Afterwards, Murder (1953) by Bob van Oyen

"Bob van Oyen" was the pseudonym of Jan van Beek, a Dutch novelist, who submitted his first detective novel, Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953), to a detective story competition, organized by A.W. Bruna & Zoon, in 1952 – winning the third-place prize and a publishing deal. Afterwards, Murder was published a year later and he wrote four more detective novels during the 1950s with cover illustrations by Dick Bruna. Van Oyen wrote two more novels in the 1960s and a handful of short stories over the following two decades. 

Afterwards, Murder introduces Van Oyen's series-detective, Captain Anton Victor IJsvogel of the Koninklijke Marechaussee (Royal Military Police), who investigates cases within the army or have a link to it. A Van Wyck Mason who's actually Dutch? Let's go on a reconnaissance mission and find out! 

Afterwards, Murder takes place a few years after World War II, in late 1947, and is set among the engineering officers of the Genie-bureau with the primary focus on their latest recruit, Reserve First Lieutenant Joop Boerda. He concludes on his first day that there are quite some "characters" attached to the bureau, but the dramatis personae lists more than twenty names. So I'll only highlight the two characters most relevant to Boerda's involvement in the case. Reserve First Lieutenant Hajo Baerends "an intellectual and amiable man," as well as an old acquaintance of Boerda, but "any understanding of army discipline was completely foreign to him" and he has a troublesome penchant for blunders – which will place his old friend in a difficult position with personal consequences. Secondly, you have Lieutenant Kees van Straaten, "een zonderlinge snijboon" ("an eccentric string bean"), whose promising career went into a tailspin when he tragically lost his wife. But on the day he was to get the boot, Germany surprised my country with an unexpected visit and Van Straaten became a decorated war hero as he fought in the first line of defense like a madman. Van Straaten remained an eccentric character who lately seemed depressed and downcast.

Story begins to take shape, or so it seems, when several people return to the Genie-bureau following a party and not everyone returned there with angelic intentions, which leads to a shocking discovery the following morning.

Van Straaten is found slumped over a desk with "one hand clutching the heavy stone paperweight," a statuette of a donkey, while "the other hanging limply along the chair." A 9mm pistol lay beside him on the floor. Captain Anton Victor IJsvogel is placed in charge of the case, but, as he noted himself, he had no experience whatsoever with murder cases and all his knowledge came from "the Penal Code and Edgar Wallace." So now he had to decide whether the death of a Genie-officer was due to suicide or murder. And, in case of the latter, he also has to find a killer. There are enough "pesterige kleinigheidjes" ("damning trifles") to make suicide less likely than it appears on the surface.

Regrettably, there's not much else to say about the story, or plot, because it all goes downhill from here and that became only apparent after the facts! You can put that down to Van Oyen not fully grasping the concept of clueing and plotting. Only thing that can be construed as a legitimate clue is the prologue, which pretty much gives the murderer's motive away, but everything are nothing more than allusions and hints to clues that don't exist! Captain IJsvogel has two reasons to believe Van Straaten was murdered: the lights were off when the body was found and one hand clutching the stone press. So you would think you're dealing with a good, old-fashioned dying message and one that actually makes sense when you take the prologue into consideration, which added an artistic element to the story and ezel is the Dutch word for both donkey and easel – except that no explanation was given why he held it. I flipped back and forth to see if something hadn't registered, while reading, but nothing. No explanation.

Another example is when Captain IJsvogel went to French to get a name, but all that the people there could tell him that the name sounded German and it's pointed out that a lot of Dutch names sound German to non-Dutch speakers. If you look at the list of characters, there are some candidates that could be mistaken by non-Dutch speakers as German. However, if it was meant as a clue, there's one not so obvious name (Buurman) that non-Dutch speakers could hear, or be remembered, as Bormann. Once again, this made sense as it would have given Van Oyen a reason to have set the story in 1947. And again... nothing. Not a name-based clue at all.

I had worked out an ingenious theory with Buurman as the least-likely murderer, because the prologue required a soldier and Buurman is a civilian employer of the Genie-bureau, but Buurman is also a well-known, black market purveyor of alcohol, cigarettes and silk stockings – who knows what business he was involved with during the war. So my explanation is that the murder was not a revenge killing, but Buurman getting rid of a blackmailer, which would also give another perspective to the note Buurman pocketed (witnessed by Boerda). Even the massive coincidence of (ROT13) Ina Fgenngra vagraqvat gb pbzzvg fhvpvqr jura ur jnf fubg works a lot better, storywise, with my explanation. I was already preparing to congratulate Van Oyen on an enthusiastic, first stab at the detective story, but failed to fool the Mycroft Holmes of the Low Countries. Only to discover my theory was based on clues that didn't exist!

I can mention more examples that will give you the idea Afterwards, Murder is a writing exercise done by someone who wants to create a writing rhythm/schedule rather than a polished and finished detective novel. Why did that copy of Ngaio Marsh's Death in Ecstasy (1937) keep turning up? Just so Boersma would finally pick it up, read it and gets an idea that will help solve the murder? Nope. He read it and the book never gets mentioned again. Why all the fanfare to rush to the murderer and give this person an opportunity to commit suicide? Why not call in your findings and have [redacted] detained? Because that would have prevented some emotional twaddle. I don't ever want to hear another bad word about either Freeman Wills Crofts or John Rhode ever again.

Last year, I was on a hot streak with A.R. Brent's Voorzichtig behandelen (Handle with Care, 1948), C. Buddingh's Vrijwel op slag (Almost Instantly, 1953), W.H. van Eemlandt's Kogels bij het dessert (Dessert with Bullets, 1954) and P. Dieudonné's Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020), but Afterwards, Murder was as a big a letdown as K. Abma's De hond was executeur (The Dog Was Executor, 1973). But as explained in my previous reviews and comments, finding these obscure, but good, Dutch detective novels is like groping around a maze blindfolded. There's no practical information online to help narrow down your search to certain writers, or titles, which makes picking them pure guesswork.

So, all in all, Afterwards, Murder began promising and then completely dissolved as a detective story, which makes it all the more surprising it earned third place in a detective story competition with 169 other entries. I find it very hard to believe there 166 manuscripts submitted that were worst than Afterwards, Murder. Anyway, sorry for the depressing review, but will pick something good for the next one. So keep refreshing that page! 

