Soaked in Tragedy

"The cautious murderer, in his anxiety to make himself secure, does too much; and it is this excess of precaution that leads to detection." 

- Dr. John Thorndyke (R. Austin Freeman's The Eye of Osiris, 1911)

Last month, I posted a review of The Cask (1920), which is an early classic from the Golden Age and embarked Freeman Wills Crofts on a career as one of the genre's more technically minded plotters – and was even considered as one of the "Big Five" British detective writers of the 1920-and 30s.

The plot of Freeman's debut novel concerned a cask "sent from France to London" and "was found to contain the body of a young married Frenchwoman." It required the combined efforts of Scotland Yard, Sûreté and the services of a private investigator to prevent the case from being shelved as unsolved.

I quite enjoyed that monument of a crime-novel with its old-world air, but the reason for bringing it up here is that Inspector French mentioned it in The Sea Mystery (1928), in which he observes that his current problem shared some similarities with "a case investigated several years ago by my old friend Inspector Burnley" – who has since retired from the force.

Funny how French's spoiler-ridden comments on The Cask confirmed my initial, unsubstantiated hunch of it being a companion piece to The Sea Mystery.

The Sea Mystery opens on a pleasant, balmy evening in September on the calm, smooth surface of the Burry Inlet, "on the south coast of Wales," where 14-year-old Evan Morgan is spending his last day-off fishing with his father. However, the only thing they managed to catch that day are the remnants of a perfect crime. Or an attempt at one anyway.

What they hooked was a solid, wooden packing crate, which was bare of "any helpful marks," but the same can’t be said for its putrid content: consisting of a horrendously decomposed body of a man, clad only in underclothes, whose features "had been brutally battered in" and "entirely obliterated" until "only an awful pulp remained." The medical-evidence places the crime five to six weeks ago.

Inspector French is faced with a problem that "seems absolutely insoluble," but believes "it is almost impossible to commit a murder without leaving a clue" and a logical, methodical mind, combined with experience, can get you pretty far.

So, first things first, French sets out to reconstruct how the crate got to the bottom of the inlet, which is done with a bit of math and a practical experiment. These first, preliminary inquiries have a pleasant amount of logical, science-based detective work, but there's a potential plot-hole.

Very early on, French determines a crane-lorry was used in the disposal of the crate, which is traced to a motorcar company, who rented out such a machine and they asked for a 300-pound deposit – which was quite a lump of money in those days. But it's never investigated if such a sum was drawn and re-deposit from a bank account around the time the crane-lorry was taken out. Which I assumed would be a rational route to follow in an investigation that, up to that point, was starved for solid, tangible clues.

A second plot-thread is introduced and involves a double disappearance from a location that'll immediately capture the attention and imagination of every mystery reader: namely the desolate, haunted and treacherous bogs and mires of Dartmoor – inextricably linked to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902).

One night in August, a pair of businessmen, named Charles Berlyn and Stanley Pyke, where on their way back home when their car broke down and they attempted to cross the moors and were never seen again in this world. The well-read, observant mystery reader should note the similarities between the plot of The Stoneware Monkey (1939) by R. Austin Freeman and the theories arising from the possible connections between both cases, which I thought was interesting. But not as interesting as the eventual explanation!

Crofts only provided French with a small pool of suspect to fish in, but managed to drag a clever and classically styled solution from it that was pure Golden Age. It won't leave the seasoned armchair detective god smacked, but they'll admire the well-clued, intricate plot solved by an intelligent and competent policeman – who's nonetheless as fallible and prone to mistakes as you and me.

Which made French more relatable than I expected and permanently shattered the preconceived notion, I once held, of Crofts as a dull, boring writer who had turned detective-stories into math homework assignments. Not the case at all! I'll definitely return to Crofts before too long. I just hope my tired brain has done some justice to The Sea Mystery. 

Well, I'll be back soon with another review of a vintage, Golden Age mystery.

The Locked Room Reader III: John Dickson Carr

"My ambition is still to write a really outstanding detective novel, which I honestly do not believe I have yet achieved. When a writer says this, what he really means is that he wants to wrote one which will make all other detective novels look silly. Of course you can't do it. But you can always keep trying."

