Swan Song

"This... is more wildly improbable than any roman policier I have ever read."

- Dr. Constantine (Agatha Christie's The Murder on the Orient Express, 1934)

Last month, I took a look at Molly Thynne's Death in the Dentist's Chair (1932), the second of a trio of mystery novels, starring Dr. Constantine and Detective-Inspector Arkwright, which were recently brought back into circulation by the Dean Street Press – prefaced with an introduction by Curt Evans. The book warranted further investigation into this short-lived series, but was conflicted as to which of the two remaining titles to pick up next.

I wanted to go with The Crime at the Noah's Ark: A Christmas Mystery (1931), but, after carefully scrutinizing the calendar, I came to the conclusion that the dusk of summer was still too early for a yuletide yarn. So I settled for the other one.

He Dies and Makes No Sign (1933) marked the final appearances of Dr. Constantine, Arkwright and Manners, which makes this book their last hurrah. However, the book also served as a punctuation mark that ended the literary career of its author. After its publication, Thynne retired from writing fiction and began her rapid decent into obscurity, which is where she languished for eight decades – until she was finally found by DSP and Evans. Let's get this review off the ground.

The book begins with Dr. Constantine coming home from a trip to continental Europe, where he suffered an annoying defeat in a chess tournament, which made his disposition as moody as the rainy weather of England. Opportunely, there seems to be a potential case, to relieve his mind, impatiently waiting for him at home: his valet, Manners, tells him the Duchess of Steynes tried to reach him. She was greatly annoyed by his absence and wished to be immediately informed when he returned from the continent. The problem she has for him has the appearance of a domestic triviality, one of the old-fashioned kind, but, before long, this problem turned into a murder case.

Marlowe is the only son of the Duchess and "the despair of half the mothers in the country," not excluding his own, but he finally met a girl, "an actress of sorts," with whom he wants to settle down – which did not fail to horrify and worry his mother. So Dr. Constantine finds himself poking around to see how matters stand, but soon the first of many complications arise. The grandfather of the girl, an obscure musician, goes missing and someone, posing as a piano-tuner, ransacked their rooms. Money and trinkets were left untouched, but a number of pages were torn from Julius Anthony's diary.

Soon thereafter, the body of the musician is discovered, under very peculiar circumstances, at the Parthenon Picture Theatre.

The body of Julius Anthony was crammed inside a small cavity, "a little over a foot in height,' that can be found underneath the stage for the orchestra, which is used "as a kind of storeroom," but circumstances makes it impossible he crawled in there himself – as the body was stuffed behind a broken chair and several music stands. There is also the matter of a strange, but superficial, wound at the back of his neck and an unhealthy amount of morphine in his system. So they're very definitely dealing with a murder case.

Just as in Death in the Dentist's Chair, the investigative characters suggest Thynne was influenced by Dorothy L. Sayers, because the dynamic between Dr. Constantine, Arkwright and Manners is very reminiscent of that between Lord Peter Wimsey, Chief Inspector Parker and Bunter. For example. Dr. Constantine uses Manners for the occasional stretch of legwork, which, if I recall correctly, is similar to the way Lord Peter uses his manservant, Bunter. However, it has been eons since I read a mystery novel by Sayers and Bunter may not have had as big a role as I remember, but do I recall him playing a part in some of Lord Peter's investigation.

In any case, one of Thynne's own trademarks appears to be plots with a strong international flavor. The plot-threads from the previous book were all over the map and this one is not all that different in that regard: one of the main characters, Mr. Civita, is an Italian restaurant owner and one of his former associates is a Belgian sommelier, Mr. Meger, who's murdered halfway through the story. Dr. Constantine solved the how-part of this second murder with the assistance of a pair of Japanese martial artists. All of this gives her books somewhat of a cosmopolitan feel.

However, where He Dies and Makes No Sign differs from Death in the Dentist's Chair is a waver thin plot, lacking any real complexity or cleverness, which made the book somewhat of a chore to review. Oh, it was very well written and nicely characterized, but the plot is overly simplistic and never really delivered on its premise. Admittedly, as a whydunit, the murder of the violinist was well conceived, but I wish the who-and how received equal attention. The second, borderline impossible murder, involving a deadly fall from a window, was cleverly done, but Dr. Constantine solved that one off-page. After which he gives a demonstration of how it was done to Arkwright and the reader. So it really added not all that much to the overall plot.

