The Weather Eye

"One's idea must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."

- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, 1887) 

Back in June, I posted a review of Venom House (1952) by Arthur W. Upfield and concluded the blog-post with the promise to return to his work more often, which, somehow, I actually managed to achieve – posting one review every month since that post. So why not continue down this path?

The Battling Prophet (1956) numbers twenty in the series about Upfield's half-caste policeman, Detective-Inspector Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte of the Queensland Police, whose special abilities makes him the man for "special assignments in the Outback" or "outer urban areas." Originally, the book was published as a serial in a weekly newspaper, The World's News, in 1955, which probably explains one uncharacteristic aspect about this particular entry in the series.

One of the hallmarks of this series are the bright, colorful and vividly described backdrops that can be found on the Australian continent. And turning these settings into full-fledged characters was one of Upfield's talents. Over the course of twenty-nine books, Bony traveled to desert lagoons, isolated cattle stations, lonely swamps, valley towns and braved the parched, treeless grounds of the Nullarbor Plains, which impressed on the reader the sheer size of the continent, but a large chunk of The Battling Prophet takes place in-and around a small cottage – giving off the impression that you’re reading a novelized version of a stage play.

The cottage in question belongs to eighty-four year old Mr. John Luton, a man of the old guard, who represents a dying race of men "who had left their mark so indelibly on the Outback." A stock of men "the like of which will never again be seen," because they "were born long before motor traction could weaken their bodies" and "the craze for luxury and mental distraction" came too late to get a firm grip on their minds, but they were prone to some of the old-world weaknesses – such as an Australian predilection for blackout drinking. However, even these drinking binges were done in accord with old-school rules: an observance that's "a relic from the old days" when hard workingmen would go on a weeks-long drinking spree after a long, self-imposed period of abstinence.

Tragically, the last of these benders at the riverside cottage resulted in a casualty. Ben Wickham is a long-time friend of Luton and had as many enemies as admirers, which he accumulated during "a stormy career" as a pioneer of modern meteorology.

During the 1950s, the science behind modern, long-range weather forecasts was still largely theoretical: the plans from the 40s to launch cameras in orbit, to observe weather and cloud patterns from space, would not come to fruition until April 1, 1960 – when the first weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched. So to be able to make accurate forecasts, before the dawn of the space age, has serious (geo) political implications.

Wickham has a weather record, dating back five decades, which allows him to make accurate prediction about the weather four, five or even six years ahead. One of Wickham's recent victories was the spot-on prediction about a great draught, but the accuracy of this forecast earned him as much scorn as admiration. As a result, the farmers who took Wickham seriously did not fallow their land, sown crops, bought manures, hired farm hands or took out any loans – which saved many of them from potentially bankrupting themselves. However, the people who had a financial or political interest in the farmers spending all of their money were not amused. Not amused at all.

This is the reason for Luton's refusal to accept that Wickham had "died in the hoo-jahs of alcoholic poisoning," which he slipped into after one of their drinking spells, but was killed on account of him preventing the enslavement of farmers and graziers by "the big merchants" and "the banks." So on the recommendation of his neighbor, Knocker Harris, the old man dispatched an urgent letter to Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Upon his arrival, Bony is confronted with the first of many complications and obstacles: if it is the murder, the culprit was clever enough to fool both the local doctor and the medical examiner from the police department. A death certificate was signed, stating Wickham had died "from heart disease accelerated by alcohol," after which the body was cremated and the dust scattered to the four winds. A perfect murder!

A good security for the murderer, but, regardless, someone starts pulling strings and Bony finds his own police apparatus is starting to work against him. Officially, Bony is on a fishing holiday and a guest of Mr. Luton, but rather quickly begins to receive urgent summons to make an early return to duty – orders he ignored and this makes him eventually a wanted man. But that's not all. Bony and Luton find themselves confronted with a couple of foreign agents, from behind the Iron Curtain, who proved to be prone to violence and prefer to enter a room with a gun in hand.

I think this betrays the episodic nature of the story's original run as a newspaper serial, but makes for a fun, well-paced yarn. And loved how much Bony was enjoying his precarious situation.

By the end of the book, Bony should've been so deep in trouble that it would've taken a platoon of gravediggers to get him out of it again, but he simply lifts himself out of the hole. How? Bony blackmails all of the involved police organizations and government branches by threatening to expose their, less than legal, activities. This makes for an excellent closer and recalled Rex Stout's The Doorbell Rang (1965), in which Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin also use the illegal activities of a government agency (i.e. FBI) to close a case.