The Case of the Curious Client (1947) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Curious Client (1947) is the 32nd Ludovic Travers novel and it is, as it says on the tin, a curious case with an interesting take on the WWII-themed mysteries and can be grouped with the British postwar WWII detective novels – a period of austerity, social malaise and a crumbling empire. However, the plot is rooted in the rise of Oswald Mosley's "Blackshirts" in the 1930s when the South Coast of England was "a hotbed of Fascism." So it was fascinating to read a detective novel built around the periods bookending the Second World War. 

The Case of the Curious Client opens on Guy Fawkes Day, 1945, which is the first one to be celebrated with bonfires and fireworks since the war started and the papers were full with "the old pre-war kind of gossip about the Bonfire Boys of Lewes and the South Coast." A fact that will function as one of the hinges of the plot.

At the time, Ludovic Travers is still learning the ropes of the private eye business from Bill Ellice, of the Broad Street Detective Agency, and is holding the fort when the agency receives an urgent telephone call from a prospective client. Herbert Dorvan wants the detective agency to track down his nephew, Robert Dorvan, who had recently returned to England as a "prisoner of war in Japanese hands," but never got in touch with his uncle and he needs him "as a sort of bodyguard" – because he believes his life is in danger. There already had been attempt made on his life. So they schedule an appointment at the Southern Hotel that afternoon, but, when Travers arrives, Dorvan has already returned home. He left behind a note asking Travers to meet him in two days time at the village of Midgley.

Midgley is situated very near the southern English coast, but Travers, once again, never gets to see his client. Not alive anyway. Travers finds the house locked up with a note pinned on the door, "away till Wednesday," but naturally, he doesn't trust the situation and eventually has the local police break open one of the doors. What they find inside is Dorvan, lying in the living room, with a bullet in his head! Dorvan had been dead for some days and it seems his murderer had used the "squibs and fireworks" of Guy Fawkes Night to hide the sound of the gunshot.

I've to mention here that The Case of the Curious Client is, perhaps, the tidiest and clearest of Bush's late 1940s novels with a relatively simple and straightforward that would have been better fitted for a short story, or novella, but Bush managed to get a whole novel out of the plot – which he accomplished without any needless padding or stretching. For example, there are only three suspects to consider (a who-of-the-three type of detective story I've come to associate with Gosho Aoyama). All three are nephews of the victim. There's the previously mentioned Robert Dorvan and his half-brother, Sidney Dorvan, who's the owner of a London nightclub, the Ginger Cat. Gerry Bruff is a radio-impressionist with his own shown on the BBC.

However, Robert, Sidney and Gerry all have alibis, some better than others, but what they lack is a strong motive, because there was very little money coming their way. So could the motive for Dorvan's murder be hidden somewhere in his questionable, pre-war activities?

During the 1930s, Dorvan blamed the ruination of his furniture business on "Jewish undercutting” and "declared war, as it were, on Jews in general." Dorvan had a sign on his door, "NO YIDS NEED APPLY," but also contributed funds to the British Fascist Movement, spoke at meetings and "recognised as one of the big men by those in the know." When France fell to the Germans, Dorvan was interned under Defense Regulation 18B, his business was closed down and his nephews, who were close associates, were out of a job too. 

So, yeah, this is really neat and tidy whodunit and you can put together the whole puzzle before the explanation is given, certainly after the second murder and a £200 clue, but it's not too obvious at the start of the story. You need to do some puzzling to reveal this person, which is not bad when you only have three suspects to work with. The Case of the Curious Client has other bits and pieces that added interest to the story.

In his 1950s novels, like The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel (1952) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956), Bush began to show an interest in forensics and technology as tools of the law, but he already played with it here. Travers takes part in a "bugging" operation of the Ginger Cat and the floor over the nightclub is secretly taken over, "requisitioned by a Government Department as an overflow for old documents and correspondence," where a microphone has been placed under the floorboards and them listening to the fragments of conversation coming through the earphones is hands down the best scene in the book – even if it's not exactly ethical. And at the scene of the second murder, the police has "a temporary telephone" installed to better coordinate the investigation. I don't remember ever having come across one of these temporary telephones in detective fiction, but it makes sense to do so and wonder if these were ever actually used or something Bush imagined would be a good idea.

However, the absolute highlight of the story is the return of the Old General of the Yard, Superintendent George Wharton, who had lost of him luster in the 1950s titles (looking old and tired), but he was his old self again here. Wharton is a showman and a master of his craft who "disguises his height with a stoop" and dons antiquated spectacles for his own "obscure and deceptive purposes." A pure showman whose "sleeves are crammed with innumerable tricks" and "his personality alert with innumerable disguises to be assumed on each apt occasion," which makes him a perfect contrast to his more introspective and theoretical friend. Travers has "the crossword kind of brain" that "loves problems and is quick to find solutions," but his "fluent theorising" is not always correct (one out of three theories) and this can count on some good-natured mockery on Wharton's part. Although he's already too willing to assimilate such theories when they're proven right. They play off each other so well when they're both at the top of the game and, more than once, Wharton beat Travers to the solution, which adds a whole different layer to this series.

I've said this in my review of The Case of the Platinum Blonde (1944), but I'll say it again: nobody else, past or present, nailed the relationship between the (quasi) amateur detective and the professional policeman as perfectly as Bush did with Travers and Wharton. I think it's not too late for modern mystery writers to learn a thing or two from Bush.

So, all in all, The Case of the Curious Client is not one of the most complex novels in the series, but it's a tidily written, competently plotted detective novel with Bush getting more out of the story than what was put into it. Something that only very rarely happens with detective stories, but this is one of those rarities. A must-read for dedicated fans of the series or readers with a special interest in WWII-themed mysteries.

Space Junk: Q.E.D, vol. 12 by Motohiro Katou

Earlier this month, I returned to Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series with a review of vol. 11, which came after an unintended five-month-long break, but hopefully, I'll be able to come closer to vol. 30 than vol. 20 by the end of 2021 and have now arrived at vol. 12 – a sequel of sorts to the novel-length story in vol. 10. A story that had been recommended to me for over a year now. 

The twelfth volume of Q.E.D. comprises, as usually, of two stories and begins with a relatively minor story, "In the Corner of the Galaxy," with a rarely used background. 