Well, as you probably gathered from this piss poor written review, I had soured on the book by the time the final chapter finally rolled around. I simply expected so much more after the excellent Death in the Dentist's Chair, which was both original and clever with an effective ending. None of those qualities made an appearance in this one.

So, yeah, I'll end this excruciating blog-post by saying that this one simply did not do it for me, but take notice, the next one will take a look at a Carrian-type locked room mystery (of course!) from the early 1930s. Hopefully, that one will live up to its reputation. 

The Standalones: 

The Draycott Murder Mystery (1928)

The Murder on the Enriqueta (1929)

The Case of Sir Adam Braid (1930)

The Dr. Constantine series: 

The Crime at the Noah's Ark (1931)

Death in the Dentist's Chair (1932)

He Dies and Makes No Sign (1933)

The Ghost of Oedipus

"There is nothing impossible to him who will try."

- Alexander the Great 

A Murder in Thebes (1998) is the second book from a short-lived series by Paul Doherty, originally published under the name of "Anna Apostolou," which he resuscitated in the early 2000s and furthered the series with three more novels – all of them taking place during the historic rise of Alexander the Great. One of the greatest conquerors of the ancient world.

Initially, I wanted to sample one of the three books from the second period of the series. This phase includes such intriguing-sounding entries as The Godless Man (2002) and The Gates of Hell (2003), but in a recent blog-post, entitled "The Impossible Crimes of Paul Doherty," the Puzzle Doctor directed my attention to A Murder in Thebes – saying in his review of the book that "the solution is genuinely clever" and "the locked room is a masterpiece." Well, that got my attention!

So, let's see if this self-professed locked room expert agrees with the diagnosis of the good doctor and one of Doherty's greatest advocates on the web.

In 336 BC, Philip II of Macedon was assassinated and his son, Alexander II, ascended to the throne, but the Greeks and Persians assumed this was the beginning of the end for the Macedonians. A grave mistake! Swiftly, the Greek city-states were forced to submit to the new king, "in a brilliant show of force," after which Alexander marched into the wild mountain region of Thessaly with the intention of bringing its tribes under his dominion.

While he was gone, rumors began to swirl of Alexander's death and how "the vultures were picking the bones of his army," which encouraged the Thebans to rise in rebellion and besieged the small garrison Alexander had stationed in their citadel – a place called the Cadmea. After being forced to return, Alexander sacked the city as a punishment for their treachery: houses, shops, taverns, council chambers and storages were "all reduced to feathery black ash." The stone walls were dragged down and everything worth as much as a sliver of silver was confiscated, which is a nice way of saying the city was plundered. Those who fought back or resisted were killed and everyone else were dragged to the slave pens. All of this is described in a single chapter that opens the book.

The sacking of Thebes further serves as an unusual moody, but effective, backdrop for the busy, intricate plot of the story.

As the remains of the city smolders, Alexander turns his gaze to the Iron Crown of Oedipus, which, legend has it, "only the pure in heart can wear" and "guilty of no crimes against his parents" – which is exactly why he wants to possess it. Alexander is determined that everyone in the land knows he received the blessing of the gods and had no part in the murder of his father. There is, however, one problem: the crown is tightly fastened on top of a stone plinth, inside a holy shrine, with a ditch full of glowing coals, a row of spikes and a snake pit in front of it. So taking the crown from a marble-lined room full of deadly obstacles will take some ingenuity. However, that's not all. 

Before the arrival of Alexander's army, two of the members of the small garrison he had left behind at the citadel were brutally murdered: a lieutenant, Lysander, from Crete was sent as an envoy to talk with the Theban leadership, but he was murdered in the streets and was crucified in front of the citadel. This had a visible effect on one of Alexander's most trusted captains, Memnon, who became frightened and seemed to have committed suicide by jumping from the window of a top-room in the tower of the citadel. After all, the door was locked from the inside and a guard was posted outside of the door. The only living presence in the room was his loyal mastiff, Hercules. So how could a murderer have reached or penetrated this secure, top-floor tower room?

