Set in Stone: "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" (1999) by MORI Hiroshi

Hiroshi Mori is a Japanese engineer who reportedly started writing detective stories when he was an associate professor, at Nagoya University, to impress his mystery-reading daughter and his debut, Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996), netted the first-ever Mephisto Prize – a Sherlock Holmes statuette awarded to unpublished genre fiction. Some of its recipients formed a publishing group in 2012, The BBB: The Breakthrough Bandwagon, to make their work available in English.

One of the members of The BBB is the subject of today's review, Hiroshi Mori, who insists his name to be written "MORI Hiroshi," family name first and in uppercase, regardless of the language. So I will refer to him as MORI from here on out.

The BBB translated and published seven of MORI's detective stories, collected in the appropriately titled Seven Stories (2016), which comprises of five standalone stories and two from the "Professor Saikawa and his student Moe" (S&M) series. But you can also buy the stories separately. So I decided to sample MORI's writing with a short story combining the armchair detective story with an architectural conundrum from 7th century India!

"Sekitō no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999) is one of two S&M stories currently available in English and MORI obviously wrote it as an homage to the Black Widower series by Isaac Asimov.

The premise of "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" is the monthly gathering of young detectives belonging to the First Investigation Division, of the Aichi Prefectural Police, at Moe Nishinosomo's residence to discuss their cases – which came to be called "The Banquet of the Black Windows." A reference to both the "huge black windows" in the living room of the apartment and Asimov's The Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984). However, the monthly gatherings were becoming repetitive and Professor Saikawa is asked to come to the next meeting with an interesting topic. What he brings is "a case that is not a usual case," which is "a mystery that is not a usual mystery."

Forty years ago, Moe's father, Dr. Nishinosomo, took part in large-scale surveys of Indian temples and focused his attention on "the so-called rock-cut cave temples." A type of monolithic architectural structures cut, carved and chiseled from "a single slab of rock" that left "completely independent, free-standing structures." A peculiarity of these ancient, rock-cut structures is that they were carved out of the rock top to bottom. During one of these surveys, Dr. Nishinosomo stumbled across an architectural anomaly.

Usually, these rock-cut structures are found in the deep mountains or sheer seashore cliffs, but a group of five stone pagodas, called Five Ratha, were found relatively close to a town and they were all made from a "giant, single rock" – all were connected to the same rock on the ground. So the location of these stone pagodas alone is enough to raise some eyebrows, but what's truly inexplicable is that the carpenters carved the finials, which is supposed to adorn the top of pagodas, some two meters away. As if they were "out of the ground like a plant."

These rock-cut structures were made top-to-bottom, meaning that the carpenters should have started with the finials, but why they were carved is a complete mystery.

A neat little historical puzzle with a simple, logical and, admittedly, a pretty mundane explanation, but the strength of the story is not in the answer. It's in the procession of incorrect answers, or false solutions, preceding it. Everyone in attendance gets to take a crack at the problem and their proposed solutions vary from the logical, or practical, to being drenched in the romanticized intrigues of history – which should delight fans of Anthony Berkeley and Ellery Queen alike.

So, all in all, I found "The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha" to be a fascinating blend of the armchair detective story and historical mystery, but it's a fairly minor detective story that will not satisfy everyone. Personally speaking, I wish there were more armchair detective stories pondering over these obscure, mysterious passages from history. You can definitely expect MORI to return to this blog sometime in the future.

The Hand of Mary Constable (1964) by Paul Gallico

Paul Gallico was an American writer and self-described storyteller, perhaps best remembered today as the author of The Snow Goose (1941) and The Poseidon Adventure (1969), who made a brief excursion into the detective genre with Too Many Ghosts (1959) and The Hand of Mary Constable (1964). A pair of unconventional impossible crime novels with a more contemporary take on the turn-of-the-century "ghostbusters" stories by William Hope Hodgson (Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder, 1913) and L.T. Meade (A Master of Mysteries, 1898). 

