Unseen Thorns

"The point is that there are a million ways for you to die that you can't possibly guard against."

- Lincoln Forrestor (William Gray Beyer's Death of a Puppeteer, 1946)

The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders is a five-part (episode) story-arc in the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) series and arguably has the best all-around story-telling and plot of all the episodes previous reviewed on this blog, which largely rests on a pair of clever locked room murders and the role played by Kindaichi's nemesis – who acts here alongside the high-school detective. And for a very good reason!

Yoichi Takato is talented magician and criminal, known as "The Puppeteer from Hell," who designs perfect crimes for people with a deep-seated grudge and controls the executioners of his schemes like stringed puppets, which he showcased in The Prison Prep School Murder Case. However, this time he has to dance to the tune of another plotter with a talent for murder.

A mysterious person going by the moniker of "Rosenkreuz" is sending out invites to celebrate the completion of the Blue Rose at the Rosenkreuz Mansion, but the letter delivered to the Puppeteer also contained a threat. One of the invitees to the party is his long-lost sister and he has to attend or else she'll leave the mansion in a body bag.

So this places Takato in a precarious position and he dislikes "the thought of unseen thorns," but what he excels at is murder, "not at the inverse," which gives him the idea to slip "a joker" into whatever game Rosenkreuz has planned – namely Hajime Kindaichi. Takato strikes a deal with Kindaichi that if his sister is among the guests, and she makes out of the mansion alive, he will turn himself in to the police to atone for his past crimes. It's an offer that proved to be impossible to ignore or turn down and this gives the story a very different dynamic, because Takato acts a secondary detective.

Someone who's right next to Kindaichi to help him in every step of the investigation, but whose role always appears to have a shadow-side. As you can never be entirely sure how much of a hand he (might) have in the unfolding drama. I found this to be a pleasant divergence from the unusual, often formulaic, narrative of the series.

Takato, Kindaichi and Miyuku arrive at the mansion, which is a European-style, cross-shaped house encircled by thick, impenetrable hedges of rose bushes that could have been pulled from the Queen of Heart's hedge maze. The person known as Rosenkreuz plays the role of absentee host and only communicates with his guest through letters delivered by the butler of the mansion, Mouri Mikado. So there you have the first suspect, however, the remaining guests are also an interesting bunch.

One of the first surprises for Kindaichi and Miyuki is that their biology teacher, Shiraki Benine, is among the guests and she has shown a personal interest in (blue) roses at the opening of the episode – which she shares with the others who received an invitation. There's a CEO of a biotechnology company and a rose garden manager, but also several artistically inclined people such as a photographer, a kimono designer, an artist and a flower poet. So this nicely sets the stage for murder and the first body turns up before the ending of the first episode.

On a brief note of negativity, the first two murders were rather disappointing as the first body turned up, impossibility, on the dinner table, but this piece of cheap trickery was (thankfully) almost immediately explained. The second person died when he tried to escape from the premise by going through the rose bushes, but the thorns had been poisoned and he dropped dead on the spot. Very, very pulpy. Luckily, these two murders did not set the tone or quality for the remaining four episodes.

The third murder is discovered when a note by Rosenkreuz commands everyone to come to the circular reception room on the north side, where he will reveal "the blue rose," but what they discover is a locked room and they make a gruesome discovery when they inspect the outside windows – inside lays the body of man on a cross-shape bed of flower petals. A wooden stake has been driven through his heart!

 

The Rose-Petal Locked Room

What makes this murder an impossible one is the door, which opens inward, but the flower bed, placed all the way up to the threshold, was undisturbed. So how did the murderer closed the door without sweeping the lower part of the petal cross into the hallway outside? The explanation proved to be as a good and novel as the locked room situation, which combined the flower motif of the story with certain aspects of the murder room to great effect.

I believe this is the kind of trick John Dickson Carr or Joseph Commings would have admired and something Yozaburo Kanari would love to pass off as his own.

The second impossible situation is of a different order altogether: a woman is being attacked in a room that can only be reached by taking a large detour around the house (some short cuts were boarded up). When they reach the section of the mansion, where the room is situated, the only person they find there is Takato and he swears nobody had passed while he had been standing there – which makes the murder they discover in the room an impossible one. The trick is yet another variation on the idea Seimaru Amagi played with in The Prison Prep School Murder Case and The Kamikakushi Village Murders from Detective Academy Q, which even uses a similar sun-light clue.

