adams' The Judas Kiss (1955) and as the publication date indicates, Adams penned the story during the twilight years of the Golden Era. A transitional period in which the focus shifted from plot-and idea driven narratives to in-depth characterization and social commentary. You can find traces of these changes in the attitudes and opinions of some of the characters, but The Judas Kiss remains foremost a detective story – and one that's surprisingly domestic in nature.

The first half basically consists of two different quarters: the introduction of Adelaide into the Michaelmore family and the unraveling cumulating in murder. Adelaide talks with George's two sons and daughters. Garnet entered the church and tries to revive the local community, often with the gleam of the zealot in his eyes. Jasper is the artistic soul of the family and uses his apartment as a studio. He also flirts with his stepmother. Emerald is a wishful writer currently working on a serious novel with Victor Gore-Black, but is their relationship purely professional? Pearl is the babe of the lot and the confident of her siblings. The source from which all of their problems spring are ideas and morals that in Britain of 1955, a full decade before Roy Jenkins eased divorce laws and whatnot, could be experienced as an assault on the institution of marriage. Granted, some of the things are still considered a no-no, but there was definitely a break with the idea that a marriage begins with secret kisses in the apple orchard and ends with sharing a plot of land in the church graveyard.

Interestingly, there's another break with tradition going contrary to what's happening at Sunbay, but to be honest, in the wake of Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngiao Marsh, it's more of a continuation than a break – except that a male mystery writer does it. Adams' series-detective, now retired Major Bennion, has taken temporary possession of the house next door to enjoy a holiday with his wife Ruth and their baby. The brief intrusions on the Bennions are cozy, domestic snapshots of what I imagine people thought of as the Good Life in this period after World War II and the Cold War warming up. So, yes, detectives have a private life, but I'm still grateful John Dickson Carr spared us a homely bedroom moment between Dr. Gideon Fell and his wife in Hag's Nook (1933). That's a genuinely, disturbing mental image. I should also note here (before continuing the review) the apparent physical-and mental fitness of the characters, because they're constantly playing golf, tennis, chess or reading detective stories.

Anyhow, the nice, quiet domicile of the Michaelmores is uprooted when a car fatally strikes down George and the reading of the will lays bare hurt pride and greed within the family. It also pits Adelaide against George's children and there's a clever bit about wording of the will, but where The Judas Kiss distinguishes itself is the red herring apparently designed to fool the self-absorbed, armchair Philo Vance's who fancy themselves the stuff of geniuses – because they've read far too many detective stories than is good for them. I can't even claim I was properly fooled by deducing the wrong murderer. After a while, I was back at jabbing a finger at my first suspect (a corpse) and shouting, "you did it... I just know you did!"

How did Adams pull this off, you ask? There's a confrontation between Adelaide and the Michaelmore children, which leads the former to go into partial exile at the local inn and that's where someone manages to poison her behind the locked doors and shuttered windows of her bedroom. The police are unable to find a trace of poison in the room or how the murderer was able to administrator the poison, but Bennion solves the locked room angle almost immediately and this is the part where the seasoned mystery reader has to tread carefully. Trust me. A dead man through space-and time manipulated me by going that route. I won't go into precise details, but you've been warned.

Unfortunately, the cleverly deposited red herring was better than the actual and much more mundane solution, which was under whelming, but the worst part was that it gives ammunition to the people who say whodunits are only about restoring order. Well, The Judas Kiss did exactly that and more: all of the "rotten" branches of the Michaelmore family were cut-off and the bad intrusions rooted out. The ones who were left behind have a married life to look forward to and all was well with the world. That part felt as a definite cop-out on Adams' part. C'mon, Adams, it was 1955! We could've handled a bleak ending with one snake left in George's old love nest. 

Anyhow, The Judas Kiss is a fun and quite an interesting read in spite of the weak, but cheerful, ending and loved slipping so foolishly over the red herring Adams expertly placed along the trail.

Finally, another word of warning for the reader, there's an amusing bit towards the end about a stolen plot of a detective novel and a character who reads the ending of a mystery before reading the entire story, because he wants to know as much as Sherlock Holmes does when he begins reading (fair enough). However, I fear this portion of the story could've revealed the method for the impossible poisoning from Carolyn Wells' Raspberry Jam (1919-20), which I still intend to read after positive comments from Curt Evans and Mike Grost. How do I know without having read the book myself, you ask (again). Well, if it's true, than Adams was less than subtle about it. 

I have previously reviewed Herbert Adams' The Writing on the Wall (1946).

The Silent Language

"Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try."

- Nero Wolfe (Rex Stout's Death of a Dude, 1969) 

 

Previously on this blog, I practically eulogized H. Edward Hunsburger's "Eternally Yours," a short story plucked from the pages of a 1980s edition of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine for Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2006), as a flawless gem of a detective story. I stand by my opinion, but that's beside the point. The introduction to Hunsburger's sole short mystery story noted the author was probably best known for the novel Death Signs (1987), adapted for the TV series Hunter in 1988, in which a deaf man leaves a dying message in sign language – and that'll be today’s review.

Mattie Shayne is a Minneapolis schoolteacher working with deaf children and part-times as an interpreter at a Medical Center, which is the reason why she finds Police Lieutenant Ryder on her doorstep: a deaf man with stab wounds has been brought into the emergency room and he needs Mattie to get a statement from the man before he passes away. Unfortunately, for the police, Noah Kendrick's "last words" make as much sense as M.C. Escher's sketchbook, "house burned down... no iron man there," but their collaboration doesn't end there.

