Man of Steel: "The Super-Key to Fort Superman" (1958) by Jerry Coleman

So, as you've probably noticed, I've been on a locked room mystery bender since February and you can blame that on the publication of Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) coinciding with the holidays, which significantly increased the size of my wishlist and to-be-read pile – glutted with more impossible crime stories than usual. I'm now almost done with trimming down my stack of newly acquired locked room and impossible crime novels. You can expect a little more variety to return by the end of the month.

One of the more peculiar titles listed in Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement is entry 2215, "The Super-Key of Fort Superman," written by Jerry Coleman and published in Action Comics, #241, 1958. A 12-page comic book story in which Superman has to find out who, and how, someone gained access to the "locked and impenetrable" Fortress of Solitude.

The Fortress of Solitude is hidden "deep in the core of a mountainside" in "the desolate arctic waste" with the only entrance being a massive door, "sheltered from view by jutting rocks," which can only be opened with "a super-key that weighs tons" – a ponderous key only Superman can lift. There's no one on Earth who can get through "the solid rock out of which it is hewn." A quiet, solitary place where he "conducts incredible experiments, keeps strange trophies and pursues astounding hobbies." Sound like the next best thing to a Batcave, but the Fortress of Solitude is more like the lair of very dedicated stalker or serial killer.

Superman has rooms, or shrines, dedicated to his friends, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Batman, complete with wax dummy replicas, mementos and specially made gifts.

A personally strung-together rope of pearls for Lois, a handmade sports car for Jimmy and a robot-detective for Batman, but they'll only receive these gifts if, not when, Superman dies. What a dick! Lois and Jimmy will probably have been slumbering in their graves for decades by the time he gets a wrinkle or gray hair! Why not give Batman that super advanced, robot-detective to fight crime now? Apparently, Superman is also an abusive animal hoarder with a private, inter-planetary zoo, hoarded from across the galaxies, crammed inside tiny cages – one panel showing several, large-sized alien animals in crate-sized cages. Well, at the very least he keeps the cages in a "locked chamber" and the floors aren't littered with rotting, half-cannibalized carcasses of former pets. So there's that, I suppose.

Anyway, one day, when Superman returns to the Fortress of Solitude, he discovers someone has entered the fortress and left a taunting message on the wall, "I can enter and leave at will! Who am I? How can I do it? I dare you to find out!" This happens another two times with a third message saying, "Kent is Superman." No one else, except Superman, could have lifted the giant key, moved the door or plunge through fifty feet of solid rock. These are the only ways in, or out, of the fortress.

Superman briefly considers some possible solutions. Such as one of his inter-planetary pets "concealing superhuman powers and intelligence" or "that strange apparatus made by Luthor," which can summon beings from the fourth dimension, but the solution unveils a legitimate locked room-trick cleverly modeled around an idea nearly as old as recorded history. And it worked surprisingly well! I expected someone had simply crawled through the large, gaping keyhole, but the solution turned out to be so much better and the identity of Superman's "most cunning opponent" was a nice touch to the who-and why of the plot. A victory for brains over brawn!

I read "The Super-Key to Fort Superman" on the assumption it would be nothing more than an amusing curiosity of the impossible crime story, but didn't expect I would end up liking it. But here we are. More than worth the five minutes it takes to read the story.

Death Knell (1990) by Nicholas Wilde

Back in 2015, I picked up a copy of Robert Arthur's The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966) on a whim, but the book unlocked a whole new wing of the detective genre to me, a sub-genre known as juvenile mysteries, where many, often completely unknown, locked room mysteries remained hidden for years or decades – some of them proved to be quite good. Over the years, I found together "JJ," of The Invisible Event, some twenty of these junior locked room novels and short stories.

Just to give everyone who's unfamiliar with these elementary-and high-school equivalents of the impossible crime story an idea what to expect, I cited half-a-dozen of the more notable examples below.

A burglar inexplicably disappears from a house with all of its exits either locked or under observation (Enid Blyton's The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, 1950). A car racing down a dangerous, snaking mountain road vanishes into thin air (Bruce Campbell's The Clue of the Phantom Car, 1953). The theft of charity money from a locked school safe and the substitution of an empty box in a watched room (Norvin Pallas' The Locked Safe Mystery, 1954). A 3000-year-old mummy is heard whispering in an unknown, long-dead language (Arthur's The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy, 1965). Paintings being moved around inside a locked, fortress-like studio (William Arden's The Mystery of the Shrinking House, 1972). An elderly, wheelchair bound woman seemingly evaporated from inside a moving, closely watched ski-lift gondola (Clue Club episode "The Real Gone Gondola," 1976).