Obviously, Amagi loves the idea of this trick and gets a ton of mileage out of it. Sure, it's an idea with a lot of possibilities and has barely been looked at by Western mystery writers (except for Paul Halter), but, in this case, I believe the first locked room trick is superior to the second one.

Anyhow, the combination of a collaboration between two enemies, Kindaichi and Takato, and a pair of excellently imagined impossible crimes is what, largely, made The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders my favorite story from this series. But the identity of the (somewhat obvious) murderer and the underlying, hidden relationships were also of interest. As to be expected, there was the good old avenger-motif at the heart of the case, but this time there was an extra dimension to the motive as it answered why Takato had to be present and what the murders had to do with his sister. Fascinatingly, this showed the story was written around several characters with parallel relationships, which recalled similar, sometimes mirror-like, relationships found in Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan (or Case Closed).

All of these parallel relationships, rose-themed clues and two locked room illusions that took full advantage of their surroundings created some beautiful plot-patterns together. The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders completely exorcised the dispiriting disappointment left behind by The Legendary Snow Demon Murders.

Hopefully, the next story will be able to maintain this level of quality. So I guess it will be a coin toss between The Death March of Young Kindaichi and The Foxfire-Floating Murders. Any and all recommendations are welcome!

Something Funny is Going On Here

"I would rather have a flock of penguins around the place any day than a raven perched on the bust of Pallas above my chamber door."

- Stuart Palmer

Stuart Palmer's Cold Poison (1954), alternatively known as Exit Laughing, is the penultimate title in the Miss Hildegarde Withers series and the last one to appear in print during his lifetime, which was followed fifteen years later with the posthumous publication of Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene (1969) – completed by Fletcher Flora. So you can read this next-to-last novel as the official ending of the series with the posthumous title serving as a curtain call.

In Cold Poison, Miss Withers has retired from her teaching position at Manhattan's Jefferson School and retreated to "the bland, monotonous climate of Southern California" in order to alleviate her asthma. Gratefully, she still has a passion for sticking her nose into other people's business and has a friend back home who recommended her services, as a private snoop, to the big boss of a movie studio.

Ralph Cushak is the studio manager of Miracle-Paradox Studios and his problem concerns the animation department, tucked away in a back corner of the lot known as Cartoon Alley, where several poetic poison-pen letters were delivered to his employees – all were adorned with an illustration of a dead Peter Penguin with "a strangling noose about his throat."

A gross violation of "the unwritten laws of cartoondom" that strictly forbids depictions of snakes, cows with udders, blood and death. So the drawings are a very serious infraction of cartoon etiquette. Oh, and the death threats were not exactly appreciated, either.

On the recommendation of Inspector Oscar Piper of New York City, the studio attracted Miss Hildegarde Withers to discreetly poke around Cartoon Alley.

Formally, the studio hired Miss Withers' poodle, Talleyrand, who acts as a live model for the animators working on a feature-length cartoon, entitled The Circus Poodle, which gives her an excuse to wander around the place as the dog's chaperon – asking all kinds of impertinent questions. Palmer used this angle of the story to provide some padding by giving a detailed, and slightly unnecessary, rundown of the story behind The Circus Poodle, but it helped giving you the idea that Miss Withers was actually at an animation studio. A background practically unique in the genre. Anyway, it doesn't take very long for Miss Withers to stumble upon a body.

The practical joker of the animation studio, Larry Reed, had called in sick around the time the threatening poems were passed around. So Miss Withers decided to pay him a personal visit, but she had to break into his pink-coral, cliffside home with the assistance of a bent hairpin and what she found was the bloated, twisted body of the animator. Something had made him swell up like "a poisoned pup" and the autopsy revealed this something was the garden-variety poison-ivy!

A very unusual kind of poison in murder cases and Miss Withers reaches out to Inspector Piper with the question whether he has ever heard of "a murder being committed with poison-ivy," which he affirmed and the example he knows of currently resided on the pile of New York's unsolved murder cases. So this begs the question whether there's a connection between both poisoning cases and the homicide detective takes the next plane to California.

On a side note, a similar connection between two unusual murder cases brought Piper to Hollywood in The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (1941).