"In the Corner of the Galaxy" opens with a televised panel discussion the possible existence of aliens and visitations to Earth. A UFO researcher, Megiyama Shunichi, claims to have more than enough proof of aliens to "force the government to release documents about them" and plans on holding an exhibition to present all of his accumulated evidence, but the skeptically-minded Professor Osamu Kotsuki asks for a bombshell revelation in "the form of indisputable evidence." What he shows them is a strange picture of an alien drawn by an American who claims to have been abducted by such a creature, which can hardly be considered evidence. One of the skeptics points out that drawings of aliens usually turn out to be copied from movies or book covers, but Professor Kotsuki ("who hates UFOs") finds the drawing to be quite interesting. Surprising everyone!

Professor Kotsuki turns up with a TV crew at Shunichi's warehouse, where he stored his "very valuable objects that prove aliens exist," which comprises of such items as "a can containing air from Mars" and "a signature of an alien from Saturn" (named Hobo Gas) – as well as "a sink for 3m tall aliens." Very tongue-in-cheek. However, the drawing gets stolen and the main suspect is Kana Mizuhara. So it falls to her friend and teenage detective, Sou Touma, to explain this quasi-impossible theft from the closely watched warehouse.

As a detective story, "In the Corner of the Galaxy" is very minor and the solution is neither particular ingenious, or memorable, but liked that it tackled something that has been consistently ignored by (Western) mystery writers. Curses, haunted houses and seances have been a staple of the (impossible crime) detective story ever since Edgar Allan Poe took a spare heart from the horror genre and buried it beneath the floorboards of the locked room mystery to give life to the detective story, but an extraterrestrial element would open up new possibilities and give an entirely different flavor to the detective story. But it has been rarely touched in the West. So a fun little story, but nothing special or memorable.

The second and longest story of vol. 12, entitled "Rainbow Mirror," is a sequel to the novel-length story from vol. 10, "In the Hand of the Witch," which begins with one of the murderers from that story receiving a visitor in prison, but the murderer drinks from a poisoned cup of juice and dies. So the guards immediately pounce on the visitor, Sou Touma! Luckily, there's security camera footage proving his innocence and is released, but where has he gone to? Kana Mizuhara, Yuu Touma (his sister) and Syd "Loki" Green go out to look for him, but someone is attacking and killing people who were involved in that old murder case.

These two linked stories are supposed to be two of the best stories in the series and they're certainly important, character-wise, as it touches on Touma's misfortune of attracting problems that hurt other people, but "In the Hand of the Witch" had a ramshackle plot and the focus on "Rainbow Mirror" was purely on character – not plot. This time, the story was trying to hard and it didn't work as well as the character-driven stories from previous stories. Even the ending missed, what was intended to be, the emotional gut-punch that landed so perfectly in other stories. And the plot of “Rainbow Mirror” walked back a major incident from "In the Hand of the Witch." So, no, this story didn't do it for me.

Regrettably, the end result is the weakest and least satisfying volume up to this point in the series, but this won't lead to another five, or six, month pause. You can expect another Q.E.D. review in February and it could be another twofer volume. So stay tuned!

The Fortescue Candle (1936) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's The Fortescue Candle (1936) is the eighteenth novel in the Anthony Bathurst series and had not been reprinted since its initial publication, 85 years ago, which Dean Street Press finally rectified last October with their second set of Flynn reprints – introduced by the doctor of puzzlelogy, Steve Barge. The synopsis promised a detective story reminiscent of early period Christopher Bush and Steve's introduction made even more curious as he named it "one of my favourite motives from Golden Age detective fiction." I can appreciate a good and original motive as much as an expertly crafted alibi or locked room-trick. The Fortescue Candle didn't disappoint! 

The Fortescue Candle begins with the unpopular Home Secretary, the Rt. Honorable Albert S. Griggs, giving consideration to "one rather troublesome problem" that "must be settled within the next twenty-four hours" at "the most generous estimate." Walter and Harper Fowles, two brothers, were condemned to death for the murder of a servant girl during a botched burglary. Griggs was now "the sole arbiter of life and death for two fellow-creatures," but decided not to overturn the verdict. On a wet morning in early March, the Fowles brothers, blazing with resentment and proclaiming their innocence, were duly hanged. And they left a very angry, spiteful father behind.

A few months later, the chambermaid of the Lansdowne Hotel finds the body of Griggs half lying out of his bed with a bullet hole in his throat, but the absence of a gun rules out suicide. There may be more to the murder than mere revenge.

Griggs is somewhat of a philanderer and, before his untimely passing, he had been visited by a rough character, Charles Wells, who promises "to let the daylight into his ugly carcase," if he continues to molest his daughter, but Griggs had already set his sights on another woman, Phillida Fortescue – a stage actress who found his attention unwelcome. Nevertheless, "the Griggs moth flutters to the Fortescue candle" (hence the title) and his stalkerish behavior gave his murder its most curious and baffling aspect. Shortly before his murder, Griggs followed Phillida to the Pier Pavilion, at the seaside town of St. Aidans, where an actress, Daphne Arbuthnot, was poisoned on stage during a performance. Griggs was backstage when it happened! The "two murders are so different in every way," but both cases pretty much share the same cast of players. Pure chance or a sinister design?

So the police reaches out to that amateur reasoner of some celebrity, Anthony Bathurst, who recognizes that the double-sided investigation is "one of the most remarkable cases with which he had ever been called upon to deal" as works hard to separate the genuine clues from the red herrings. And there are plenty of both to be found in this case!

Just consider the following: a small, white cube of chalk found in the pocket of the dead man's pajamas and drawings of a skull and crossbones, drawn in chalk, on the soles of his shoes. A maid passing the door of Griggs' hotelroom and catching snippets of a conversation mentioning murder, fowls and Griggs stating they belonged to him and entitled to do with them as he pleased. The missing glass of "poisoned spirits" that Bathurst expects the murderer disposed of in "an unexpected manner" at the pavilion. A coil of rope that the electrician of the pavilion, Mr. Fowles (yes, him), wore around his body and melon seeds found inside the pages of a book Griggs was reading before he was shot, which can be construed as a warning from "a mighty secret society" that "strikes absolute terror into the hearts of those unfortunate enough to incur its enmity," the Ku-Klax-Klan – which has to be given some serious attention as two witnesses have unexpectedly departed for America. Obviously, this plot-strand is Flynn's obligatory nod and a wink to Conan Doyle and this time picked the least triumphant of all of Sherlock Holmes' cases, "The Five Orange Pips" (collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891), to pay homage to. Not as customary with Flynn is that aspect of the plot pays tribute to that "marvelously clever creation" of G.K. Chesterton, Father Brown, who he trashed in The Billiard-Room Mystery (1927). Steve suggested Flynn might have been angling for an invitation to the Detection Club. Anyway... 