So, as you can see, these junior detective novels rarely deal with murders, or even natural deaths, but are, as a rule, written around strange disappearances, thefts, buried treasure, haunted house, codes and gangs of criminals – omnipresent tropes of the juvenile detective story. This is not a rule cast in iron and exceptions can be found (e.g. Hugh Lloyd's The Clue at Skeleton Rocks, 1932). An exception that has become more common over the past thirty years.

JJ reviewed Robin Stevens' Murder Most Unladylike series on his blog, most notably the impossible crime novel First Class Murder (2015), while I discussed a Japanese light novel (young adult), Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) by "NisiOisN," in which one of the victim's is decapitated inside a locked storage-room. So child-and teenage detectives meddling in murder cases, like good kids, have become more common and a staple of the Japanese anime/manga detective stories. Recently, I came across, what could be, the earliest example of a juvenile mystery novel with an adult plot when thumbing through my copy of Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). An adolescent locked room mystery that could have been penned by John Dickson Carr, Paul Halter or Derek Smith. Yes, it's that kind of a detective story!

Dutch edition

Nicholas Wilde's Death Knell (1990) is an ingenious, classically-styled impossible crime novel with a ghostly murder, steeped in history and legends, inside a sealed crypt with two crime scene maps and a handwritten chart – tabulating alibis, motives and opportunity. However, the book also has a warm, human touch and the teenage protagonists are realistic, convincingly drawn characters.

Tim is a 14-year-old boy from London who takes his friend, Jamie, along for the winter holiday at the old-world vicarage of his grandfather in Lychwood, Norfolk.

Wilde describes Norfolk as a place "not really seen at all, only guessed at" or "half-glimpses sometimes" when "you weren't quite looking" and "slipping into hiding when you looked too hard." A landscape that "watched you from behind your shoulder." So a perfect habitat for ancient legends and old ghost stories! During their holiday, Tim and Jamie are told the haunting story attached to the abandoned church, which dates back to the time of Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In the late 1530s, the church was closed down as "a place of the old Catholic worship" and the priest was told to pack his bags, but the priest's old day-book contains three entries following the closure of the church. The first entry warned "God has departed from His house," but, "where God is not," there "shall another power enter in" and "take possession" – a second entry confirms a creature has "come forth from his hiding in the earth." What followed is a historical horror story.

On four, separate occasions, a single stroke of the bell emanates from the locked, deserted church and every time a villager died. One time, a shadowy creature was seen edging away from the church and vanishing into the locked crypt. So the bell was taken down and the middle of the floor of the crypt was sealed tightly with a giant stone resembling "an old, forgotten tombstone." And, as the story ended, the church-bell "tolled one single stroke."

So, when they go to investigate they discover that Old Jefford, who lives at the High House, lying face down on the floor of the crypt with a pick-ax and a bunch of keys next to him. The door is not only locked from the inside, but blocked with the giant stone! Nobody else had been hiding in the room and the crypt has no hidden tunnels, secret passageways or camouflaged doors. Only window is small, narrow with an inch thick glass that was closed when the murder was discovered. So how did the murderer get away? How was the large, unyielding stone lifted and hauled up a flight of stone stairs? The hole situation looked plain impossible!

The vicar believes it was an unfortunate accident, but the police is convinced it was murder and, for months, they uproot and disturb the normally quiet, everyday routine of the village. But by that time, the boys have returned to London and it would take a whole year before they were allowed to spend another (winter) holiday with Tim's grandparents, which is where the story becomes a little more than a well-done locked room mystery for teenagers – showing Tim's grandparents had "aged about twenty years in twelve months" under the strain. Tim and Jamie are determined to get to the bottom of the case, but this is easier said than done, because Jamie, as somewhat of an outsider, can "look at it like a maths problem." On the other hand, Tim is not as detached as his friend as the solution to this math problem will affect his grandparents, their friends and neighbors. A nicely-done, warm human touch to the characterization.

