Policeman in Armour (1937) by Rupert Penny

E.B.C. Thornett was an English crossword expert and the author of nine densely plotted, jigsaw-like detective novels, published under the pennames of "Rupert Penny" and "Martin Tanner," which were almost completely forgotten in modern times – until they were brought back in print by Ramble House. Back in 2010, I decided to give Penny a try and, obviously, settled on Sealed Room Murder (1941). Unfortunately, the torturous, snail-like pace of the story wasn't exactly an open invitation to continue my exploration of Penny's Chief Inspector Beale series.

Sealed Room Murder has an audacious and original locked room-trick, but it was tucked away in the last quarter of the story and it was preceded by seemingly never-ending domestic quarrels between the characters. Something that became tedious and boring very quickly. I do believe Sealed Room Murder could have been pruned and whittled down to a classic short story or novella, comprising mostly of the last quarter, but, as it stood, it completely killed any desire to read the rest of the series.

Cue "JJ," of The Invisible Event, who has been raving about Penny since 2015. The cretin even had the gall to say (I quote) "the emergence of an unpublished penny novel" would be more exciting to him than "an unpublished work of John Dickson Carr." He actually said that... on a public forum!

You can say what you want about Mary Tudor, but she knew how to treat apostates and heretics, like JJ, which makes it fortunate for him that I'll be the one who'll be passing judgment on this occasion and always give someone a second hearing – such as Yazoburo Kanari and Clifford Knight. So I went over JJ's blog-post, "Policeman's Lot – Ranking the Edward Beale Novels of Rupert Penny," and decided on the novel he called "Penny at his most presentable." Was he right? Let's find out!

Policeman in Armour (1937) is the third novel in the Chief Inspector Edward Beale series and embarks a month after Albert Carew is sentenced to five years of penal servitude for forgery.

Carew "kicked up no end of a fuss when the verdict was brought in" and wrote a threatening letter to the judge who presided over the case, Sir Raymond Everett, stating that "Hell is the only place for people who take five years off a man's life for what he didn't do." Closing the letter with the promise that the judge certainly hasn't more than five years left to live. Sixteen months later, a deathbed confession released Carew from prison with "a lot of apologies" and a financial compensation, but he had not forgotten about the man who put him behind bars.

Justice Everett, of the King's Bench Division, suffered a severe heart attack after the sentence and was forced to retire to his mansion, Heath Approach, where lived with his relatives and has filled a private room with a collection of knives – resembling "a war museum." An aspect that remained underdeveloped in the story, but something I thought was worth mentioning since Penny so closely aligned himself with writers of the Van Dine-Queen School like Anthony Abbot, Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett.

Chief Inspector Beale is consulted by Justice Everett, now "a plain private citizen" with "a very weak heart," on a very peculiar threat he received from Carew. A letter arrived advising the ex-judge to start doing "a few good actions," because Carew was going to make up a balance of his life and pass judgment. And the letter is filled with details only known to his household. Several months later, Chief Inspector is called back to Heath Approach to investigate the murder of the retired judge.

Before he was murdered, Sir Raymond Everett has suffered a second heart attack and was put to bed, sedated with morphia, but was found later in the evening with the bone-handle of a nine-inch knife sticking from his back.

Some of my fellow mystery bloggers, like JJ and SaHR, have labeled this murder as a locked room mystery, which is not only incorrect, but it sells short what Penny tried to do here. Beale observed that "nobody could have done the murder," but, as the explanation shows, the crime-scene was hardly a locked room under close, unwavering observation. There were several ways in, and out, of the bedroom. However, these entrances and exits resembled an obstacle course, or maze, comprising of latched windows, a door with a noisy lock, an occupied dressing-room and ticking clocks – through which the murderer had plotted a route. Beale had to find this way to get in, and out, of the room without being seen or heard. Something very different, but just as intriguing, as a good, old-fashioned locked room puzzle.

Penny wisely decided to keep the pool of potential murderer's as small as possible and placed only a handful of people inside the house at the time of the murder. There's the victim's greedy, unlikable daughter and son-in-law, Mildred and Richard Dyson. A spinster daughter and qualified nurse, Sybil Everett, who has been taking care of her father since his first heart attack. The victim's niece and someone Beale believes to be entirely innocent, Evelyn Stoddert, and his physician, Dr. Malcolm Rider. And then there's always the outside possibility, Carew.

Beale methodically tries to find a way out of this maze-like problem, littered with such clues as "a squashed snail," a packet of taunting letters and a fatal assumption on the murderer's part, which even the most observant reader is likely to miss or overlook – until its spelled out during the denouement. This is indeed makes for a very densely, sometimes slowly moving, but a solid, plot-driven, detective novel. Penny shared most of clues fairly with the reader, because, as the Challenge to the Reader states, there's "not much point in setting a problem that nobody can solve except the setter and his puppets." My only complaint is that the motive of the murderer is only foreshadowed. This prevents the reader from comfortably settling on the murderer, because you're never quite sure about the motivation of this person. I also thought the nature of the motive was a little out of place in, what had been up to that point, a purely an intellectual game between author and reader.

Nevertheless, the plot is undeniable a piece of old-world craftsmanship and it didn't bother me there were conveniently converging plot-threads that complicated the overall scheme, because Penny handled them with care and skill. A plot that could have easily become a mess. You can easily envision the solution and follow along with Beale's explanation, but, more importantly, the murderer's pathway into the bedroom and another, well-hidden alibi-trick were (for me) the absolute highlights of a clever, complicated, but satisfying, detective story. Recommended to everyone who prefers a big hunk of meat on their plots!