- John Dickson Carr

Recently, I've been coming across blog-posts such as "Five to Try – Starting John Dickson Carr," which appeared on The Invisible Event, and "A Bit of a Ramble – John Dickson Carr's Great Works" from fellow mystery enthusiast Puzzle Doctor – which reminded me of a shameful omission on my part.

Over the past several years, I wasted a number of opportunities, filler-posts and an immeasurable amount of basic logic by neglecting to assemble my very own list of favorite John Dickson Carr novels. Logically, such a list should've been one of the first entries on this blog. But, hey, better late than never, right?

John Dickson Carr shouldn't require an introduction, especially around these parts, but if you're one of those uncivilized, heathenish infidels, unfamiliar with the Lord of the Locked Room Mystery, you might want to take note of this list – or risk suffering the same faith as Duc de Saligny. The reader has been warned!

I have broken down this best of list in three categories: series-books, standalones and historical mysteries.

The Henri Bencolin-series:

The Lost Gallows (1931) was the second detective-story from the mind of a young John Dickson Carr and can be considered a premonition of things to come, which consists of a lost street and a murderer, known as "Jack Ketch," roaming the fog-bound streets – cumulating in one of the "prettiest fancy in the whole realm of nightmare."

The Four False Weapons (1937) is the last entry in this series and moved away from the gothic, theatrical atmosphere of the earlier books, but without being any less mystifying or satisfying. The plot itself is fantastic: a retired Bencolin unravels a brilliantly contrived murder in France, which was obviously modeled around G.K. Chesterton's "The Three Tools of Death," from The Innocence of Father Brown (1910), and the Hanaud stories by A.E.W. Mason.

The Dr. Gideon Fell-series:

The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933) is the second book in the series and while not as atmospheric as its predecessor, Hag's Nook (1933), but the plot is a lot tighter and involves a series of pranks resulting in a crossbow-murder – committed at the historic Tower of London. One of the plot-points involves a long, lost manuscript by Edgar Allan Poe and Carr "reproduces" a short passage from this hitherto unknown Auguste Dupin tale.

The Hollow Man (1935) is, IMHO, a fabulous Chestertonian-tale of the miraculous shooting of Professor Grimaud in his locked/watched study and later an equally baffling crime in Cagliostro Street, but the book seems to have lost some of its popularity in recent years (heresy!). The solution is incredible tricky and I have seen the fairness being called into question, but the story derives its admiration from offering an overly ingenious and complex situation – without the plot becoming a cluttered mess. You can perfectly understand by the end of the book how everything went down. That's what attracted fans of fiction to this book for over half a century: it's the fantastic and nearly unbelievable being pulled off in an almost perfect and convincing manner.

The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) is one of Carr's Baghdad-on-the-Thames stories, in which Dr. Fell makes his only appearances in the opening, middle and ending portion of the book – while listening to three different narratives about a strange night at the Museum of Oriental Art. Highly recommended!

The Crooked Hinge (1938) is often billed as an impossible crime novel, but the eventual explanation makes it more of an improbable murder and a Chestertonian-nightmare, but it's a great one nonetheless. The plot-threads consist of Tichborne claimants-type dispute, witchcraft, the Titanic and a creepy automaton called the Golden Hag.

The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) is one of Carr's more bizarre, but satisfying, mystery novels, in which an amateur psychologist, Marcus Chesney, stages an observational experiment to oust a murderer in his village – who killed several children with poisoned chocolates. Naturally, in a Carr story, Marcus is murdered in front of his captivated audience without anyone have spotted the murderer.

Till Death Do Us Part (1944) is Carr's most successful attempt at creating an Agatha Christie-type of village, but with his own typical spin on – which includes a persecuted woman and a locked room shooting. This one appears to have gained some popularity with 21st century readers of vintage mysteries.

He Who Whispers (1946) is considered by some as the true masterpiece from this series, because it has everything: dark, grim atmosphere, excellent story telling, misdirection and an improvement on the persecution-plot from Till Death Do Us Part – with a woman who's suspected of being a vampire and therefore a natural suspect of a seemingly impossible stabbing atop of a tower in France. I definitely liked this one, to say the least.  