 

The detective, or ghost-breaker, in these novels is the chief investigator for the British Society of

Psychical Research, Alexander Hero, who nevertheless operates as "an independent private detective of the occult." Hero believes the occult can be defined as a compound of "wishful thinking, sleight-of-hand, music-hall tricks, the evidence of idiots, coincidences, unreliable reports, greed, human gullibility" and, to a certain extent, the unexplainable. And, in his opinion, there has "not been a single case proven of the dead returned" or "the existence of a spirit world” up to now. Hero remains open-minded and the next case always remains open until he "can shut the door." 
 

So, while Hero remained eager for genuine proof of the paranormal, he actively destroyed "the charlatans of spiritualism" who "preyed upon the misfortunes of the bereaved and ignorant." 

 

Too Many Ghosts brings Hero to Paradine Hall, filled to capacity with ghosts, where furniture moves around on its own accord, candles extinguish themselves and the ghostly figure of nun can materialize out of nowhere – not to mention the phantom harp player in the locked music-room. The solution to the ghostly fingers, plucking at the harp strings in the music-room, makes Too Many Ghosts a notable locked room mystery of the period. And not just the locked music-room. Hero "de-haunts" every single, seemingly supernatural, occurrence and manifestation.

 

I was glad to learn at the time Gallico penned a sequel, The Hand of Mary Constable, but some lukewarm reviews and comments over the years had condemned it to the Purgatory Zone of my TBR-list. I was in the mood for one of those séance mysteries and wanted to save Patrick Kelley's Sleightly Invisible (1986) for later this year. So here we are.

The Hand of Mary Constable finds Alexander Hero en route to New York City in the wake of an alarming letter from Dr. Frank Ferguson, President of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, who tells them there "a number of occurrences" with potentially dangerous, earth-shattering consequences – which involves the U.S. government at its highest level. Ferguson refuses to give any details in his letter, but, when Hero arrives, he's ushered to a private meeting with some mighty important, highly ranked officials. General Walter Augstadt, in charge of a special project, Saul Wiener, the Regional Director of FBI, and an FBI expert specialized in fingerprints, Mr. Ferris. What they tell him could affect the Cold War in a most unexpected way. 

 

Professor Samuel Constable is the head of the Department of Cybernetics, at Columbia University, who has been working with the Department of Defense on the secretive Project Foxglove.
 

The objective of Project Foxglove is to develop a way to intrude upon "the commands taped into a missile" and "persuading it to disobey these commands and in some cases to reverse them," which effectively turns them into homing pigeons. A device that will, one way or another, reshuffle the cards on the world stage. If every nation had the device, computerized technology would be rendered ineffective on the battlefield and fighting would have to be done with field armies or dropping bombs from airplanes, but, if the Soviets gets it first, they're all "dead ducks" – nations around the world have been working hard on similar projects. Professor Constable got it and they were only months away from a breakthrough. But a personal tragedy in his life would end placing the whole world on "the horns of a nasty dilemma." 

 

A year ago, Professor Constable lost his 10-year-old daughter, Mary, who was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away shortly after. Mary's illness and death left her father "a markedly changed man," which made him easy prey for two so-called spiritual mediums, Arnold and Sarah Bessmer. 

 

Professor Constable was told that the Bessmers had receives a message from Mary and he began to attend their weekly séances, during which he heard "a voice purporting to be that of his daughter" and had physical contact with "a figure which he believes to be a materialization of her." Amazingly, they were able to produce physical evidence of Mary's ghostly presence! During a séance, the ghost of Mary had thrust a hand in a bowl of liquid wax and thereafter in cold water, which left behind "the transparent hand and wrist of a child" – an empty glove of wax! It would be impossible for any living flesh or bone to have been withdrawn from it without shattering it. Even more astonishing is that the wax glove has fingerprints belonging to Mary! An impossible-to-fake detail since Mary's body had been cremated.

 

So having one of your most important scientists, who's working on a top secret project, in the clutches of two greedy vultures is bad enough, but things become fishy when Mary begins to talk world politics. Someone is dictating Mary's messages with the intention to make him either defect or voluntarily part with his knowledge. Considering how sensitive the whole situation is, they can't simply cut the professor from the mediums and prevent him from “communicating” with his daughter. A course of action he would most definitely resent intensely. 