These deaths seem to be the work of a turncoat within the ranks of the small garrison. A person referred to as the Oracle and this traitor "spun his rumors and lies," which eventually lead to the destruction of the town. Understandably, the king wants this spy captured and crucified "for all other traitors to see."

Miriam and Simeon Bartimaeus, brother and sister, previously helped Alexander in quelling a sinister plot, which was recorded in A Murder in Macedon (1997), but now they have to tangle with a dangerous and formidable spy – one who is not afraid to bloody his hands with some dirty work. At the same time, they're also expected to find an explanation for the possible murder in the locked tower room and figure out how to retrieve the crown from the shrine. But there are more problems on the horizon. Yes, this book has a very saturated plot.

Not long after the fall of the city, the whispered rumors begin of sighting of the ghost of Oedipus: who has been seen dragging his swollen foot, blood-encrusted club in hand, around the streets of Thebes. Like one of the Nine Man-Eating Giants from Roald Dahl's The BGF (1982). These terrifying sightings are followed by a string of gruesome murders of Macedonian soldiers and guardsmen: all of them had their heads caved in with a massive club, but appeared to have been unaware of the approaching danger. The murdered did not take them out one-by-one, because they were nearly always killed in groups of two or four at a time. However, they were all taken by complete surprise.

This gives the murders a strong flavor of the impossible and was somewhat reminiscent (in presentation) of the killings of Napoleon's sentries in John Dickson Carr's massively underrated Captain Cut-Throat (1955). The explanation for these clubbing-deaths was pretty simple, but it made sense and fitted the plot very well. Luckily, the proposed explanation, which was disappointing, was attempted to be used as a scapegoat by the guilty party. I thought that was a nifty way to employ and redress a false solution.

Doherty sidestepped a similar pitfall with the impossible crime at the citadel's tower: everything seemed to suggest the army captain was scared out of the window, but there was a fiendishly clever, but simple, explanation – which seemed to be completely original as well. It wonderfully explained everything: why the locked door, guard and dog posed no obstacle to the killer. The mood of the victim and how a strong, rugged and old warhorse could so simply be overtaken and flung out of the tower window without a cry. A (minor) work of art!

On top of that, every aspect of the plot is reasonably clued or hinted at. Well, you might not be entirely able to work out how to lift the crown from its plinth, but, otherwise, it is fair enough.  

So, all in all, one of Doherty's better and more interesting historical mysteries, as well as one of his best locked room novels, which plays out against the smoldering remains of a sacked city. That also added to the overall quality of the book. A Murder in Thebes is definitely recommended. 

Stranded in Paradise

"All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attended them."

- Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719)

Robin Forsythe was a solicitor's clerk at Somerset House, where he masterminded "a fraudulent enterprise" resembling "something out of the imaginative crime fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle," which earned him a spell in prison, but during his incarceration he began to labor on his childhood dream – i.e. trying to earn an honest living as a fiction writer. Forsythe completed his first novel, Missing or Murdered? (1929), while serving his sentence and writing proved to be a more profitable outlet for his criminal schemes.

During the brief period between 1929 and 1936, Forsythe wrote, altogether, eight mystery novels: five of them formed the Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series and the remaining three were standalones. Earlier this year, Dean Street Press reissued all of the Vereker mysteries, but nearly all of the non-series books remain out-of-print. The key word here is nearly, because one of them, Murder on Paradise Island (1937), is available from a small publishing outfit as shady as Forsythe's own criminal past.

Regardless, I was somewhat curious and wanted to know if the originality, cleverness and overall quality, found in the Anthony Vereker series, extended to the standalones – which is why I decided to take a gamble. I was not entirely disappointed. 

Murder on Paradise Island was the conclusion of Forsythe's literary career, as he passed away in the same year as the book's publication, but it was a career that ended on a captivating note. It's an imaginative and unconventional mystery novel with a beautifully conceived background. One that falls in the same category as Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Pidgeon's Island (1934), Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), but also reminded me, to some extent, of Arthur W. Upfield's Man of Two Tribes (1956) and Ellery Queen's And on the Eighth Day (1964). So no run-of-the-mill mystery for this review!