The Fortescue Candle is "a labyrinthine chase" with many, independent or incidental moving parts and treacherous red herrings, which comes with both up-and downsides, but either way, it's very impressive Flynn succeeded in stringing everything together in a coherent and logical way. Some parts of this plot shined with Flynn's usual creative and innovative brilliance. One example is the original motive for one of the murders, which certainly was a new one to me, but Flynn also snug one of those double-edged red herrings into the story. A red herring that becomes a clue once you realize it's a red herring and stands in stark contrast with the other, more crudely executed red herrings.

There is, however, a downside. Very nature of the plotting and storytelling makes the whole scheme a little loose in the joints and some aspects needed a little shoehorning to make it all fit. For example, a very little, but very convenient, coincidence allows one of the most important clue/red herring to the first murder fit the story like Cinderella's slipper or the unanswered question (ROT13) jub ernyyl xvyyrq gur freinag tvey? Jrer gur Sbjyre oebgure'f gur ivpgvzf bs n zvfpneevntr bs whfgvpr be qvq gurl qrfreir gb unat? I thought it was weird to leave this thread dangling considering its importance to the overall plot.

So this looseness in the joints of the plot prevented The Fortescue Candle from taking a place among Flynn's top-tier novels, like The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928), Murder en Route (1930) and Fear and Trembling (1936), but it's a genuine, Golden Age mystery with a complex, maze-like plot littered with clues and red herrings – some a little better handled than others. But the logical conclusion is everything but disappointing. Flynn deserves a posthumous Detection Club membership!

And Hope to Die (1995) by Roger Ormerod

Last week, I reviewed Roger Ormerod's A Shot at Nothing (1993), a splendid tribute to the great detective stories and locked room mysteries of yesteryear, which convinced me to explore this modern, but already forgotten, author further – who tried to marry the traditional detective story with the contemporary crime novel. Some attempts were more successful than others. But what matters is that he tried to keep the plot-driven detective story alive during a period when something else was expected from crime writers. More importantly, Ormerod had an undeniable fondness for locked room mysteries and impossible crimes! 

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) listed three novels, A Spoonful of Luger (1975), The Weight of Evidence (1978) and An Open Window (1988), but have since then identified More Dead Than Alive (1980), One Deathless Hour (1981), A Shot at Nothing and And Hope to Die (1995) as impossible crimes. But there's more! I recently discovered Face Value (1983; published in the US as The Hanging Doll Murders) and The Key to the Case (1992) can be added to the list. Time to Kill (1974) has David Mallin handing the murderer a cast-iron alibi, which could possibly translate into a quasi-impossible situation.

So that makes about nine, or ten, of his fifty-odd novels impossible crimes and you can bet there are probably a few more that remain unidentified, which is very promising, because Ormerod had a magic touch when it came to fabricating miracles – making him one of the most important and prolific (British) contributors of the period. During the 1980s and '90s, the impossible crime story had become to domain of American and yet to be translated, non-English writers. These writers include Edward D. Hoch, Bill Pronzini, Herbert Resnicow, Paul Halter, Soji Shimada and his shin honkaku movement, but only a few Brits carried on the tradition during the 1970s, '80s and '90s. I can think of only three names, Douglas Clark, Paul Doherty and Roger Ormerod, who wrote impossible crime fiction in a significant quantity during those decades.

You would assume locked room readers would treasure a writer, like Ormerod, but he appears to have been forgotten the moment he stopped writing in 1999 and passing away, aged 85, in 2005. Not even Adey and Brian Skupin were aware how much he actually contributed to the locked room mystery. Fortunately, I've some experience tumbling down these rabbit holes of obscurities. 

And Hope to Die is listed online as a standalone mystery, but it's the fifth Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson novel with Third Time Fatal (1992) being the third title that's listed as a standalone. So the series counts six, not four, novels in total comprising of Hung in the Balance (1990), Bury Him Darkly (1991), Third Time Fatal, A Shot at Nothing, And Hope to Die and Landscape with Corpse (1996). I've read two novels from this series and think I can safely state that it likely represents Ormerod at his most traditional, slanting heavily towards the classics, but with the characterization having a distinctly modern flavor. And Hope to Die gave a much clearer picture of our dating detectives in its opening chapter.

Philipa Lowe is the daughter of Chief Superintendent Lowe and is the widow of Graham Tonkin, a well-known water colorist, who left with her modest income, but that becomes a bone of contention in her relationship with the ex-police inspector, Oliver Simpson – whose career "disappeared in one flash of shot" when he tried to wrestle a shotgun from a madman. A shower of shotgun pellets to his right arm ended his career and the opening chapter revealed it will "gradually going to deteriorate" over time, which proves to be an obstacle to getting married. Oliver doesn't want to live on Philipa's money. So he hasn't set eyes upon for weeks as he secretly got a job with a security firm.

Philipa is soon reunited with Oliver through a bit clever maneuvering by her solicitor and family friend, Harvey Remington, who asks her to go to an in situ auction to gauge the authenticity of a water color painting. A portrait reputedly painted by her late husband, but he had painted only one portrait and that one was sold to a collector. Oliver will be there as part of the security team. There reunion at Mallington Hall is only slightly dampened by discovering the painting is a partially nude portrait of her on a bath stool, but notices that a very distinctive birthmark is missing. Something her late husband would certainly have included, but this plot-thread is eventually brushed aside (technically, that's not a pun, please don't bludgeon me) when it served its purpose, as a clue, to the main problem of the plot.

Mallington Hall is the old, neglected home of the demure Mrs. Drew, her dark, saturnine son, Derek, and his younger sister, Pattie. There's also their "sort of cousin," Wilfred Lyle. Under the rule of Richard Drew, they lived a far from happy existence as old-world country gentry folks, but nine months ago, Drew shot himself in the library. The thick, solid door was locked on the inside, key still in the locked position, while the metal catches of the old bay window "had long ago rusted solid" with decades old layers of paint sealing the opening section – whole "now had to be considered as one solid window." So the police concluded it couldn't have been anything else except suicide, which spelled disaster for the family, because his life insurance had a suicide clause in it. Consequently, the family were forced to auction the content of the home and move to farmhouse to keep chickens.