So, all in all, I think it's safe to say Penny has redeemed himself with Policeman in Armour and will resume my exploration of Chief Inspector Beale's casebook later this year, but, while JJ was right on this occasion, he's not off the hook yet. He still has a strike against for him that last manuscript comment.

Something Smells Fishy: "The Affair at the Circle T" (1946) by Clifford Knight

Nearly a year ago, I read The Affair of the Scarlet Crab (1937) by Clifford Knight, whose career as a novelist was launched when The Affair of the Scarlet Crab emerged as the first ever winner of the Red Badge Mystery Prize – netting him $2000 and a publishing contract. Knight would go on to publish more than twenty detective novels over the next fifteen years.

The Affair of the Scarlet Crab takes place during a scientific expedition en route to the Galapagos Islands, but the snail-like pacing, lack of excitement and a lackluster conclusion resulted in an average mystery novel at best. However, this was Knight's first crack at the detective story and debuts tend to be less than perfect. So I wanted to explore Knight's work further to see how he developed as a writer, eyeballing The Affair of the Limping Sailor (1942), when I struck a well of disheartening comments.

The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47 (2009) has very little good to say about either Knight or his series-character, Professor Huntoon "Hunt" Rogers.

Anthony Boucher admitted in his reviews that Knight is excellent when it came to the local color of his novels, but has "an infallible formula" consisting of nothing more than Professor Rogers picking "a picturesque locale, calmly watch a series of murders committed under his nose" and after 60,000 words accuses someone "who obligingly confesses all" – as a rule his deductions are nothing more than "pure guesswork." Boucher remarked in his review of The Affair of the Dead Stranger (1944) that he only kept reading the series in the hope that some day a murderer will say, "OK, Hunt, now prove it."

So not exactly a glowing endorsement and an opinion backed by two genre-experts, Curt Evans and John Norris, who commented on my review of The Affair of the Scarlet Crab. John warned me that “the slow pace and lack of excitement are his unfortunate stock in trade” and Curt called one of his supposedly better novel, The Affair in Death Valley (1940), a “put-downable” read that took several days to finish. None of this was very encouraging, but, I reasoned, maybe the short story format was better suited for Knight's limited abilities as a plotter. Well, I'll say this, the problem with the pacing was solved... kind of.

"The Affair at the Circle T" was the first short story about Professor Huntoon Rogers and, believe it or not, was originally published in the October, 1946, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as a fourth prize winner of a short story competition – anthologized later that year in The Queen's Awards (1946). I find it amazing that a simple landscape writer and average plotter, like Knight, can rake in prizes while a talented, innovative writer and plotter, like Harriette Ashbrook, bathed in the shade of obscurity.

As you probably guessed by now, "The Affair at the Circle T" and the short story format did nothing to cover up Knight's short comings. If anything, it exposed them even more!

The story and plot "The Affair at the Circle T" is very simple and straightforward: Professor Huntoon Rogers is on a fishing holiday in the High Sierras and visits the owner of the Circle T ranch, Buck Chamblis, where a murder had taken place the previous day. Professor Rogers listens the lion's share of the story of what has happened before his well-timed arrival. A dame from New York, Mrs. Rolard, had come down to Nevada for six weeks in order to secure a divorce from her third husband. She had rented a cottage on the Circle T ranch.

Mrs. Rolard was the kind of woman "a normal man would just naturally want to cut her throat," but her soon-to-be ex-husband followed her to the dude ranch and she already found a new toyboy, which doesn't prevent them from eating and singing songs together – everything seems very amicable between the three of them. This situation abruptly ends when Mrs. Rolard is ruthlessly murdered in her cottage. Only tangible clue the police has is that the maid was shoved in the face outside the cottage, but it was dark and she couldn't make out who it was. However, she "smelled fish on the guy's hand." After listening to this story, Professor Rogers orders a reconstruction and (unfairly) deduces (being very generous here) a simple, uninspired solution hinging on an obscure piece of trivia.

I've to admit that there were two clues hinting at this solution, but, without knowing that piece of trivia, you can only make an educated guess. The waver-thin plot rests entirely on this "ha, gotcha!" revelation and the murderer obligingly confesses, but it has to be weakest piece of evidence for a solution I've ever come across in a detective story! There were two suspects with a "fishy odor" on their hands and Rogers never demonstrated why the other couldn't have done it, which alone is enough for reasonable doubt. There's no supporting evidence and the maid's testimony can probably be shaken in a courtroom, because in the story itself there was a hint of duplicity.

So, no, Knight's "The Affair at the Circle T" is not a good detective story in any shape or form and think he might have been better suited for the novel-length mystery after all, because the local flavor of his setting can paper over some of his short comings as a story-teller and plotter. I'm still going to read The Affair in Death Valley or The Affair of the Limping Sailor, but then I'll close the book on Clifford Knight and Professor Huntoon Rogers. Maybe...

Sorry to end this second review of the year on such a downer, but I'll try to do some quality control for my next read.

Murder Comes Back (1940) by Harriette Ashbrook

Harriette Ashbrook's Murder Comes Back (1940) is the sixth and penultimate novel of the short-lived, criminally ignored Spike Tracy series, which had been out-of-print for the better part of a century, but, last year, the whole series was unexpectedly reissued as inexpensive ebooks – courtesy of Black Heath Editions. You've to keep in mind that most of these titles used to be exclusive collector's items. So it's good to see them finally back in the hands of regular mystery readers.