Geoffrey Mayne is a young barrister and the story’s protagonist, who recently passed his Bar exam, but was physically rundown and caught influenza – accompanied by a serious complication (i.e. pneumonia) and "he very nearly lost his life." His Aunt Emily suggested a sea voyage to put him back on his feet, but Mayne, who describes himself as "a born spectator," would have been happier to spend several weeks in the country near a good golf course. However, his aunt was "not to be denied" and his mind was strangely longing to see a desert island. One that would fathom his early, boyish delight in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858) and R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883).

Well, the young barrister got his wish when he boarded the Statesman liner, Charles James Fox, for a cruise to the Isles of the Pacific, but not in the way he imagined.

One night, Mayne is awakened by the ship's fire alarm and found himself in "a faint haze of smoke" that "hung in the air of his cabin." An oil tank of the ship has caught fire and the ship is about to sink, but the next thing he remembers, after falling into the sea, is waking up on the white, pearly beach of a Pacific island – which very much seems like paradise. There was "the azure and amethyst waters of a lagoon," clumps of tall coconut palms and "masses of light and dark emerald foliage" leaping "into the sapphire sky," but the island seemed bare of any of the comforts of modern, early twentieth century civilization. No tea, cigarettes, books, music or a simple, home-cooked meal.

However, during his initial exploration of the island, Mayne finds the remains of previous habitants: an abandoned, dilapidated hut, in which he finds tools, an axe and even a German book on nudism, but also traces of the former occupants attempt at farming. Whoever where there before him, they cultivated edible roots, sweet potatoes and brought pigs to the island, which have now reverted to a wild state. But to his surprise, he also discovers other shipwrecked survivors!

The first person he meets is Miss Freda Shannon. She is, personality-wise, the complete opposite of Mayne, which is why these two clashing personalities began to orbit one another on the cruise ship. It's from her that he learns about the other survivors: Mr. Oscar Lingwood is a big, fat-faced man who loves whiskey and started pursuing Freda on the cruise ship. Major Dansie is a retired army officer, who lived in New Caledonia, and knows all about edible plants, fruit and animals, which makes his presence a blessing for the others. He also knows how to tell a good yarn. Victor Hanchett is the "strong, silent type," while Tom Haylock was "the silly ass of the ship" and "a great favorite with everyone." Finally, there are Violet Lovick, Freda’s maid, and Lingwood's manservant, Walter Wink. A very diverse group of characters.

They realize a ship may be years removed from the shores of the island and they might be stuck together for a decade or more, which makes Freda reflect she and Violet might have "to resort to polyandry to prevent bloodshed or even to meet ordinary human necessities." However, that's a future worry as they first have to figure out how to carve out a "normal" life on the island. Not one of the easiest tasks, but one that becomes even more difficult when they start fearing the presence of a hostile person on the island.

One of the interesting aspect of the island is the presence of a megalithic sculpture, a "childish monstrosity carved on the central crag" of the island, which adds some wonder to the backdrop of the story, but someone shoots at them every time they come near the plateau of the statue. Of course, this "armed unknown" is soon held responsible for the shooting death of one of them. The explanation for the shooter's uncanny ability to remain unobserved makes this aspect of the story a border-line impossible crime, but not enough to entirely qualify it as such and the answer is really simple – which makes a bit disappointing that one facet of the shooting was not clued or hinted at. Nevertheless, you can probably guess how it was done, because it's a fairly old trick.

Overall, the plot is relatively simple and lacks the complexity found in the Vereker series. Even the last-minute turn of events, concerning the last death on the island, was more of a twitch than a twist in the plot. Regardless, I did not view the plot’s simplicity as a drawback, since the book was obviously written as Robinsonade with detective interruptions, which was kind of charming and a novel approach to isolating a group of people from the outside world – normally done by a rather sinister individual. But in this novel, they were actually shipwrecked and the murders arose from their situations as castaways stuck together on a desert island. I thought this was very well done.

If there's anything to complain about, it's the abandonment of the potential plot-thread of the unburied bones and their missing skulls, which was briefly mention, but never explained. Who were they? How did they die? And who took their heads? We'll never know! I was also very prescient while reading the second chapter, because, after discovering the abandoned hut, I knew they would find what was uncovered a couple of chapters later. However, I guess it was a necessary to push forward the narrative by eliminating certain of the immediate obstacles one encounters when being stranded on a desert island. One of the characters even lampshades this by remarking the discovery must have been brought on their paths "by fictional Providence."