Pattie has heard of Philipa's reputation as an amateur meddler in police cases and asks her to prove her father was murdered in exchange for a brass paraffin lamp. A beautiful piece of antique that would look great in her cottage, but the offer comes with a caveat. She wants her to prove it was "murder by somebody from outside the family." This is not easy when everything points towards suicide.

A noteworthy moment from her investigation is when she shows the old-fashioned library door key to an expert (i.e. a career criminal) to see if he can detect any traces of tempering, like scratches on the stem, which would indicate the key was turned from the outside with pliers. This was not the case and the story from here on out quickly turns into a much darker, character-driven crime novel with all the trappings of a 1920s whodunit. Solution to the problem is hidden in the actions and personalities of the characters, which comes with a packet of depressing and sordid back stories. And in particular of Derek and Pattie. However, the key to the case is the character and story of their late father.

Richard Drew was "all dignity and gentlemanly superiority" living "in a world that disappeared long, long ago," but he had his personal set of principles and, when an grim incident ten years ago broke his civility (to put it mildly), he locked himself away from the world in his personal library. A decade later another incident apparently resulted in him taking his own life, but Philipa slowly becomes convinced it was actually murder. 

So far, so good, but let the reader be warned: the answers to these questions don't show Ormerod's usual creative and original approach to the detective story and locked room mystery, but it speaks volumes that he still succeeded in dropping me off at the final page without really being disappointed.

Firstly, the small pool of suspects and a second murder makes the murderer stand out like a scarecrow and the locked room-trick is an old dodge that you shouldn't get away with today or in 1995, but Ormerod played it serious with a straight face – oddly enough it made it much more convincing. Usually, these modern send ups of the country house/locked room mysteries that trot out this particular trick feel like a novelty store item, but And Hope to Die (despite the contemporary touches) felt like the genuine article. It reminded me in that regard of Michael Innes' final novel, Appleby and the Ospreys (1986).

All in all, And Hope to Die was a little disappointing, because Ormerod has written much better and more ingenious detective stories, but it was rather interesting to see a modern, character-driven crime drama being played out as a Golden Age mystery – adapting to it (locked room-trick). But if you're new to Ormerod, I recommend you start with More Dead Than Alive or A Shot at Nothing.

The Three Coffins (1935) by John Dickson Carr

Back in 2019, I decided to reread Till Death Do Us Part (1944) by John Dickson Carr, the warlock of Golden Age detective fiction, because it underwent a reevaluation over the past fifteen years and its status raised from a mid-tier title to one of Carr's ten best novels – a trend that began on the now defunct JDCarr forum and Yahoo GAD group. A trend that continued through this blogging era. Yeah, it was a deserved, long overdue reevaluation of an often overlooked and underappreciated novel in Carr's oeuvre. 

What's not as well deserved, or acceptable, is the simultaneous devaluation of Carr's landmark locked room mystery novel, The Three Coffins (1935; originally published as The Hollow Man).

I noted in my review of Till Death Do Us Part that book earned its new status on technical points rather than a knockout, but The Three Coffins seems to have lost its classic status on points. Sure, technically, it's perhaps not quite as sound as, let's say, She Died a Lady (1943) or He Who Whispers (1944), but I think readers today miss the point why it was considered a monumental contribution to the genre – a landmark only comparable in status to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). The Three Coffins is the utterly bizarre and fantastic done right. An impressive juggling act, traversing a slippery tight-rope, which reached the ending without the intricate, complicated plot becoming a tangled, incomprehensible mess. It worked with all the mad logic of a dream! That's what generations of (locked room) mystery readers admired about it.

However, there's one difference between the mystery readers of yesterday and today: we have a larger frame of reference, as there's more available today, which can give a new perspective on a long-held, settled opinion. Just look at my own downgrade of Robert van Gulik's Fantoom in Foe-lai (translated as The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959). So it was time to give The Three Coffins another read to see how well its reputation stands up to rereading and standing it did. The Three Coffins is written proof that there's no one, past, present or future, who can hold a candle to Carr. He proves it on the very first pages of the story! 

The Three Coffins opens with the statement that "those of Dr Fell's friends who like impossible situations will not find in his case–book any puzzle more baffling or more terrifying" than the murder of Professor Grimaud and "later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street" – committed in such a fashion that the murderer must have been invisible and "lighter than air." A stone cold killer with all the otherworldly qualities of a goblin or mage. Some began to wonder that the killer really was nothing more than hollow shell and that if you took away "the cap and the black coat and the child's false–face," you might reveal someone "like the man in a certain famous romance by Mr H.G. Wells." An extraordinary and confusing murder case, but Carr hastens to add that "the reader must be told at the outset" on "whose evidence he can absolutely rely." Such as the witnesses at Professor Grimaud's house and Cagliostro Street. This is the kind of the confident bravado that separated the masters from their apprentices.

Dr. Charles Grimaud a teacher, a popular lecturer and writer whose specialized in "any form of picturesque supernatural devilry from vampirism to the Black Mass." Every week, Dr. Grimaud holds court at the Warwick Tavern in Museum Street with a small group of his cronies, but, during their last meeting, there was an unexpected guest. A magician by the name of Pierre Fley challenges Dr. Grimaud that there are men who can get out of their coffins, move anywhere invisibly and four walls are nothing to them. Frey claims to be one of them and has a brother who can do even more, but he's dangerous and says either himself or his brother will visit Dr. Grimaud very soon. Dr. Grimaud tells him to send his brother and "be damned."

A few days later, Dr. Gideon Fell is sitting in front of a roaring fire of his library with Superintendent Hadley and Ted Rampole when the latter tells them about the incident at the Warwick Tavern. Dr. Fell immediately springs his immense bulk into action to pay Dr. Grimaud a visit, because he fears the worst has already happened.

The "first deadly walking of the hollow man" took place that night, shortly before Dr. Fell, Hadley and Rampole arrived at the scene, when "the side street of London were quiet with snow" and Dr. Grimaud received a strange, bundled up visitor – whose face was obscured by child's false-face resembling a Guy Fawkes mask. He was seen talking with Dr. Grimaud by the open door of his study, before entering and locking it behind them. A gunshot was heard and when the door was finally opened, they found a dying Dr. Grimaud, but not a trace of the shooter or the gun. There's an unlocked window in the study, but it overlooks a large, unbroken blanket of virgin snow and the locked door was under constant observation.

