The Astronomical Body

"Impossible is a hell of a strong word, Doctor."

- Elijah Baley (Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, 1954)

John Russell Fearn was an incredible prolific British (pulp) author who dabbled in an array of genres, which encompassed science-fiction, westerns and detective stories, under a multitude of pennames – including "John Slate," "Thornton Ayre" and "Hugo Blayn." A large number of Fearn's work, under as many pseudonyms, were catalogued by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991). So it was only a matter of time before I got around to sampling some of his work.

In the early 1950s, Fearn wrote a brace of science-fiction mysteries, as by "Volsted Gridban," which are both listed as impossible crime novels. The Master Must Die (1953) and The Lonely Astronomer (1954) record the investigations of a scientific detective from the later part of the 22nd century. For some inexplicable reasons, I decided to go with the second and last novel in this short-lived series.

The Lonely Astronomer is set at the Metropolitan Observatory in London, England, which is the pride of British engineers from the year 2190: the site occupied by the observatory "was over five square miles in area" and in the center of the "park-like space" there's a base of a mighty, two-mile high column – "upon the top of which the Observatory was poised." It's a marvel of futuristic design, but the person presiding over this astronomical "crow's nest" is the detestable Dr. Henry Brunner.

Dr. Brunner is as talented as an astronomer as he's at making enemies and supplied everyone around him with ample ammunition to justify their dislike for him.

He "courted" his twenty-five-year old spectrographic assistant, Monica Adley, with all the charm of a medieval robber baron, which did not go over well with her love-interest, David Calhoun, who's an assistant astronomer. There's an actual alien working for the Observatory, Sasmo of Procyon, who arrived on Earth after an "awful voyage across the endless endlessness of space" that lasted twenty-seven generations, but Brunner disrespectfully scoffed at the knowledge and skill being brought to the table by this being from the stars. Finally, there's the janitor and general factotum of the place, simply known as Joe, who owns a peculiar kind of pet: Loony, the Martian gossamer-spider.

The rainbow-hued spiders were created by settler scientists "in a specially cultivated forest environment under colossal pressurized domes" on the Martian surface. They're large, extremely intelligent creatures that are "as frail as a puffball" and "completely non-poisonous," who spend most of their time spinning intricately woven webs that "glitter and flowed like phantasmal rainbows," but Brunner had ordered its destruction – because it roamed around.

So it hardly comes as a shock when Joe finds Brunner inside the Observatory with an ugly gash across his forehead and strangulation marks on his throat.

The first Adam Quirke SF-mystery

The police have a special interest in Calhoun and Sasmo as potential suspects, but the problem is that nobody appears to have had an opportunity to commit the murder and "got away without being seen by the janitor." Joe has been ruled out as a suspect "by his age and general feebleness compared to the strength of Brunner."

Enter Adam Quirke: a heavyset, six-feet-nine giant of a man with a round face and a white mane, but this physically overawing man is prone to constant fits of violent and prolonged laughter, which became really annoying after only a short period. Just as annoying as referring to his secretary as "light of my life," which only served to pad out this already very short novel. Quirke is easily one of the most annoying detectives I've ever come across.

Thankfully, those quirks began to subside as soon as Quirke decided to act as a proper detective and the double-pronged solution he proffered to the death of Dr. Brunner was vivid and original – even though it was deeply engrained in the science-fiction genre.

I figured out the direct cause of the injuries, but the indirect cause was something different altogether. It's what made me close the book without the feeling of having wasted my time, which is a fear I had several times while reading the book, because The Lonely Astronomer has its fair share of flaws: one aspect of the solution, concerning the victim, was not properly hinted at, spiders are referred to as insects and than there is Quirke's annoying mannerisms.

It's interesting to note that our time is more advanced in some aspects than Fearn's imagination of the far-flung future of 2191: they have colonized Mars and dabbled in genetic manipulation, but the only information that can be drawn from blood is to which group it belongs and a device similar to our CAT-scan has only recently been invented – which is called (no joke) "The Penetrator." Somehow, that did not throw Quirke in a fit of laughter.

So, The Lonely Astronomer is not a classic of its kind, but it’s an interesting specimen and another example showing The Caves of Steel (1954) by Isaac Asimov was not the first of its kind. Something I discovered when I read Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet (1942). By the way, I was inspired to bump this up my to-be-read list by a review of The Naked Sun (1957) on Ho-Ling's blog. You might find it a reason to read it, if you haven't done so already.

Finally, allow me to draw your attention to my review of Robin Forsythe's The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933), which I posted yesterday. I might return to Forsythe for my next review, because I really enjoyed my introduction to his work. So, once again, stay glued to that screen!