There were, naturally, deaf acquaintances of the victim and even his much younger widow, Ariana, can't make a statement to Lt. Ryder without Mattie translating the hand gestures and words. After the dark opening of Death Sign, Mattie and Ariana slip in the routine of the bantering, mystery solving couples from the 1940s and throw around allusions to Ellery Queen and Columbo – whose described as "an abused archery target in his disreputable trench coat." However, Mattie also acts a guide for Ryder (who represents the reader) in the deaf community and touches slightly upon their history.

Mattie and Ryder peddle between suspects and witnesses as they uncover Ariana's hidden motives for doing away with her husband, and her possible relationship with the barrel-chested neighbor, Paul Linstrum – who competed in an Iron Man (triathlon) competition. Ariana left another (deaf) man to marry the much richer Kendrick and may harbor a grudge against them. They also hear Kendrick's only friend, Todd Meredith, a deaf art gallery owner, Neil Travers, an artist sponsored by the gallery, and the victim's snooty business partner, Sam Cole.

All in all, a splendid pool of suspects of draw from and Hunsburger places just enough clues to keep it a fair-play mystery, but it does not radiate with the same intensity as the short story mentioned at the beginning of this post. However, Death Signs is still a well written, fast read, that kept my interest with a good enough plot placed against an unfamiliar backdrop. And there aren't that many mystery novels (besides EQ) with a (good) Dying Message as the main plot-device of a story. David Alexander's Murder Points a Finger (1953) is the only example I can think of from the top of my head. Perhaps I should’ve tackled Colin Dexter's The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977) as comparison material before taking on this one. Anyhow, not a perfect mystery, but I enjoyed it.

Lamentably, I have to end this review on a sad note. I was roaming the internet for more on Hunsburger when I learned of his passing on November 28, 2011, after receiving care in an IC-Unit for a head injury, but the unsettling part came when I searched further. I can't claim these two reports are accurate (which you read here and here), but they claim the fatal injuries were sustained during a mugging! However, if these reports are true than the perpetrator(s) deserve the kind of justice only a lethal cocktail of midazolam and hydromorphone can provide.  

Tied Together: Two Impossible Crime Stories

"Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying."

- Teller (from Penn & Teller) 

"A man vanishes at the top of the Indian rope trick and is found dead miles away" and "a dead man continues to receive mail in response to letters apparently written by him after he'd died" are two of the stories teased on the back cover of The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2006) – edited by anthologist Mike Ashley.

Six years previously, Ashley compiled The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) and both collections are distinguished from past anthologies by the balance between rarely reprinted locked room stories and brand new content. Of course, there's a flipside to every success story. The quality of the content is prone to fluctuation and can go from radiating brilliance, and crackling with novel ideas, to absolute schlock pumped from the sewers of some shoddy, forgotten pulp archive or private collection. Ashley's second collection of impossible crimes has the dubious honor of containing one of my favorite and most hated locked room mystery stories of all time. Lets begin with the latter.

John Basye Price's "Death and the Rope Trick" was buried in a 1954 issue of the London Mystery Magazine and hadn't been reprinted before, which can have a legitimate reason behind it – quality wise. Even after re-reading the story, I still feel Ashley should've been in the docks for desecrating a gravesite. He actually called it (and I quote), "a particularly cunning example." Oh, the story starts out promising enough, alright, but the solution does more than merely strain the readers credulity... it then strangles reality with it. It's as if Price took the premise of a rejected Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner cartoon and used it as a template for a detective story.

The legendary Indian Rope Trick is at the heart of the story and begins when the narrator, Jimmy, accompanies his uncle, Mr. Edward Dobbs, Chairman of Western University's Board of Trustees, to Central America to witness the famous trick in person. A certain Mr. Weldon, a student of the paranormal, has left the university two million dollars under condition a fund of half a million dollars. The money is a reward for the person who can perform the magic rope trick under scientific test conditions and there by demonstrate the genuineness of psychic phenomena, because even Harry Houdini never attempted it. That's the logic behind the challenge. I guess. But the presentation of the trick isn't even consistent with the terms of the will or the fund.

Dr. Clive Marlin is a self-styled student of the occult and has claimed the $500,000 reward, but hams up his performance at a steady pace from the start with not a word of protest from the trustee or his nephew. The poring of the concrete and signing their names in it is an interesting hindrance to eliminate one possible way of cheating (until you read the explanation), but there are also curtains placed around the plateau. Guess who aren't allowed in for the first part of the performance? It's an out and out magic show with suspicious movement in and out of the curtained enclosure, which leads up to an incredibly convoluted and ridiculous dénouement – going contrary to statements made by Jim and his own photographic evidence. I refuse to believe they were fooled by what they saw or that the truth wouldn't have come to light after the photographs were developed.   