Anyhow, time to cut this overlong review short by saying that I enjoyed reading Murder on Paradise Island. It was not as tricky or clever as the author's series novels, but the setting and circumstances, in which the characters found themselves, made more than up for this. So if you like mysteries about a group people cut-off from the outside world, or even classic shipwreck fiction, you might want to add this one to your wishlist.

Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series:

Missing or Murdered (1929)

The Polo Ground Mystery (1932)

The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933)

The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935)

The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936)

The standalones:

The Hounds of Justice (1930)

The Poison Duel (1934)

Murder on Paradise Island (1937)

A Prize to Pay

"But in the circus you never know what kind of house you're going to have. It's especially difficult with children."

- Dodo the Clown (Alan Melville's Death of Anton, 1936)

The Secret of the Crooked Cat (1970) is the thirteenth case for that troop of meddlesome kids, who are known in the area of Rocky Beach, California, as The Three Investigators, which was penned by an award-winning crime novelist and pen-for-hire, Dennis Lynds – writing here under the name of "William Arden." Lynds was one of the three most frequent contributors to the series and wrote the excellent The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972).

The third book he wrote for the series, The Secret of the Crooked Cat, begins on an afternoon in early September as Uncle Titus, owner of the Jones Salvage Yard, comes to the boys with an unusual chore. He wants a pair of washtubs painted in red, white and blue stripes! It is, quite literally, an odd-job, but they were given to understand that the painted tubs were to be delivered to the star of Carson's Colossal Carnival: The Great Ivan and Rajah – The World's Greatest Performing Lion. Ivan wants to use them as seats for Rajah.

So "the boys went to work with a will" and a short time later they were ready to personally deliver the lion seats to the carnival, which is where they find their next case. One that offers them an impossible problem in the style of Fredric Brown and Clayton Rawson. 

Jupe, Pete and Bob took a spin on the Ferris wheel and amused themselves with the antics of a small, fat clown, but, when they headed to the game booths, they witness a man arguing with the boy operating the shooting gallery – yelling "you're a cheat" and "give me that prize." Suddenly, the tall man with the moustache, dark glasses and slouch hat snatched a stuffed animal from the hands of the boy and began to run. He briefly entangled himself with the trio of investigators, but eventually managed to fled and run around a jutting corner of a high wooden fence. As one of the guards observed, "it's a dead end round that corner." The thief seemed to have trapped himself!

However, when they went after him they arrived on a completely empty spot: the high fence was on the right and the deep water of the ocean on the left. There "was no way out except the way they had come in," but the only trace the thief had left behind was the stuffed animal. Later on, they learn this person pulled-off a similar vanishing act when he was chased into "a totally blind alley" by the police.

Sadly, the explanation for these two impossible disappearances are exactly what you'd expect from a detective story with a carnival background. It's very carny and hinges on the talent of a particular carnival worker, which makes it a good thing that this aspect of the plot was only minor part in the motor of the plot – which centered on the question of who and why anyone would want to steal a plush toy.

The boy who operates the shooting gallery, Andy Carson, is the son of the carnival's proprietor, Mr. Carson, who kind of tags along with Jupe, Pete and Bob on this case. It's from Andy that they learn he had already handed out several stuffed cats, as the big prize in the gallery, but the one that was snatched from his hands was the last one of the lot. So what was the reason? As they probe deeper, they discover that the carnival has been plagued by very costly accidents: several ponies had died of food poisoning, three tents were burned down and the young investigators themselves were present when the lion escaped from his cage – giving an opportunity to Pete to play the hero and Jupe later determines someone had picked the padlock of the cage.

So they've to conclude they're dealing with a saboteur, as well as a sneak thief, which lures them into several dangerous and life-threatening situations, but the best part of the book is perhaps the backdrop of the story. The carnival background is well conceived and convincingly drawn, which subtly describes a struggling business in a trade that had its golden days behind it and had to grapple with the modern world. Andy tells the boys early on the story that security is a problem, because "people are always trying to steal from carnivals." For this alone, The Secret of the Crooked Cat comes recommended to readers who love mysteries with a carnival or circus background.