Last month, I burned through three of them and was impressed with all of them. The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) was a breezy, lighthearted take on The Van Dine-Queen School and a good introduction to Spike Tracy. The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) had taken the punch out of its ending by the relentless passage of time, but you can see how startling original the plot was when the book was first published. Murder Makes Murder (1937) simply is an excellent detective novel full of human interest, tragic characters and a shockingly original motive.

So I decided to open 2020 with one of the three remaining Spike Tracy novels on my pile, which includes The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931) and The Purple Onion Mystery (1941), but opted for the alluring story promised by the premise of Murder Comes Back – which is, as to be expected by now, deliciously original. It goes without saying that I was not disappointed.

Mrs. Moira Ballinger began life as Mathilda Grable, a clerk in the lowest basement of a New York mammoth department store, where she spent her days "selling hardware to harassed housewives" and "her nights in a hall bedroom in Brooklyn." A dull, unsatisfying existence until she suddenly "burst into the headlines" as The Department Store Cinderella.

Mathilda's unlucky lot in life was forever changed, not by "a fairy godmother" with "glass slippers and a pumpkin coach," but a stroke of fate that brought her into contact with the widowed owner of the department store, Prentice Ballinger. Mathilda's sister, Miss Olivia "Ollie" Grable, had been hired to become the private tutor of Ballinger's ten-year-old son, Sidney. Three months later, Miss Mathilda Gable was Mrs. Prentice Ballinger and her picture was plastered on all the newspapers in town. They had two children together, David and Patricia, but, before Patsy was even born, tragedy struck when Prentice Ballinger unexpectedly took his own life. A strange death planting the seeds for a string of murders two decades later.

During those twenty years, Mrs. Ballinger cultivated a public image as a high-rolling society woman, but she didn't exactly made herself beloved within her own family.

Mrs. Ballinger poured more than a million in her long-time toyboy, Jeffrey Linscott, but she hypocritically cut-off her son, Dave, without a penny when he found his own Cinderella in the sub-basement of the department store, Paula Maslach – a poor Polish girl. This condemned the young married couple to live in squalor in "a dingy cold-water flat" in "foreign quarter of the city" with a baby on the way. She let her stepson, Sidney, face ruination without parting with as much as a penny. Only her plucky daughter, Patsy, seems to have a grip on the family purse strings. So there are enough people around who would welcome an untimely passing when history began to repeat itself right down the last detail!

A very bored Spike Tracy, brother of the District Attorney of New York County, is lazying about in the office of Inspector Herschman, inquiring whether there were any ladies sliced up in trunks or babies in ashcans, when the inspector receives an urgent telephone call. A Dr. Horatio Pennypacker tells them to immediately get their ass to a large house on East 84th Street. Mrs. Ballinger was found shot to death in bed with a revolver clutched in her lifeless fingers, but Dr. Pennypacker has a lot to tell the homicide detective. And he "forcibly detained" the potential murderer in a locked room, James P. Worts. The lawyer of the now late Mrs. Ballinger.

Dr. Pennypacker tells Spike and Herschman two very interesting things: 1) the apparent suicide of Mrs. Ballinger is carbon-copy of the supposed suicide of her husband, twenty years previously, which seems to have followed a script. The same gun had been used under identical circumstances. The same person found the bodies and the same doctor was called to the scene, Pennypacker. 2) Pennypacker believes the police were pressured into dropping their investigation into the death of Prentice Ballinger, because they never looked for an explanation as to who, or why, the whole bedroom was wiped clean of fingerprints. And he believes the person responsible for gumming the works was the lawyer.

A tantalizing premise, to say the least, with a plot delivering on its premise. An ultimately simplistic and satisfying plot complicated by an array of iron-clad alibis, lying suspects, blackmail, two crudely executed murders and, very briefly, an impossible disappearance was teased when a suspect vanishes from a house – which had been under observation by the police. However, this problem is presented and solved on the final page of Chapter X. Ashbrook also briefly toyed with an impossible crime idea in Murder Makes Murder, but she only pulled the trigger in The Murder of Sigurd Sharon with disappearance from house in which every exit was guarded by policemen.

Murder Comes Back is very much a traditional, Golden Age detective with a refreshingly original premise, but the plot has some unconventional bits and pieces that come mostly from the interaction between Spike and Patsy. Early in the story, Spike is advised to find a woman "who can dish it out" as well as he does and better.

Somewhat prophetic as he soon comes eye-to-eye with a human monkey-wrench, Patsy, in the office of Herschman. She waves a cigarette in Spike's direction and asks Herchsman "who's that and what do you call it?" Spike's attempt to tangle with Patsy proves to be more of an headache than tackling four murders and, with his judgment clouded, holds back a lot from Herschman. Something that'll bug his conscience throughout the story, but the payoff is amazing and accumulates in an unforgettable ending. I wonder if Ashbrook had been reading Maurice Leblanc at the time, because this is the kind of ending you would expect from an Arséne Lupin yarn.

Anyway, I hope Spike has the common sense to put a ring on Patsy and has his last outing, in The Purple Onion Mystery, be one of those humorous, lighthearted detective novels with a bantering, mystery-solving husband and wife teams in the spirit of Frances Crane and Kelley Roos.

A second, somewhat unconventional story element is an attempt to save someone's life through blood transfusion, which furnishes the plot with an interesting clue. A sort of clue you would expect from one of the scientific mystery writers of the time, but this only goes to show the versatility of Ashbrook as a plotter.