Unsurprisingly, the inquisitive, logical-thinking Jamie is the one who puts together all of the puzzle pieces, but they still work wonderfully together and their investigation in the still-falling snow is full of wintry charm. A search for the truth ending with a great scene in the dark crypt and an emotionally regretful confrontation with the murderer, which makes Wilde's Death Knell one of the best characterized, plotted and written juvenile mystery novels. But, for me, the absolute highlight of the story was the solution to the impossible murder inside the locked crypt and the explanation how a slab of stone came to rest against the door. A very original locked room-trick in the spirit of Carr, Halter and Smith. Seriously, all three of them could have written Death Knell and the book is a must-read for everyone who thinks highly of those lauded mystery writers. You won't be disappointed, I promise!

There are only two things marring the story. Firstly, the seasoned armchair detective will quickly suspect who's behind the murder, which still leaves you with having to pick apart how it was done and that's a bit trickier to do. Secondly, Wilde provided no explanation for the series of ghostly, seemingly impossible, deaths in the 1500s and only served as a ghost story to add some atmosphere to the scene of the crime. Somewhere, there's a good historical mystery hidden in that ghost story.

Putting my nitpicking aside, Wilde's Death Knell is one of the best written and now one of my favorite juvenile detective novels with an a well-imagined, excellently executed locked room-trick worthy of the grand masters of the impossible crime genre. Good, believable characterization and solid storytelling. What a shame Wilde didn't write more of them!

A note for the curious: I read Death Knell in English, but discovered that the book had been translated in Dutch, under the title Doodsklok (Death Clock or Death Bells), but I think Zielenrust would have been a better title. A literal translation of zielenrust is soul rest, but peace of mind would be a more accurate translation and would fit the slightly haunted ending of the story.

Away Went the Little Fish (1946) by Margot Bennett

Margot Bennett was a Scottish author, copywriter and scenarist, who produced a number of screenplays for the 1960s BBC adaptation of Maigret, but she also contributed short stories to Lilliput Magazine, wrote an apparently well-known science-fiction novel (The Long Way Back, 1954) and a number of now largely forgotten detective novels – two of which featured her short-lived series-character, Captain John Davies. When they were first published in the 1940s, Bennett was most earnestly praised and criticized by one of the Golden Age luminaries, Anthony Boucher.

British edition

Boucher reviewed Bennett's debut novel, Time to Change Hats (1945), in The San Francisco Chronicle (collected in The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47, 2009), which he commended for its "unobtrusively witty, sly and delightful" dialogue and characterization. But added that the plot has "the English endlessness of a Miles Burton" with "an anything but a watertight solution." Boucher thought her second novel, Away Went the Little Fish (1946), was "far better plotted" without losing any of the rich, delightful writing and wit of her debut.

What transplanted Bennett's Away Went the Little Fish from my never-ending wishlist to the peaks of my to-be-read pile, is its inclusion in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). My only problem was tracking down an affordable copy.

Away Went the Little Fish has long been out-of-print and secondhand copies have become scarce over the decades. So imagine my surprise when discovering that the book had been translated in Dutch, titled Waar bleef het visje? (Where Did the Fish Go?), as part of the equally obscure, short-lived Pyramide zakromans (Pyramid Pockets) series – published between 1949 and 1950. A copy of this translation was a lot easier to get than an original English edition.

The cover of my Dutch edition announces Away Went the Little Fish as a "humoristische speurdersroman" ("a humorous detective novel") and Bennett's comedic approach to the detective story is comparable with Edmund Crispin's satirical mystery novels (c.f. Buried for Pleasure, 1948), but with the clever, technically-sound plots of The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), Swan Song (1947) and The Long Divorce (1952). Yes, those also happen to be three of Crispin's most accomplished locked room mysteries!

Captain John Davies' personal file had been misplaced, presumably lost forever, in the maze-like archives of the Ministry of War and promptly placed in the wrong folder when it resurfaced, which assigned as captain of "a well-nigh non-existent army unit" stationed in Wetherfold – a stately village forty miles from London. When he arrived in Wetherford, he choose private quarters over been billeted in a wing of "the fifth oldest and second ugliest castle in England." And now lives in fear of the social tendencies of his landlady, Mrs. Cole. This was shaping up to be his life, for the foreseeable future, until an auction and murder humorously disrupted the routine of Wetherford.