So all of this makes for a good and even excellent read, but there's one blemish that keeps The Battling Prophet from a place in the first rank. The revelation of the murderer was anti-climatic and was not really connected to any of the other plot-threads, which was slightly disappointing. I found the background of the victim fascinating and the murder should really have been tied to his activities as a meteorologist.

Unfortunately, The Battling Prophet ended on a slightly disappointing note, but the journey to the final chapter was not bad. There were some pretty good or fun scenes. One of them has Bony telling Rev. Weston about his past, while they cast a fish line, which recounts his birth and how he acquired his peculiar name. Bony alluded to his origin in other novels, but this telling of his story seemed to have a bit more details. I also liked the scene when has inside a hidden cellar listening to a policeman making enquiries about his whereabouts. As I noted, Bony was having far too much fun in this outing.

To sum this overlong review up, I would not recommend readers who are new to the series to start here, but fans of the series will find this an interesting inclusion in Bony's casebook. 

My other reviews from this series: 

Winds of Evil (1937)
The Bone is Pointed (1938)
An Author Bites the Dust (1948)
Venom House (1952) 
Cake in the Hat Box (1954)
The Battling Prophet (1956)
Bony and the Mouse (1959) 

Kingdom Come

"On a lonely sword he leaned,

Like Arthur on Excalibur."
- G.K. Chesterton (The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911) 

Recently, I reviewed A Child's Garden of Death (1975) by Richard Forrest, which marked the debut of his husband-and-wife detective team, Lyon and Bea Wentworth, as well as the first one to feature an impossible crime – of which there are five in this ten-book series. Some of them have very alluring sounding premises (e.g. inexplicable vanishing of an airplane and a disappearing houseboat).

So, naturally, I felt attracted to the series and A Child's Garden of Death, in spite of its imperfections, deserves praise for attempting to bridge the gap between detective stories from the Golden Age and those from the post-World War II era. In any case, the book warranted further investigation and almost immediately decided on which one would be next in line: the last one from the series, Death at King Arthur's Court (2005), which was published posthumously.

Inferring from the dated plot-thread about the fax machine, I strongly suspect the manuscript was initially rejected by his publisher and spent the next decade as drawer stuffing.

Nevertheless, the summary of the plot was promising a story with a solid locked room problem, one with "a medieval twist," involving a hooded figure wielding a broadsword and the shadow of suspicion falling on Lyon – who could end up on death row. So how I could possibly resist? But let's start at the beginning.

Lyon is an author of children's literature and created the Wobblies, "a pair of benign monsters," while his wife, Bea, is an "unflappable state senator." One whose rising star is starting to get noticed across state lines. They live in an eighteenth century house, called Nutmeg Hill, which stands in the Connecticut town of Murphysville, but the small, deceivingly peaceful town has a homicide rate that competes with that of Cabot Cove and Midsomer County. Usually, they find themselves involved in these local murder cases.

During their first recorded case, Lyon and Bea were drawn into an official police investigation by a close friend, Police-Chief Rocco Herbert, but in their final outing as detectives they find a problem in their own driveway – inurned inside a completely sealed, armor-plated RV!

Warren Morgan, a professor at Middleburg University, has been receiving death threats from "a bunch of disgruntled college dropouts," who refer to themselves as the Brotherhood of Beelzebub, which went as far placing "a hundred grand bounty on Morgan." So the professor went full A-Team on an old RV and turned the vehicle into "a rolling fortress." The front doors had been strengthened with interior braces, the windows were replaced with "the special safety glass utilized on armored cars" and could be covered steel shutters. A steel shield had been welded under the chassis and a giant air-conditioning unit was sunken into the roof, requiring the combined strength of "four or five very strong guys," which has an air-filtration system built into it – making it impossible to gas him through the air vents. Finally, the only door has a combination lock and there are only two people with the right combination: Morgan and Lyon. 

The final result is a vehicle with "all the protection of an army tank" and "the interior comforts of hedonist's house trailer," which was parked for extra security on the driveway of the Wentworth home. However, every effort to protect himself proved to be wasted money and energy: someone penetrated a seemingly impregnable fortress and butchered the professor with his own broadsword. He used the sword as a prop in one of courses in Arthurian legends.   

Around the same time as the murder, Lyon found himself in the nearby woods, dazed and confused, but he also feared for his life: a hooded figure, in a robe, wielding a medieval-looking sword was pursuing him with the clear intention of separating his head from his shoulders. Strangely, the figure of his executioner "disappeared into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared."

When Lyon emerged from the woods, hunched, bloody and dragging a long sword across the grass, he tells a waiting Rocco Herbert that something had happened to him, but he was "not sure what." However, Captain Norbert of the State Police suspects Lyon of murder. After all, Lyon was covered in blood, carried a broadsword and knew the combination of the lock on the door. So you would expect that, from here on out, the plot would center on exonerating Lyon, but here is where the book began to flip-flop – shifting the focus of the story into a different direction.