The plot here sticks nicely together and, if there's anything to complain about, it's that Ashbrook obviously took a basic idea from a previous novel and wrote an entirely new story around it. A very different story, but you can still make out the outlines of that previous novel and only serious downside to this is that it, kind of, foreshadows a part of the ending. Other than that, Murder Comes Back is another excellent mystery novel from a woefully underappreciated writer and a good way to ring in the New Year. A belated happy 2020 everyone! :)

Framed in Guilt (1947) by John Russell Fearn

John Russell Fearn unexpectedly passed away in 1960, aged 52, when he suffered a heart attack. A fate he unfortunately had to share with his father, Percy Slate Fearn, who died under similar circumstances and influenced Fearn to write a detective novel around "the consequences of early deaths from heart problems."

Framed in Guilt (1947) was originally published under the penname associated with his Maria Black series, "John Slate," but this is a standalone with Superintendent Henshaw on duty and was praised by Philip Harbottle as one Fearn's "most realistic" and "best locked room novels" – a very personal novel for more reasons than one. The backdrop and characters of the story were drawn from his days as a part-time typist for a solicitor's office in Birley Street, Blackpool.

William Barridge is a sober, quiet and meek man of forty-four, but looked "a good twenty years older," who has been married for twenty years and has three "obstreperous children."

However, it has a marriage that has gone cold and loveless, because he's stuck in a dead-end job as head clerk to a solicitor and has neither "the wit nor the courage to attempt anything better." So luxury, such as a maid, eludes them and even his children have just enough respect for him to say goodbye before going to school. And it's not much better at work.

The dingy offices of Henry Minton, solicitor and Commissioner-of-Oath, is located on the first-floor of a converted Georgian dwellinghouse, "smelling of ink, dry parchment, cold air and Monday morning," which is as cheerless as it sounds – brightened only by the presence of the office boy, Jimmy Elgate. A young lad who constantly has his nose buried in an American pulp magazine. Other two people working there are the junior clerk, Arthur Standish, and the typist, Sally Higson.

So they slip into the dull, grinding routine of yet another work day, but the routine is broken when Jimmy, Sally and Arthur Standish return from lunch and find the place locked up. Barridge is nowhere to be found.

One thing you need to know, before going on, that there are two different locks on each office door. A modern Yale lock and underneath it "preposterous keyholes" dating back to the days when a dungeon-like key was needed to (un)lock the doors, which were now redundant except to peek through. Jimmy decided to take peek through the ancient keyhole of Minton's locked office and spotted a body lying on the floor with a large knife protruding from the back.

The body belongs to the meek and mild head clerk, Barridge, but the only key to the door is in the constant possession of Minton and, at the time of the murder, he was in Liverpool on business. So how did Barridge enter the locked office of his employer, or how did his murderer get out, but what baffles Superintendent Henshaw even more is why anyone would want to kill a "harmless, spineless man" – even when evidence emerges casting the shadow of suspicion on two people. One of these two suspects, Mrs. Jennifer Carr, surprisingly falls into the category of cherchez la femme. Or does she?

The detection here is combination of plodding police work, combing over the crime scene, checking alibis, questioning people, musing over clues and possibilities, complimented with bits and pieces of forensic detective work. Henshaw regularly calls upon the forensic experts to analyze the dirt under the victim's fingernails, ink on a letter in order to determine its age and make them do a microscopic examination of the murder weapon. Fearn was a pulp writer who had a tendency to indulge in the fantastic (e.g. Account Settled, 1949), but, sometimes, there are streaks of the Realist School in his work – both in characterization and setting. Such as the undistinguished solicitor's office and the normal, everyday people who work there from the opening chapter. You can also find these traces in Death in Silhouette (1950), Flashpoint (1950) and Pattern of Murder (2006) with its working class characters and backdrop.

Needless to say, the opening chapters and Henshaw's investigation are the best parts of the story, but the plot and solution has its problems.

My first problem is that the gist of the solution is kind of obvious and the only reason why it didn't kill the story are two red herrings, which are used here as roadblocks to that obvious answer. But you can still figure it long before Henshaw has worked out all the details. Secondly, the core idea of the plot is something I detest in detective stories, because, more often than not, it's just a lazy cop-out on the writer's part. So it's to Fearn's credit that he succeeded in whipping something decent and acceptable out of this otherwise hack plot-device, but it forces me to disagree with Harbottle that Framed in Guilt is Fearn's best locked room novels.

Admittedly, Fearn tries to do something else with the locked room mystery here, but he has written better and much more original impossible crime novels, such as Thy Arm Alone (1947) and Vision Sinister (1954), which doesn't mean I didn't appreciate what he was trying to do – especially when juggling with two of my big no-noes. But he has done the locked room better. And when you take a step away from the locked room angle, you have an overall well-done plot put together by "a weaver of a perfect crime." Someone with "the mind of a contortionist" that you can't help but feel a pang of sympathy for. The personal back-story also helped me appreciate the book more than I would otherwise have done.

So, all in all, Framed in Guilt is an interesting and unusual take on the locked room mystery, but by no means a classic of its kind. I think impossible crime fanatics and fans of Fearn will get the most out of this story.

A note for the curious: Philip Harbottle told me about the personal aspects of Framed in Guilt and provided this endearing image of Fearn as a part-time typist as told by a man who was a junior office boy at the time: "...this man was from another world... he showed no knowledge of law, no interest in the clients of the practice and he seldom spoke to anybody. At regular intervals he just was there, hawk-nosed, smouldering eyed, apparently unaware of his surroundings. Usually a cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth, and one eye was half-closed against its rising smoke, as two fingers of each hand pounded the keys of the big, brief-carriage typewriter... faster than the girls could type with five fingers." Even when doing a part-time job, Fearn was the consummate pulp writer!