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

"I'm here on Mars for a specific purpose... there's the job of bringing you to justice."

- Dillon Stover (Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet, 1942) 

"Robin Forsythe" was born Robert Forsythe in 1879 in Sialkot, British India (present-day Pakistan), as the eldest son of a distinguished cavalryman and seemed to be destined for an uneventful, but respectable, existence – while a nurturing his childhood dream of living by his pen as a fiction writer. A normally disastrous, life ruining encounter with the long-arm of the law inadvertently placed Forsythe in a position that turned that dream into reality.

In 1927, Scotland Yard conducted an undercover operation at Somerset House and carried out "intensive police laboratory examination of hundreds of suspect documents," which resulted in the arrest of Forsythe and several co-conspirators. Over a year-and-a-half period, they earned 50,000 pounds from the illicit sales of high value judicature stamps. Stamps that were removed from documents that had their cancellation marks obliterated with acid. 

It was a clever scheme that at the time evoked comparisons with the tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and our very own genre historian, Curt Evans, likened "the fraudulent enterprise" to "something out of the imaginative crime fiction" of the "post Golden Age lawyer-turned-author Michael Gilbert," but the lucrative venture ended with a fifteen-month prison sentence – during which Forsythe began to make serious work of his unfulfilled dream of being a writer. Forsythe's release from prison coincided with the publication of his first mystery novel: Missing or Murdered (1929). 

Between 1929 and 1937, Forsythe penned and published eight mystery novels: five of were part of the Algernon Vereker series and the remaining three were standalone novels. The books were well received upon publication and drew favorable comments from a number of Golden Age luminaries, but slowly drifted into obscurity after their author passed away in 1937, which is a mistake that's now being rectified by the indispensable Dean Street Press and Curt Evans – who're doing a stellar job at filling the void that the Rue Morgue Press left behind!

I initially wanted to read The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), but that particular title was not yet available for purchase. So I settled for my second choice, The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933), because ocean-bound detective stories have the tendency to be pretty good. I was not wrong in this instance. 

The Pleasure Cruise Mystery begins with Manuel Ricardo, a high-spirited member of "the noble army of artists in prose fiction," convincing his friend, Anthony "Algernon" Vereker, to accompany him on a pleasure cruise aboard the Green Star Company’s luxury liner "Mars." Vereker is a gentleman-artist with a growing reputation as an amateur detective, but critics slated his "last atrocity" and suffered some "bad luck in the Armadale murder," which offers up a picture of an educated, but fallible, character. A picture that also begs to be compared with E.C. Bentley's Philip Trent and Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. 

Ricardo is convinced that immersion "in the joyous inanities of a charming social life," during a pleasure cruise, is the easiest and quickest way for Vereker to bounce back from his recent spade of bad performances, but the very epithet of pleasure makes him recoil and prefers the company of a good book and a cigar. Vereker ends up retreating to his cabin in the company of a copy of Professor Dorsey's Why We Behave Like Human Beings (1925) when voices begin to emanate from the next-door cabin, which utter such suspicious things as "you'll have to do the job as soon as possible" and "consider the awful risks" – suggesting that something unlawful might be afoot. A suggestion that seems to be confirmed when Ricardo stumbles over the body of Mrs. Mesado on D deck. 

Mrs. Mesado is the wife of an Argentinean meatpacking millionaire, Guillermo Mesado, but they had "a bit of a rumpus some weeks ago" and she "decided to console herself with a cruise." She brought along her sister, Constance, and her brother-in-law, Richard Colvin, who knew she was suffering from heart disease and knew "she might have a fatal seizure at any moment." There are, however, suspicious elements concerning the sudden death of Mrs. Mesado: the hands beneath "a pair of chamois leather gloves" were cut and bruised. A necklace, described as "a rope of alternate cinnamon and white diamonds," went missing and one with flashing blue and white stones turned up in an unexpected place. 

I'm afraid I can't reveal too much about the plot, because the story has a sparsely populated dramatis personae, which gave the book some restrictions, but Forsythe hammered a scintillating and original detective story from those limitations. It's a fresh, original and audacious treatment of a classic plot-device that offered a satisfying explanation for the cut and bruised hands of the victim, the cause of death and the exact time when life went extinct. 

However, the most admirable part of the plot is probably the nature of the crime that makes it truly comparable to Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1937): namely a scheme that’s perfect in theory, but fell apart when put into practice by the Merrivalean "blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general" – which is something I always appreciate. In my opinion, it's the best approach to make even most labyrinthine plots believable, because the complexities arise from a perfectly conceived plan going awry. 