 

Ferguson asks Alexander Hero to go undercover at the Church of the Holy Ozone as Peter

Fairweather, a lecturer at Cambridge, who recently lost an entirely fictitious fiancee and gives him the unenviable task of carefully weaning the professor from the mediums without damaging him or force him to defect – which is easier said than done. The only way to go about it is smashing the illusion of the solid, one piece wax glove. And to do that, he has to figure out how "to make a wax glove with the fingerprints of a person who is dead and buried" and duplicate it. An already difficult task made even harder when he also has to content with the personality of his assumed personality, the flesh-and-blood ghost of his dead, nonexistent fiancee, a Russian assassin and skeptical government officials. 
 

The Hand of Mary Constable is a weird kind of crime novel that's not easy to pigeon-hole. The impossibility of the wax glove is the peg on which the plot hangs, recalling the bloodless impossible crime stories by Carter Dickson and David Renwick, but, around the halfway mark, the cold war thriller elements began to intrude on the story without being a hybrid of either. The Hand of Mary Constable is a (crime) novel that happens to have elements of both the impossible crime story and cold war thriller, which is an interesting and unusual blend. But one that began to lose its flavor once the story passed its halfway mark. Gallico also decided to tip his hand to the reader here and it didn't do the plot any favors. 

 

Thankfully, the solution to the impossibility of Mary Constable's hand was better than some reviews suggested and the explanation of how the cast was made certainly was original. Something to be expected from the writer who dreamed up the trick of the phantom harp player in a locked music-room. However, the trick would probably have been better served in tighter, more focused, detective story that would allowed the finer details (i.e. fingerprints) to be tidied up. More importantly, The Hand of Mary Constable is a very well written, imaginative and engrossing novel in spite of its flaws and the only that actually bothered me is that the story undersold how dark and revolting the plot against Professor Constable truly is – occult brainwashing of a grieving father with the memory of his dead child as bait! And it's not just him who's being tortured. Mrs. Constable makes a brief appearance, but that's enough to take pity on that poor, long-suffering woman who first lost her only child and now has to watch her husband slipping from her fingers. 

 

So, with everything told, The Hand of Mary Constable is not an unsung classic of the locked room mystery novel, but it still has a lot to recommend with an intriguingly posed impossibility, the early, eerie atmosphere surrounding the ghostly visitations and the well intended attempt at blending different genres. Gallico betrayed here that he was a better storyteller than plotter, but Too Many Ghosts and The Hand of Mary Constable stand as noteworthy and original contributions from an outside visitor to the impossible crime and detective story. I don't think anything like these two (locked room) mysteries were published until John Sladek wrote Black Aura (1974) and Invisible Green (1977) a decade later.

The Edge of Terror (1932) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's The Edge of Terror (1932) is the twelfth title in the Anthony Bathurst series and part of the much deserved, long overdue second set of reprints, published by Dean Street Press, which nearly became "the book that got away" as not even Flynn's estate had a copy of it – only copy for sale came with "a stratospheric price tag." Luckily, a generous collector came to the rescue and made his copy available to Steve Barge and DSP.

However, the extreme scarcity of copies explains why The Edge of Terror never figured or was even mentioned in connection with a very exclusive list of vintage detective novels and short stories. The serial killer tale!

Steve Barge, the Puzzle Doctor, wrote in his introduction that the serial killer "posed a problem for the writer of the pure mystery," mainly centering on the motive, which leaves the writer with "two primary options." The victims are either linked or picked at random. The locked room mystery, the closed-circle of suspects and the dying message as restrictive tropes, but, compared to the serial killer, they're open worlds that are still being explored today. And how ironic it's that the serial killer has become a staple of the modern crime novel.