So they begin to dig around together, just like the good old days, but this is the point where the primary weakness of the book begins to manifest itself. Cold Poison has a plot that's on the slender side and buried beneath a barrel full of red herrings, which did no favors to the fair play element of the story. Miss Withers and Piper are constantly kept busy with sorting out all of the false leads, but this sumptuous buffet of red herrings only prevented the reader from having an honest shot at beating the detectives to the solution – as nearly all of the clues turn out to be nothing more than distractions. And this makes it slightly frustrating that the book did not contain illustrations of the visual clues used to identity the poisoner.

At the end of the story, Miss Withers asks all of the suspects to make sketches of the murdered character of Peter Penguin and compares them to original drawings from the poison-pen letters. The thing that betrays the murderer in these drawings is something a regular reader, who's not familiar with the animation business, could still have picked upon. Yes, it would have been a slender clue, but a clue nonetheless and should have been included in the story.

So, you probably assume Cold Poison was an enormous letdown, but not as much as you might think.

Sure, as a detective story, the plot completely underperformed, but, as a fan of the series, it was still an enjoyable read. Granted, the book could have been really great had the clueing been up to scratch, but long-time readers of Palmer will be still able to appreciate this penultimate entry in the Miss Withers series. One that ends on a note suggesting that the series really had come to a close. So the story, in spite of its short comings, is of genuine interest to fans of Palmer, Withers and Piper.

Well, thus ends this poor excuse of a review and wish my brief break from the locked room sub-genre had been on a more positive note, but, hopefully, the next break will turns up a non-impossible classic. 

In the meantime, there are several locked room reviews in the pipeline. I have yet another review of a Kindaichi episode lined up and should return to Case Closed one of these days, which has an impossible crime story involving a certain gentleman thief. I'm also eagerly awaiting the arrival of a short story collection and placed a handful of locked room novels at the top of my TBR-pile, of which two will be re-reads. So you all have some more miracle crimes to look forward to!

Snowy Death

"Crimes 're committed by people. There ain't nothin' impossible about it! What are ya stupid?"

- Harley Hartwell a.k.a. Heiji Hattori (Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 50)

Last Sunday, I posted a review of my third foray into the Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) series, The Alchemy Murder Case, which closely followed the formula established in the original incarnation of the series, but the plot had a grand and original locked room illusion – a two-sided trick that also explained the secret behind the vanishing of a gigantic sword. So it was the third (episodic) story in a row that did not end in disappointment.

But than an old friend of this blog, "Origami," turned up in the comment-section and jinxed my epic rediscovery of the series. Oh, yes. This is going to be a good, old-fashioned bashing of Kindaichi.

The Legendary Snow Demon Murders is stretched across four episodes and takes place against the endless, snow-capped mountain tops of the Snow Goblin Ski Resort, which has recently been developed by an investment group and a handful of people have been selected for a trial run – including the protagonists of the series, Hajime Kindaichi and Nanase Miyuki. However, they're present at the resort as part-time workers to help take care of the testers. And, as to be expected, there's a dark, bloody history attached to the place.

On New Years Eve, 50 years ago, the now long-abandoned mountain village was visited by the legendary Snow Demon, who left behind a trail of blood and empty houses, but the remains of his many victims were never recovered. Everyone in the region believed that the missing villagers had all been "eaten by the Snow Demon." Well, so far, so good. But not for very long.

The legend of the Snow Demon and the miraculous vanishing of his victims enters the picture when one of the guests, Kumosawa Natsuki, disappears from her log cabin without leaving a single footprint in the large, unbroken blanket of virgin snow outside – which had began to fall when she had retired and stopped when she was discovered to be missing. She had been spirited away! An unlikable guest and "creepy otaku," Sabaki Kaito, disappears during the second episode, but his body is found and vanishes again, which is the point where the story begins run out of fuel.

A large swath of the second episode and pretty much the entirety of the third is nothing more than filler material. And not very good filler material at that!

There are two basic, and simplistic, problems at the heart of these two episodes: the (non-impossible) disappearance of Sabaki's body from a casket and who flung a bloodstained meat-cleaver through the window of the main cabin when everyone was alibied. The answer to the first problem is a reworking of a cheap, dime-store magic trick, but with a body and casket replacing the coin and small box, while the meat-cleaver trick is embarrassingly childish and bad – even the Ayatsuri Sakon series would have shied away from using it.

So, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the plot, but hoped that the explanation of the impossible disappearance would save the episode. After all, I had my doubts about the previous episodes I watched and they turned around in the end with some splendid solution. Well, that did not happen in this case, I'm afraid.

Sure, the explanation for the impossibility is, in principle, an excellent one that might also be completely original, but I had two problems with it (you can re-reverse, or decode, the spoilers with copy-paste here):

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2) .tolp eht fo xurc eht neeb taht dah gnivigrof erom tol a neeb evah dluow I .yrots neeuQ yrellE suomaf taht morf esuoh eritne na fo ecnaraeppasid eht sa hcuS .nibac gol elohw eht fo gnihsinav eht tuoba neeb ytilibissopmi eht dah detanimile ,evoba denoitnem ,ssenkaew eht dna denehtgnerts neeb ev'dluoc tolp llarevo ehT ?deraeppasid dah stnirptoof emos dna nosrep eno fi sa raeppa ti ekam ylpmis ot kcirt elacs-egral ,etarobale na a hcus esu yhW

The Snow Goblin Ski Resort

As to be expected, the who-and why behind the killings weren't particular ingenious, innovative or very surprising, because the murderer's identity and motive were written around the avenger-motif used in nearly every single story in this series. I suppose the choice of the murderer was the only notable aspect of the plot, since this person was below suspicion, but hardly enough to save this dull, slow-moving episode stuffed with mostly second-and third-rate tricks – which triggered traumatic flashbacks to my first encounter with this series. The original Kindaichi series is like my 'Nam or something.

Surprisingly, this blog-post turned out to be not half as harsh as even I expected it to be. I'm disappointed, more than anything else, because the premise and main trick of The Legendary Snow Demon Murders had potential, but everything ended up being half thought-out or completely wasted. Such as the horrible filler material and the series formula didn't do the story any favors either. However, this will not deter from continuing with the series and you can probably expect a review of The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders next. That's a good one, right?

On a final, unrelated note: allow me to draw your attention to my previous review of Stacey Bishop's Death in the Dark (1930), which is a very rare detective novel that has recently been reissued and the plot toys around with no less than three impossible crimes! So you might want to take a peek at that review. By the way, the next review will be of a non-impossible crime novel. Yes, I'm still aware of their existence! :)

Let There Be Light

"Nothing has 'just happened' in this case. There's a terrible logic about everything--a carefully planned reason behind each detail. Nothing has been left to chance. Still, this very systematization of the crime will eventually prove the murderer's downfall. When we can find a key... we'll know our way into the main chamber of horrors."

- Philo Vance (S.S. van Dine's The Greene Murder Case, 1928)

George Antheil was an avant-garde composer and authored one of the rarest locked room novels in the genre, Death in the Dark (1930), which he published under the nom-de-plume of "Stacey Bishop" and was written as a roman à clef, but others have described the book as "an act of revenge" - since all of the victims are fictional substitutes of people who had drawn the ire of the author.

During the American debut of Antheil's signature work, Ballet mécanique, several elements of the performance turned rogue, which resulted in "an unmitigated disaster." The critics were savage and the composer returned to Europe with a blemish on his name. Several years later, Atheil poured all of his anger into the pages of a detective novel and used it as a vehicle to murder "everyone he held responsible for the catastrophe."

Remarkably, there were a couple of high-profile names, such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, who had a guiding hand in the creation of this strange piece of detective fiction. So the book has a great back story and a literary pedigree, but how does Death in the Dark stand up as a detective story?

As the late Robert Adey correctly observed, the book is "an extraordinarily complex work" and "a combination of the worst and best elements of the thirties," which are woven into an intricate webwork of plot-threads with three apparently impossible shootings at its core – dressed and padded with chatter about art, music and science. On the surface, it might appear as if Death in the Dark is a typical work from a student of the Van Dine-Queen School of Detective Fiction, but Antheil really stands out among his classmates. Such as the inclusion of some weird, science-fiction-like laboratory scenes that some have likened to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

So the plot is a rich one and crammed with all kind of material, which almost makes this a heavy, baroque-style mystery novel and requires a fully attentive reader. And this may also be the greatest weakness of the book. There's so much here that the effect of certain elements (like the impossible shootings) are weakened. But lets begin at the beginning. 