I only have one point of criticism, namely the time Forsythe took in unveiling that explanation, which began to reek of padding after a while. Once he lifted a tip of the veil, revealing the true nature of the crime, he should have yanked off the whole sheet, but he continued to try to baffle his audience to the last possible moment. It's something to be appreciated, sure, but also cheapened the overall effect of the revelation. 

Anyhow, I think Forsythe made an excellent decision in exchanging real-life crime for fictional ones and I'll be sure to return to his work before long. I've read positive reactions about The Polo Ground Mystery (1932) and The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) sounds enticing. So expect more Forsythe and Vereker in the near future, but for my next read I'll be dipping into a SF-mystery. Stay glued to that screen!

Far From Impossible

"You're always hearin' that things were better in the good ol' days... I'll tell you one thing that was better—the mysteries. The real honest-to-goodness mysteries that happened to ordinary folks like you an' me. I've read lots of mystery stories in my time, but there's never been anything to compare with some of the things I experienced personally."

- Dr. Sam Hawthorne (Edward D. Hoch's "The Problem of the Covered Bridge," from Diagnosis Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, 1996)

Edward D. Hoch was a giant in the field of short form mysteries, having written roughly nine hundred detective stories since his literary career began in 1955, which were published in such famous periodicals as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine – spawning a sundry cast of series-characters in the process. I know that I'm perhaps slightly biased, but my favorite of Hoch's creations is unquestionably Dr. Sam Hawthorne.

Dr. Sam Hawthorne was a physician in the fictitious New England town of Northmont, but stories are his reminiscences, as an older man, on a period that stretched across three decades. The first story in the series, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge," was published in 1974 and took place in March of 1922, while the final one, "The Problem of the Secret Patient," appeared in 2008 and was set in October, 1944. It's an unusual series in that the stories and characters are not frozen in time, which tends to happen with long-running series.

Time passes at a normal rate in the small town and the people who live there, such as the (semi-) regular characters, are not unaffected by the tick-tock of the clock, but there's one element that's constant and insists on returning with the same regularity as the seasons – namely the locked room murders and other seemingly impossible problems!

Northmont has an average homicide rate that dwarfs Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove, but crimes in the former insist on defying the laws of reality: a horse-and-buggy inexplicably vanishes from a covered bridge, a man is strangled by the branches of a haunted tree, a murder is committed in a locked, octagon-shaped room and a solo-pilot is stabbed in mid-air inside a locked cockpit. These are merely a handful of examples from the first two collections of excellent stories, Diagnoses Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (1996) and More Things Impossible: The Second Casebook of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2006), but this review will concern itself with the third volume of stories, which is titled Nothing is Impossible: Further Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2014).

However, before I take a look at the individual stories, I have to make a note here and say that the collection, as a whole, was not as strong as its predecessors. Somehow, the stories lacked that magical touch or failed to live up to their own premise, which really surprised me. Hoch was known for consistency in quality, but that was not on display in this collection. Don't get me wrong: there were a couple of good stories, but none of them as original ("The Problem of the Pink Post Office") or classical ("The Problem of the Octagon Room") as some of the tales gathered in the previous volumes – which really is a pity. Now that I have dampened your spirits and enthusiasm... lets take a look at the stories!

"The Problem of the Graveyard Picnic" was published in the pages of EQMM in June 1984 and takes place in the Spring of 1932. Dr. Sam Hawthorne is moving from his small office in the center of town to a remodeled wing of Pilgrim Memorial Hospital, which is being downsized after the eighty-bed facility had "proven far too large for the town's need." In between moving and seeing patients, Hawthorne pops outside to attend the funeral of a prominent citizen in the cemetery in front of the hospital and comes across a picnicking couple, but the woman gets up and runs away when she sees the doctor – witnesses how an invisible force pushes her over a stone-railing of a swollen creek. A nice, fun little story, but I figured how it was done while the crime was in progress.

The first collection of Dr. Hawthorne stories

"The Problem of the Crying Room" appeared in November 1984 issue of EQMM and the story happens in June of 1932. Northmont is in the midst of the centennial celebration and the high point of the festivities is the opening of the town's very first talking-picture palace. The Northmont Cinema is equipped with a glassed-in, soundproof room for families with babies or small children, called a "Crying Room," but the small room attracts the attention of Sheriff Lens and Dr. Hawthorne when the projectionist commits suicide – leaving a note behind confessing to the locked room murder of Mayor Trenton on opening night. However, the opening night is not until the following night!