Finally, the plot, itself, is rather simplistic, even a bit ridiculous in some aspects, but there's a twist in the tail of the story that's pure Scooby-Doo. There's an unmasking scene at the end of the story and several disguises have to be peeled away to reveal the face of the villain, but the best part is that the bad guy uttered the following sentence, "I'd have got away except for those stupid kids." 

So, yes, the book can be a bit silly and there have been better plots in the series, but The Secret if the Crooked Cat is a fun adventure/mystery and one that uses its carnival background to full effect. I would say this was a pretty decent entry in the series.     

Other books reviewed in this series: The Secret of Terror Castle (1964), The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965), The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (1966), The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966), The Mystery of the Moaning Cave (1968), The Secret of the Crooked Cat (1970), The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972), The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973) and The Mystery of the Invisible Dog (1975).

In the Teeth of the Evidence

"It is really a most extraordinary case."

- Dr. Constantine (Agatha Christie's The Murder on the Orient Express, 1934)

Molly Thynne was born into nobility, a member of the English aristocracy, who was related, on her mother's side, to the painter James McNeil Whistler and as a young, impressionable girl met such literary luminaries as Rudyard Kipling and Henry James – which may have influenced her own literary endeavors later on in life. But, as Sherlock Holmes once famously observed, "art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms."

In the case of Thynne, this meant that she turned her back on the lofty heights of literature and descended into the dark bowels of popular-fiction. Over a period of six years, she penned half a dozen detective stories, of which three were standalone novels, but the remainder were part of a short-lived series about Dr. Constantine – a Greek "chess playing amateur detective" who was placed by the critics among "the Frenches and Fortunes" of the genre.

Lamentably, the relentless march of time was not very kind to Thynne and she eventually fell prey to obscurity. Even the fairly comprehensive Golden Age of Detection Wiki, a veritable who's who of who the hell are these folks, does not have single page on Thynne or any of her books. Now that's genuine obscurity! However, Thynne and Dr. Constantine are about to be rescued from the purgatory of biblioblivion.

Dean Street Press is going to reissue all six of her detective stories and our resident genre-historian, Curt Evans, furnished these new editions with an introduction, which touched upon her family background and brief career as a mystery novelist. It adds some interesting background details to these long-forgotten mysteries and the person who wrote them.

So let's take a look at one of them: Death in the Dentist's Chair (1932) is the second book about Dr. Constantine and Detective-Inspector Arkwright, who made their first appearance in The Crime at Noah Ark: A Christmas Mystery (1931) and bowed out in He Dies and Makes No Sign (1933), which also happened to be Thynne's swan song – after which she vanished from the scene. She retired from authorship without a discernable reason. The critics were very positive about her books and she was "independently wealthy," which would have allowed her to continue to dabble in the genre, but, perhaps, she got bored in the end. Anyway...

The opening of Death in the Dentist's Chair takes place in the dental practice of Mr. Humphrey Davenport, society dentist, where several patients are congregating in the waiting room: Mr. Cattistock is taking a breather after having several of his front teeth removed, which he experiences as a terrible blow to his self-confidence. Mrs. Vallon, widow of a theatrical manager, had a bad toothache, but she found that the pain had subsided after a pleasant conversation with Dr. Constantine. Sir Richard Pomfrey was introduced as "a prey of unease" who, sincerely and devoutly, wished the morning was over. Finally, there's Lottie Miller, wife of a London jeweler, but she's described as an unpleasant, garish-looking woman with a bad-tempered mouth.

The most famous dentist mystery

Mrs. Miller is the first one to be ushered into Davenport's consulting room, but her appointment seems to drag on and on. Dr. Constantine decided to poke around and finds what, initially, appears to be an embarrassment: Davenport left Mrs. Miller behind in the consulting room to adjust her dentures, but, upon his return, he found the door to be locked from the inside. Mrs. Miller seems to be completely unresponsive.