The Sir Henry Merrivale-series:

The Plague Court Murders (1934) is the one that pushed me over the edge and convinced me of Carr's brilliance as a mystery writer, which was done by murdering a fraudulent medium on the premises of a haunted house – inside a locked room, of course! The solution is incredible tricky, cheeky and the murderer is neatly tugged away from the reader, but all the clues are there and that tightrope was successfully traversed.

The Unicorn Murders (1935) has Carr balancing along a similar tight-rope in order to fool the reader, but it's arguably even more successful as he balances between a formal mystery and a spy-thriller – stranding a group of survivors of an air-plane crash in a French chateau with a legendary criminal a la Arsène Lupin. There are also a couple of interesting and original (impossible) murders: people are being gored to death by an invisible unicorn!

The Punch and Judy Murders (1937) is a wacky mad chase story and pits Ken Blake against Murphy Law, while the tell-tale clues march along noticed and are eventually followed by a couple of false solutions. A very competent and amusing entry in this series.   

The Judas Window (1938) is arguably the most iconic book in this series and sports one of Carr's most original trick, but the clip the length of this blog-post I'll refer you to my full review of the book.

Nine-and Death Makes Ten (1940) is a personal favorite of mine and possibly one of the best shipboard mysteries, which places H.M. aboard a munitions-carrying ship crossing submarine-infested waters and has an interesting impossible situation – that of bloody, "ghostly" fingerprints that doesn't match with any of the passengers.

She Died a Lady (1943) is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this series, but, again, to prevent this post from assuming the size of bloated canal corpse, I'll refer you to the full review of this book.

The Skeleton in the Clock (1948) is, admittedly, the weakest admission on this list, but the plot is still very descent and concerns itself with poison-pen letters, an impossible crime in the past and recent murder at a disused prison complex – which are neatly tied together by the end of the story. But the best parts of the story are the comedic bits-and-pieces, which genuinely made me laugh when I read it for the first time.

The standalone-and historical mysteries:

Poison in Jest (1932) is a gothic-style mystery novel and takes place in a decaying, Pennsylvanian mansion in the dead of winter, which has a creepy, brooding atmosphere depicting such horrors as a disembodied hand from Caligula's statue "run" along the window ledges like a spider. There's also poisoned brandy pored from a sealed bottle and dying laughter echoing through the dilapidated hallways. I really want to re-read this one!

The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936) is a brilliantly conceived and convincingly argued reconstruction of a real-life crime from the days of Charles II, but it's mainly included here because it perfect demonstration of the authors gift for resuscitating the past through the written word.

The Emperor's Snuff-Box (1942) is a triumph among Carr's standalone novels, but I'll refer you to my full review for reasons previously stated in this post.

The Bride of Newgate (1950) is Carr's first historical mystery novel and one of his best, but, once again, I have to refer you to my previously review of the book.

The Devil in Velvet (1951) was considered by the author himself to be one of his finest achievements and how can you argue against it? The book revolves around a deal with the devil himself, which sees an exchange of Professor Nicholas Fenton's soul for a one-way trip to the late 1600s – in a futile attempt to prevent a murder by poisoning. However, this capsule synopsis doesn't do any justice to the book as a whole.  

Captain Cut-Throat (1955) is a strange, but massively underrated, hybrid-novel stitching together the seams of the spy-and adventure stories with that of the traditional mystery – which takes the form of an invisible assailant, the titular "Captain Cut-Throat," bumping off Napoleon's sentries on the eve of the planned invasion of England. If there's one of Carr's lesser-known works that deserves recognition, it's this one! And I'll be re-reading and reviewing it before long.

Well, if there's one thing that became obvious after compiling this list, it's that I'm a bit of a heretic myself, because time has dimmed a lot of the details of the books I have read. So this list is already a candidate for revision somewhere in the future.