Mayor Trenton insists on watching part of the movie from the soundproof room, because the would-be assassin is dead, but a single gunshot goes off and wounds the Mayor. Dr. Hawthorne was with him inside the room and Sheriff Lens was guarding the only door, but all of those precautions failed to stop an aspiring assassin from taking a shot at the prospective victim. I loved the premise and the ideas Hoch was working with, but the solution seemed to lack that magical touch of ingenuity and I'm afraid there might be some medical objections to the method – such as the tendency of blood to coagulate. I still tend to like this story though.

"The Problem of the Fatal Fireworks" was first published a May 1985 issue of EQMM and takes place on the 4th of July of the same year as the previous story. It's also the first really disappointing story from this collection. The elements that were carried over from the previous story were nice and the whodunit-aspect was decent, but the question regarding how "half a stick of dynamite" was inserted into a sealed package of harmless firecrackers was hardly worth the label of an impossible crime.

"The Problem of the Unfinished Painting" was published in EQMM in February 1986 and takes place in the Fall of 1932. A very rewarding story, because it showed a negative side effect to playing amateur detective. Dr. Hawthorne is asked by Sheriff Lens to assist in the locked room murder of Tess Wainwright. She was found slumped in a chair at her easel, strangled to death with a long paint-spattered cloth, but all of the windows were latched from the inside and the cleaning lady was in sight of the only door to the studio – which she claimed was closed the entire time she was there. The fun part of the plot is that the murderer was attempting to hammer out a ironclad alibi, but unforeseen circumstances transformed into a "closed-room situation" and that ruined everything. However, while he was out playing detective something happened at the hospital that makes Dr. Hawthorne decide to devote his full attention to his patients.

"The Problem of the Sealed Bottle" was published in EQMM in May 1986 and the story takes place on December 5, 1933, which was the period when Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected President of the United States and delivered on his promise to repeal Prohibition. Slowly, the US is being stocked, legally, with booze and Northmont is no exception, but the first bottle of spirits to be (legally) unsealed contained a potassium cyanide. I thought the background of the story, death of an era, was more interesting than the plot itself.

"The Problem of the Invisible Acrobat" first appeared in the December 1986 issue of EQMM and takes place before the events from the previous story, during the summer of 1933, when the circus came to Northmont. The story has one of the better impossible problems collected in this volume of stories. Dr. Hawthorne takes Sheriff Lens' nephew, Teddy, to the circus where the death-defying stunts of the five Lampizi Brothers are part of the main attraction, but one of the them vanishes in mid-air and only leaves behind an empty trapeze – "swinging back and forth" as if "supporting the weight of an invisible acrobat." The explanation for the vanished trapeze-artist is clever without being incomprehensible, a semi-sentient being should figure out the main gist of the trick, but the vanishing is tied-in with a second plot-thread involving the body of clown covered in stab wounds. I expected more of these type of stories from Hoch in this collection.

The second collection Dr. Hawthorne stories

"The Problem of the Curing Barn" originally appeared in EQMM in September 1987 and takes place in September 1934. A wealthy business tycoon, Jasper Jennings, who came to Northmont during the depths of the Depression to grow tobacco, but he soon was murdered after the first harvest – a straight-razor slashed across his throat in a dark barn where the plants are being air-cured. Sheriff Lens is glad that it's "not one of those locked-room murders," because barn has "more holes than a rusty sieve," but there was no opportunity to get rid of the murder weapon. I've seen the explanation for the vanishing murder weapon before in stories, but they post-date this one and wonder if the trick originated in this tale.

"The Problem of the Snowbound Cabin" was published in the December 1987 issue of EQMM and takes place in January 1935, which gave the town of Northmont a much needed break from death and crime. Dr. Hawthorne takes his nurse, April, for a weeklong winter holiday in Maine, but not long after his arrival a retired stockbroker is found murdered in his log cabin. Of course, the surrounding area is covered in a blanket of snow marked only with the paw prints of a roaming bobcat, but not of a human predator, which begs the question how the murderer managed to enter and leave the cabin without leaving footprints in the snow. I appreciated the fact that Hoch tried to be original here, but the explanation seems really impractical. It should also be noted that Dr. Hawthorne loses his nurse in this story to marriage here and the next two stories revolve around her replacements.

"The Problem of the Thunder Room" appeared in April 1988 in EQMM and takes place in March of 1935 and May Russo has replaced April (yes, the joke about their names is played up), but she is deadly afraid of thunderstorms and blacks-out when they happen. May has such an attack when a freak storm surprises the town and when consciousness returns tells Hawthorne she had a dream about "a hammer and people being killed," but the problem arises when a message reaches the doctor that someone was bludgeoned to death during the thunderstorm and a witness swear it was May – could she had been in two places at the same time? Unfortunately, the explanation borders on cheating and is a less successful treatment of the whodunit-aspect from "The Problem of the Invisible Acrobat."