Now, to be honest, the giants of the past were very hit-and-miss when trying to tackle the serial killer with Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders (1936) and Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails (1949) standing as the iconic, Golden Age serial killer novels, but John Dickson Carr's Captain Cut-Throat (1955) and William D. Andrea's The HOG Murders (1979) found two nifty variations on the two previously mentioned options – cementing a spot right underneath Christie and Queen. But there were also some real stinkers. Such as Philip MacDonald's massively overrated Murder Gone Mad (1931) and Jonathan Stagge's lackluster Death's Old Sweet Song (1946), but opinions differ on those two. Carr heralded Murder Gone Mad as one of the best crime novels of all time (no idea why) and Curt Evans valiantly defended Death's Old Sweet Song against its detractors in the linked review. We shouldn't overlook Gladys Mitchell's The Rising of the Moon (1945), which offers the reader an experience all of its own.

So, as said above, the result varies enormously, but where does Flynn's The Edge of Terror rank on the list of Golden Age serial killer novels? Let's find out!

The Edge of Terror is narrated by Dr. Michael Bannerman, village physician of Great Steeping, who six months previously was taken into the confidence of Inspector Goodaker about a threatening warning letter they received. A letter promising to remove "one of the most prominent citizens of your most atrocious town" by "by the 31st day of August next" and “the matter may not end there." The letter signed "The Eagle." They assume it's a hoax or someone trying to stir the pot, but, on August 31, Goodaker calls Dr. Bannerman to tell he had received a second letter announcing the murderer's arrival. And the next morning, Dr. Bannerman receives a second call informing him a milk boy had found the body of Walter Fredericks in Taggerts Lane with his throat cut.

Walter Fredericks was one of the richest men in the district and owned, among other things, two big cinemas. So the murderer couldn't have picked a better victim to create a first-class sensation, but what the murderer couldn't have foreseen is the presence of a holidaying murder-magnet, Anthony Bathurst, who's immediately roped into the case by the Chief Constable. When the murderer strikes down another member of the Frederick family, the motive appears to be a personal one, but a third murder seems to break the link. It's this third murder that's the most interesting of the lot.

Fredericks owned two cinemas and in one of them, Beaufoy Cinema, the people in attendance were startled by "a piercing scream that was easily separable from the "talkie" to which they were listening." The body of the girl in charge of the confectionery counter was found lying close to the top of a flight of stairs with a knife wound.

John Russell Fearn's One Remained Seated (1946) and Pattern of Murder (2006) made me wonder if there were any more detective novels with a cinema setting, which was actually rarely used, but have since found several additional titles – one of them being another DSP reprint, Moray Dalton's The Art School Murders (1943). The Edge of Terror definitely belongs on that list and gives the reader a brief, but welcome, peek behind the scenes of a 1930s cinema through the questioning of a uniformed boy who sold chocolates and cigarettes to the patrons ("on a tray suspended from his neck") and found the body. This leads to the clue of "little blurred blot of pink cream" that "is going to bring a man to the gallows."

There's not much more I can tell about the plot, because, as Steve noted in his own review, The Edge of Terror is something of fairground ride of novel, but have to compliment Flynn for his use of a neighborhood patrols as a response to mounting body count. A logical response to a vicious killer roaming a small community that's too often absent in these kind of serial killer stories, e.g. Paul Halter's L'arbe aux doigts tordus (The Vampire Tree, 1997). Secondly, Flynn once again shows here that he was to the false identity what Christopher Bush was to the unbreakable alibi and Carr to the locked room mystery. It's fascinating how some writers succeeded in making their names synonymous with certain tropes.

My sole complaint is that the finer details of the motive, which is the linchpin of the serial killer story, were obscured until Bathurst's explanation, but, on a whole, it was tremendously fun read and a good, early attempt to wring a proper detective story out of the work of an apparent homicidal maniac. The Edge of Terror doesn't soar to the same heights as The ABC Murders, Cat of Many Tails or Captain Cut-Throat, but it's mostly certainly a cut, or two, above most of the other, lesser-known Golden Age serial killer novels. Flynn was great!

Murder in Reverse (1945) by Anthony Webb

Norman Scarlyn Wilson was a British writer who authored a handful of Teach Yourself language books, French and Spanish, but during the height of the genre's golden years, from 1937 to 1947, he produced eleven detective novels – published as by “Anthony Webb.” An interesting mystery writer who seems to have been forgotten by even the rabid readers of the traditional, Golden Age detective story.