 

So, according to the evidence, the murderer drifted into the house without leaving any footprints on the sidewalk and floated out of the study window!

Dr. Fell is having a field day with this one and is more actively woolgathering than usual, but he still does it with all the tact of "a load of bricks coming through a skylight." He lumbers through the crime scene, while Hadley is questioning people, as he inspects the slashed painting of three coffins, pounces on the most disreputable-looking volumes on the bookshelves and went down wheezingly to look at the fireplace. Somehow, Dr. Fell combined his observation with Dr. Grimaud's dying words and "interpreted in jig–saw fashion" part of the backstory to the murder that's buried in Transylvania. I had completely forgotten The Three Coffins is not only a monumental locked room mystery, but also made perfect use of the dying message and the correct interpretation is another clue that a master was at work here.

There are many layers to this story, which have to be slowly peeled away, but as layer after layer gets removed, they expose new questions and complications. Such as a second, seemingly impossible, murder.

Cagliostro Street is a little cul-de-sac, no more than three minutes' walk from Grimaud's house, where a man was shot and killed under circumstances suggesting that he was "murdered by magic." Several witnesses at either end of the street heard a voice saying, "the second bullet is for you," followed by a laugh, a muffled pistol shot and man walking in the middle of the street pitching forward on his face – shot close enough that the wound was "burnt and singed black." There were no footprints in the snow but his own. This second murder allows Dr. Fell to reach his full potential as he goes into overdrive. Dr. Fell lectures on ghost stories, gets lectured on magic tricks and culminates with one of the most iconic chapters in all of detective fiction, "The Locked Room Lecture," in which Dr. Fell famously breaks the fourth wall ("because... we're in a detective story, and we don't fool the reader by pretending we're not") to talk about all the known locked room-tricks at the time! Just one of those many touches that makes this is a genuine classic.

The masterstroke comes when Dr. Fell visits Cagliostro Street and observes "a big round–hooded German clock with moving eyes in its sun of a face," in a shop window, "seeming to watch with idiot amusement the place where a man had been killed" and hears church bells in the distance that he finally sees the whole picture – which translates in one of the best surprise solutions of the period! A beautifully executed solution, reversing everything you thought was true, that pays homage to G.K. Chesterton (plot) and Conan Doyle (backstory). Sure, the critics have a small point that the solution is a little improbable in certain places and aspect can be hard to swallow. But, as stated before, it's the utterly bizarre and fantastic done right with all the mad logic of a dream and (impressively) Carr in full control of every moving bit and piece of a staggeringly complex plot, which is still easy to visualize once everything is explained. 

The Three Coffins is an almost otherworldly performance that nobody else could have pulled off except Carr. There have been those who tried. Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat (1938), John Russell Fearn's The Five Matchboxes (1948) and Paul Halter's La quatrième porte (The Fourth Door, 1987) spring to mind. There even have been those who came close, like Christianna Brand's Death of Jezebel (1948) and Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), but there will never be another Carr or The Three Coffins.

So, no, I don't agree with the downgrading of The Three Coffins at all. It's deservedly the most famous of Carr's many masterpieces and a landmark of the locked room mystery. Recommended unreservedly! I hope my fanboyism didn't bleed through too much.

Familiar Faces: Case Closed, vol. 76 by Gosho Aoyama

The 76th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a.k.a. Detective Conan, opens with a big, five-chapter long story covering nearly half of the volume and starts out as a fairly standard detective story, but then the plot takes a wild left turn and becomes part of the main storyline – revealing the potential presence of a Black Organization spy. A dramatic, double-layered case that began as a routine assignment. 

Conan built a website for Richard Moore's detective agency, "Private Eye Extraordinair," which netted him the first paying client who hired him over the internet. And the case looks like easy money.

Kei Kashitsuka found a key to a coin locker in the belongings of her recently deceased brother and hired Moore to find the locker, because "it might something important that could be placed in the stiff's coffin," but text messages about scheduling results in missing each other – returning to the office without having met their client. But upon their return, they notice someone has been in the office and they find their client tied up in the bathroom with her assailant, dead as a door nail, sitting on the toilet. Kashitsuka tells them she came to the office and was met by a man claiming to be Moore's assistant, but he knocked her out with a stun gun and came to in the bathroom "bound with duct tape" when Moore with his entourage returned. The man panicked and shot himself. Only minute traces of gunshot residue found on her body and clothes confirm she didn't fire the gun, but Conan has his suspicions.

So this part of the story is basically an inverted mystery with the question how-and why it was done with the shooting being a (borderline) impossible crime and the motive is tied to a botched bank robbery. During the robbery, a bank teller was shot and his last words form one of the most elegant and natural dying messages I've come across since Ellery Queen's short-short "Diamonds in Paradise" (collected in Queen's Full, 1965). This makes for a nice little detective story, but the situation takes an unexpected turn when Conan is kidnapped and everyone comes into action to find him, which include three of the most recently introduced recurring characters, Toru Amuro, Subaru Okiya and Masumi Sera.

All three of them obviously have ulterior motives to hang around Conan and Moore, but the final page of the story suggests one of them is a Black Organization spy, "Bourbon." Considering the three suspects and Aoyama's style of plotting, Bourbon will probably turn out to be a sheep in wolves clothing pretending to be a wolf in sheep's clothing (i.e. a double agent). A good, eventful story with a new development in the ongoing storyline.

A note for the curious: there's a brief reference in this story to the "Silver Witch Case" from vol. 63, which is a fun impossible crime story about a phantom car that can fly!

Unfortunately, the second story is one of the weakest, most unconvincing stories in the series in a very long time and begins when Doc Agasa, Conan and the Junior Detective League are invited to a barbecue at the home of Sumika and Takushi Konno – a married couple who they met and helped during a camping trip. However, they're constantly arguing with each other and ends with Amy seeing Sumika threatening Takushi with a knife and yelling "I've had enough... I'll kill you." But when Agasa and Conan hurry to the scene, it's a wounded Sumika who's on the floor with a knife sticking out of her body. This could have been a decent enough detective story and one line in particular, "you always get carried away with pranks," suggested the Konnos could have prepared a prank for the young detectives by staging a little domestic murder. Takushi simply took advantage of it to take his wife out the picture in a way that looked like self-defense. Sadly, the solution leaned heavily character manipulation and timing, which was neither cleverly done or very convincing. And the happy, lighthearted ending struck a jarring note with all the drama preceding it.