"The Problem of the Black Roadster" was published in the November 1988 issue of EQMM and takes place in April of 1935. The story introduces April's final replacement, Mary Best, who came to town during a deadly bank robbery. I did not care for this story, I'm afraid.

"The Problem of the Two Birthmarks" appeared in the May 1989 issue of EQMM and is set in May of 1935, in which the attempted smothering of a food poisoning victim in Pilgrim Memorial Hospital is tied to the destruction of a ventriloquist’s dummy of a restaurant entertainer and a murder by strangulation in a locked and unused operating room – to which the only key was in possession of a doctor with a cast-iron alibi. However, the locked room turns out to not be a locked room at and is somewhat of a cheat. Hoch seems to have been plain out of ideas during this period, which is especially noticeable in the next story.

"The Problem of the Dying Patient" was published in December 1989 in EQMM and takes place in June of 1935. Dr. Hawthorne gives an elderly patient her medication and she washes the pill away with a swig of clean water, but immediately afterwards dies of what is later determined to be cyanide poisoning – which may cost Hawthorne his license to practice medicine and is even suspected of a mercy killing. What I found so immensely disappointing was how the poisoning was presented, as a genuine and baffling impossibility, but the explanation revealed she had something in her mouth prior to swallowing away her medication. It was explained that the item in her mouth was slowly dissolving during her medical examination and, "when it dissolved enough," the cyanide was released and killed her. However, there were no remnants of this item found in her mouth or stomach during the post-mortem? The only thing that makes the story worth a read is the situation Hawthorne finds himself in, but not for the plot, which is atrocious.

"The Problem of the Protected Farmhouse" originally appeared in the May 1990 issue of EQMM and takes place in the final quarter of 1935. A local and paranoid Nazi-sympathizer, Rudolph Frankfurt, fortified his farmhouse to protect himself from anti-Nazi elements – effectively living "behind an electrified fence and locked doors" that's "guarded by a dog." However, an axe-wielding murderer managed to bypass those security measures, but the explanation is simply practical and workman-like instead of original and inspired.

"The Problem of the Haunted Tepee" was published in the December 1990 issue of EQMM and takes place across two centuries, which stretches from the Old West of the late 1800s to New England of the mid-1930s. Because this is a crossover story! Ben Snow had "been a cowboy during the 1880s and '90s" and a selection of his adventures were gathered in a volume entitled The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales (1997), but there was one unexplained episode from his career that has always haunted him. Snow has heard of Hawthorne's "reputation for solving impossible crimes" and decided to tell him the story of a haunted tepee that either killed its occupants or made them sick. It's a nifty variation on the "Room That Kills" theme with lots of historical color that brought a two completely separate series-characters, which is something I love as much as a good locked room mysteries. There are simply not enough crossovers in our genre!

"The Problem of the Blue Bicycle” appeared in the April 1991 issue of EQMM and took place in September 1936, which centers on a girl who went missing as if something from the sky had plucked her from the bicycle. It's an OK story, but nothing special or particular interesting.

Well, that was the final entry in this collection, but I seem to have been slightly more positive when judging the stories on an individual basis. However, the collection as a whole remains the weakest of the three, which is a real shame. I also wish I could've begun this year on a somewhat more positive note, but I happen to pick some less than perfect work. Oh well, better luck with the next one!

Now, if you'll excuse me for a minute, I have to go into hiding, because I'm sure a certain Hoch-fanboy will appear any moment now to point and shriek at me like Donald Sutherland from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Die Like Thunder

"Detectives never guess... they draw exact deductions from given premises."

- Bobby Owen (E.R. Punshon's Ten Star Clues, 1941) 

Writing as "John Bude," an English theatrical producer and director by the name of Ernest C. Elmore penned and published thirty detective novels over the span of nearly twenty-five years – all of which are reputedly to be very rare and highly collectible.

Fortunately, the British Library has reissued a handful of books from Bude's impressive body of work: The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), The Lake District Murder (1935) and The Sussex Down Murder (1936). Death on the Riviera (1952) is scheduled for release in March of this year.

These brand new editions are introduced by Martin Edwards, an accomplished crime writer and genre historian, who observes that Bude's debut novel contains several clues that help to explain his growing popularity more than half a century after his death – which has partially to do with a "writing style" that is "relaxed and rather more polished than one would expect from a first-time novelist." I also believe Bude's poorly masked love for the detective story played a part in being embraced by a contemporary and appreciative reading audience, which is especially noticeable in the opening chapter of The Cornish Coast Murder.