Death in the Dark is narrated by Stacey Bishop (of course!) and is a close friend of Stephan Bayard, who is "wedded to the modern arts," but, like Philo Vance, picked up criminology as a hobby and has assisted the police on several occasions – such as "the celebrated Lanoucin case in Paris." So when the Public Prosecutor of New York, Howard Wayson, called they hurried to the scene of a "devilish and diabolical" crime.

The scene of the murder is the apartment of Dave Denny, an "extraordinary young concert manager," who has been shot under inexplicable circumstances in his bedroom.

When all those present were distracted by either several fire engines outside or engrossed in a book (see map), someone turned off the lights and fired a shot from the hallway into the victim's bedroom. A perfectly aimed shot that hit Denny dead square in the forehead, but the room was pitch-dark and to deliberately shoot with such incredible accuracy seems utterly impossible under the given circumstances.

The floor plan and position of everyone during the first shooting

Interestingly, during the initial stages of the investigation, Bayard's pet theory betrays a level of fallibility not often associated with detective-characters cut from the same cloth as Philo Vance. 

Based on a nick in the bathroom door, Bayard believes Denny used an elaborate method to take his own life and throw suspicion on those present in the apartment, but the theory becomes untenable as evidence begins to pile up around him. One of the monkey wrenches in this theory is the key to the front door. A key that should be on a hook next to the door, but, every time something happens, it is found stuck in the lock. The infernal key also proves to be stumbling block in a case of murder.

Speaking of murder, there are two additional shootings under equally impossible circumstances: one of the family members is shot dead in the middle of the living room, while surrounded by the police, but nobody saw the shooter and the gun is found in the bedroom – where two days previously Denny had been murdered! A third member of the family is arrested and locked up in a police cell, but the killer even managed to breach the police security and shoot another person in the face.

I agree with John Norris' opinion that the police cell murder has the cleverest, if gimmicky, explanation of the three locked room problems, which actually provided me with the idea for the title of this blog-post. You'll snicker or grin when you learn its significance, I promise! Only downside is that the prison cell murder, out of necessity, is explained away almost immediately. It would simply not be acceptable if took until the end of the book for the investigators to figure out how the trick was done.

The first two locked rooms are of a lesser quality than the last one, but my only real problem is with the second shooting in front of several witnesses.

Technically, the trick is feasible enough and would probably work. However, you have to wonder whether a shot could really be fired, under such difficult circumstances, without anyone noticing from whose direction it came, but what really bugged me is that a golden opportunity was passed over to turn this bizarre shooting into a full-blown locked room mystery, which could easily be done with most of the present elements – such as "a resounding crack on a door in the hallway" and the gun on the bed.

Only thing that needed to be added is that someone noticed a streak, or a shadow, fleeing into the hallway and act upon it. But all they would find is a gun in the bedroom and a murderer who vanished from a locked and watched apartment. If you know how the trick in the book is worked, you'll know how well this addition to it would work. It would create two impossibilities (shooting and vanishing) with one single trick!

So that missed opportunity at crafting an ever better impossible problem was somewhat bothersome. Nevertheless, it was fun to read how Antheil toyed around with the possibilities for all of these impossibilities, which is always a treat for locked room fanboys like yours truly.

I also appreciated the ways in which the problems were approached, which on one occasion strayed off the well beaten track. There's the customary interviews, theorizing and the compilation of several fact sheets (graded facts, time charts and a floor plan), but in addition to these Bayard wrote "poems" for all three impossible shootings explaining why they're so damned impossible. They add to the overall peculiarity and oddness of the book. Still, the tabulations and "poems" also bring clarity to the complex plot by placing all of the known facts and clues in an ordered list. And these lists did strengthen some of the most important clues to the identity of the murderer. So there's that.

Well, I guess I should conclude that Death in the Dark is a strange, uneven detective novel brimming with the weird and unusual elements, but clever and consistent enough to succeed as a proper (locked room) mystery. Sure, the book is not in the same league as the classics of its form, however, you could place it easily alongside other alternative locked room classics such as W. Shepard Pleasants' The Stingaree Murders (1934) and Joseph B. Carr's The Man with Bated Breath (1934).