But, first, Dobbs and Jimmy witness the rope snaking up from the curtain and rising into the air and a young, skinny boy, named Ali, climbs up the rope, while the curtains below burst into flames and only a tight budget (he hadn't quite earned that check yet) prevented a full fire work display. You have to admire the integrity of the trustees to not allow the Scientific Method to intrude on the privacy of the Man Behind the Curtain. Anyhow, Marlin proceeds to whip out a pistol and shoot the boy, but the only thing dropping from the sky is the white loincloth Ali was wearing. He appears to have burst like a soap bubble. Statements and (photographic) evidence makes you reject the obvious answer. Not that it would've helped you solve the crackpot method of the Rope Trick or how the body of Ali was found miles away from the performance area. However, I think Marlin still qualifies for the half million dollars for showcasing a supernatural ability in how every inane step of the performance worked like a well-rehearsed dance routine. Looking back, it's like a minimalist and slightly surrealistic circus act performed for a very, very small audience. I didn't like the story, is what I'm trying to say.  

Nevertheless, the editor was able to redeem himself with the inclusion of H. Edward Hunsburger's "Eternally Yours," culled from the pages of 1985 edition of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which I think is close to perfection in terms of a short detective story – and re-reading has only cemented my first impression of the story. Remembering the solution, I was surprised how liberal Hunsburger was in sowing clues and dangling the truth in front of the reader. It should be required reading for aspiring mystery writers in how to clue a detective story.

Jeff Winsor is hardcover artist for mystery novels and narrator of "Eternally Yours," who doesn't believe in ghosts nearly as much as he believes in the scarcity of good apartments in New York City, but his new abode in Gramercy Park is beginning to look haunted. The previous tenant, Admiral Miles Perry, died behind the locked doors of the apartment after slipping on a rug, but is keeping up a chess-by-mail correspondence with a friend – signed "fraternally yours, Charles." It gets unnerving when the postcards begin to contain references to events after Penny passed away. Two impossibilities for the price of one!

Karen Hunter, the lady in Winsor's life, is convinced there's a murderer somewhere, because "people are always getting murdered behind locked doors in mysteries," and Penny's ghost wants Jeff to find his killer. Recognizing an inescapable quest for the truth, Winsor begins to question the doorman, Tom Banks. Lew Drayton, the local postman and considered for mail carrier of the year. Tana Devin, the star of the soap opera Maneuvers from 3B and Mr. Campbell from 3A with more than enough reasons to celebrate the untimely demise of the Admiral. Hints and clues are littered in these conservations, and there's even a false solution which caused me some embarrassment. I assumed I had hit upon a somewhat original premise and solution for a locked room mystery, but my subconscious seems to have borrowed from this rejected explanation. I still gave it a good twist, though.

However, I have to admit Hunsburger's explanation also retraced the steps of a well-known short story and an obscure locked room novel, which I can't mention without spoiling the solution of this story, but the spin he gave on it was really good and invigorated one plot-device that should've been dead and buried in the 1980s. It's evident Hunsburger knew his way around the classics and "Eternally Yours" just gels perfectly as a Who, How-and Whydunit. And fair-play, too! This story should be dragged from obscurity to be hailed as a classic. And if you disagree, you're a heretic. Or Symon's harlot. Or both. But that's OK. We don't judge in this Mausoleum of Enlightenment.

Finally, the inspiration for re-reading these stories came from Paul Halter's La tête du tigre (The Tiger's Head, 1991), which has a character reminiscing on witnessing the Indian Rope trick in person. By the way, if anyone is curious how the original Indian Rope Trick was pulled off... well... it's a bit disappointing. Back in the oldie days, before mass-communication, there were people who amused themselves by telling tall tales and one of them was a completely fabricated story of seeing an amazing performance of the trick by a mysterious fakir or priest. Usually in an obscure market place in a mountain village or countryside. I think the only proper, workable way to pull of the trick is on a disguised, elevated platform with a thick, hollow rope and a pole that can be stuck through it when it's stuffed in the prepped basket.

Tiger's Cage

 "Aw, c'mon, you can't fool us! A genie is supposed to grant wishes."

- Louie (Duck Tales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, 1990)

Paul Halter's La tête du tigre (The Tiger's Head, 1991) is the fifth novel, alongside a dusting of collected and uncollected short stories, to be translated from French into English by our very own purveyor of miracles – John Pugmire of Locked Room International.

The first half of The Tiger's Head is divided between chapters entitled "On the Trail of the Suitcase Killer" and "The Leadenham Chronicles," in which we follow Dr. Alan Twist, Inspector Archibald Hurst and the inhabitants of a normal sleepy village before their respective problems collide in the second half. Twist and Hurst are tasked with roaming train stations for clues in a particular brutal murder case. Someone has been discarding suitcases containing the severed arms and legs of women, however, they've been unable to locate any of the heads or romps – which is not a case you'd think interest Twist. Until the "Suitcase Killer" strikes again in unfathomable circumstances.

Jenny Olsen is a flower girl of reputedly questionable virtue and was seen by her boyfriend, Tom Ross, entering her apartment in the company of a shadowy figure and flees to the nearest pub. A friend convinces him to go back and confront the bloke, but they find the door and windows secured from within. However, the lights are still on and the sound of running water can be heard. They force the front door and the place appears to be deserted, but someone turned off the water tap, made a bloody mess of the bathroom and left a suitcase behind – containing a severed set of woman's legs and arms. The murderer and the remaining body parts seem to have faded from existence!

Meanwhile, in the otherwise quiet and dormant village of Leadenham, another series of crimes are being perpetrated, but the petty thefts of chocolates, candles and hats are fairly tame in comparison with the Suitcase Murders. The best part of these so-called village chronicles is the introduction of the people who live there and those who'll be there for the second act. I have often criticized Halter's depiction of villages as nothing more than a small, tight cluster of houses where the suspects happened to be living for the purpose of the story (e.g. The Fourth Door, 1987), but here there's more of a communal feeling – even though the characterization remains on the surface. 