On a final note, there two more, locked room-related things: yesterday, I posted a review of Michael Bowen's Washington Deceased (1990), which featured a shooting in locked, guarded-and camera-watched supply room inside a prison complex. Secondly, I found an old, beaten-up Dutch paperback edition of Det slutna rummet (The Locked Room, 1972) by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but I begin to regret the purchase – because this duo almost repelled me from the detective story in my early days of discovery. So is this one as good as some fans say it is or is it dreadful and depressing as everything else they wrote?

Anyhow, I'll be back with something from the Golden Age before too long. Stay tuned!

Death Behind Bars

"You've got the murderer locked in there like a cockroach under a drinking glass. How does he get out?"

- Inspector Poland (Joseph Commings' "Murder Under Glass," from Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner, 2004) 

In a recent cumulative blog-post, titled "The Locked Room Reader II: An Overview," which commemorated the two hundredth post tagged as a "locked room mystery," I mentioned several modern practitioners of impossible crime stories – such as Herbert Resnicow and Bill Pronzini.

Michael Bowen is trial lawyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the United States and an author of about a dozen mystery novels, who I have seen mentioned in the same breath as the previously mentioned locked room artisans. But his detective stories had eluded me until now.

It's not for a lack of interest. In an edition of "The Jury Box," from an issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from the early 1990s, Jon L. Breen opined that Bowen was "one of the most promising detective-story classicist to debut in the last couple of years" and his stories appears to be crammed with the kind of impossible problems haunting up the works of John Dickson Carr and Edward D. Hoch.

So, I'm not entirely sure why a self-described, unapologetic classicist, like yours truly, who can't go for more than two or three blog-posts without bringing up a locked room mystery took so long to get around this author. But that's one of those unanswerable, ponderous questions of life for you.

Washington Deceased (1990) introduces Richard Michaelson, who's a thirty-five year veteran of the Foreign Service of the State Department, all-round Washington insider and author of a slim, hardcover volume by the title of Bright Lines and Slippery Slopes: Nine Fallacies in Current Foreign Policy Discourse – which he sees being clutched at a meeting by 19-year-old Wendy Gardner.

Wendy Gardner is the daughter of an ex-senator, named Desmond Gardner, currently serving time in a Federal Minimum Security Correctional Facility in Maryland on a bribery conviction, but a chance at parole is looming on the horizon. However, a sugar-related investigation might block Gardner from tasting his freedom again. Which is why Gardner contacted Michaelson through his daughter and asked him for chat at the prison face to face.

The first half of Washington Deceased mainly consists of establishing Michaelson as a character of this series, which shows him as "brave, cool and arrogant" with a "definite idea where he wants to be when the next President comes in," but would "lie, cheat or steal to get on the right guy's short list for one of the jobs he has in mind." So, not exactly a hand-wringing bureaucrat, but a politician nonetheless.

There are, of course, some things to be said about Washington itself, or rather, the political-machine it hosts, which has (for example) the State Department spying on the CIA, because the latter was "not good at telling the State Department and Congress everything it found out" – which gave the place an Alice-in-Wonderlandesque spot of madness. Like the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. There were also some conversational snippets predicting a collapse of Apartheid in South Africa and a crumbling influence of the Soviet Union.

I found these parts quite enjoyable, because it placed the detective story in a different territory, but only part of the story that of interest, plot-wise, was the seemingly inexplicable locked room shooting in prison.

"Sweet" Tony Martinelli was "a thumb breaker" specialized in "labor racketeering," which exists of coaxing "union members not to be overly inquisitive about what's happening to their pension funds" and shake down employers by convincing people "not to interfere with illegal work stoppages." A charming personality who was quite out of place in the minimum secured facility housing non-violent offenders.

So it's not a surprise someone wanted an end to Martinelli's existence, but the real problem arises in answering how this unknown person managed to do it!

Tony Martinelli is shot in a locked basement supply room, numbered "B-4," with a Colt .22, which was left inside the room and the shooting was on a surveillance camera – and that's where the problems begin to arise. The only room in the window was barred, locked and framed with a metal detector-alarm and the same goes for pretty much the entire premise. There are three floor plans showing how many cameras and metal detectors are strewed around the complex, which makes it "totally impossible for any inmate" to have "left the Supply Room by any means."