So, a long, rambling story short, I liked Death in the Dark. Maybe more than I should have, but liked it nonetheless.

Heavy Metal

"Sometimes we have to stand on our heads in order to see things the right-side up."

- Hadji Singh (The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Episode 12: The Alchemist)

The Alchemy Murder Case is the third, four-part episode from Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo R (The File of Young Kindaichi R) I watched and has a by-the-numbers plot, written according to the well-worn formula of the series, but with a completely original locked room trick and a clever method for hiding the murder weapon – a gigantic long-sword. A minor piece of the overall puzzle that can be viewed as a well done, quasi-impossible problem. But first things first.

Hajime Kindaichi takes a shot at winning a 400 million yen prize by participating in a reality game show about a hidden treasure, which consists of a stack of gold bullion secreted somewhere on a lonely island.

Renkin Island is completely isolated from the outside world and used to belong to a physicist, Ezaki Kuroudo, who became an alchemist and constructed a bizarre, intricate building on the cliff-side of the island. Alchemist Mansion was built for "the sake of the ultimate scientific research," alchemy, but disappeared when he had reputedly reached "the peak of that alchemical research." What he left behind was the mystery of what happened to the ton of gold he had brought to the island with him. After all, it had to be somewhere.

A television special is being filmed around the hidden treasure and several people are brought together by the production team to hunt for it, which includes a number of celebrities such as Akashiba Taiki (comedian), Fukamori Hotaru (idol) and Hayami Reika (actress) – who's a recurring character in the series and debuted in Death TV. However, they also netted several regular contestants "who won a puzzle-solving battle" in order to secure their spot on the show. They are Isshiki Rikako (science student), Kamioka Fuuma (dental student) and Hajime Kindaichi.

So the cast, alongside the crew, are left on the island, but, before the day draws to a close, the problems begin.

The only motor-launch is torched and footage from the overnight camera shows a cloaked figure, with an iron mask, dragging "a huge sword" across the hallway! A situation culminating with the discovery that the body of the Assistent Director, Mayumura Takuya, is peering down at them from atop of the rooftop skylight, but the sword-wielding Alchemist has only just began and ramps up the bloodshed in the subsequent episode – proving he has both the look and work ethic of a deranged killer from a 1980s slasher film.

Hell, one of the victims sat on the toilet when the Alchemist removed a panel in the ceiling and struck her down from above! If that doesn't qualify as slasher-type of murder, I don't know what does.

Anyway, the most interesting of the murder is the one the Alchemist committed inside a sealed bedroom. All of the bedrooms in the Alchemy Mansion have impassable, grated windows and doors of solid steel that can be latched on the inside with a heavy bar, but, as the legend goes, "an alchemist can walk through any kind of metal," which is what the viewer is shown. Admittedly, I was annoyed that they showed too much of the murderer's handiwork, because it appeared to give the whole game away.

A fear that seemed to be confirmed when, what I saw, suddenly reminded me that The Alchemy Murder Case had previously been brought up on this blog. Back in 2015, I reviewed a horrendously bad locked room novel and imagined an alternative explanation for the impossible crimes, which earned a comparison in the comment-section with this Kindaichi story.

So my attention began to wane and, once again, feared I had to write a lukewarm review of the story, but the truly original explanation reeled me back in. The solution added a new method to the long list of tricks of how a murderer could enter, and exit, a room that appears to be completely impenetrable and fitted the theme of the plot like a glove. And no. The metallic bar, securing the door from the inside, was not lifted and lowered with the help of a magnet. It's a bit more involved than that.

What's really remarkable about the locked room trick is how the same principle applied to the disappearance of the sword. A sword that had been looked for all over the place, but could not be found. One of the later murders provides a solid clue as to what happened to the weapon and this, in turn, should provide you with a clue to the problem of the latched door.

"He sees when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake..."

So, the impossible aspect of the plot really makes this four-part episode recommendable to other locked room afficianodes and in particular to those who have a special fondness for Paul Halter's Le cercle invisible (The Invisible Circle, 1996) – which shares a couple of similarities with The Alchemy Murder Case. Such as a sword murder inside a sealed room with grated windows and the additional problem of a vanishing sword.