Major John McGregor is one of Leadenham's citizens with a bagful of tall stories and anecdotes from his days in India, which includes witnessing the famous Rope Trick in person and an account of an unsolved murder case eerily similar to the suitcase murders.

The major finds a new audience for his tales with the arrival of his nephew, Jim, who's a professional tennis player and his fiancée, Evelyn Marshall, but there's also the engaged couple of Clive Farjeon and Esther Dove and the former adopts a skeptical attitude towards the stories. One of the prized items in Major McGregor's collections of swords and daggers is in fact a bamboo cane with a lump of bronze as big as a fist and shaped like the head of a tiger, which he won from a fakir in a crooked bet. It's said that the head of the tiger is the home of an ill-tempered genie and prone to violence after being summoned, especially towards those who refused to believe in him before appearing.

Major McGregor and Clive Farjeon lock themselves up in the lounge room and every possible exit is being guarded by their friends, which does not prevent something from viciously attacking both men with the titular cane – killing the major and seriously injuring Farjeon. However, there's nobody else to be found in the room afterwards! The nature of Farjeon's wounds clears him from suspicion and the actual solution was far cleverer, original and better executed than the first locked room murder, which had an intriguing set-up but a lousy explanation.

Plot-wise, The Tiger's Head is the most complex and ambitious novel I have read from Halter since La quatrième porte (The Fourth Door), but (alas!) this intricate braided rope of plot-threads has a few weak spots and flaws. It's so complex you can understand and forgive Halter for bringing luck and coincidence into the game, which were words too often dropped by Twist in the explanation. But in the authors defense... what an imagination! However, the real flaw in Halter's works (IMHO) remains the lack of sense of time (and often a place), which is not an unimportant aspect of stories set in the past. I wonder how different the writing in these stories would've been, if they had been set in France instead of England. Anyhow...

To sum this review up, The Tiger's Head is not a novel of crime that fleshes out characters by going over every minutiae of their life, with a dash of social commentary, but a detective story that takes great pride in being elaborate for the sake of being elaborate. I liked it in spite of some of its shortcomings.

Pellets from a Buckshot

"...you planned the most hazardous of all crimes as if you were devising a harmless parlor game." 

- Nero Wolfe (Rex Stout's The League of Frightened Men, 1935)

The original plan was to have one or two more reviews up by now, but an unspecified package stubbornly persists on being delayed and, tiring of the wait, settled on crossing a handful of short stories from the ever growing list of mysteries I hope to read one day.

"Holocaust House" is a novella and a continuation of the previous review, in which I looked at Norbert Davis' debut as a mystery novelist with The Mouse in the Mountain (1943), however, I mistakenly called the book the first recorded case for Carstairs and Doan. That's not the case. The novella was published as a two-part serial for Argosy in November, 1940, which was the inaugural case for the unlikely duo. Well, sort of.

Doan and Carstairs are, essentially, the same characters from the novels. Doan is short and plumb, whose pink round face and bland blue eyes radiates with the type of innocence gullibility conmen look for in a mark – which basically means that Doan is a hardboiled, gun toting and drinking incarnation of Father Brown. However, it's the fawn-colored Great Dane, "as big as a yearling calf," Carstairs, with a pedigree of high-class ancestors as long as the arrest record of any repeat offender, who's the senior partner. "Holocaust House" is no different in this aspect and begins with Doan awaking from successfully getting drunk the night before and Carstairs, "never been able to reconcile himself to having such a low person for a master," gives him nothing but wearily resigned disgust.

The first quarter of the story consists of Doan trying to figure out who slipped him a bulky, stainless steel cigar case with deadly content (not one of the perils mentioned in the anti smoking ads, by the way) and finding a man "whose name isn't Smith and who doesn't wear dark glasses and doesn't have black eyebrows or a black mustache," before their employer of the Severn Agency, J.S. Toggery, gives him a case that separates him from Carstairs. Doan has to safeguard a gunpowder and munitions heiress, by the name of Sheila Alden, in the mountains of the Desolation Lake country – where the first snow of the winter season has begun to fall. Carstairs does not approve of mountains and stays with Toggery. And you thought Scrappy had attitude problems.

Here where's the novella begins to differ from the novels, not only because the separation breaks the fun dynamic between the protagonists, but what we get in place functioned surprisingly well as a morbidly funny take on the closed-circle of suspects stuck in a mountain lodge. There are some wonderful, evocative scenes as Doan wonders the train tracks, heads down against the blizzard, in the dark and finds a frozen corpse by match light or the encounter with the one-armed, lantern wielding stationmaster and his troupe of sled hounds – slightly unhinged and nurtures a grudge against the Alden family. The situation at the lodge is arguably worst: there's a nervous man from the bank who hired Doan, a secretary hell-bent on murder, a shady caretaker and a lost traveler.

A perfect set-up for murder, fisticuffs and emptying the remaining cartridges in Doan's revolver and, while the murderer became more and more obvious, the plot stuck together pretty well. Breezy, well-paced hardboiled story telling laced and occasionally funny, too! Well, it seems I have overused the padding to review this one story and I'll try to lay off the stuff for the next three stories.