Dutch edition

Wetherford is buzzing with "the excitement of an approaching circus" over the estate auction of the contents of the home of the late meat pie king, Seward Corker, which provides the book with its most satirical scenes. Most notably the scene in which several "bargain-hunters" feverishly bid on a giant, mahogany-wood wardrobe that "could be sold as an emergency home in some places," even though they have no room for it, or an old set of copper fire-dogs. But the auction takes a turn for the worst when a bridal chest is carried out with the body of a local smut writer crammed inside.

Raphael Sands was a writer of ill-repute who "wrote 100.000 salacious, but very profitable, words" and achieved a popularity of "the most dubious kind," but his personality was as unpleasant as his books. So the person who split his skull with a tomahawk was seen by some as a public benefactor.

Captain Davies has helped bring a murderer to justice before and is hired by the victim's wife, Vicky, to keep her out of the hands of the police, which means he not only has to wrestle with his feelings for the beautiful widow, but tackle a cast of slightly cracked suspects – who all have their own peculiarities. Such as a missionary doctor, Miss Ida Clarke, who begins most of her sentences with "when I was in Africa." A reclusive scientist, known as "de Tijd-Techniker" ("The Time-Technician"), who's working on a secret super-weapon (a death ray or an antidote to the atom bomb). A local physician, Dr. Hooper, who wants to become Harley Street boffin specialized in rheumatism, because you can't cure it and that means there's bread in rheumatism. There's an old, scandal-prone army major, Broome, who's dragged into the case and the smart, 10-year-old daughter of Mrs. Cole, Jodie, who seems to know something about the murder. But she closely guards her secret.

Even the old-fashioned, less-than-perfect translation can darken the bright, sparkling comedic tone of Bennett's storytelling and characterization, but Boucher was right that Away Went the Little Fish is too long and too digressive. But "a good thing is a good thing" even "if there's too much of it." So, while the story is overwritten in parts, the various plot-strands stuck together nicely with a logical and satisfying solution with some good clueing. Particularly the titular clue of the fish, which actually cut the number of potential suspects. What about the locked room, you ask?

French edition

Away Went the Little Fish is a genuine locked room mystery, but the impossible crime aspect is a little underplayed. However, it's not without interest to the fanatical locked room reader/impossible crime fiend. Bennett provided us with one of those rare, but delightful, two-pronged impossibilities.

One of the impossibilities is the question how the murderer could have struck down his victim in full view of the visitors, on viewing day, before hiding the body and weapon under similar circumstances, but this plot-thread will eventually give the murderer away to the observant, suspicious-minded reader – some of whom will no doubt spot one of the tale-tell clues. Second impossibility is the possible, inexplicable entering, or exiting, of the house after it had been securely locked-up for the night. The solution to the problem of the locked-up house is of such blinding simplicity that you have to wonder why nobody else has thought of it before or since then. Not at all what I expected! A clever little locked room-trick and criminally underplayed here.

A note for the curious: when I finish a novel or short story listed in Robert Adey or Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders, I go to the back to see if they have anything to say on the locked room-trick. There were no additional comments this time, but Adey, or Skupin, only described one of the two tricks. So, even if you can't contain your curiosity, you still have to track down a copy to learn the locked house-trick. :)

So, on a whole, Bennett's Away Went the Little Fish is an amusing, if slightly overwritten, lighthearted take on the British village mystery reminiscent of Crispin's comedic detective stories with a dash of Michael Innes and a clever, well put-together plot. A highly recommendable mystery novel that deserves to be reprinted. Are you reading this, Dean Street Press?

Firestorm (1996) by Nevada Barr

Nevada Barr is the author of a series of suspense-driven mystery-and thriller novels centering on the tribulations of a National Park Ranger, Anna Pigeon, beginning with the Anthony Award-winning Track of the Cat (1993) and seems to have ended with Boar Island (2016) – comprising of nineteen titles in total. A series "loosely based" on Barr's experiences as a ranger and partially inspired by the vividly written detective novels by the great Australian mystery writer, Arthur W. Upfield.

What lured me to this series is the inclusion of the fourth title, Firestorm (1996), in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) with an original-sounding impossible crime, "death by stabbing of a victim apparently alone in a fire shelter." An inexplicable murder during a raging firestorm? It sounded to me more like the premise of a disaster/survival thriller than a proper locked room mystery, but, predictably, it still got my attention.