The explanation for this seemingly impossible murder has flashes of originality and imagination, which possibly betrayed a love for stage-illusions on the authors part, but the complexity of the trick came at the expense of believability – evidenced by the amount of ground Michaelson had to cover to explain each step of the murder.

The murderer had to do "a whole series of things that incredibly increased the chance" of being spotted "doing something that would get him convicted of murder," which is hard to explain in a convincing manner without Murphy's Law rearing its ugly head.

You really need to calculate one or two (minor) screw-ups in order to give this kind of real-time, murderous illusions a shred of credibility, but I can easily forgive this – 'cause I love originally thought-out impossible problems. I had a much bigger problem how some of the details were half-assed such as how the murder weapon got into the facility as a whole. The answer supplied: "how does cocaine get in... how does contraband of any kind get in," followed by "no prison on Earth is airtight." Well, the solution how the pistol got into locked and metal-detector protected supply room was definitely a lot better. And puzzling along and making up false solutions was fun as well. 

Overall, Washington Deceased was an interesting, if imperfect, introduction to Michael Bowen's locked room novels, which requires further investigation before giving my final judgment. I remember reading some positive things about Worst Case Scenario (1996) and Collateral Damage (1999). So one of those two will probably be the next Bowen I'll be reading.

A Question of Tempo

"I want to seize fate by the throat."

- Ludwig van Beethoven 

Alfred A.G. Clarke is primarily remembered under his chosen alias, namely "Cyril Hare," which appeared on the cover of several works of popular detective-fiction, but the often overlooked legal career of the author functioned as an obvious repository of inspiration for those stories – having served as both a barrister and a judge.

There are nine novels and a volume of short stories, published over a span of three decades, beginning with Tenant for Death (1937), which introduced Inspector Mallett.

A second series-characters is introduced in Tragedy at Law (1942): a disillusioned barrister, named Francis Pettigrew, who prefers not to clad himself in the mantle of Sherlock Holmes. Luckily for the reader, "Cabot Cove-syndrome" wasn't a diagnosable condition in Pettigrew's days. So he does not have much sway in the matter.

There is, however, an upheaval in the personal life of Pettigrew in the opening of Hare's sixth mystery novel, When the Wind Blows (1949), having transitioned from a middle-aged bachelor to a married man and settled down to "a life of domesticity in the country" – which include being the honorary treasurer to the Markshire Orchestral Society.

It had begun fairly innocently. Pettigrew was called in as a consultant, of sort, to help settle an absurd dispute, but reluctantly became fully involved as a prelude to murder began to softly play in the background.

The first quarter of the plot consists primarily of planning, compiling and squabbling over the content of a concert programme for their annual performance at City Hall, which is done in Hare's elegant, literate style and keen eye for characterization.

You're almost lulled into believing you're actually reading a "novel of character," instead of a detective story, but for an altercation between the solo violinist, Lucy Carless, and a Polish clarinetist, Tadeusz Zbartorowski, which makes the latter bow-out and leaving them to find a last-minute replacement. A substitute is found and the concert does take place, but never reaches its final crescendo. The concert is prematurely cancelled when they stumble across the strangled remains of Lucy Carless backstage!

The task of snarling the responsible party in the death of the solo violinist is basically divided between two "teams" of detectives.

The U.S. title of When the Wind Blows

First of all, there's Detective-Inspector Trimble of the City Division of the Markshire County Constabulary, a young policeman who's "well aware that he had yet to prove himself," accompanied "by an elderly, skeptical sergeant of the old dispensation" named Tate – who are officially in charge of the investigation and they perform most of the legwork. However, Francis Pettigrew is reposed in an armchair and is reluctant "to be drawn into the inquiry," despite having "stumbled on something that had helped to uncover a crime" in the past, but finds himself cattle-probed into action by Chief-Constable MacWilliam.

I really enjoyed the interaction between those two and they're reportedly reunited in That Yew Tree's Shade (1954), but back to the book at hand.