Isaac Asimov's "Mirror Image" was originally published in the May, 1972 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, collected in The Complete Robot (1982), which marked the brief return of the Earth policeman Elijah Baley and the advanced Spacer robot R. Daneel Olivaw after their last joined investigation in The Naked Sun (1957). Baley is surprised when Olivaw turns up on Earth on a Spacer ship, but there's a professional character to his visit. There are two passengers, a pair of eminent mathematicians, accusing each other of plagiarism and the story has the potential to cause a tidal wave of scandal across the academic worlds of the Settler planets – unless Baley can sort out the mess before taking off again. They both tell the exact same story, except the names in their story are reversed, and even their servant robots repeat the conversation verbatim. Again, the names are swapped. Clearly, one of the robots was instructed to lie and exposing the truth lies in understanding how the lying robot interpreted TheThree Laws of Robotics. "Mirror Image" is a fun little quip, but one that felt immeasurable small in comparison to its monumental predecessors, The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun, in which Asimov excelled as he created entire worlds with civilizations, history, technology, infrastructure and political structures, and still remembered he was writing a detective story. But more importantly, it refuted the argument that modern forensic science killed clever, old-fashioned plotting decades before it was made. Asimov was so much more than just a Visitor from Science Fiction to the mystery genre.

I count the husband-and-wife writing tandem of William and Aubrey Roos, writing under the penname of "Kelley Roos," among my favorite mystery writers and if you're wondering why, you obviously haven't read The Frightened Stiff (1942).

"Two Over Par" is a short story, collected in the anthology Four and Twenty Bloodhounds (1950), featuring Jeff and Haila Troy – New York's meddlesome, wisecracking amateur sleuths and they were the best. Jeff and Haila Troy are indulging in their latest fad, which happened to be golf, but they are quickly drawn in their favorite past time when they uncover two bodies in the thickets of the golf course. Mrs. Carleton and her caddie, Eddie Riorden, were shot through the head and this gives rise to multiple possibilities. Based on a 1948 novella I read, "Beauty Marks the Spot," I assumed Roos needed novel-length stories to fully shine, but here we have the same, satisfying dovetailing of plot threads combined with their trademark wit and even a twist solution. My only complaint is that it wasn't a full-length novel.

G.D.H and M. Cole's "The Owl at the Window," collected for the first time in Superintendent Wilson's Holiday (1928) as "In a Telephone Cabinet," mentioned every know and then as a splendid example of short impossible crime stories, however, I found it to be a tad-bit dated. The story opens with Wilson and his friend, Dr. Michael Pendergast, stumbling on a man breaking into the locked home of his friend who failed to respond. As to be expected, the man is murdered and lies dead in the telephone cabinet of his home. His face blown apart from the discharge from a blunderbuss, which also happened to be the only remarkable feature of the story. The lack of suspects makes the solution only more obvious than it already was and I have seen this set-up done better in Arthur Porges' "The Scientist and the Wife Killer," which can be found in The Curious Cases of Cyriack Skinner Grey (2009). So a little bit of a disappointment.

Finally, it's interesting to note that I picked these stories randomly, but, nonetheless, there emerged a connecting theme: all of the culprits did too much to cover up their misdeeds and, thereby, exposed themselves to the detectives. And that explains the opening quote.

It's a Dog's Life

"They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral." 

- Dr. Mortimer (Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

There weren't a myriad of opportunities amidst the busy hum of the holiday preparations and celebrations to chip away at Mt.-to-be-Read, but now that life has snapped back to normal, it's time to pick up where I left off. And surprisingly, it's not a locked room mystery!

I was in the mood for a flippant, humorously inclined and, above all, a fast paced read to start the New Year, which brought me to The Mouse in the Mountain (1943) by the highly regarded pulp writer Norbert Davis – whose first foray in full-length novels garnered praise from the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and introduced a pair of unique detectives to the scene. Doan is a short, plumb, low-end private eye with the imposing, fawn-colored Great Dane, named Carstairs, being the brains and strong arm of the duo. Oh, Doan knows how to shoot people! There is, however, a slight consequence to their unusual partnership in that it gives the books a slight nod to the borders of SF/Fantasy, because Carstairs is obviously capable of higher cognitive thought processes and basically the brave, literary ancestor of Scooby-Doo. I would even go as far as placing Carstairs in the detective lexicon alongside such notable snobs as Philo Vance, Lord Peter Wimsey and early-period Ellery Queen.

The Mouse in the Mountain can be categorized as both a World War II mystery, Carstairs is in the army training dogs to protect airfields and is now on furlough, and a Busman's Holiday, which begins before they can board a bus from the Hotel Azteca to the remote, isolated Mexican mountain village of Los Altos – in spite of being advised to cancel the tour for the time being by the local authorities. Doan and Carstairs meet their fellow passengers and the first they bump into is Miss Janet Martin, a schoolteacher following the trail of the long dead pioneer Lieutenant Perona, but there are also the Henshaws and their horrendous offspring, Mortimer. I honestly kept my fingers crossed someone would chuck Mortimer under the bus or tossed him to Carstairs as a chew toy. Happy New Year, by the way. The party is rounded out with a flypaper heiress, Patricia van Osdel, her gigolo, Greg, and personal maid, Maria, but the real star of this company is their driver. Bartolome is a licensed chauffeur and tour guide with "English guaranteed by the advanced correspondence school," adding, "conversational and classic," but uses these acquired skills to string together flowery insults – like calling his fat boss "a flesh-laden criminal."  