Plain Sailing (1987) by Douglas Clark

Back in October, I read an excellently written and plotted post-Golden Age detective novel, entitled Death After Evensong (1969), which constituted my introduction to the work of a pharmaceutical executive turned mystery novelist, Douglas Clark – a specialist in medical puzzles and inventive methods of poisoning. Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) listed Death After Evensong as Clarke's sole contribution to the impossible crime sub-genre, but I found two more titles to add to the list. One of these titles is Clarke's penultimate novel.

Plain Sailing (1987) is the twenty-sixth entry in the Detective Chief Superintendent George Masters and DCI Bill Green series. A lot of has changed between them since their second outing in Death After Evensong eighteen years previously.

All of the animosity and antagonism, permeating and poisoning their professional relationship, has not only completely dissipated, but they have become close friends outside of work. Masters was introduced as a tall, vain and unrepentant bachelor, but is now married to Wanda Masters and they have a young child together, Michael – who has Bill and Doris Green as "honorary grandparents." A very close relationship that was unthinkable two decades earlier. The opening of Plain Sailing has them even going on a much deserved holiday together, but, barely a day has gone by, when a patrol car pulls up in front of their cottage with terrible news.

Jimmy Cleveland is the 26-year-old son of a colleague and friend of Masters, DCS Matthew Cleveland, who has just found himself a good job, a nice flat and "a steady girlfriend," Janet. He also has a passion for sailing and took part in the King's Cup Week, but died unexpectedly under seemingly inexplicable circumstances "a mile or two out to sea in a small dinghy."

Jimmy had been out on the water for an hour and a half when the only other occupant of the dinghy, Harry Martin, raised the alarm and an American doctor answer the call for help. This doctor immediately recognized the symptoms of cyanide poisoning, which is where the problems begin. Cyanide is "the sort of stuff that works immediately," but Jimmy hadn't eaten or drank anything on board and gelatin capsule would have dissolved within twenty minutes. Suicide is very unlikely and Martin has no conceivable motive to kill him. So how did the murderer administer a dose of cyanide to a man isolated in a small boat out at sea? A situation somewhat like "one of those locked room mysteries."

A rather interesting aspect of the investigation is the reversal when it comes to emotional attachment to the case.

Generally, the detectives are the impartial outsiders, especially when they're police detectives, but the suspicious death of the likable young man, like Jimmy, seems to have made no impact on the large gathering of sailors, because they're "chattering about everything else under the sun" – except Jimmy's sudden death. This situation gives the story an unusual atmosphere befitting the strange circumstances of the murder. 

However, the clever little poisoning-trick acts as the single support column for the entirety of the story and plot. And to be quite honest, the who-and why of the murder weren't as good, or inspired, as the how with exception of the tragic mistake that lies at the heart of the story. Something that wasn't helped by some obvious padding of the page-count.

Masters states early on in the story that they have to "soak in everything" and get "to know all there is to know about sailing." So we get some technical details and, in combination with the weakly handled who-and why, it became evident that the trick had come before the story. And the whole story was erected around it. Showing that Clark had lost some of his story-telling ability since the early Death After Evensong, which was as well written as it was plotted without any stretching to pad it out.

All of that being said, the poisoning-trick of the impossible crime was fairly original and fitted the sailing theme of the story. The kind of impossible poisoning Paul Doherty began to specialize in during the 1990s (e.g. The White Rose Murders, 1991) or you can find with some regularity in the Case Closed series (e.g. "The Loan Shark Murder Case"), but the idea and setting would probably have been better served had the novel been whittled down to a short story – which might have resulted in a classic sporting detective story centered on an impossible crime. Such a tale could have been an anthology staple!

Everything considered, Plain Sailing wasn't a bad detective novel, particular for its time, but it was a step, or two, down from the much earlier Death After Evensong. So my next read in the series is going to be a title from the early-and mid period with such promising sounding, poisonous puzzles as Sweet Poison (1970), Sick to Death (1971) and The Gimmel Flask (1977). Dread and Water (1976) has a premise reminiscent of one of those mountaineering mysteries by Glyn Carr. So my exploration of this series will be continued.

By the way, the quality of my reading appear to have taken a drop when I sidelined Harriette Ashbrook for a moment. A sign she'll be ignored no longer and have to return to the Spike Tracy series the moment 2020 rolls around?

Murder in Retrospect: The Best and Worst of 2019

 

So, here we are again, gathered at the yawning grave of another year that has passed too soon and, before we start shuffling dirt on the casket, I like to take a moment to go over my best and worst reads of 2019. Merry Christmas by the way!

This year provided me with an interesting best-of list. The 1920s and 2010s are surprisingly well represented here, but the 1930s and 1940s still dominate the list. Same can be said about the omnipresent locked room mystery and more than a dozen non-English (translated) mysteries made it on the list, but, astonishingly, I reread more novels and short stories than I remembered – because a handful of them made it on the list. However, the undisputed winner of 2019 is Brian Flynn with four individual entries. So lets run down the list.