The chapters in which the investigation is being discussed between Chief-Constable MacWilliam and Pettigrew or Trimble show the simplistic complexity of the case, because there aren't any sub-plots to distract from the main problem – which includes such perplexities as an unknown substitute clarinetist taking the place of first substitute during the concert. Who was stranded in a different town by an unknown driver in a stolen car. It's obvious someone slapped together an alibi, but how it was pulled off and by who is different question altogether.

It makes for a trim, streamlined plot with barely an ounce of fat on the story. However, When the Wind Blows suffers from a particular kind of weakness that appears to be a hereditary trait in Hare's work, which is basically grossly overestimating the intelligence of his readers – as the motivation in his books usually hinge on obscure points of law, history or literature. You basically have to be a polymath to solve those aspects of the books, but it's hard not to admire a writing who can tie-together Mozart's Prague Symphony, Charles Dicksens' David Copperfield (1850), a personal specialty of Henry VIII and a question of tempo.

So, all in all, I wouldn't place When the Wind Blows in the same league as Hare classics, such as Suicide Excepted (1939) and An English Murder (1951), but there was a definite effort made to place it there and its author sure came close in doing so.

Finally, in my review of Cold Blood (1952) by Leo Bruce, I commented on the gloomy, post-War atmosphere of the book and "D for Doom" responded as follow: "They still had rationing until 1954" and "the Labor Party wanted rationing to continue forever," which would mean the "future was going to be gray and bleak and dull."

Coincidently, I came across a couple of interesting lines in When the Wind Blows pertaining to these post-war rationings, which I had to share coming so close after reading Cold Blood.

Upon visiting Pettigrew, MacWilliam remarks, "in these days of shortages and rationing, it should be considered perfectly proper for guests to bring with them morsels of tea and sugar and disgusting little packets of margarine for the benefit of their hosts." There's a report on "the fatal stockings" that "had been destined to choke the life out of Lucy Carless," but tracing their purchase proved completely impossible, because "the stocking-starved maids and matrons of Markhampton and the surrounding countryside" had "stampeded into the shop and cleared the place of the first fully-fashioned sheer, superfine nylons that had been seen in the city for many a long month."

Is it just a coincidence I came across these lines so soon after reading Cold Blood or did I always ignore this late-part of the British WWII mysteries? Anyhow, I'll probably back sooner than later with a new review and/or post.

The Last Harvest

"Oh, it's so awful. All those dreadful newspaper headlines! They seem to be positively baying after him, like bloodhounds."

- Freda Ducrow (Leo Bruce's Cold Blood, 1952)

Bruce Montgomery was a composer and conductor who scored a number of British comedies and films, such as the Carry On-series and The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), but today he is mostly remembered as "Edmund Crispin" – author of nine mystery novels and numerous short stories.

Crispin was among the last wave of traditional, puzzle-oriented mystery writers to emerge from the Golden Era of the genre, which included such luminaries as Christianna Brand and Kelley Roos. Some have even referred to Crispin's series-characters as the Last Golden Age Detective.

The name of this character is Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature, who made his primary appearance in The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), which was inspired by the works of his favorite mystery writer – none other than the great John Dickson Carr.

Crispin solidified Fen as genuine prodigy of the Golden Age in such classic and wonderful mystery novels as the farcical The Moving Toyshop (1946) and Swan Song (1947), which is a very Carrian locked room conundrum. The only thing I can bring against them is that I have read practically the entire series before this blog came into existence.

I would've loved to have been able to jotted down and dumped my initial, perhaps overly enthusiastic impressions of this series on here, but the only book that was left unread on my shelves was a posthumous collection of short stories. Most of them short-shorts of no more than 4 or 5 pages.

Fen Country: Twenty-Six Stories (1979) was published a year after Crispin passed away and the stories were harvested from the pages of the London Evening Standard, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Winter's Crime – where they originally appeared between the years 1953 and 1969. They're a jumble of series-and standalone stories with a couple of solo-cases for Inspector Humbleby.

So, let's take 'em down from the top!