The third and last story of the volume is a Metropolitan Police Love Story, but this time, it's a thriller! Detective Takagi disappears and a package is delivered to his colleague and girlfriend, Sato, which contains a modified tablet with a live stream – showing Takagi in a precarious situation. Takagi lies flat on his back, tied up and gag, on a wooden plank on a very high construction surrounded by tarp. A noose is tied around his neck and without any clues, or demands, they only have his past cases to go in order to find him. A story ending on a cliffhanger that will be concluded in the next volume.

On a whole, it's not too interesting a story (so far), but one aspect of the plot deserves to be pointed out. This is the second time, in the entire series, Western readers have an advantage over Japanese readers when it comes to a language-based clue, which this time was impossible to hide in the English translation. You've to be denser than Arthur Hastings to miss it. You can find that first story in vol. 55.

So, yeah, it's difficult to rate this volume, because all of its strength is in the first story, but followed by a very weak one and something I fear will turn out to be nothing more than thriller-filler. But then again, if you're this far into the series, you'll be more than happy with the first story!

A Shot at Nothing (1993) by Roger Ormerod

Over the past few years, I've read four novels by Roger Ormerod, a jack-of-all-trades and second-string mystery writer, who evidently tried to find a balance in his stories between the traditional detective stories of yore and the contemporary, character-driven crime novels of the 1970s, '80s and '90s – which he did with various degrees of success. So it's understandable why Ormerod hasn't stood the test of time and is not as well remembered today, but locked room readers should take note of him. Ormerod was not impartial to the locked room mystery and, when it came to manufacturing miracles, he was not bereft of talent either! 

The Weight of Evidence (1974) is a little clunky, as a whodunit, but the synergy between the solutions to a strange disappearance from a construction shed and the discovery of two bodies in a bolted cellar room made for an original, one-of-a-kind impossible crime. More Dead Than Alive (1980) is a grand, old-fashioned and rambling detective novel littered with multiple, false solutions and a daringly original final explanation to the locked room problem. The Open Window (1988) is the weakest of the lot that withholds clues from the reader, but the locked room-trick still had flashes of ingenuity and probably would have worked better in a short story. 

A Shot at Nothing (1993) is the third title in the short-lived Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson series and it's a more conventional, relatively simplistic, locked room mystery. But, in every other regard, it's his clearest written and most consistently plotted detective novel I've read to date.

Philipa Lowe is the daughter of Chief Superintendent Lowe and is somewhat of a "lady sleuth," having been "successful two or three times in sorting out other people's problems," who's currently in a relationship with a former policeman, Oliver Simpson – whose career ended prematurely with a shotgun blast. A Shot at Nothing opens with them haunting for a house and Philipa eye caught Collington House. An over sized bungalow with a sprawling estate with a hedge maze blocking the front door and the father of the present owner had the place "laced with alarms" connected "to the nearest police station." Surprisingly, the place is dirt cheap and she soon finds out why Oliver has his objections to the place.

During his time as an inspector in the district, Oliver had an illicit affair with the lady of the manor, Clare Steadman, who's currently serving out a life sentence for murdering her husband, Harris Steadman. Oliver happened to be nearby when the burglar alarm was triggered and dispatched to the house.

Six years ago, Clare and Harris had a spousal spat over money. Clare refused to cough up the money to pay his debts and he angrily stormed into the gunroom, where her late father's collection of valuable shotguns reside in glass cabinets, locking the door behind him. And through the locked door of solid oak, Harris began to taunt Clare, smashing the glass cabinets and flinging the guns through the french windows onto the lawn. Yelling how much "they'd be worth after a dose of rain." So she armed herself with two twelve-bore cartridges, ran outside and started tossing the shotguns back into the room, but Harris closed and locked the french windows. Clare picked up a shotgun, loaded both barrels and blasted the lock.

A shot that did three things: it jammed the lock, blasted a hole in one of the double glazed window and Harris was showered in glass splinters. Clare saw him through the hole in the glass, slumped against the wall, assumed he was dead and called the police, who were already on their way, but this is where the story begins to fall apart – because her story is that she fired one barrel outside. Harris was showered in glass, but what killed him was a second shot fired at close range. There were two emptied barrels in the shotgun and the spread makes it "damn near impossible" the second shot was fired through the hole in the window. Oliver found the door the gunroom unlocked, but what sank Clare was her insistence that she heard "an unexplained third shot." So, naturally, the police doesn't buy her story.

Oliver asks Philipa if she "could prove her innocence for her," which doesn't go over well, but she can't help being fascinated and in particular about that unnecessary, illogical third shot that went against all the evidence. Or how it can be linked to a shotgun missing from the collection. Not to mention whether, or not, the gunroom was locked from the inside. She knows that if "something happens that's illogical in the known circumstances" then "there have to be different circumstances in which it is logical," but this case is not going to be purely an intellectual exercise.

Clare is released early, out on a license, returned to her home when Philipa and Oliver were there, which made for an awkward reunion, but Philipa quickly realizes she's dealing with "quite a personality." She needs to break down the walls of lies and false fronts Clare had erected all around to get to the truth of those three mysterious shotgun blasts six years ago. Something that's easier said than done. Harris was despised in the district and Clare received a hero's homecoming complete with a village fête on the estate, but her first day back ends with another murder!

As stated as above, A Shot at Nothing is Ormerod's clearest, most consistently plotted and written detective novel with a lot to recommend to connoisseurs of the traditional, puzzle-oriented detective story, but there are one or two things that need a little nitpicking – mostly concerning the clash of the old and new school of crime-and detective fiction. Philipa and Oliver are a far cry from the bantering, lighthearted mystery solving couple found in Delano Ames, Kelley Roos and the Lockridges, but their relationship tensions and troubles were actually tied, or relevant, to the plot. So it didn't bother me too much. However, their characterization and Oliver's personal involvement showed Ormerod tried to frame the story as a modern crime novel/quasi-police procedural. I think this took away a little from an otherwise solid detective novel with some ingenious and inspired plotting.