THE BEST MYSTERY NOVELS READ IN 2019:

Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) by Seimaru Amagi

One of only four (translated) novels based on the long-running and popular manga series, The Kindaichi Case Files, in which Hajime Kindaichi gets lost in a snowstorm and ends up on the doorstep of Silverwood Lodge. A place where a members of an on-line, detective-themed chat group, On-Line Lodge, have a meeting at the time. There is, however, a shadowy person among them, "The Trojan Horse," who's plotting wholesale murder. This is perhaps the first traditional detective story that used the internet in any meaningful way. And it has a great alibi-trick!

The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) by Harriette Ashbrook

This is arguably the weakest title on the list, but the debut of both Harriette Ashbrook and her series-detective, Spike Tracy, was such a fun, lighthearted take on The Van Dine-Queen School of Detective Fiction I had to include it. Spike helps his beleaguered brother, District Attorney R. Montgomery Tracy, to find the murderer of the wife of a rich diamond merchant and destroys an iron-clad alibi in the process.

Murder Makes Murder (1937) by Harriette Ashbrook

On the other hand, Murder Makes Murder is easily one of the more memorable titles on this list and without a question Ashbrook's strongest mystery novel. Spike is traveling down to a small island, off the coast of Maine, to be the best man at a wedding, but, on the second night, the bride-to-be is gruesomely murdered in her bed and a storm cuts has cut them off from the outside world – which forces Spike to play detective once again. A very human and tragic detective story with a shockingly original motive.

The 3-13 Murders (1946) by Thomas B. Black

I enthusiastically called The 3-13 Murders one of the greatest hardboiled detective novels in my review, but not everyone agreed with me. Nonetheless, I quite enjoyed tailing Al Delaney around Chancellor City, in yellow cabs, as he tackled numerous intertwined cases. I liked it.

The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950) by Enid Blyton

The second novel in the only series Blyton wrote for children older than eleven, "The Barney “R” Mysteries," in which a lively, convincingly drawn group of children solve a long string of baffling thefts of historical and valuable documents – snatched away from locked and guarded rooms. Admittedly, the solution is nearly as old as the locked room mystery, but Blyton added something new to it that made it acceptable again in 1950.

Les invités de minuit (The Seventh Guest, 1935) by Gaston Boca

A very unusual impossible crime novel about a strange night at a walled-in manor house, "as impregnable as a tombstone," where an uninvited, seemingly invisible, guest performs a number of unnerving parlor tricks. One of the more fantastic titles published by Locked Room International.

Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) by Herbert Brean (a reread)

A superior detective novel than Brean's most well-known mystery, Wilders Walks Away (1948), in which Reynold Frame and Constance Wilder's plans to get married in the historical town of Concord, Massachusetts, get imperiled. They are flung head first into a case involving a ghost lamp, a phantom army, a quasi-impossible disappearance and an excellent historical mystery. This is the book that Brean should be remembered for.

The Bloody Moonlight (1949) by Fredric Brown

Am and Ed Hunter are engaged to investigate whether, or not, a revolutionary new invention is worth a five-thousand dollar investment. A radio-device that can pick up all kinds of signals, but the inventor claims he has been receiving signals from the planet Mars! A marvelous and original, semi-hardboiled detective novel with a hint of science-fiction.

The Case of the Dead Shepherd (1934) by Christopher Bush

Murder brings Ludovic Travers and Superintendent George Wharton to a co-educational school where a dying teacher was found in common's room and the hated headmaster is beaten to death. This was a welcome return to those tricky, clock-work plots of early Bush.

Goodnight Irene (2018) by James Scott Byrnside

An ambitious debut of, what may be, one of the first mystery writers of the Second Golden Age that will come into full bloom around 2030 (mark my words). A mystery novel not only with all the brilliance of a Japanese shin honkaku, but also one of those rare homages to Byrnside's favorite mystery novelist, Christianna Brand. Something that becomes very obvious when you reach the solution to a case comprising of such bizarre elements as an armor-clad body, a locked room, dismembered corpses and a dying message. So what's there not to like?

The Opening Night Murders (2019) by James Scott Byrnside

A detective novel with a dazzling, kaleidoscopic plot written by someone who has only been reading classic mysteries since 2017, but moved with prodigal speed in mastering all the aspects of story-telling, plotting and characterization – delivering a modern masterpiece. The rich and complex plot is hard to briefly sum up. So just read it for yourself.

Till Death Do Us Part (1944) by John Dickson Carr (a reread)

A novel once considered to be one of Carr's mid-rank (locked room) mystery novels, but, over the past fifteen years, its status has been elevated to one of his ten best titles. This made me decide to reread the book and it definitely held up. A cleverly spun story about a young playwright who becomes involved with a woman, Lesley Grant, who's accused of being a serial-poisoner – having left three men dead inside locked rooms. This is followed by an impossible murder inside a locked room. A five-star detective novel that indeed deserved a reappraisal.

Where There's a Will (1961) by Kip Chase

An admirably attempt to fuse the traditional detective story with the modern, character-driven crime novel and introduced Chase's wheelchair-bound detective, Justine Carmichael. A former police chief who's regularly consulted by his ex-colleagues whenever they encounter a case outside of the normal routine. What a shame Chase only got to write three detective novels.

Death After Evensong (1969) by Douglas Clark

A classically-styled detective novel presented as a modern police procedural that brings the police-detective to a bleak, desolate village where time moves a lot slower and the inhabitants are stuck in a previous era. The detestable vicar of the place is found shot to death in a classroom of an abandoned school building, but the bullet seems to have miraculously vanished. A splendidly written and evocative novel with an original and well-done impossible crime.