Reverend Dodd, Vicar of St. Michael's-on-the-Cliff, Boscawen, has a tradition Monday evening ceremony with Doctor Pendrill. They smoke and have metaphysical arguments, but the true purpose of their weekly tradition is to indulge in their vicarious, but perfectly commonly, "lust for crime stories." Every week, they borrow and share pieces of crime fiction from the local library and Reverend Dodd compiled an interesting selection for their latest meeting: Edgar Wallace, "the new J.S. Fletcher," J.J. Farjeon, Dorothy L. Sayers and Freeman Wills Crofts – some of them I have yet to read myself. I guess that's why I've never been able to shake off the feeling that I have only scratched the surface of the genre.

Anyway, Reverend Dodd and Dr. Pendrill are provided with an opportunity to put all that accumulated knowledge from fiction into practice when a phone-call comes in for the doctor.

The local squire of the small, isolated village of some four-hundred souls, Julius Tregarthan, was found dead in his study: someone had fired several shots under the cover of a raging thunderstorm and one of the bullets "went clean through the brain." It's a strain on the brain of the local police force, Constable Grouch and Inspector Bigswell, because viable suspects, motives and evidence are thinly spread around.  

Firstly, there's a niece, Ruth, who was nurturing an intimate friendship with a local writer and World War I veteran, Ronald Hardy, but her uncle disapproved of the friendship. An admittedly weak motive, but one that has to be taken seriously by the police after both Hardy and his service revolver disappeared – coupled with the obvious prevaricate behavior of Ruth. Secondly, a local black sheep and village bad man, Ned Salter, who had been imprisoned by Tregarthan and evicted from his cottage was seen arguing with the victim on the day of the shooting and there's gambling servant who had a monetary motive.

However, it's the Reverend Dodd who figured out answers to several of the most nagging questions blocking the path to the entire solution, which include the "strange lack of footprints on the cliff-path" and a logical explanation for "the widely scattered shots" that "starred the glass" of the study-windows.

I can only praise this part of the story for being both original and logical, but the overall quality of the story was marred by a combination of two flaws: the murderer is a minor character that hovered in the background and the motivation of this person was never properly hinted at. That left me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I enjoyed the smooth writing, the characters and some of the ideas, which was somewhat reminiscent of E.R. Punshon, but the ending felt like an absolute cheat. I wish I could end this review on a far more positive note than this, but the ending was what it was.

So if you, like me, attach some importance to the Golden Age rules of fair play, you'll probably end up a little bit disappointed that The Cornish Coast Murder did not sustain itself as a proper, fair play Golden Age mystery right up till the ending. However, I agree with Edwards that, as a debut novel, it's an extremely well written and characterized novel. There have been A-list contemporaries of Bude who fared far worst in their first outing. So I'm still tempted to explore his later work as well.

Well, that's the first review for 2016 and I'll be dipping in some impossible crime material for the second one, which should come as a complete and utter surprise to you. Anyhow, I wish each and every one of you all the best for this year!

Murder in Retrospect: The Best and Worst of 2015

"...scattered across the country is a small but determined group of readers... who devour almost every mystery story published. They take their daily dose of murder with the frenzied enthusiasm of a drug addict. They know all the tricks; they have followed all the detectives, erudite, exotically Oriental, depressingly homespun; they are familiar with all the ways a human being can be put to death."

-  Philip van Doren Stern ("The Case of the Corpse in the Blind Alley," from The Virginia Quarterly Review, 1941)

First of all, the amusing opening quote for this obligatory annual round-up post comes courtesy of Past Offenses, who recently uncovered an article from the early 1940s in which the author rages impotently about people avidly consuming the kind of books he looks down upon – concluding that the "root of their devotion can probably be traced to an unhappy childhood" or "a maladjusted sex life." Fortunately, Phil gave us the verbal ass pounding we had been yearning for since 1841 and finally made men out of us!

Secondly, I hope everyone survived the busy, demanding ordeal of the festive season and enjoyed themselves on Christmas Day. I surely did. Well, I could pad out this post further, but I'll stop myself here and immediately skip to the meat of the matter: a list of the best-and worst mysteries read in 2015! They've been surprisingly voluminous this time around, because I had a rather slow start this year and there were even months I had barely read anything worth mentioning.

So here is, without further ado, the annual best-of/worst-of list:  

THE BEST MYSTERIES READ IN 2015:

Spider's Web (2000) by Agatha Christie and Charles Osborne

A novelisation by Charles Osborne of a stage-play Agatha Christie wrote in 1954 for Margaret Lockwood, who wanted a role that would exploit her talent for comedy, which resulted in a humorous thriller about a diplomat's wife stumbling over a body in the library – not long before her husband is expected to come home with an important foreign guest. A fun and clever little mystery that's not as well known as other pieces from Christie's large body of work.