So I decided to look the series up and made some surprising discoveries that warranted further investigation.

My first surprises were Barr naming the traditionally overlooked, or ignored, Upfield as one of her favorite (past) mystery writers and the possibility that she has another locked room novel to her credit, Blind Descent (1998), which takes place in a dangerous, endless underground cavern system – not listed in Skupin's Locked Room Murders. This potentially second, unlisted locked room novel lead me to a third, pleasant, surprise when learning Barr often included "a very professional and useful map" in her stories. Honestly, the underground map from Blind Descent alone was enough to get it short-tracked to the snowy peaks of my to-be-read pile. So I knew enough to get myself a copy of Firestorm.

Firestorm opens on the tenth day of battle between an army of firefighters and California's "Jackknife Fire," which started near Pinson Lake and has taken "two newsworthy sacrifices" when it started, a camper and his dog, but the fire has since spread out "over thirty thousand acres of prime timberland." Consuming everything and everyone crossing its path. As the Jackknife Fire "cut a black swath" through the Caribou Wilderness and Lassen Volcanic National Park, in northern California, small camps ("spikes") were springing up along the fire-line.

Anna Pigeon volunteered as a medical technician, to help staff the medical units, where she spends more than a week bandaging cuts, treating blisters and handing out supplies at one of these tented, village-like spike camps – a "city of a thousand souls" that appeared "suddenly in the wilderness." A cold front moving in over the Cascades coincides with a call to Pigeon's medical unit to rescue Newt Hamlin, a swamper with the Forest Service out of Durango, Colorado, who busted a knee when a log rolled down on him. Unfortunately, as they returned with the wounded swamper, the cold front gave "a spectacular swan song" to the Jackknife as it exploded into a firestorm. This is where the book becomes a truly engrossing and superb disaster/survival thriller!

Pigeon's team is confronted with "tornadoes of pure fire shrieking through the treetops" slaking "a hunger so old only stones and gods remembered." Tragically, they have to leave Newt behind on his stretcher to die and run for their lives, until coming across a Safe Zone, where they can huddle down in a small, silver pup tent to protect them from the scorching winds and fire. When the unit reemerge, they face a devastated landscape and a second casualty, Leonard Nims, whose body is found inside his fire shelter with a knife-handle sticking out of his back, but the murderer had to have walked "through fire to accomplish the task."

Something that was, if not outright impossible, unthinkable. A murder in the middle of a firestorm is not even their most dire problem.

The storm front that caused the blowup brought snow and sleep in its wake, which grounded air support and the long, twisted road leading to the remote spike camp had to be cleared. So they're stuck on a snowy ridge in the Cascades with scant, dwindling supplies, untreated burn wounds and batteries running low as they fight against cold, hunger and insanity – while a murderer walks among them. What a phenomenal setup for a detective story!

It's tempting to compare Barr's Firestorm to Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933), but the only point of commonality they have is a massive forest fire marooning the characters on a patch of land surrounded by "a sea of black and flame." Firestorm is a full-scale disaster novel with a detective plot and the only thing that comes close enough to it is Izo Hashimoto's manga pulp-series, Fire Investigator Nanase, but written with same verve and strong sense of setting as one of her favorite Golden Age mystery writers, Arthur Upfield. Barr has a similar talent as Upfield when it comes to vivid, lifelike descriptions of scenery, wildlife or simply the weather that reminded me of Upfield's written portraits of sandstorms (Winds of Evil, 1937), droughts (Death of a Lake, 1954) and the desolate Nullarbor Plain (Man of Two Tribes (1956). So, where setting and story-telling is concerned, Barr inherited the mantle of Upfield as the top geographical mystery writer of her time.

I only have Firestorm as an example, but, if its indicative of her other novels, you should only read her for the vivid scenery, action and thrills, because the characterization is dull and intrusive. The plot is ultimately disappointing.

Firestorm is set in the middle of a disaster area, in which the characters have to survive with a murderer among them, but the immersion is broken by the dry patches of characterization and in particular the scenes with Frederick Stanton – "an offbeat FBI agent" and love-interest of Pigeon. Stanton is an outside line of information to the isolated unit, but his musings about his ex-wives, disappointing children, wood carvings and his feelings had no place in this otherwise gripping disaster thriller. Same goes for Pigeon. She was at her best when grappling with their precarious situation or diverting her mind by analyzing the murder.