"Who Killed Baker?" was written in collaboration with fellow composer Geoffrey Bush, who came up with the plot-idea, and stands as one of Crispin's most well-known and successful short stories – partially due to it having been used as padding for several anthologies. It's basically a riddle in story form and its punch line is designed to fool avid mystery readers, which is probably why I have seen it referred to as "an anti-detective story." But I enjoyed it. 

"Death and Aunt Fancy" is one of the better shorts from this collection, in which Fen quite easily solves the smothering-death of an aunt of one of his pupils based on a cryptic remark, "I don’t know why she's doing this," and a hearing aid-device. The main problem with these short-shorts is clueing, but this is not one of them! 

In "The Hunchback Cat," Fen tells a story about the Coping family and their long-standing tradition of parricide. There are only two Copings left when Fen meets them and one of them is soon found inside locked room of a medieval castle tower, but it's not an impossible crime and the final explanation is a let down. The clue of the cat was quite interesting, though. 

"The Lion's Tooth" is what an elderly nun mutters after getting whacked over the head and the daughter of wealthy businessman, Mary, is snatched from the convent. The title functions as a sort of "dying message," but Fen manages to work out its meaning and rescues the girl.

I would qualify "Gladstone's Candlestick" as a locked room mystery and has Fen proving one of his students innocent of theft of a valuable candlestick without having to "postulate any nonsense about duplicate keys," but in order to do so there’s a bit of cheating on the author's side – which is a pity.

"The Man Who Lost His Head" finds Fen involved in the theft of a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci from the study of Sir Gerald McComas and his worst fear is that the drawing is still within the family. I found this to be a rather forgettable story.

"The Two Sisters" retraces some plot-points from "Death and Aunt Fancy," but it's not a rewrite and perfectly stands by itself. A man by the name of Wyndham is an insomniac and recovering from a nervous breakdown, which is why he accepted an offer from aunt to stay at her cottage – miles away from the busy, civilized world. During one of his sleepless nights, Wyndham witnesses something disturbing outside and Fen knows exactly what kind of game is being played. A good and fun story that was reminiscent of the suspense stories by Anthony Gilbert.

"Outrage in Stepney" is a Cold War-type story and only of interest for its linguistic clue involving the German language, President Eisenhower's name ("Eisssenhoer") and some hinting references to the situation in post-World War II England ("just don't start heiling Mosley..."). Why do Cold War stories-and novels so seldom measure up to World War II mysteries in the plotting department?

However, "A Country to Sell" is a story of international intrigue from the mid-1950s, which does live up to its World War II counterparts and even chugs in a locked room mystery for good measure. Christopher Bradbury is a Washington-agent and Oxford graduate who consult Gervase Fen on a delicate, baffling problem which has had far-reaching and deadly consequences. A couple of "months of work collapsed in ruins" after "communicated instructions by phone" leaked out, which were given over a secured line that was "safe from tapping" and received in a room with the door and window "closed and fastened." You can argue that the technical aspect of the solution makes the story dated, but it was a nice surprise following in the footsteps of the previous story.

"A Case in Camera" is the first solo-appearance for Detective-Inspector Humbleby and helps his "wife's sister's husband," Superintendent Pollitt of Munsingham City CID, closing a case of murder during a breaking-and entering of a home. The photographic alibi is interesting in how it relates to the location and time-of-death of the victim, but I couldn't help thinking it was wasted on a written story – because it would've been a nifty trick for TV.

"Blood Sport" is another solo case for Detective-Inspector Humbleby and it's a forensic story touching upon a ballistic-type of problem when the police is confronted with a suspiciously barrel in a shooting death. Yeah, I barely remember this story. So, I probably wasn't too impressed by it.

"The Pencil" is a standout story in the literal sense of the word. It's a hardboiled story treading on the heels of professional killer assigned to infiltrate and neutralize the leader of rival gang, which has to be done by posing as "poisoned bait" – and not everything works out in the end as it was planned. I did not expect this type of hardboiled story from Crispin, but when they're as good as this one I can almost understand why some readers prefer the rough and tumble to the puzzle-oriented stories. Almost!