The solution to the impossible shooting is at it's core an elaborate reworking of a locked room-trick vintage mystery readers have seen before, but it was very well done and expanded with all the confusing and complications surrounding the various shots. Solution to that third, unnecessary shot was a clever touch and gleamed with the ingenuity, but not as much as the unexpected and surprising truth behind the second murder. The original motive behind this murder elevated the whole story to something worthy of the great mystery writers of the past. I can easily imagine Brian Flynn pulling a stunt like this and made up for some minor smudges on the plot. Such as the vague and obscure clue to the motive for the first murder or not treating it as a locked room murder until very late in the story.

But when you take A Shot at Nothing as a whole, it's only true flaw is that it was published in 1993 and not 1933 or 1943, because it would likely have been better and more fondly remembered by locked room readers and classic mystery fans. A highlight of an otherwise meager decade for good, old-fashioned detective fiction.

On a final, related note: A Shot at Nothing has convinced to return to Ormerod before too long and see what he did with his other locked room and impossible crime novel, which all have intriguing sounding premises. A man is shot and killed in A Spoonful of Luger (1975), but the gun was locked in a box and the victim had swallowed the key. One Deathless Hour (1981) has two murders, miles apart at the end of an hour's drive, but carried out with the same gun and within minutes of each other. And Hope to Die (1995) tackles the classic murder in a locked library scenario. There possibly more of them hidden among his various series and standalone novels. I'll find them, if they're out there. To be continued...

The Cabinda Affair (1949) by Matthew Head

John Canaday was a World War II veteran, educator and had a two-decade long career as the leading art critic for The New York Times, but more importantly, he wrote seven crime-and detective novels – published between 1943 and 1955 under the penname "Matthew Head." Four of those novels feature his series-detective, Dr. Mary Finney, who's the American Miss Marple of the missionary brigade in the Belgian Congo. 

The Cabinda Affair (1949) marks the second appearance of Dr. Mary Finney and Hooper Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), but she spends 2/3 of the story listening to Hooper's recounting his recent Cabinda adventure.

Hooper has remained in the Belgian Congo following the events recorded in The Devil in the Bush (1945) and now works for a US government agency called the War Contracts Settlement Commission (WCSC). His latest assignment brings him to a small, hard-to-reach town of a Portuguese enclave, Cabinda, that's "old as towns go" in those parts, but its appearance "screamed aloud for a watercolorist." Cabinda is dotted with boxcar-like, candy-colored houses with false-front type, like an old American western town, "except that they had all been painted in these soft Easter-egg shades of blue and vermilions and creams and gray-lavenders and whites" – trimmed in contrasting colors. Hooper is deployed to this enclave to help settle "one of those good will contracts" worth four million dollars! That's an awful lot of goodwill.

During the war, the US was very anxious for Portugal to stay neutral ("so was Portugal") and the generous contract was a friendly gesture from Uncle Sam to the Portuguese, but the war is over. And they don't need the overpriced mahogany anymore. Since there had already been two long extensions on the date of delivery of the first load, the contract only has a week left before it becomes cancelable.

Hooper is accompanied to Cabinda by a lawyer and troubleshooter, Cotter, who arrived sick as a dog, but what concerned Hooper more is his boyish, movie-star good looks. Not without reason when their business dealings begin to blend with the domestic affairs of their shady host, Falcão. Falcão is a stockholder and local manager of the Companhia Khaya who lives in Cabinda with his young and beautiful wife, Ana Falcão. She has a mesmerizing effect on Hooper and Cotter. Falcãos also have two children. A 17-year-old daughter, Maria, who's an innocent, frail-looking beauty with a humped back. Henriques is her old brother and he would be rather back in Lisbon than running the logging camp. Lastly, there's a disreputable lawyer, Maximiano da Cunha, and a nosy wood importer, Pete Caulsworth-Bigg.

So the business end of their meeting gets quickly mixed up with the personal and Hooper, while sick  with fever, witnesses several things he was not supposed to see. This culminates with him finding a body in the adjacent room with a knife wound before passing out again.

Miss Finney listened to the whole story and called his mental processes and powers of observation "an exercise in the distortion of obvious fact by the application of sentimental prejudice," because things happened right under his nose without catching on "anything's happened at all" – which is the crux of the plot. There aren't any physical clues to examine with the truth being hidden in the psychological makeup of the suspects. What they see or how they behave holds the key to the solution. Something that would not have been half as difficult had Hooper not wrongly interpreted everything he saw and heard, but it's a clever play on the unreliable narrator by using "a sentimental fool" with tropical fever.

Despite the African setting, the character-driven plotting and storytelling places The Cabinda Affair, weirdly enough, among the novels of the uncrowned British Crime Queens like a Moray Dalton or Maureen Sarsfield. A final flick of the knife gave the solution a twist justifying its inclusion among the Crime Crimes (crowned or uncrowned). There is, however, one noticeable difference. While the character-driven plotting and storytelling is very reminiscent of the Crime Queens, the tone is not as polished or sophisticated. I suppose most you go, "oh, no, the book takes place in Africa," but don't worry, it's not rampant, colonial-era racism. It's actually the opposite. The Cabinda Affair has some passages that you expect to find in a modern crime novel instead of a vintage detective story from the late 1940s. And in this regard, the frank, open-minded Miss Finney stands closer to Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley than Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. 

The Cabinda Affair began with Hooper doing all the talking, recounting everything that happened in detail, but Miss Finney began asking questions as the story progressed and under her scrutiny everything Hooper assumed was "pretty obvious and logical" began "to stop making sense" – exposing that case was not closed. So she accompanies Hooper on a return journey to Cabinda where she effectively destroys a criminal scheme and reveals a murderer who's both surprising and obvious, which revealed another clever aspect of the story. The Cabinda Affair is mostly a decent, character-driven crime novel leaning a little too heavily on the colorful setting, but there's another layer to the plot Head used to give a satisfying twist to Miss Finney's explanation that elevated it to a genuine detective novel.

So, yeah, The Cabinda Affair is a little out of the ordinary for a 1940s whodunit with clashing contrasts between tone and style, but Head made it work and it's an accomplishment to come up with a gracefully simple twist that upgrades a plot from decent to quite good. Recommended! And I'll be moving Head's The Smell of Money (1943) and The Congo Venus (1950) to the top of my wishlist now.