The remaining parts of the episode were decent enough, but also pretty standard fare for this series. Once again, we get one of the myriad of variations on the same motive that (for some reason) this series recycles endlessly. I can only remember one of the earliest volumes in the manga series, namely Smoke and Mirrors, in which the murderer had a novel motive. Otherwise, it's always some kind of reworking of the age-old avenger-motif.

However, that will always be an annoyance with me, but a minor one and to most readers motive is only of secondary importance. It's just weird that nobody in the Kindaichi universe ever commits murder simply for financial gain, love, jealousy, shame or fear.

As a whole, The Alchemy Murder Case was a pretty decent, if formulaic, entry in the series, but one with an outstanding and original locked room mystery. So I suppose this episode can also be used as an introduction to the series for some of my readers. You can watch them (legally, don't worry) on Crunchyroll.

I previously reviewed The Blood Pool Hall Murder and The Prison Prep School Murder Case. No idea which episode will be next on my watch list, but The Death March of Young Kindaichi and The Rosenkreuz Mansion Murders look promising. So stay tuned!

Riddle Me This

"My reputation as a meddler had preceded me..."

- Hildegarde Withers (Stuart Palmer's Miss Withers Regrets, 1947)

Stuart Palmer's The Cases of Hildegarde Withers (2012) is an abridged edition of an early compendium of short stories, collecting only five of the eight original stories from The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers (1947), which is the sole drawback of this collection. On the upside, the book still consists of a handful of Palmer's lesser-known, but quality, detective stories about his popular and incomparable series-sleuth, Miss Hildegarde Withers.

Miss Withers is an angular, prim-looking schoolteacher at Manhattan's Jefferson School, where she presides over a third-grade class of hooligans, but she also has an uncanny knack to always be around when a body turns up – earning herself a reputation with the NYPD as a "meddlesome old battleaxe." Fortunately, she also happens to be one "the smartest sleuth" in or "out of uniform."

On the surface, it seems like your standard detective series with an inquisitive, nosy spinster as the protagonist, such as Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple and Patricia Wentworth's Miss Maud Silver, but (IMHO) Palmer and Miss Withers are leagues ahead of their competition. Even John Russell Fearn's wonderful Miss Maria Black is only a distant second in my book.

One of the reasons is the figure of Miss Withers, who's far more convincing character than many of her counterparts, but even more important is that Palmer possessed both a brain and imagination, which he used to construct some clever and imaginative (puzzle) plots – e.g. The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933), The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (1937) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). But he was equally adept at writing short detective stories (e.g. Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles, 2002).

So you can read the content of The Cases of Hildegarde Withers as specimens of Palmer's versatile talent as a mystery writer, because the short stories within this collection range from whodunits, alibi-tricks, a smash-and-grabber and a locked room story of the inverted variety! Let's take a crack at them.

The first story, "The Puzzle of the Scorned Woman" (a.k.a. "The Riddle of the Lady from Dubuque"), was originally published in a December, 1947 publication of New York Sunday News, which cast Miss Withers in the role of "a precautionary measure." Elsie Pender has trouble accepting that the man she loves, Paul Severance, is going to marry another woman and she wants Hermione Lapham to pursued her daughter to blow of her marriage to the plastic surgeon, which is, naturally, out of the question.

However, Pender appears to have gotten her hands on a .38 automatic and Mrs. Lapham is afraid the girl might do something irreversibly stupid. So the head of the Homicide Division, Oscar Piper, turns to the department's gadfly, Miss Withers, because it's difficult for them to act when nothing concrete has happened. But there's not much she can do: Pender is found in Severance's private office with two bullet-holes in the chest and an obviously forced suicide note besides her. Miss Withers solves the case by making an astute observation about her clothes and gloves, which tested negative when they were subjected to a nitrate test. A good, short and simple story with a nifty little twist in the tail.

The next story, "The Riddle of the Yellow Canary," first appeared in a 1934 issue of Mystery and is my personal favorite from this collection!

A music publisher from Tin Pan Alley, Arthur "Art" Reese, has a pesky problem on his hands, named Margie Thorens, who has made it "necessary that she be quietly removed" and has working on a scheme for months – which is put into action with near perfection. Reese slips Margie a poisoned capsule and dictates song lyrics to her while he watches her die, but the clever part is that the song text can be construed as a lyrical suicide note. And as a finishing touch, Reese's leaves her body behind in a room with "a door locked on the inside." The locked room trick is a very simple one, but you rarely get an impossible angle in an inverted mystery. So that was a nice feature.