So the dentist's mechanic is summoned from his workshop to remove the screws from the lock on the door and what they find is horrifying: Mrs. Miller is seated in the dentist's chair and underneath her chin was now "a larger and more gaping travesty of the toothless mouth above," which is an ugly, dark gash – in which "the blood that had now ceased to spurt still frothed and bubbled." On the floor, to the left of the chair, was a bloodstained knife. Someone had slipped in, cut her throat and escaped through the open window, which had traces of blood and soot on it. The key to the door was found outside.

I guess this premise proved I suffer from, what Edmund Crispin described as, "locked rooms on the brain," because I was convinced this was an impossible crime in disguise and Davenport was the murderer. After all, why slash someone's throat when she was having a dentist’s appointment? I reasoned this was the only opportunity Davenport had to get to the victim, but this, potentially, also made him a prime-suspect. So he needed to distract the attention away from himself by making it appear someone else entered the room and left through the window. This could simply be accomplished by cutting her throat, opening the window, creating the blood-and soot traces on the window sill and locking the door behind him. He could simply fling the key out of the window of another, nearby room in the building.

However, the whole affair revealed itself to be far more complicated and original than my own locked room fancies!

Dr. Constantine and D.I. Arkwright are immediately confronted with a whole slew of complications: Mr. Cattistock has vanished and Sir Richard briefly left the waiting room at the time of the murder, which looks very suspicious when the police suspects him of having a past with the victim. Mrs. Vallon seems above reproach: no apparent motive and her alibi is Dr. Constantine, but, of course, that means nothing in a detective story. Then there's the widowed husband, Mr. Charles Miller, who has a dark, murky past and did not get on well with his wife, but now he appears to be "badly frightened."

Murder in the Torture-Chair

The case truly becomes complicated when the body of a second woman is discovered on a doorstep of Eccleston Square, throat cut with a similar looking knife as was used on Mrs. Miller, which is entangled in a crisscross of international connections. The second victim is found to have Russian antecedents. Both of the murder weapons are of Chinese origin and Cattistock worked in that country as a missionary. Mr. Miller's shady past is rooted in South Africa and they extend all the way to Switzerland and eventually England.

Arkwright finds the whole case "too damned geographical" for his taste, but he forms an engaging duo with Dr. Constantine and they do an excellent job at following all of these globally scattered plot-threads back to the killer. One of Dr. Constantine's approach to uncover information clearly showed the influence Dorothy L. Sayers had on Thynne's detective fiction: Dr. Constantine used his valet, Manners, to do a spot of legwork – which I found to be very reminiscent of Mervyn Bunter's role in the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

However, as was pointed out in this review, the reader was sometimes kept in the dark about the finer details of Dr. Constantine's investigation, but that turned out to be a minor complaint when the explanation was unveiled – an explanation that was build around parts of what was then still fairly recent history. And those parts were used better than I expected. The plot could’ve easily dissolved into a third-rate thriller in the final leg of the book, but Thynne kept the story firmly grounded in the detective story territory and this made the ending all the more effective. So I definitely want to read the other two Dr. Constantine mysteries.

On a final, hastily scribbled note, I’ve to point something out: one of the first things that came to mind when I read about this series was Agatha Christie's The Murder on the Orient Express (1934), because one of the characters is a Greek physician, named Dr. Constantine, which could've been just a coincidence. 

However, I've a good reason to believe this may not be the case. Death in the Dentist’s Chair and The Murder on the Orient Express also have an interesting plot-thread in common: they both share an almost identical language-clue, but it gets better. These clues are not only based on the Russian language, but they also concern the except same letter in both novels! It's not exactly a stock-in-trade clue you'll find any other mystery novel from this era. So maybe the inclusion of a Dr. Constantine was a nod and wink at the book that helped Christie plot The Murder on the Orient Express. It’s possible, right?

The Devil's Trickery

"But what's puzzling you, is the nature of my game."

- The Rolling Stones (Sympathy for the Devil)

The 57th volume of Case Closed, originally published as Detective Conan, commences with a devil of a case and centers around several clever, but riskily, executed murders, which also concern the unraveling of Eisuke Hondo's back-story – one of the focal points of the previous volume.