While banter and comedic scenes mark the overall tone of the story, there's a dark undercurrent flowing from the personalities and motives of the characters. Even the most innocent characters are moral derelicts in one-way or another. Mrs. Henshaw's over-motherly, protective behavior created an uncontrollable monster and his father can only resort to idle promises to twist his neck. Van Osdel bribed the hotel to put the tour back on the road and Doan's reason for going to Los Altos is up for debate through out the story, but does not flinch in demonstrating his flexible morals upon their arrival by shooting a bandido under surveillance by the local authorities – represented here by Captain Emile Perona. Granted, it was a clear case of self-defense.

The Captain is a descendant of the man who captured Miss Martin's imagination and didn't conform to most of the stereotypes of the day, but this lovely subplot had the emotional depth of a low-budget, daytime soap opera. However, the way in which this plot-thread was tied up was, inadvertently, hilarious. Captain Perona is one of more honest characters in The Mouse in the Mountain, but Perona is vain with old-fashioned, aristocratic notions. The final bit was simply a portrait of an undaunted man who, after the first feminist wave subsided, calmly whisked out a discreet handkerchief to dab his face and mentally noted the day when it all really ended.

Anyhow, the arrival of the company at Los Altos brings along more than just rich tourists hunting for overpriced souvenirs, there's a boatload of trouble and a soaring body count in the surroundings of the once peaceful village – which also suffers under the tremors of a small earthquake. Doan's original quarry is killed when a roof collapses and the cause of a conflict of interest between the detectives, which leads to Doan and Carstairs being briefly incarcerated. The earthquake also gave cover to an opportunistic killer (and the exact opposite of the revealing quake in Bones (1985) by Bill Pronzini), but the plot never blazes with the same fire as the descriptions of the Mexican highlands or the crisp, witty hardboiled storytelling, dialogues and the (somewhat) morally decrepit characters. They were the real draws of The Mouse in the Mountain.

Note(s) for the curious: I've read the second Carstairs and Doan novel, Sally's in the Alley (1943), shortly before I began blogging, which left me with an unanswered question. Why didn't Carstairs smell the blood-spattered corpse in the boot of their car? Couldn't he be bothered or was prolonging the discovery of the body designed to cause as much discomfort to Doan as possible?

Carstairs may also be tagged as the ancestor of the soft-boiled, semi-comedic television series Kommissar Rex (Inspector Rex) – a krimi from Austria.

Finally, the Rue Morgue Press reissued all three Carstairs and Doan mysteries years ago.

Murder in Retrospect: The Best Mysteries Read in 2013

"Love is such an arbitrary thing. I love my mom. I love pancakes."

- Doug Stanhope (Stand-Up Comedian)

"Give me problems!"

Yesterday, I posted a summary overview of the worst mysteries endured this year and the most inferior examples answer why detectives can be held in such low regard, but today I'll be gushing and talking pompously, like a ranting Napoleon atop a hobbyhorse, on the ingenious mysteries I enjoyed reading in 2013. The detective stories that were the seven-percent solution to my Sherlock Holmes.

You can expect an over representation of everyone's favorite trope, "The Locked Room Mystery," but I like to believe the divergence of styles, sub-genres and international character shows a balanced, in-depth list with an overlapping theme.

Now, without further ado, the List of Best Mysteries Read in 2013:

The "Moth" Murder (1931) by Lynton Blow

The first of merely two mystery novels by Lynton Blow, but as enthusiastic an endeavor in the field of detective fiction as the Wright brothers conquering the skies in 1903. Except that The "Moth" Murder takes off when the blazing remains of a light aircraft plunges from the sky and a post-mortem on the charred pilot reveals an inexplicable bullet wound. These are, however, the first of a train carriage of complications, but Blow holds a firm grip on all the plot threads and understands these kind of complex detective stories gain credibility by including Murphy's Law in the equation. The only letdown is that there's an old trick at the heart of the mystery.

Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) by M.P.O. Books

A figure head of the Dutch criminal underworld, Fred Duijster, is brutally slaughtered in his tightly secured, fortress-like home. The windows were covered with steel shutters and the grounds around the house are monitored with motion sensors that trigger overhead lights, back and front, and cameras – and they captured only one person entering and leaving the home at the time of the murder. But is he guilty? It's an impossible crime story in the same vein (and quality) as Marcia Muller's The Tree of Death (1983) and Herbert Resnicow's The Gold Solution (1983).

Painted for the Kill (1943) by Lucy Cores

A comedic mystery lampooning the daily workload of a prestigious beauty salon, The House of Lais, a popular haunt for women inhabiting the upper crust of New York, but the place is run like a (awkwardly pre-dated) parody on the Stalinist shadow of Big Brother from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). I guess it's a hallmark of good comedy if you're jokes gain traction over time. However, Cores took a break from satirizing everyone, and everything, to construct a satisfying plot around the death of a valued customer of Lais. Clever and funny. 

The Poison Oracle (1974) by Peter Dickinson

Now here's a tale that would've bought Sheherazade another reprieve from the executioner's sword, if the King had faltered after the One Thousand and One previous nights. A tale of the imaginary sultanate of Q'Kut. A strip of land in cloud-cuckoo land where the Arab rulers share a special bond with the native Marshmen, an isolated tribe with their own unique language, reaffirmed every year in a verbal treaty, "The Bond," which is an epic song telling the history of the Marshmen and the Bond. Dickinson builds a completely new civilization with a history, language, social structure, political system and used as a framework for a first-rate detective story – involving a pre-verbal chimpanzee, skyjacked airliner and an impossible poisoning in the Sultan's private zoo. Undoubtedly, one of the richest mysteries I have read this year. 