Actually, the best bit of characterization is that of an foolish, unlikable firefighter, Hugh Pepperdine, who somehow managed to "pass his step test to become a red-carded firefighter" and is slowly cracking under the pressure. I suppose this part of the story is one of the reasons why Firestorm has been compared with Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939) and Pigeon even compared him with "one of the wretched little boys in Lord of the Flies." Firestorm needed more of that, but Pigeon had to put him in his place the hard way "to keep him from tearing their fragile society apart." So that's where that story ended.

Unfortunately, the solution to the apparently impossible and fantastical murder in the firestorm failed to deliver on its promise with a simplistic, underwhelming explanation. I can already hear JJ frowning disapprovingly at its status as an impossible crime novel. The weak clueing and the finer details of the motive coming out of nowhere didn't exactly help either, but, what annoyed me the most, is that the story suggested a far more elegant and satisfying solution.

Here's the solution I pieced together (ROT 13 with minor spoilers): Svefg bs nyy, lbh unir gb xabj gung vg jnf fhttrfgrq Yrbaneq Avzf jnf erfcbafvoyr sbe gur nppvqrag bs Arjg Unzyva naq Cvtrba sbhaq n unaqshy bs pehzof va “gur fdhner pnainf rairybcr gung ubhfrq uvf sver furygre,” juvpu fhttrfgrq gb Cvtrba gung Avzf unq orra “gbb ynml gb pneel gur nqqrq jrvtug bs gur nyhzvahz grag” naq “wrggvfbarq vg va snibe bs rkgen sbbq.” Jura gurl erghea gb gur cynpr jurer gurl yrsg Unzyva oruvaq, gurl svaq gung gur sverfgbez unq oybja uvf furygre njnl naq ohearq uvf obql gb n pevfc. Fb jung V svtherq unccrarq vf gung Avzf erghearq gb Unzyva gb gnxr uvf furygre naq, nf n “tbbq Pngubyvp obl,” pbasrffrq jung ur qvq gb gur qrnq pnzcre (nf ur qvq gb gur erny zheqrere) gb gur fbba-gb-or-qrnq Unzyva, ohg guvf cebirq gb zhpu sbe Unzyva naq ortna gb fgehttyr jvgu Avzf – va na nggrzcg gb znxr uvz qvr jvgu uvz va gur synzrf. Unzyva vf obhaq gb uvf fgergpure naq ab zngpu sbe Unzyva, juvpu vf jul, bhg bs qrfcrengvba, ur cynagrq n xavsr va uvf onpx. Ohg gur jbhaq vf abg vafgnagyl sngny. Fvapr ur jnf ehaavat ba nqeranyvar, Avzf znxrf vg gb gur fnsr fcbg jvgu uvf fgbyra furygre naq qvrf fubegyl nsgre penjyvat vafvqr.

Gur bayl gjb bowrpgvbaf gb guvf fbyhgvba nccrnerq gb or gur snpg gung gurer jrer avar fheivibef jvgu bayl rvtug furygref naq Avzf' cresrpgyl rerpg furygre, ohg V svtherq fbzrbar unq jvgarffrq gur fgnoovat naq gevrq gb cebgrpg gur zrzbel bs gung qrnq obl ol qrfgeblvat nal rivqrapr gung pbhyq or yvaxrq gb uvz. Fhpu nf gur fgbyra sver furygre naq ercynpvat vg jvgu uvf/ure bja. Gur pbecfr unq orra frnepurq naq fhfcrpgrq guvf jnf qbar gb erzbir na rkgen xavsr gb znxr vg nccrne nf ur unq orra fgnoorq jvgu uvf bja xavsr. Guvf nyfb znqr vg nccrne nf vs gur zheqrere jnf fgvyy nzbat gurz.

So, purely as a detective story, Firestorm is a good example why I'm always so hesitant with modern crime writers, especially when they have close ties to the character-driven thrillers of today, but, as a disaster/survival thriller and geological crime novel, they probably don't come any better than Firestorm. And the reason why I'm still going to read Blind Descent.