Golden Age of Detection Wiki (who's who of who the hell?) has nothing on him and had to trawl the internet to find small, obscure bits and pieces of information here and there.

A French wikipedia page confirmed Webb was a pseudonym of Wilson and has a full bibliography, of the English and French editions, with a sketchy description of his lead detective, Mr. George Pendlebury. There are a few lists with rare, secondhand copies and one listing all the Dutch translations, which means his novels have appeared in at least three languages. And that's pretty impressive considering how thoroughly forgotten he's today. More interestingly, is the possible existence of an old BBC radio interview. On the June 21, 1951, episode of Tea-Time Talk, “Selecting a Detective,” Webb is asked about “the problems and pitfalls that await the author of detective fiction,” which sounds fascinating, but have been unable to find an archived copy online – not even a transcript. So how did such an obscure, hard-to-find writer as Webb came to my attention?

Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019) has an entry for the eighth Mr. Pendlebury mystery, Murder in Reverse (1945), earning its spot with an impossible poisoning in an empty and watched room.

So, without anything substantial to go on, I read the book with little more than a bit of hope that it would turn out to be a half-decent detective story with a good, or acceptable, locked room-trick. Murder in Reverse is unquestionable a second-string detective novel, but not a bad one that's strangely reminiscent of Christopher Bush (plot), Francis Duncan (detective) and Brian Flynn (style).

Mr. Pendlebury takes the lead in nine, of eleven, detective novels penned by Webb and is a kind, elderly gentleman who lives with the family of his granddaughter, Margaret, who all adored him deeply as a man in the habit of giving much and seeking little in return – reaping “a spontaneous reward of affection.” The “most kindly of men” with a repository of arcane trivia and a benevolent, but insatiable, curiosity which Detective-Inspector Wagstaffe has drawn on on more than one occasion. Much to the excitement of the old man himself. Mr. Pendlebury delighted “in pitting his wits against those of the criminal” and put his talent for “unearthing seemingly irrelevant details” whose “significance was apt to be overlooked by more orthodox investigators” to practice. And if you add to that his willingness to play cupid or being called murder magnet by his grandson-in-law, you have a detective character who strongly reminded me of Duncan's Mordecai Tremaine.

Murder in Reverse takes place in one those many small, picturesque villages dotting the English countryside, Stutterford, which had been temporarily deprived of one its Air-raid Wardens, but Mr. Pendlebury promptly offered to act as substitute. No good deed goes unpunished and his new responsibilities forces him to postpone a visit to his neighbor, Joseph Kendrick, who's celebrating his eightieth birthday when the story opens. But when he arrives that evening to present Kendrick with a birthday present, Mr. Pendlebury is told that Kendrick has unexpectedly passed away.

Kendrick had invited his three nephews: the brothers John and Peter Kendrick and their black sheep cousin, Charles Hannington, who disappeared to Australia two decades ago, but he recently resurfaced and he's up to his old tricks again – telling the brothers he has their uncle eating out of his hands. The doctor also has his suspicions and asks for a post-mortem. And the possibility of murder poses a precarious question. How could Kendrick have been killed, while alone in room, with John and Peter playing a game of chess in another room? They they were bound to notice anyone entering the room or moving about the room.

However, once the problem is posed, the story moves on to another problem when the Chief Constable, Major Bingley, asks Mr. Pendlebury to come over the scene of, what's unmistakably, a murder. Mr. Pendlebury is "thrilled to the marrow." But the reason why Major Bingley asks his assistance is actually quite original.

Murder in Reverse is, at its core, a bright, lighthearted village mystery marred only by the dark, ominous clouds of the Second World War hanging over it. There are numerous references to blackouts, food rationing, wartime beer, stringent regulations and parlor maids working in munitions factories, which also affected the police apparatus and routine that now had to work with “a staff largely lacking in experience” – reason why Wagstaffe is absent here. Major Bingley admits to Mr. Pendlebury he's not able “to cope with jobs as serious as murder cases.” The garroting of Mr. Bancroft, a solicitor, is a particular nasty case of murder. So he's not adverse to turn to an amateur who had earned the respect of Wagstaffe and Scotland Yard. And when the result of post-mortem is announced, they have to figure out whether the same, unseen hand committed these two vastly different murders. A subtle murder and a not so subtle murder.