Nightshade (2006) by Paul Doherty

A historical mystery novel set in 1304 and centers around the affairs of the perfidious Lord Scrope, whose district has fallen in disorder after ordering the massacre of an entire religious sect, but King Edward I has dispatched Sir Hugh Corbett and Ranulf to restore His Majesty's Rule to the region. However, upon their arrival, they learn matters have worsened with the arrival of a mysterious bowman. In order to protect himself, Scrope erected a sealed structure, a reclusorium, on the Island of Swans, which is encircled by an icy moat and guards posted on the opposite banks – all to no avail. Locked doors and shuttered windows failed to keep his murderer out and Doherty comes up with a better solution than he usually does for his impossible premises. Not ground breaking, but not bad either.

Vultures in the Sky (1935) by Todd Downing

A previous mystery novel I read by Downing, The Cat Screams (1934), ended in disappointment, after the plot failed to live up to its own premise, but there are more than enough redeeming qualities to be found in its successor. Downing's series character, Hugh Rennert of the United States Treasury Department, Custom Services, takes charge of a train bound for Mexico City when one of the passengers dies while passing through a tunnel and Rennert doesn't entertain the idea that the bad air in the tunnel did him in. The plot rattles along at a nice, steady pace and the exploration of the local culture gives the book its authentic touch. This is not a cheat Christie knock-off. 

Ättestupan (Deadly Reunion, 1975) by Jan Ekström

With a nickname like "the Swedish John Dickson Carr," it was bound to attract my attention and I wasn't disappointed, but, stylistically, the book stands closer to Ross MacDonald and Christianna Brand. The problem here finds it roots in the three warring branches of ninety-year-old Aunt Charlotte Lethander's family and summons them all in a last ditch effort to reconsolidate them before passing away – which ends in a tragic murder/suicide. One of her relatives was shot and the murderer was gassed to death in a locked bedroom. The brooding atmosphere and hidden (family) secrets is still today typical for Scandinavian crime fiction, but the classically styled plot and clever impossible crime makes it a noteworthy entry in the annals of locked room mysteries.

The Con Job (2013) by Matt Forbeck

The first tie-in novel continuing the cancelled TV-series Leverage, set during the third season, and the plot would've been a perfect basis for an actual episode. Nathan Ford's crew goes after a disreputable art dealer who has been targeting old comic-book artists, which brings them to Comic-Con and a galore of shenanigans in an attempt to thwart the dealer from robbing Alec Hardison's heroes blind.

La Septième Hypothèse (The Seventh Hypothesis, 1991) by Paul Halter

More than once, I found something to nitpick about in a Paul Halter story and I blame the glowing comments preceding the long-awaited translations, which unfairly drew comparisons with John Dickson Carr and G.K. Chesterton. On the other hand, this particular title can be logged into evidence to back up their claim: the plot is triumphant in reviving the "Baghdad-on-the-Thames" atmosphere of a long-gone London. Plague doctors are seen roaming the streets by moonlight, a deadly duel of wits between a genius playwright and a gifted actor and one or two impossible disappearances. What's not to like?

Moord in de trein (Murder on the Train, 1925) by Herman Heijermans & A.M. de Jong

A dark, twisted gem of a story stained with the irony of history (see review) and opens with Satan visiting three of the characters, but the only thing the rich banker, the ambitious writer and the hotel-rat have in common is a ticket for the D-train to Paris. Nathan Marius Duporc, Inspecteur of the Amsterdamse Centrale Recherche, one of the passengers, has to wrench apart a surprisingly good and Carrian murder plot.

77 Sunset Strip (1959) by Roy Huggins

A curious, but well-done, TV tie-in novel composed of three short stories with bridging material predating the television adaptation, based on these original pulp stories, but the kicker is that private eye Stuart Bailey is confronted with trio of crimes of the impossible variety. It's a fast-paced montage of three cases pitting a street-wise, smart talking detective against a few actual brain crackers and the structure is remarkably similar to Bill Pronzini's Scattershot (1981), which strung three, separate (impossible!) cases for the Nameless Detective in one of his most Hellish weeks at work.

At the Villa Rose (1910) A.E.W. Mason

A story clearly foreshadowing the Golden Age of Mysteries and The Great Detectives After Sherlock Holmes and his imitators, which was accompanied with the publication of G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown (1910), but Mason's contribution was casting a mold for a certain type of Great Detective. Inspector Hanaud of the Sûreté reflects such famous sleuths as Hercule Poirot and Sir Henry Merrivale (or they reflect him), but the problem is certainly up-to-date for the time it was written in. All in all, a classic I should've read before 2013.

De Amsterdamse koffermoord (The Amsterdam Suitcase Murder, 1979) by Seicho Matsumoto

This is a collection of Dutch translations consisting of a single novelette and three additional short stories, but the main showpiece is the novella-length Amusuterudamu-unga satsuyin-jiken (The Amsterdam Canal Murder Case, 1969) and was originally published in the weekly Shukan Asahi. The plot was based on the premise of an actual, unsolved murder case and one that captured the eye of the press in both Europe and Japan. Read the review for more details.