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Murder on the Campus (1933)

Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) amended Robert Adey's original 1991 revised edition significantly with the inclusion of TV shows, movies, anime and manga, which served as a reminder that I haven't watched a single episode of either Banacek or Kagi no kakatta heya (The Locked Room Murders) – two detective TV-series wholly dedicated to the impossible crime story. A gross oversight that will be corrected before the year draws to a close! But, for now, I have something else that caught my attention.

Locked Room Murders: Supplement listed Arthur T. Horman's screenplay of Murder on the Campus (1933), a low-budget adaptation of Whitman Chambers' The Campanile Murders (1933), with two intriguing-sounding locked room situations. Normally, I would prefer to read the book before watching the movie, but The Campanile Murders is a long out-of-print, hard-to-get novel and Murder on the Campus is in the public domain. So...

Murder on the Campus was directed by Richard Thorpe and have seen it being advertised as "a solid collegiate whodunit," but, purely as an impossible crime story, it stands as a good example of how the locked room mystery can help prop up an otherwise threadbare plot.

The two lead-characters of the movie are Bill Bartlett (Charles Starrett), a reporter for the Times Star, who's mad about a college student, Lillian Voyne (Shirley Grey), who's currently working her way through college by singing in a nightclub. Bartlett is even willing to risk "a term in prison" to get her out of trouble when she becomes the prime suspect in a murder case, but, surprisingly, not a murder linked to her sleazy nightclub gig.

A student, Malcolm Jennings, is heard playing the carillon on top of the campus campanile, a bell tower, when the chiming all of the sudden stops and a gunshot is heard. A crowd immediately gathered in front the locked door of the bell tower and, until the police arrived, "not a soul" had come through the only way in, or out, of the bell tower. At the top of the tower, they find a body with a gunshot to the head without any powder burns or a weapon, "a plain case of murder," but where did the shooter go – since he, or she, is nowhere to be found inside the tower! The discovery is followed by scene in which Captain Ed Kyne (J. Farrell MacDonald), Sergeant Charlie Lorrimer (Dewey Robinson) and Bartett rattle of a series of potential solutions to the locked room problem. Such as a rifle shot from an elevated position (high buildings or the far-away hills), hiding places (elevator shaft) or the use of a parachute or rope. All of them are discredited on the spot.

Unfortunately, the discovery and brief discussion of the murder, demonstrating the sheer impossibility of the shooting ("nobody left there after the shot"), is as good as Murder on the Campus gets as a locked room mystery... until the solution.

The solution to the impossible murder is an interesting one. A combination of two distinctly different locked room techniques, closely associated with two different groups of locked room specialists, which is somewhat of a rarity, but the potentially good locked room-trick was completely wasted here – withholding the only "clue" until the last twenty minutes. A late clue so blatant that it was insulting. There's a second, quasi-impossible situation concerning the fatal bullet that had been fired with a gun that had been locked-up at the time of the murder, but this second impossibility is given even less thought than the locked bell tower. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have recognized it as an impossible crime had it not been for its inclusion in Skupin's Locked Room Murders. And it didn't help that the obviously possibility turned out to be the solution.

So the presentation and solution to the locked bell tower murder is not without interest, but the poor, threadbare story, wedged in between, makes Murder on the Campus merely a curiosity for impossible crime fans. However, what the movie lacked in plot ingenuity, it made up with likable performances, a good pace and an authentic period charm. Even with a poor plot, Murder on the Campus was still fun to watch, if only to see actual actors from the 1930s act out a detective story from that period. Something even the best modern adaptations can never replicate.

As of now, I've no idea what I'll read, or watch, next, but chances are that it will be another entry from Locked Room Murders: Supplement.

The Murder of Steven Kester (1931) by Harriette Ashbrook

The Murder of Steven Kester (1931) is the second outing of Harriette Ashbrook's smart-alecky, playboy detective, Spike Tracy, which may have been her most commercially successful endeavor as it was adapted, in 1934, as the black-and-white movie Green Eyes – a movie with a minor footnote in the history of television. The movie received its first telecast on Sunday, February 25th, 1940 on NBC's experimental station W2XBS in New York City.

Just like its predecessor, The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930), Ashbrook's second novel is a thoroughly conventional detective story compared to her subsequent novels such as The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933), A Most Immoral Murder (1935) and Murder Makes Murder (1937). A typical, 1930s American detective story written and plotted in the traditions of the Van Dine-Queen School. However, as John Norris pointed out in his 2013 blog-post, "The Detective Novels of Harriette Ashbrook," her "tendency to be a bit risqué" is "on flamboyant display in this book."