Lyon avoids immediate arrest and the next couple of chapters have him recounting the events from the day and evening, which introduces a number of potential suspects.

First of all, there are two feuding literature professors from Middleburg University and Margon's half-brother and sister, twins, who are under his financial control, but there’s also a redheaded stripper from Boston and mother of Morgan's son – who wants to secure a future for their child. This gave the narrative an entirely different tone and the story never returned to the one set forth in its opening chapter, in which Lyon was attacked by the sword-wielding figure. It turned the book from a dark persecution story into a more lighthearted whodunit in less than two chapters.

Actually, the opening of the book and the chapters recounting what happened on the day preceding the murder recalled some of the Jonathan Creek episodes from the 1990s (e.g. Danse Macabre, 1998).

After these chapters, the State Police receives a letter, written in red ink, which claimed responsibility for the murder ("Satan has been gloriously revenged") and Lyon is let off the hook. Once more, this changed the tone and direction of the story: there are a number of additional murders, one by sniper fire, and the reader learns of a person who has designs on Bea. First by stabbing or shooting her in public and eventually by planting a car bomb. On top of that, Lyon and Rocco have to deal with the slightly unhinged personality behind the threatening letters, which involved the plot-thread about the fax machine, but this was basically a side distraction and an excuse to introduce some thriller-ish material – such as tossing around a hand grenade. I actually liked that fun little scene, but there's no way they could've pulled that off in less than four seconds.

Anyway, this moves a great chunk of the second half of the book into the territory of the modern thriller and crime novels, which was reflected in the poor and disappointing conclusion of the book. The murderer was both obvious and slightly mad. So don't expect too much from the who-and why part of the plot.

There is, however, one aspect of the plot I loved: the explanation for the locked room murder. If you want something different in a locked room mystery, you'll find it in this part of the plot. The solution wonderfully uses such aspects as the weight of the armored vehicle and some, eh, external factors. Forrest excellently clued and foreshadowed how the trick was pulled off, which he subtly spelled out to the reader in the opening chapters, but you've to be very alert and perceptive to put one and one together. Sure, the idea behind the locked room trick is simpler than its execution, but that does not take away from the fact that Forrest found a fairly original way to enter and leave a sealed environment.

So, yeah, Death at King Arthur's Court has a strong opening, a shaky, uneven middle section and a disappointing ending, but with a good and solid impossible crime plot. I guess I can only recommend this one to locked room enthusiasts. Other wise, you can safely skip this one.

Well, I'll try to find something better and more classical for the next blog-post.

When the Wind Blows

"Will you walk into my parlor?
Said a spider to a fly
Tis the prettiest little parlor
That ever you did spy."
- Mary Howitt (The Spider and the Fly, 1829)

Clifford Orr hailed from Portland, Maine, and during his short time on this earth made a living by his pen, starting with writing and scoring musical comedies for his school's drama club, which portended his moderate success as an occasional lyricist – scoring a hit with "I May Be Wrong (But I Think Your Wonderful)," sung by Doris Day. He also worked for a Boston-based newspaper, managed a Wall Street bookshop and rounded out his career as a "Talk of the Town" columnist for The New Yorker magazine. 

A perfectly respectable and presentable résumé, but not entirely complete. It misses an important, if short, period from his career and that brief stint is of interest to the ferocious consumer of crime-fiction. 

During the late 1920s and early '30s, Orr wrote and published two mystery novels, The Dartmouth Murders (1929) and The Wailing Rock Murders (1932), which have since fallen into obscurity. A third book was announced, called The Cornell Murders, but it was never published. So there we have another entry for this lamentable list of lost and unpublished detective stories. Fortunately, the other two have emerged from literary oblivion and found their way back into print. 

Earlier this year, Curt Evans, genre-historian and mystery enthusiast, announced that a small publishing house, Coachwhip, was reissuing The Dartmouth Murders and The Wailing Rock Murders as a twofer volume – for which he penned a short, but insightful, introductory piece. On a side note, Evans seems to have a finger in a number of pies these days and it's starting to resemble the formation of a syndicate, but I love it when scarce, long-forgotten mystery novels get reissued. So I'll just pretend I did not see any syndicate forming going on here. 