The Case with Nine Solutions (1928) by J.J. Connington

The title of the book is a little misleading, because the titular solutions are no more than nine different possibilities, or combinations, of accident, murder and suicide Sir Clinton Driffield has to consider in a quadruple murder case – ending with an elegant solution to a problem of labyrinthine proportions. A classic detective novel from the 1920s.

The Glass Spear (1950) by S.H. Courtier

A great specimen of the anthropological detective novel, steeds in folklore and Gothic atmosphere, which takes place on a Australian sheep-and cattle range dominated by the family matriarch, Huldah – who lives a reclusive existence in a locked suite of rooms. Only two people are ever allowed to enter her private domain. Around her several murders take place that could only have been committed in Australia. A beautifully written and plotted mystery showing why Courtier deserves to be reprinted.

The Night of Fear (1931) by Moray Dalton

An excellent example of the Christmas mystery with a solid plot and an intriguing premise: a costumed Christmas party ends with a game of hide-and-seek in the dark, but a blind guest finds a body in the long gallery. The solution is not is pitch-perfect. However, the book still holds up as one of the better Christmas mysteries.

De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019) by Anne van Doorn

My country is not exactly known for its traditionally-styled, plot-driven detective fiction, but "Anne van Doorn," the penname of M.P.O. Books, has been working hard to alter this shameful state of affairs. So I'm glad to report that he produced one of my favorite detective novels of 2019! A truly excellent detective novel that begins with a false deathbed confession, which brings to light well-handled (locked room) murders. However, what elevates the book to classic status is the revelation about one of the protagonists that completely and utterly floored me. My ego got schooled hard on that one.

The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn is my Great Discovery of 2019 and The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye is one of the better titles reprinted by Dean Street Press, in which Flynn expertly tied together a case of Royal blackmail with a poisoning at a dentist's surgery. A book obviously written as a homage to Conan Doyle (c.f. "A Scandal in Bohemia," 1891), but was more reminiscent of early Agatha Christie.

The Murders Near Mapleton (1929) by Brian Flynn

One of the earliest and best examples of the Christmas mystery novel that became popular in the 1930s. The story begins with Sir Eustace Vernon excusing himself during Christmas dinner and vanishes from the house, but the case gets rolling with three subsequent discoveries: a suicide note, the body of the butler in the pantry and a badly mangled corpse on the train tracks. The solution glistens and shines with all the brilliance of the Golden Age.

Invisible Death (1929) by Brian Flynn

A most uncommon impossible crime novel, framed as Doylean thriller, in which a man is poisoned under inexplicable circumstances during a siege on a house by members of a sinister society, The Silver Troika – who were decimated by the victim during the Great War. But where they responsible for his death? The plot is a little light, but the sheer joy of the story-telling and original premise made this one of the more fun detective novels read this year.

Murder en Route (1935) by Brian Flynn

One of the regular commuters on the bus from Estings to Raybourne, who always traveled on the open top, doesn't descend the stairs one day and when the conductor goes to investigate he discovers that the man has been murdered. However, the man had been up there all alone. So how did the murderer get to him? Flynn only wrote a handful of impossible crime novels and this is his best one.

The Gold Watch (2019) by Paul Halter

A time-bending detective novel stretched across nearly a century, between 1911 and 1991, which masterfully intertwines two different narratives comprising of a hunt for a copy of long-lost film and two impossible crimes – one of them committed in 1966. A tour-de-force that will stand the test of time and will one day be considered a classic impossible crime novel of the 2010s.

The Medbury Fort Mystery (1929) by George Limnelius

A fascinatingly written novel, set at an army fort, which tries and succeeds in being both an inverted mystery and proper detective novel simply by inverting the inverted detective story. An approach anticipating Anthony Berkeley's Jumping Jenny (1933) and Trial and Error (1937). And the locked room aspect was just the cherry on top.

The Further Side of Fear (1967) by Helen McCloy

A relatively minor novel, especially for McCloy, but the plot pleasantly blended suspense with espionage and presented as a locked room mystery, which begins when a shadowy visitors enters and leaves the locked apartment of the heroine. It deserves to be better known.

Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by NisiOisiN (a reread)

The award-winning debut of "NisiOisN" and the book is, what's known in Japan, as a Light Novel (Young Adult) illustrated with manga artwork that tells the story of the reluctant protagonist, Ii-chan – who accompanies a friend to a gathering of geniuses on Wet Crow's Feather Island. There he's forced by circumstances to take a proactive hand in capturing a ruthless killer. One of the murders is a gruesome beheading in a locked storage room and has a solution as brilliant as it's original.

Murder Isn't Cricket (1946) by E. and M.A. Radford

This is, what Anthony Boucher called, the simon-pure jigsaw puzzle detective story that used scientific detection to slowly, but methodically, unravel an impossible murder committed during a cricket match – liberally using challenges to the reader to keep the armchair detective on their toes. If you like plots, you'll love the Radfords.

Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947) by E and M.A. Radford

A surprisingly successful hybrid of the sophisticated theatrical mysteries of Ngaio Marsh with the science-based detection of R. Austin Freeman and Ellery Queen-like challenges to the reader. The problem here centers on the mysterious poisoning of the lead actress in the Christmas pantomime Dick Whittington and His Cat during the dream-scene.

Senseijutsu satsujinjiken (The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, 1981) by Soji Shimada (a reread)

A macabre, grisly tour-de-force and the cornerstone of the Japanese shin honkaku movement, which skillfully manipulated the multiple strands of a complicated plot involving a legendary unsolved case from 1936, body parts scattered across Japan and an impossible murder. A bloody jigsaw puzzle eventually pieced together by an astrologer and fortune-teller, Kiyoshi Mitarai. There are some minor imperfections, but the central puzzle, tying everything together, is simply ingenuis. A genuine classic!