You can hardly picture Philo Vance, or Ellery Queen, attending a fancy dress party "dressed only in a tiger skin" and "an air of irrepressible good-humour."

Spike Tracy is a friend of Miss Jennifer Vinton, granddaughter of Steven Kester, who left her parents when she was an infant, but Kester seldom found the time to be a grandfather and left her in the care of a kindly, adoring nurse, Dora. Who's now somewhat of an old family retainer privy to "the household skeletons." Kester's attitude towards his granddaughter changed when she returned from abroad as a young woman with "a complete set of friends" and began to have daydreams about launching his granddaughter in society, which would lead to a marriage with a suitable young man and a great-grandchild – preferably a boy who would bear his name. Jennifer shattered his "dignified daydreams" by falling deeply in love with a hardworking law clerk, Cliff Millard, who makes long hours to make ends meet.

Kester, "an awful snob," is dead set against Jennifer marrying a man "he considered his social inferior" and stopped her weekly allowance, but, when she pawned her jewelry, he threatened to cut her out of his will. And he even summoned his lawyer. Somewhat of a mistake when you're already an unlikable character in a detective story.

On an evening in June, Jennifer throws "a masquerade party" at her grandfather's Long Island mansion, Long Hills, but the party ends when the body of Steven Kester is found, stuffed in a closet, with multiple stabwounds!

Spike flippantly remarks to the local police how beautifully the murder of his host "fulfills all of the requisites" of the best detective stories with a house party (check), a corpse (check) and an amateur detective who happened to be present when the murder was committed (check), but rarely has an amateur detective slipped so easily into a murder investigation in such an unlikely situation – putting him to work when District Attorney Foxcroft recognizes him as "the damn fool that solved the murder of Cecily Thane." I suppose it also helped that he's the younger brother of the D.A. of New York City, R. Montgomery Tracy, but, even by Golden Age standards, it was somewhat amazing at how fast Spike was calling (most of) the shots.

As an aside, Chapter V gives a brief biography of Spike, but the biography was almost entirely copied from The Murder of Cecily Thane. I thought that the passage sounded familiar and remembered the phrase "a charming hybrid." So I went back to compare those passages and they are indeed the same. What a lazy way to pad out a chapter! Gratefully, I don't have to say the same about the busy plot, which has more complications than merely two headstrong lovers opposed by a family patriarch.

Several days before the party, Roger Herries arrives at the house and was introduced to everyone as an old friend of Steven Kester, who would be staying a few days, but Kester was clearly annoyed at both his presence and references to the Arco iron mines – even ordering his private-secretary to dump all of his Arco mining bonds. Something that becomes very suspicious when Herries attempts to flee the house after the murder. There's also money missing from the wall safe and something had been burned in the basement furnace. However, the most baffling aspect of the case is that the overly diligent murderer put "the phone and the cars out of commission," not once, but twice! One of those flashes of originality that would come to define Ashbrook's future novels.

Nonetheless, The Murder of Steven Kester is largely a conventional, typical Van Dine-like detective novel, crammed with clues and red herrings, which should help the observant, suspicious-minded reader with spotting the murderer well before the end. Even if the clueing was a bit dodgy at times. The pair-of-dice clue is a good example of a dodgy clue given very late into the story, but hardly enough to sink the story as a fair play mystery. More importantly, Ashbrook pulled all of the plot-threads together to my full satisfactory.

So, plot-wise, The Murder of Steven Kester is a competently constructed, charmingly told detective story with a splendid setting, a solid alibi-trick and interesting character backstories, but not a shining example of Ashbrook's ability as an innovative and original mystery novelist. You have to turn to the previously mentioned The Murder of Sigurd Sharon, A Most Immoral Murder or the superb Murder Makes Murder, if you want to see what she was capable of as a plotter and story-teller. Otherwise, The Murder of Steven Kester comes recommended as a good representative of the American detective story from the early 1930s.

This only leaves me with the last and somewhat contentious Spike Tracy novel, The Purple Onion Mystery (1941), but, keeping the end of Murder Comes Back (1940) in mind, I still hold out of hope for it.