The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966) by Robert Arthur

This was the sixth book in a series of juvenile mysteries about The Three Investigators, but it was my introduction to Jupiter "Jupe" Jones, Peter Crenshaw and Bob Andrews. It's a gem of a case: they're asked by none other than Alfred Hitchcock to figure out who's committing acts of thievery and vandalism on the set of a suspense movie, which involves an abandoned amusement park with a haunted merry-go-round and an island that used to double as a pirate hideout. Where there are pirates, there's bound to be treasure!

Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) by Yukito Ayatsuji

A book credited with launching the neo-orthodox movement in Japan and a fun riff on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939), but populated with the Asian counterparts of the characters from Peter Lovesey's Bloodhounds (1996). The characters are members of a university club dedicated to detective story and they decided to stay on an abandoned island that had been site of a tragedy. Of course, a fresh series of murders is dogging their heels! A very fun and important mystery novel that was translated by our very own Ho-Ling Wong.

Cold Blood (1952) by Leo Bruce

Lamentably, Bruce retired Sgt. Beef as his series-character after the publication of this novel, but it's a magnificent sendoff to such a wonderful and sadly under-appreciated detective character. Sgt. Beef is engaged to investigate the bludgeoning of a misanthropic recluse in a dark, gloomy-looking Georgian mansion and soon comes to the conclusion that much more than simply his reputation is on the line. The confrontation with the murderer on the rooftop may have inspired a specific episode from Jonathan Creek, which in turn may have given the writers of Sherlock an idea to explain a cliff-hanger.

The Sea Mystery (1928) by Freeman Wills Crofts

A companion piece to Croft's debut novel, The Cask (1920), which begins when two fishers hook a wooden packing crate in the waters of a Welsh inlet and discover it's macabre content: a horrendously decomposed body of a man with obliterated features. It's a seemingly insoluble problem, but the methodical Inspector French follows the clues to their logical conclusion. Somewhat of a minor classic. 

The Judas Window (1938) by Carter Dickson

If I'm not mistaken, this is the only book I re-read in 2015. However, it's one of those books that stood up very well to re-reading: a man is murdered in a hermitically sealed room and suspicion naturally falls on the only other person present in the room – who's absolutely innocent. The explanation to the impossible aspect of the plot is as classic and original as the performance of the "Old Man" in the courtroom!

Seijo no Kyusai (Salvation of a Saint, 2008) by Keigo Higashino

The second, full-length novel in the "Detective Galileo" series and has an impossible crime plot that is as clever and original as it's cheeky and unbelievable, but all of the clues where right there – embedded in the characters. I'm sure not everyone is willing to swallow the explanation, but it's a fresh and innovative treatment of the shopworn poisoning plot.  

Inherit the Stars (1977) by James P. Hogan

I know what you're thinking: how can I award a spot on my yearly list of best classic and neo-orthodox mysteries to a science-fiction novel? But it's ok: we've officially appropriated Inherit the Stars from the SF-genre. It's officially ours now! The plot of the book revolves around the anomalies discovery of a skeleton in a spacesuit on the moon, belonging to a normal-sized, anatomically modern human being, but carbon dating says this person died over 50.000 years ago! I know it's science-fiction novel and the plot is grounded in that territory, but the explanation is worthy of our genre!

Dead Man's Quarry (1930) by Ianthe Jerrold

I said about the reissued edition of this book that it gave credence to our claim that we're currently living in a Renaissance era of detective-fiction. The story is set the beautiful, evocative Wye Valley in the Hereford-Wales borderland, which is where a cycling party ends with its least popular member at the bottom of a disused quarry. It's a pure and solid Golden Age mystery.

There May Be Danger (1948) by Ianthe Jerrold

I wanted to avoid giving writers more than one entry this year, but I had to make an exception for Jerrold's final contribution to the genre: which is more of an thriller-cum-adventure story that's structured as a very unusual detective story and ends up as an espionage novel. It begins when an out-of-work stage manager, Kate Mayhew, notices a handbill in a shop window requesting information about a missing twelve-year-old London evacuee – which leads her to a sparsely populated village in Wales and a very dangerous situation. It's simply splendid! By the way, lot's of Welsh-set mystery novels this year!    