Naname yashiki no hanzai (Murder in the Crooked House, 1982) by Soji Shimada

This long anticipated second translation of the doyen of shin honkaku, Soji Shimada, which takes place in a Western-style house, Ice Floe Mansion, with a bizarre, glistening cylindrical tower – perched at the top of a snowy cliff. The owner has invited a group of people to spend the Christmas holiday there, but then people start to get murdered in locked rooms. Not as grandiose as its more famous predecessor, but it's still a solid detective story with a classic locked room-trick. And the story made excellent use of diagrams.

The Corpse with the Sunburned Face (1935) by Christopher St. John Sprigg

A very unconventional, but surprisingly successful, merger of a satirical English village mystery and a sultry thriller taking place in Africa, peppered with a dose of social comedy, which showed Sprigg was an excellent writer and plotter – blessed with a wealth of imagination. The result here is one of his more memorable detective novels. What a shame he died so young.

The Missing Moneylender (1931) by W. Stanley Sykes

A book aspiring to be both R. Austin Freeman and Dorothy L. Sayers with a plot concerning the unexpected death of a doctor and a missing moneylender, but Sykes brought an original idea to the table. A way to commit an almost perfect murder.

Shisei satsujin jiken (The Tattoo Murder Case, 1948) by Akimitsu Takagi (a reread)

A richly detailed detective story, set in the bombed ruins, shuttered buildings and makeshift shops of post-war Japan, but with a plot deeply emerged in the “shadowy, sensual world” of tattoos and cursed ink. An iconic locked room mystery from one of the pioneers of the original honkaku era.

They Walk in Darkness (1947) by Gerald Verner

This is an incredibly dark, pulpy take on the quintessential English village mystery steeped in witchcraft, serial killings, vigilantism and an impossible crime of the no-footprints scenario. One of Verner's longer novels that obviously tried to be a little more than most of shorter novels. I believe he succeeded.

Sorcerer's House (1956) by Gerald Verner

A fine example of the pulp-style detective story and a warm homage to John Dickson Carr's He Who Whispers (1946), which centers on a tragically wronged woman, Fay Meriton, whose back-story is tied to a dark, long abandoned house that once belonged to one of history's more illustrious figures, Cagliostro. Villagers claim they still lights moving around the dark house and bodies tend turn up below the window of the Long Room. One of Verner's best mystery novels.

The Laughing Dog (1949) by Francis Vivian

Inspector Gordon Knollis is called on to investigate the murder of Dr. Hugh Challoner, who was found strangled in his surgery, which is case full of doodles of the titular dog and a tightly-drawn, closely-knit group of suspects. A solidly plotted detective novel and one of my favorite entries in the series. 

 

THE BEST SHORT STORIES READ IN 2019:

Short Stories from Collections:

Challenge the Impossible: The Final Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne (2018) by Edward D. Hoch

"The Problem of the Potting Shed"

"The Problem of the Haunted Hospital"

"The Problem of the Secret Passage"

The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing (2003) by Helen McCloy

"Through a Glass, Darkly"

"The Singing Diamonds"

"Thy Brother Dead"

"The Bug That's Going Around"

The Cambodian Curse and Other Stories (2018) by Gigi Pandian

"The Haunted Room"

"A Dark and Stormy Light"

Single Short Stories:

Takemaru Abiko's "Ningyou wa tent de suiri suru" ("A Smart Dummy in the Tent," 1990)

Eric Ambler's "The Case of the Overheated Service Flat" (1940)

Jon L. Breen's "The Lithuanian Eraser Mystery" (1969)

D.L. Champion's "The Day Nobody Died" (1944)

Carter Dickson's "Blind Man's Hood" (1937)

Paul Halter's "Le livre jaune" ("The Yellow Book," 2017)

Edward D. Hoch's "The Case of the Modern Medusa" (1973)

Edward D. Hoch's "Circus in the Sky" (2000)

J.A. Konrath's "With a Twist" (2005)

E.C.R. Lorac's "Remember to Ring Twice" (1950)

Rintaro Norizuki's "Toshi densetsu pazuru" ("An Urban Legend Puzzle," 2001)

Edogawa Rampo's "Yaneura no sanposha" ("The Stalker in the Attic," 1925)

Soji Shimada's "Hakkyō-suru jūyaku" ("The Executive Who Lost His Head," 1984)

Hideo Yokoyama's "Dōki" ("Motive," 2000)

THE WORST OR MOST DISAPPOINTING READS OF 2019:

The Rat-a-Tat Mystery (1956) by Enid Blyton

A book with plenty of wintry charm and a lingering Christmas spirit, but the plot was razor-thin and uninspired, which was a huge disappointment after reading The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950) and the previously listed The Rilloby Fair Mystery.

The Dead Don't Care (1938) by Jonathan Latimer

This poorly written and plotted piece has replaced Ellery Queen's The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) as the most transparent novel from an otherwise highly regarded Golden Age author. A paper-thin plot filled with shallow, immature characters and a bare amount of detective work by a couple of holidaying private-eyes. Like I said in my review, the dead don't care and neither should you.

The Army Post Murders (1931) by Mason Wright

A book with a strong opening and a great setting, a lonely army fortress in the middle of nowhere, but with an uninspired ending. Very disappointing.