"Windhover Cottage" is a short-short story featuring Detective-Sergeant Robartes of Scotland Yard, who demolishes an alibi by stumbling to a stock-in-trade mistake amateur murderers often make when employing the use of an automobile – which made for a decent, but not outstanding, story.

I can barely remember anything about "The House by the River," except that neither Fen nor Humbleby were present. The same goes for "After Evensong" except that the murderer was caught on an inconsistency in a statement to the police, which is never a good sign for a detective story. Luckily, quality picks up again with the next couple of stories!

"Death Behind Bars" is proper short story-length and consists of a letter written by an Assistant Commissioner about "what thriller-writers describe as an impossible murder or a locked room mystery," which took place inside a prison cell and the only suspect with a motive lacked the opportunity to administer the poison. The poisoning method in combination with the background of the character, motive and identity of the murderer makes for a cleverly plotted story. I really enjoyed this one for obvious reasons!

As you'll probably deduce from the long-title, "We Know You're Busy Writing, But We Thought You Wouldn't Mind If We Just Dropped In For A Minute" is a humorous story about a crime writer whose patience is slowly eroded by constant interruptions. Crispin was as much as a satirist of detective stories as Leo Bruce, but this is the first story in this collection that really showcased that aspect of his full-length mysteries. A fun and enjoyable story!  

"Cash and Delivery" was a previously unpublished story and another one that proved to be too short and unremarkable to have anchored itself in my short-term memory, which prevents me from saying anything sensible about.

"A Shot in the Dark" reunites Fen and Humbleby as the later tells of a shooting-case in a place called Cassibury Bardwell, which "too big to be village and too small to be a town," and has Crispin's take on Agatha Christie's eternal triangle – and whether this one has a happy ending is debatable.

"The Mischief Done" is one of a handful stories in this collection that's longer than 4 or 5 pages and revolves around 100,000 pounds diamond, called Reine des Odalisques, which snatched from under Humbleby's nose. You can probably put it down to the length of most of the stories here, but the plot didn't appear to justify the "length" of this rather average story.

"Merry-Go-Round" is a fun, anecdotal story told by Humbleby to Fen about Detective-Inspector Snodgrass, the Yards "expert on literary forgeries," but "far from being an amiable character" – who offended a newspaper baron and book-collector with enough money and his own printing press to take the piss out of the forgery expert. A good combination of the author's cleverness and sense of humor!

"Occupational Risk" has Gervase Fen suggesting a psychological test to fret out the person who left a body underneath a coffin in a freshly dug grave.

"Dog in the Night-Time" has another one of Fen's pupils asking the professor for help and Anne Cargill's problem pertains to yet another stolen diamond, which her late-father purchased and was probably pinched by the estate-executor or her uncle. Fen uses a Sherlockian principle to sniff out a clue and the use of dust in this story makes up for its unfair use in the candlestick story earlier in this collection.

Words of caution from the Crime-Composer

Detective-Inspector Humbleby observes in "Man Overboard" how "writers of fiction get very heated and indignant about blackmail," but the "death of a known blackmailer is a great event" for the police, because a number of unsolved cases can be tidied up "by a quick run through the deceased's papers" – sometimes even murder cases. Humbleby tells a pretty good and strong story of a nearly undiscovered, unsolved murder to illustrate his claim, but it also drove home the point of fiction writers that the only good blackmailer is a dead one. Either way, it's a good story.

"The Undraped Torse" has Gervase Fen solving the problem of a man who has problem with his face being photographed, but broke an expensive camera when a picture was being taken of his lower body. A pretty meh-story.

"Wolf!" is about the shooting of a rich, practical joker while he was on the phone with his son and there are only two suspects, both of his sons, but they are both in possession of a cast-iron alibi – which revolves around old-fashioned kind of telephone. But so does the solution. By the way, I'm sure I have read an extremely similar short story from another writer, but I can't remember where or by whom. Any help?

Well, that's all of them and I'll finish this overlong review here by saying Fen Country is the usual mixed bag of tricks, which is nearly always the case with short stories. But the good ones made it worth the journey and I'll guess this is as good an excuse as any to re-read some of the full-length Gervase Fen mysteries.