In the first pages of the opening story, Conan is still digesting the information from the previous volume and tries to fit certain pieces of the puzzle together. But then an opportunity presented itself to gather further information about the background of their friend: Eisuke Hondo invites them to accompany him to the home of the former employers of his late mother. She had used to be employed there as a live-in maid and the family recently came across some of his mother's memento's, which included a photograph and a birth certificate. Coincidently, the same family also engaged the professional services of Richard Moore.

A year ago, the body of Tango, only son of the head of the Okudaira family, was found floating in the swimming pool outside of the house, but the circumstances ruled out an accident or suicide: the body was tied up and a piece of duct-tape was plastered across the mouth. The initial police investigation established that everyone in the home was in possession of an alibi and they assumed the murder was an outside job, but his father, Kakuzo, tells Moore that he believes his son "was murdered by a rotten sneak lurking in my own home." Kakuzo's suspicions are confirmed when he himself is murdered under strange circumstances.

When roaming the premise, they hear a crash coming from the study and Kakuzo screaming a warning, "don't open the door," but there's no other way to enter the room and when they open the door they find him hanging from the ceiling – bleeding from the mouth and gasping for breath. Kakuzo died en route to the hospital. Once again, the situation precludes suicide and a blood-dripped dying message claims the killer is from Hades itself, but I found this dying clue to be ridiculous, unconvincing and completely unsolvable for non-Japanese speaking readers. The actual gem of the plot is the rather ingenious method for the hanging and the role a shattered vase had in its setup. It also revealed itself to be, somewhat, of a locked room mystery.

There is, however, one weakness: Kakuzo probably would not have died, because there was no sheer drop to break the neck and only dangled shortly at the end of that rope. So he probably would not have died in real-life, but, nonetheless, a clever trick showing the hand of a particular cruel and vengeful murderer. By the way, the method for the drowning was much simpler, but equally cruel and "both murders were designed to prolong the victims' suffering." 

The second story is an inverted mystery: Satan Onizuka is the lead singer of "a visual rock band," Styx's III, who has a serious falling out with his personal agent and he goes to town on him with a sharp knife. Scene of the crime is a private-room at Nichiuri TV-station and the question this poses is how the rock singer managed to kill his agent without being seen in the corridors.

Satan Onizuka presents himself as a demonic singer, complete with Kiss-style makeup, which prevented him from moving around the studio complex without being recognized. It's unlikely he wiped his face clean and reapplied the face paint upon his return to his dressing room, because he happened to occupy the only dressing room that was stripped of its mirrors and his personal handler had not yet returned with a new hand mirror – which gave him precious little wiggle room to gut his agent.

Unfortunately, for the singer, Conan, Doc Agasa and the members of the Junior Detective League were on the studio's premise at the time of the murder. They were there to attend the taping of a Samurai Kid episode, but those plans got canned. So they had to settle on playing detective. Conan sharply observes the importance of such clues as Satan's lavish lunch, his dry eyes and origami animals on the dressing room table. This all makes for a nice little story and an interesting companion piece to the previous story. The motives are pretty much the same, but the murderer turned out to be surprisingly human in this story. Even though he presented himself as a demon from hell.

By the way, I only know of one other detective story that uses origami figures as a clue: Robert van Gulik's Nagels in Ning-tsjo (The Chinese Nail Murders, 1961).

The third story is a very short, mildly humorous chase tale, consisting of a single chapter, in which Richard Moore is very keen to shake an unknown person off his tail. But this unknown person seems to be able to find him everywhere he decides to go. There's not much else to say about this chapter except it was a quick, fun little intermezzo.

Finally, the last three chapters continue with the Eisuke Hondo story-line, which is laced with important revelations about his father, sister, Rena Mizunashi, Black Organization and the involvement of the CIA. It also contains a mini-puzzle at the hospital, in which Conan has to deduce the identity of a spy from three potential suspects. One of them posing as a patient. But this story will be included in the next volume. So I might have to lift that one from the pile sooner rather than later.

Overall, a good and clever, if not always a perfect, collection of detective stories with some significant progress in one of the ongoing story-lines as one of the high spots of the volume. The other highlight was the bit with the vase from the hanging case in the first story. I genuinely liked that bit.

Well, I hope to be back before too long with a long-forgotten detective story from the Golden Age. So stay tuned!