Inspector Oscar Piper invites Miss Withers to accompany him to the scene, because she always wanted to know how "the police can spot a suicide from a murder," but the bugbear of the police department becomes convinced this suicide is a well-disguised murder. She got a substitute teacher to take over her class and devoted her time to study locks and poisons, but the tale-tell clue came when she discovered the victim had a pet canary. A chirping little creature who proved to be the not so silent witness that strapped Reese to the electric chair. It's an absolute ace of a short story.

The third story of the lot, "A Fingerprint in Cobalt" (a.k.a. "The Riddle of the Blue Fingerprint"), was first published in 1938 in New York Sunday News.

The story opens, uneventfully, at an auction of antiques and the audience show a complete disinterest in a mahogany wardrobe. A heavy beast of burden that took three men to lift onto the platform, but auctioneer is not easily deterred and orders one of his helpers to open to wardrobe to show everyone how much storage space they could own. Someone else had noticed that convenience as well. When the wardrobe is opened, the body of a man comes tumbling out.

Dr. Carl Brotherly was a collector of "Oriental statuettes" and tucked inside his shirt was a postcard-sized photograph of a fingerprint, but why was it found on the body of a murdered collector? Luckily, Miss Withers had a very good reason to be in attendance at the auction and discovers why the police were unable to identity the fingerprints, which points straight to the motive for the murder and the murderer. Another simple, but good, story with a pretty novel idea (the titular fingerprint). I believe the idea, along with the basic premise, could have been developed into a full-length detective novel.

The fourth story, "The Riddle of the Doctor's Double," has a copyright date of 1936, but doesn't appear to have a publishing history prior to 1946 when it was printed in the August issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I can only assume that the story was shelves, or failed to sell, on account of the underperformance of the plot. The premise was promising enough, but the solution was painfully transparent.

Inspector Piper and Miss Withers are present to give aid to an old, feeble and dying man, but his personal physician informs the duo that he believes a very impatient would-be-murderer is helping the old man along to the other world – which is confirmed when, a short while later, the man is murdered in his own bed. However, the person who was admitted to the sick man was his own doctor. Or to be more accurate, the person appeared to be a spitting image of the doctor. And the latter came around to see his patient mere minutes after his double had done the dirty work.

A fantastic premise with all the potential in the world, but everyone with measurable brain activity can see through the charade. A surprisingly poor attempt at a least-likely-suspect story from one of the Greats of the Golden Age. But hey, every short story collection has an obligatory dud or two. Even in a slim volume like this one.

Finally, we get around to "Green Fire" (a.k.a. "The Riddle of the Green Ice"), which was first published in The Chicago Tribune in 1941 and has an unusual kind of problem for Miss Withers: a series of smash-and-grabs of jewelers display windows, but the latest one leaves a police officer dead – shot while he tried to stop the criminal. You would expect such a plot between the pages of a hardboiled crime story, but Miss Withers make some astute observations and clever deductions that provides Inspector Piper with profile of the jewel-snatcher.

Such as the criminal being an egomaniac (the brick was wrapped as a gift with happy birthday on it, because the jeweler's shop was celebrating an anniversary), wanted by the police (desperate enough to shoot his way out of the situation) and he was new to the jewel racket (since he left a valuable green emerald). However, the story has much more to offer as the criminal returns for that "25-carat hunk of green ice," eludes the dragnet, while Miss Withers also has to tango with a mad house-painter and locate the hiding place of the missing emerald.

Sounds confusing? Well, perhaps. However, the story is much clearer than my brief description, but the overall effect is somewhat marred by Palmer's attempt to pack as much plot in twenty-some pages. I think this story warranted a larger page-count. Still, it's nice little story showing what happens when a spinster sleuth, like Miss Withers, makes a wrong turns and ends up on those mean streets of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Glad to report she was able to hold her own!

All in all, a well balanced collection of short stories consisting of three good ones, one dud and a minor gem. So not bad. Not bad at all. But the collection and stories were so short that this read was hardly more than an appetizer. Who knows. Maybe I'll pull one of Palmer's unread Miss Withers novels from my shelves as a follow up, but we'll see what the next blog-post will bring.