What unfolds from this premise is sedately told, but very uneven, detective story with some good and interesting ideas that sadly lacked the practiced touch and finesse of Webb's more skilled, well-known contemporaries. But let's look at the good first, before going over the bad.

Storytelling of Murder in Reverse is drenched in the old-world charm depicted in the beautifully illustrated book cover, which shows the most striking and important scene in the book. Mr. Pendlebury leisurely strolling pass shop windows and spotting an important clue in a grocer's window. He also purchases a tin of tobacco that helps him squash a pointless alibi. So this should give you an idea about the pace of the story. The reason behind the murder is a refreshing take on an age-old motive, the locked room-trick is clever, but unpolished, and there might have a spot of unintended, but first-class, piece of misdirection – which succeeded in throwning me off the scent. You see, based on the different murder methods, uncertainty of time of death in the Bancroft case and the book title, I assumed the victims had murdered each other. A plot-device that has been used before, and since, Murder in Reverse was published and usually involves a time-delayed administration of poison for one of the murders. The actual solution turned out to be very different from what I expected and it's not perfect.

I'm generous when saying that the clueing is uneven. Some things are shared, while others are kept close to the chest, but even the clues that are shared only give you a hint, or nod, in the right direction without ever giving you a key piece of evidence. For example, if you're imaginative and observant enough, you can probably make an educated guess how the locked room-trick was roughly executed. But you won't know for sure until Mr. Pendlebury begins his explanation. A warning to the reader: he takes his time getting to the point. What nearly killed the story is the identity of the murderer and something that will not fail to embarrass the seasoned mystery reader. Luckily, the weaker areas of the plot have a solid motive and a clever locked room-trick as support columns or else the whole thing would have collapsed into an uninspired, third-rate detective story. A charmingly written, third-rate detective story, but a third-rate detective story nonetheless.

So, on a whole, Murder in Reverse is not completely without merit, but very much a second-string mystery novel and can only be recommended to long-time mystery readers, because they're the most likely to take the good with the bad (junkies!). Someone who has only scratched the surface of the genre might have the same reaction to Murder in Reverse as to potassium cyanide. I didn't dislike it and always enjoy exploring these obscure detective novels, but don't expect Murder in Reverse to make an appearance on my annual best-of list.

The Death of Laurence Vining (1928) by Alan Thomas

Alan Thomas was a British barrister, literary editor and mystery writer who wrote sixteen, largely forgotten, novels of detection and criminal intent, but his seminal novel, The Death of Laurence Vining (1928), is the stuff of legends – an extremely rare locked room mystery that turned the detective story on its head. An elusive novel reputed to be "a minor classic" with "an ingeniously thought out impossible crime" and an original spin on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson!

However, you're advised not to read the book expecting to find a completely tongue-in-cheek treatment, similar to Leo Bruce and Takemaru Abiko, of the classic detective story. The Death of Laurence Vining could have been written by Anthony Berkeley when he was in a particular foul mood. This probably explains why such a brilliant detective story has not been reprinted in nearly seven decades. But more on that later.

Laurence Vining was a genius as well as "a queer fish" of independent means, which both allowed him to devote his mind to the pursuit of knowledge, but whether his study of man bolstered his humanity "is open to grave doubt." An arrogant and difficult man who didn't have much sympathy, or liking, for his fellow creatures and wasn't afraid of giving offense in a "devilish polite" and sarcastic manner – which earned him more enemies than friends. Only person who seemed to understood and even appreciated him was his "very impressionable" friend, Dr. Benjamin Willing, who became Vining's Dr. Watson when he began developing an interest in criminology. And on more than one occasion, Vining had succeeded where the police had failed.

The Death of Laurence Vining opens with the last chapter in a sensational murder trial, referred to in the newspapers as the "Shop Murder" or "Shop Case," in which Vining delivered the murderer of shopkeeper to justice. A success that came at a personal price. The case ended Vining's role as an anonymous, unofficial consultant to the police and the papers wrote jubilantly about the eminent scholar abandoning his studies "in order to assist in work of this kind." Scotland Yard had a real-life Sherlock Holmes!