Crime at Christmas (1934) by C.H.B. Kitchin

Mystery readers mostly remember Kitchin as the author of Death of My Aunt (1929) and Death of My Uncle (1939), but Crime at Christmas was my introduction to Kitchin and the book has a pleasant, old-fashioned and traditionally looking plot. However, Kitchin wrangled a clever and original mystery novel out of the premise of a family gathering at Christmas time. It's a bit slow moving in parts, but comes highly recommended if you like to read Christmas-themed mysteries in December.

Schemers (2009) by Bill Pronzini

A fairly recent entry in the ongoing biography of Pronzini's "Nameless Detective," who's named Bill, which can be labeled as a "bibliomystery" and has two impossible situations at the core of its plot: one of them is the disappearance of several highly prices volumes of detective fiction from secure and private library. The second impossible situation is a fatal shooting in that very same library and the explanation shows were still a long from exhausting every possible way to polish someone off in a locked room. I'm also very amused at the fact that this hardboiled series is strewn with bibliomysteries and locked room murders. 

Ten Star Clues (1941) by E.R. Punshon

Punshon has rapidly ascended on my list of personal favorites and Ten Star Clues is a great piece of justification. It's basically one long riff on the infamous, Victorian-era case of the Tichborne claimant and is scrupulously plotted with an extremely linear narrative, which was evidently needed to keep the plot from becoming muddled. A clear and sharp detective story.

Bleeding Hooks (1940) by Harriet Rutland

Arguably, one of the best and cleverest mystery novels I have read this year and a book that should be jotted down on my list of all-time favorites: it's set in a Welsh fishing village where one of the unpleasant guests is found at the side of a lake with a poisoned salmon fly deeply imbedded in her hand. I found the whole book a pleasure to read and the final, ingenious twist was grand! I can't recommend this one enough!

Devil's Planet (1942) by Manly Wade Wellman

An early and surprisingly accomplished attempt at integrating a formal mystery plot with a science-fiction premise, which predates Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel (1954) by more than a decade! The plot follows around an Earthling, named Dillon Stover, on the dry, dusty and draught-stricken surface of Mars in thirtieth century and how Stover became the prime-suspect in the murder of a prominent Martian citizen – who perished in a locked room! I'm genuinely baffled how Devil's Planet failed to carve a name for itself as both an early hybrid and an impossible crime novel.

HONORARY MENTIONS:  

I've read a number of anthologies and short story collections, but adding an additional section to the list, discussing individual stories, would really bloat this blog-post. So I simply list the collections I enjoyed as a whole.

Max Afford's Two Locked Room Mysteries and a Ripping Yarn (2008)

Christianna Brand's What Dread Hand (1968)

Edmund Crispin's Fen Country: Twenty-Six Stories (1979)

The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries (2014), which I reviewed in several parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.  

CURIOSITY OF INTEREST:

The Case of the Sharaku Murders (Sharaku satsujin jiken, 1983) by Katsuhiko Takahashi

A book starting off as a British-style academic mystery, but soon delves into the distant past as the characters try to figure out the identity of a legendary woodblock print artist, "Sharaku," who worked for only a short period – between the early months of 1795 and 1796. You have to enjoy either history or art to enjoy this book, because this portion of the plot covers a period from the early 1600s to the late 19th century. It's not a great mystery novel, but it's an interesting one.

THE TOP 3 WORST MYSTERIES READ IN 2015:

1: Nine Man's Murder (2011) by Eric Keith

I read this one on the strength of a ton of positive reviews, but was angry and disappointed when I discovered a horribly written, sloppily plotted mess populated with unconvincing, cardboard characters. As I noted in my review, the characters resembled a group of Easter Island statues, because they were completely unmoved by what happened around them and this robbed the book of any tension that should’ve arising naturally from the isolated situation. You should avoid this one at all costs.

2: The Santa Klaus Murder (1936) by Mavis Doriel Hay

A long, repetitive Christmas-themed mystery novel lacking in originality. It was a chore to read and a drain on my festive spirit, which prevented me from reading and reviewing some additional, holiday-themed detective stories I had lined up for this month. Not recommended.

3: And So to Murder (1940) by Carter Dickson

I know, I know! I actually placed a John Dickson Carr novel in this portion of the list, but it's a genuinely bad and poorly constructed mystery. Hopefully, its inclusion here proves I can be critical of his work and not just gush over, and blindly praise, everything he ever wrote.

Well, that's a wrap for this year! I'll probably have more review for this year, but that would require me to finish the book and write a review before the end of the year, which is not a guarantee in these final days of 2015. So this could very well be my final post of the year. If that's the case: I want to thank everyone who has voluntarily put up with my vague ramblings about detective stories over the past twelve months and wish you all the best in 2016!