Anyway, let's start with this review: I decided to begin with Orr's second mystery novel, The Wailing Rock Murders, which Evans described as an "original work" possessing "a strong element of terror" reminiscent of the "eerily atmospheric Thirties detective novels" by the John Dickson Carr – such as The Three Coffins (1935) and The Crooked Hinge (1938). Surprisingly, the book is not a locked room mystery. I say surprising, because it is listed in Locked Room Murders (1991) and secured a spot in the line-up for the "99 Novels for a Locked Room Library," but there's not a trace of a genuine impossibility to be found between its pages. Only the dark, moody atmosphere makes the book comparable to the work of Hake Talbot, Joel Townsley Rogers and Carter Dickson. 

So how it came to be labeled as a locked room novel is somewhat of a mystery, but let's not dwell on the lack of a miracle crime in the book. Anyway...

One of the first notable aspects of The Wailing Rock Murders is the detective-character, Spaton "Spider" Meech, who is a grotesque and deformed monstrosity: a twisted spine turned him into a hunchback and his long, gangling arms hang well below his knees, while his large head seems to lie on his chest when he walks – which earned him his nickname. He also prefers "to sit cross-legged on tables or on the floor" rather than rest his hump "against the unyielding back of a chair." This malformed image makes children laugh and old ladies cross themselves, but it has served him well when he started to make a name for himself as a Great Detective. After all, the press and public love stories with strange or unusual angles and characters.

The Wailing Rock Murders finds Meech in Ogunquit Beach, Maine, where his ward, Garda Lawrence, is a guest at the home of the Farnols and she invited her Uncle Spaton to join her there. 

Creamer Farnols is an amiable, twinkle-eyed host and his wife, Vera, was described by Garda as "a peach," but suffers from occasional "intervals of unconsciousness." They've a daughter, Patricia, who has invited Philip Masterson: a silent, moody and introspective young man. Garda also invited a young man, Victor Millard, but he has a forthcoming and good-humoredly personality. Finally, there is a holidaying chemist, Richard St. John, and his wife, Helen. 

All of them are packed inside a "scabrously ugly" house, a complete monstrosity, perched on a cliff, like "some strange foreign growth," which has "a many-angled cupola topping the whole abomination" – making it appear as "the head of some underworld king" protruding "from the rocky earth." The house has a twin structure perched on the rocks of a nearby cliff. Below them are the windswept and haunted beaches, which is where the cursed rocks of the book-title can be found: there's a curiously-shaped cavern down there and "whenever the wind blows across the opening in a certain way" a slight humming can be heard, but, every now and then, a tremendously heavy wind produces a heart-wrenching wail. A wail that, according to the legend, foretells of death. 

I found this to be somewhat reminiscent of the cursed, rocky protrusions from Arthur J. Rees' The Moon Rock (1922).

Well, the legend of the wailing rocks deliver on their promise and a gruesome murder occurs not longer after the arrival of Meech, which he discovers: Meech finds the body of his ward, "her throat most horribly, most hideously slit," inside the cupola room. So he immediately takes charge of the investigation and the local sheriff allows him to usurp all of the authority in the case. One of the criticisms often leveled against the Golden Age detective story is the freehand given to meddlesome amateurs and semi-official investigators, but Meech takes it to the next level – basically hijacking the office of sheriff. I do not recall having come across anything like this before. 

However, Meech does function as a proper investigator: drawing maps, compiling timetables and conducting interviews, but what really drives the narrative is stumbling from one situation into another. He angrily listens to the murderer's confession, which leads to a second throat-cutting in the cupola of the other house. A supposedly empty, deserted and boarded up place, but Meech discovers it houses an embarrassing family secret and leads him to a third murder – one that's buried deep into the past. It also becomes apparent that mental issues and twisted minds are a common feature among this small cast of characters. 

All of this takes place over the course of a single, sleep-deprived night and during the early morning following their nightmarish experience. And as the sun rises, Meech figures out the whole mess and comes to an unsettling conclusion. 

The explanation is surprisingly simplistic and you've got to admire the fine tight-rope Orr tried to traverse, but there's a problem or two: one of them is that the solution made nearly all of the plot-threads appear as irrelevant and only served as a distraction from the obvious. Secondly, the passing of time dulled the twist of the solution. It was not entirely new when the book was originally published, but Orr's application of it was unusual and noteworthy. I suspected such sort of game was being played, but kept being lured away from it by the other plot-threads. 

So, all in all, The Wailing Rock Murders is not one of the all-time greats from the genre's Golden Era, but still a good, fun and solid read. If you love such mystery writers as Carr and Talbot, you'll probably like this one. Regardless, I suspect The Dartmouth Murders will end up being my favorite of the two. It sounds like Patrick Quentin (college setting) meets Ellery Queen (father-and-son detective team). So you can expect a review of that one in the near future and I'll try to have a genuine locked room mystery for the next one.
 

By the way, is it just me or is there something different about this place?

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)