So a shock wave goes through the country and newspaper headlines when Vining is killed under circumstances defying any logical or even natural explanation.

A ticket collector at the top platform of Hyde Park Tube Station witnessed Vining entering an empty lift, save and sound, but, when the lift had reached the bottom, the doors opened to reveal the body of the briefly famous detective – a ceremonial dagger had been planted in his back. But how did the murderer enter the lift without being seen by the tick collector or managed to escape with the two people waiting at the bottom? Dr. Willing offers his assistance to the exasperated Inspector Widgeon, of Scotland Yard, to help find the murderer of his friend. An apparently invisible murder or the possibility of a sentient dagger aren't the only complications in the case.

Vining young, devil-may-care nephew, Captain Jack Ransome, who wanted to marry his uncle's secretary, Pamela Jackson, but disappeared shortly after his uncle threatened to disinherit him. Suleiman, Vining's Malayan servant, disappeared around the same time and, if he turned on his master, the motive could be hidden among the many oriental treasures crammed inside his museum-like house. Who's behind the mysterious letter, signed "Red Hat," which lured Vining to the tube station? On top of that, Widgeon often has to drag answers from various suspects and witnesses.

However, the investigation that takes up the middle portion of the story is surprisingly plain and straightforward for, what legitimately is, one of the best detective novels of the 1920s. A routine investigation that's taken up with questioning witnesses, examining the scene of the crime and digging around for the clues with the only notable highlight being a preposterous, pulp-style false solution proposed by Dr. Willing to explain how Vining could have been stabbed in sealed and moving lift. You have the chalk the middle portion up as the calm before the storm, because the eventual solution is one that hits all three cylinders – who, why and how. The locked room-trick is meticulously put together and the nature of the trick, as well as the ideas it used, foreshadowed what was to come in the decades ahead. Even more impressive is that the murderer accounted for several possibilities and had prepared according with several backup plans. One of them would have aborted the whole scheme, if outside elements started working against it. Something I've never seen before!

I had both my suspicions and doubts about the murderer's identity, because the locked room is not all that easy to work out and the motive kind of stumped me, but the choice of murderer and the twisted motive were unquestionably masterstrokes. Thomas was not satisfied and went one step further in the unusual confrontation with the murderer, which resulted in exactly the kind of ending I've always wanted to see in a genuinely classic detective novel. Thomas gave it to me.

So why has this minor classic and herald of what was to come in the 1930s not been reprinted since the 1950s? I got my answer when Vining's housekeeper gave her opinion on Suleiman using a hard R that you can hear rolling off the page and that's not only time The Death of Laurence Vining showed its age in a less than flattering way. So you'll be hard pressed to find a publisher today who would be willing to reprint it and very likely will remain out-of-print until it enters the public domain.

Yeah, The Death of Laurence Vining definitely lived up to its mythical reputation among locked room readers as an obscure masterpiece and, if you're willing to take the good with the bad, you'll be treated to a brilliant, innovative and cleverly subversive detective story worthy of Anthony Berkeley.

Murder with Minarets (1968) by Charles Forsyte

Earlier this year, I was introduced to the excellent detective fiction of "Charles Forsyte," a penname shared between Gordon and Vicky Philo, who wrote four detective novels in the traditional mold of the genre's Golden Age – three of which Robert Adey listed in Locked Room Murders (1991). Diplomatic Death (1961) evoked the spirit of Clayton Rawson with a murderer resorting to stage illusions at the British Consulate in Istanbul. Diving Death (1962) uses a tight bundle of alibis to create an impossible murder at the bottom of the sea, but their last novel has a surprisingly chatty, character-driven story and plot.

Murder with Minarets (1968) is a standalone mystery novel with the center stage being a block of flats, in Ankara, Turkey, where the British Embassy houses its staff members. Story is mainly concerned with the domestic and social side of the diplomatic life with dinners, social functions and a picnic filling out the story, which is the dominion of the Embassy wives.