Killer's Wedge (1959) by Ed McBain

A perfect introduction to Ed McBain and my first meeting with the illustrious 87th Precinct, in which the Squad Room suffers from a mild case of breach of security when Virginia Dodge barges in with a handgun and plants a bottle of nitroglycerine on a desk. Dodge demands to see Detective Steve Carella, but he's out on another case that stands in the stark contrast with the hostage situation at the precinct. Carella is looking into the death of a business tycoon at his family mansion, where he apparently hanged himself in a windowless room with the only door dead-bolted on the inside. You get a hostage, cat-and-mouse thriller and a classic locked room mystery for the price of one!

Bimbos of the Death Sun (1987) by Sharon McCrumb

To quote myself from the original review, Bimbos of the Death Sun isn't an elaborate and complicated affair, however, everything came together in the end and made sense. More importantly, McCrumb turned a new leaf on the timeworn dénouement scene and the backdrop of a SF-and Fantasy convention made this a memorable read. The 1988 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original was more than deserved, IMO.

The follow-up to this book, Zombies of the Gene Pool (1992), a very character-driven mystery novel about "The Dead Sea Scrolls of Science Fiction," shares this place with Bimbos of the Death Sun. Read them both in 2014, if you haven't done so already.

The Voice of the Corpse (1948) by Max Murray

The village shrew of Inching Round, Angela Mason Pewsey, passing the time with mentally torturing her neighbors, sending poison-pen letters and shrieking folk songs, receives her comeuppance when an unknown assailant strikes her down at the spinning wheel. Pewsey's black notebook is missing, but, to the bafflement of Mrs. Sim, the local police prefer to follow the obvious trail of a passing tramp or gypsy. The ending has an excellent, morally ambiguous twist and goes to show that not all village-themed mysteries are by definition cozies.

Dead Man's Gift (1941) by Zelda Popkin

An unconventional, but original, detective story drowning in conventional tropes and added as a counterweight to G.E. Locke's The Red Cavalier (1922) on my worst-of list, in that's a good example of how you could play with tradition – such as the closed-circle of suspects. Here we have the beneficiaries of distant relatives gathering at the house for the reading of eccentric will, but a freak flood cuts them off from the outside world and a murder is committed in a submerged staircase. However, the flood is not just a novel plot device here to keep the house party stranded and Popkin shows the sometimes dramatic effects the water has on local residents, but even more important, there's a genuine, clever twist at the end of the book.

Beyond the Grave (1986) by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller

There aren't many, genuinely well-written crossovers within the mystery genre. Licensing issues, splitting royalties and different modus operandi may've prevented more than one writer from pooling his character with the creation of a friend/colleague. Thankfully, these obstacles are mere trifles for the husband-and-wife writing team of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, who snatched enough opportunities to foster a friendship between their respective characters, but the best crossover piece they collaborated on covered a pair of sleuth a century apart – riding the waves of the aftershocks of an even older crime. For the true mystery fan, there's something touching about Elena Oliverez's longing to tell the then long-dead John Quincannon how the case ended. 

The Bughouse Affair (2013) by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller

The first in a new series of full-length mystery novels chronicling the daily caseload of John Quincannon and Sabine Carpenter, a couple of private investigators in San Francisco of the 1890s, in which Pronzini and Muller tie-together the story of two cases and three detectives into one conclusion. Sabina is following the cocktail route and torch lit bazaars on the trail of a high profile pickpocket, while Quincannon is on a stakeout for a burglar and bumps into peculiar character that claims to be Sherlock Holmes! Oh, and there's a murder in a locked room and the killer escaped from the house, under surveillance by Quincannon and Mr. Holmes, unseen.

Murdercon (1982) by Richard Purtill

There surfaced a handful of accidental patterns in my reading this year and these included stories set at SF/Fantasy or writers convention, discovering impossible crimes Robert Adey missed in his locked room autobiography and train-mysteries. Purtill ticked two of three boxes with a detective yarn unwinding at another one of those SF/Fantasy cons, where a surviving copy of a failed magazine, Kosmo Tales, from the 1930s becomes the motive for a couple of bizarre, seemingly impossible murders – one of them apparently committed by Darth Vader.

Cake in the Hat Box (1954) by Arthur W. Upfield

Upfield is one of those rare writers, alongside H.R.F. Keating and Rex Stout, who could write detective stories you can read and enjoy without being a mystery fan, because of the gripping storytelling or the engaging characters – making them stories about detectives rather than detective stories. In these books, it's the evocative depiction of the Australian landscape, which is perhaps the best-drawn character in the series, from the sun blasted Nullarbor Plain to draught stricken cattle ranges. Here Upfield describes Agar's Lagoon, another dried-up desert settlement, hemmed-in by a halo of glass bottles and where meteorites streak across the night sky, but the well-contrived plot explaining the shooting of Constable Stenhouse was the topping on the cake. 

Darkness at Pemberley (1932) by T.H. White

The author of the Arthurian fantasy, The Once and Future King (1958), once wrote a detective story and the first half, concerning a murder at St. Bernard's College, is a typical British, drawing room-style mystery – including maps, floor plans and an impossible crime! The second half is a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between the detective and murderer/master criminal, restricted to house, but presented here on the scale of the worldwide manhunt for Carmen Sandiego.