Embassy wives "as a breed were no better and no worse than any other group of woman in a small community," but they "could be nearly as devastatingly cruel as small children to anyone who does not go with the herd." Nobody tried harder to belong than the Austrian wife of one of the First Secretaries, Magda Tranter. An unlikable and impossible woman who could have been forgiven her unsuitable clothes, artificial manner and tantrums, but she had "no vestige of a sense of humour" – British "can forgive almost anything but that." But it still comes as a shock when her husband finds her body in the bathtub. Apparently dead of a heart attack.

Magda was under treatment for a weak heart and was buried without any questions being asked, but Paul Tranter is behaving oddly after her funeral and people begin to imagine things. But, as one of them states, "do you really want to hang him?" It's not until Paul dies in that same bathtub that an investigation, official and unofficial, is carried out. This time, it could have been nothing else than murder! But first there's something I need to nitpick about.

Murder with Minarets is listed in Adey's Locked Room Murders as "death by induced heart attack in a locked room," but there never was any mention of a locked or broken down door in Magda's case and with the second death it was explicitly mentioned that the door was unlocked. So not a locked room or impossible crime at all. I suppose the clever method would have allowed for an impossible crime scenario, even with an unlocked door, but, for that to have worked, the murderer needed a dominant alibi. And then you would have gotten an impossible crime akin to Henry Wade's Constable, Guard Thyself (1934).

Nevertheless, even without resulting in an impossible murder, the trick is a clever one and worthy of the bizarre murder methods that was one of the specialties of the Golden Age detective story. Jan Duquesne is one of the Embassy wives who had nagging questions about the death of Magda and, when Paul is killed, she decides to turn amateur detective together with her sister, Gina, and a visiting archaeologist, Christopher Milner-Browne – who's the brother of a Second Secretary, Peter Milner-Browne. But they have to look for the murderer among some very familiar faces.

Tom Hadley is Her Majesty's Consul in Ankara and lives with his wife, "Ba," and their two children on the second floor of the Embassy block, which they shared with the Tranters. The thin wall separating the two flats made it impossible not to hear the Tranters rows and Magda's "mid-European tantrums." The spacious flat on the floor below is occupied by the Counsellor, Charles O'Halloran, and his wife, Laura. Peter Milner-Browne has the floor above the Hadleys and Tranters, but there also two outsiders who have to be considered. Francis Allerdyce is a violin professor at the Ankara Conservatoire and had "not only a natural inclination to meet Magda's advances halfway," but "a conviction that it was almost a professional necessity" to do so. And then there's his wife, Doune Allardyce. Most of the clues have to be picked from what they did or, more importantly, what they said.

John Norris said in his review that he had the feeling the female half of the writing duo was in charge of writing Murder with Minarets, which is exactly the impression I got while reading the story. I suspect Gordon's most important contribution to the plot was the murder method. Everything else is exactly what you would expect from the some of (lesser-known) Crime Queens.

To quote John, "the ingenious murder method" is "reminiscent of the kind of thing Christianna Brand would dream up" with "the best clue planting is done in casual conversation," which is another reminder of such writers as Brand, Dorothy Bowers and Helen McCloy. So the plot is very talkative and without the focus on alibis, false-solutions and impossible crimes, the book notably differs from its predecessors in tone and style. But not for the worst!

Murder with Minarets is purely a character-driven whodunit with cleverly planted clues in seemingly meaningless patter or casual remarks, which can make the technical murder method feel a little out of place in a novel resembling a gentle comedy-of-manners – coated with a thin veneer of the detective story. But don't be mistaken! Underneath the chatter and cocktail parties, there's a genuine detective novel that would have been more at home in 1938 rather than 1968. So definitely recommended, but, depending on your personal taste, you might want to begin with either Diplomatic Death or Diving Death.

Hold on! Just one more thing... Over the past year, or two, I've come across three writers, Kip Chase, Charles Forsyte and Jack Vance (Sheriff Joe Bain series), who wrote a few traditional, classically-styled detective novels in the 1960s and abandoned the genre or stopped writing altogether. Does anyone know of any other mystery writers from that period that fit the profile? I would like to read more from this lost generation of Golden Age mystery writers.